Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-r2nwp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-03T10:34:29.565Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modal-epistemic arguments for the existence of God based on the possibility of the omniscience and/or refutation of the strong agnosticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

Fábio Maia Bertato Open the ORCID record for Fábio Maia Bertato [Opens in a new window]
Fábio Maia Bertato*
Affiliation:
Centre for Logic, Epistemology, and the History of Science, University of Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil
*
Email: fbertato@unicamp.br
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I present some modal-epistemic arguments for the existence of God, based on the possibility of omniscience. For this, I provide modal formal systems that allow obtaining the existence of God as a theorem. Moreover, based on what I assume as reasonable premises, they show that the strong agnostic position is contradictory, since it allows the conclusion both that God exists and that God does not exist.

Keywords

existence of Godomnisciencestrong agnosticismmodallogic
Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 61 , Special Issue 1: Featuring articles on The Existence and Nature of God: Contributions from Latin America , March 2025 , pp. 143 - 151
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bertato, FM (2020) The logic of the Trinity and the Filioque question in Thomas Aquinas: a formal approach. In Silvestre, RS (ed.), Beyond Faith and Rationality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol. 34. Cham: Springer, pp. 137–151.Google Scholar
da Silva, GB and Bertato, FM (2019) A first-order modal theodicy: God, evil, and religious determinism. South American Journal of Logic 5, 49–80.Google Scholar
da Silva, GB and Bertato, FM (2020) Formal theodicy: religious determinism and the logical problem of evil. Edukacja Filozoficzna 70, 93–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutten, E (2012) A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments: Towards a Renewed Case for Theism. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit.Google Scholar
Rutten, E (2014) A modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God. Faith and Philosophy 31, 386–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tooley, M (2021) The problem of evil. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/evil/.Google Scholar
von Fintel, K (2011) Conditionals. In von Heusinger, K, Maienborn, C and Portner, P (eds), Semantics: An International Handbook of Meaning, vol. 2. Handbücher zur Sprach und Kommunikationswissenschaft 33.2. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 1515–1538.Google Scholar
Wintein, S (2018) The modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God is flawed. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84, 307–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar