I was browsing Facebook the other day (as I often do) and came across a paper that looked really interesting. It was titled: “From a Cosmic Fine-Tuner to a Perfect Being.” That caught my attention immediately because Fine-Tuning Arguments have traditionally been thought of as to only get us to a cosmic designer, not all the way to God (classically conceived). After reading the paper, I found it so interesting that I contacted the author, Justin Mooney, and invited him on for an interview. This podcast episode is the result!
Justin Mooney
Justin Mooney is currently a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has two Masters degrees in Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion. His research interests are Metaphysics and, you guessed it, Philosophy of Religion. Check out his bio and published papers here.
Episode 22
In this episode we’re talking about a New Cumulative Case for God’s Existence. I’m joined by the soon-to-be Dr. Justin Mooney. He’s currently a PhD student but already has two masters degrees in philosophy and philosophy of religion. Super smart dude. I also really loved chatting with him. I like how he explains things. The content of this episode is potentially groundbreaking. Justin, along with a few other philosophers, has discovered a new way of defending God’s existence. Instead of using one argument to get a powerful being and another argument to get a designer and another to get a moral being, we can instead infer a perfect being from each argument. But you’ve got to listen to the actual episode to hear how that works.
People involved in creating this episode:
- Cameron Bertuzzi – Host
- Sawyer Hudson – Producer and Sound Editor
- Justin Mooney – Guest
To listen to this episode, just hit the play button below. It’s that simple! You can always subscribe and listen on iTunes. All of our episodes are pushed there for free.
I’m always excited about novel arguments for theism. It is truly a gift to ponder God. I would, however, like to raise an objection. Admittedly, I haven’t read the paper or Byerly’s work, so perhaps this can be easily countered. When thinking of the Raven inference, it seems to me to be a “more of the same” argument. Essentially, the more X I encounter with property Y, in the absence of any X without Y, the more safe the inference that all X are Y. Of course, this kind of induction is problematic and susceptible to sampling bias. But that… Read more »
I just heard a good rebuttal to my concerns. Basically, perfection could plausibly be very simple and supervene on the other properties (omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc…). And to counter the raven blackness being singular, it too could be construed as a composite of the physical and biological structures responsible for the blackness.
I think these are all good responses.
Far out.
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