438 pages ; 24 cm

Publisher's description: Most people, believers and nonbelievers alike, are unfamiliar with the variety and force of arguments for the impossibility of God. Yet over recent years a growing number of scholars have been formulating and developing a series of increasingly powerful arguments that the concept of God, as variously understood by the world's major religions and leading theologians, is contradictory in many ways, and therefore God does not and cannot exist. This unique anthology brings together for the first time most of the important arguments for the impossibility of God that have been published. The collection includes papers and book selections by J.L. Mackie, Quentin Smith, Theodore Drange, Michael Martin, and many other distinguished scholars. The editors provide a general introduction and brief summaries of the arguments to help the reader grasp the crucial issues involved. Both students and teachers of philosophy and the philosophy of religion will find this anthology to be an indispensable resource

Includes bibliographical references

Definitional disproofs of the existence of God. Can God's existence be disproved? / J. N. Findlay -- God's non-existence: a replay to Mr. Rainer and Mr. Hughes / J. N. Findlay -- Proving the non-existence of God / John L. Pollock -- Can an ancient argument of carneades on cardinal virtues and divine attributes be used to disprove the existence of God? / Douglas Walton -- God and moral autonomy / James Rachels -- Deductive evil disproofs of the existence of God. Evil and omnipotence / J. L. Mackie -- The problem of evil / J. L. Mackie -- Plantinga on the free will defense / Hugh LaFollette -- A sound logical argument from evil / Quentin Smith -- Unjustified evil and God's choice / Richard R. La Croix -- Doctrinal disproofs of the existence of God. The paradox of Eden / Richard R. La Croix -- A moral argument for atheism / Raymond D. Bradley / Miracles as evidence against the existence of God / Christine Overall -- Miracles and God: A reply to Robert A. H. Larmer / Christine Overall -- The argument from unfairness / Richard Schoenig -- Multiple attributes disproofs of the existence of God. Incompatible-properties arguments: a survey / Theodore M. Drange -- Omniscience and immutability / Norman Kretzmann -- Omniscience, eternity, and time / Anthony Kenny -- On the compossibility of the divine attributes / David Blumenfeld -- A disproof of the God of the common man / Michael Martin -- Conflicts between the divine attributes / Michael Martin -- Why God cannot think: Kant, omnipresence, and consciousness / Matt McCormick -- God and the best world possible / Lawrence Resnick -- Agency and omniscience / Tomis Kapitan -- The incompatibility of omniscience and intentional action: a reply to David P. Hunt -- The paradox of divine agency / Matt McCormick -- Single attribute disproofs of the existence of God. The concept of the supernatural / Gilbert Fulmer -- The paradox of omnipotence / J. L. Cowan -- The paradox of omnipotence revisited / J. L. Cowan -- Against omniscience: the case from essential indexicals / Patrick Grim -- Omniscience possible? / Roland Puccetti -- Logic and limits of knowledge and truth / Patrick Grim -- The being that knew too much / Patrick Grim -- Appendix. Of the confused and contradictory ideas of theology / Patrick Thiry d'Holbach

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