Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

I started writing this as a response to Danny’s comment, but the post ended up being so long that I am making it into its own article. “Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” (Ex 40:35) Was God [...]

Aquinas writes that “the love of God infuses and creates goodness” (ST, I, 20, 2), while man is drawn to love the goodness that is already there. Clearly, he is talking about metaphysical or essential goodness here. In contrast, both God and man together create moral goodness or the goodness of accidents, such as wisdom [...]

This word has at least two meanings: (1) “having moral desert,” (2) “entitled” or having a positive claim on something regardless of one’s merits. For example, consider the two statements: “the worker deserves his wages” and “your children deserve the best.” In the former “deserving” has the meaning (1), because there is a contractual obligation [...]

Meaning in general is studied by semiotics or the science of interpretation. In order to find meaning in X or of X, we must interpret X in terms of something else. Though it can be long, the process of interpretation does not proceed forever but ends with existence, the good, the true, the beautiful, the [...]

In an insightful paper on the psychological causes of the belief in immortality and the kinds of immortality, Corless Lamont argues that the most important such cause is the desire to reunite with the deceased family members and friends and, perhaps, to atone for imperfect behavior towards them. (Critiques of God, “The Illusion of Immortality”) [...]

Ths song goes: Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die: Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth. This is incorrect. Christ had no glory before the Incarnation; in fact, He earned glory due to it. What He laid by was His omniscience, as [...]

Goodness is prior to God in the understanding and experience, because one can and usually does come to know what is good and what is not good before knowing anything about God. Further, God is in the beginning of one’s education described as good; it is only later on that we draw an identity between [...]

In (ST, I, 19, 9, ad 3) Aquinas writes: The statements that evil exists, and that evil exists not, are opposed as contradictories; yet the statements that anyone wills evil to exist and that he wills it not to be, are not so opposed; since either is affirmative. God therefore neither wills evil to be [...]

This time by the clever H.J. McCloskey. Consider first the following sophism: “Natural calamities do not necessarily turn people to God, but rather present the problem of evil in an acute form; and the problem of evil is said to account for more defections from religion than any other cause.” (Critiques of God, 210) But, [...]

John Dewey writes: “It may be asked by those who do not like to look upon the darker side of the history of religions why the darker facts should be brought up. We all know that civilized man has a background of bestiality and superstition and that these elements are still with us. … How [...]

Erich Fromm accuses many strands of the modern Christianity of being “authoritarian” rather than “humanistic.” An authoritarian religion depreciates the individual; it makes him weak, unloving, insignificant, even as it glorifies God. “The essential element in authoritarian religion and in the authoritarian religious experience is the surrender to a power transcending man. The main virtue [...]

“For the principle task of civilization, its actual raison d’être, is to defend us against nature.” (Critiques of God, 144, “The Future of an Illusion”) You hear that, you tree huggers? When was the last time a tree hugged you? (Yes, the fruits and lumber and oxygen that trees produce are a boon to mankind. [...]

Following Thomas Aquinas, I define faith as the assent of the intellect to the revealed knowledge of God. It is an act of choice. Aquinas writes that faith stands between science and opinion. In what way does it so stand? It does if we compare the relative strengths of the influences that impel the intellect [...]

Wallace I. Matson considers the following two arguments equally weak: I. Natural objects share with artifacts the common characteristics of adjustment of parts and curious adapting of means to ends. II. Artifacts have these characteristics because they are products of design. Conclusion. Therefore natural objects are probably products of a great designer. and I’. Natural [...]

Though Rothbard savaged poor Mr. Hook, the latter, nevertheless, presents a startling description of suicide in the rather dated anthology Critiques of God: Making the Case Against Belief in God: “Now the act of suicide is an act of radical destruction, which destroys at one stroke the possibility of any kind of personal experience. ‘I [...]

Can we say that (1) the four moral virtues are in us from the animal part of our nature, (2) the three intellectual virtues are in us from the angelic part of our nature, and (3) the three theological virtues are in us from our nature made deiform? In other words, moral virtues (a) came [...]

… the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce. Have the Jews become the PC Nazis, committing the contradictory sins of policing thoughts and deathly fearing the pogroms, in the US and theocratic nationalists (who have, I so heard, learned a great deal about military strategies from Hitler) in Israel? Come [...]

Swinburne’s point is that being too close to God will make one’s choices of good as versus evil too easy. If one is convinced that God will disapprove of his behavior or that He will punish him in the afterlife, then we will “have less opportunity for serious good actions. That will make our commitment [...]

I’m in awe of Swinburne because of this chapter. Some highlights: The law of self-making: one’s character is determined by numerous actions. “In a Godless world there is no reason to expect that, even given that creatures make moral choices, these choices would affect character in this way. It might be just as hard to [...]

It seems to me that Kant is pretty much a completely sterile thinker. So, I want to ask a question to the public: in your view, did Kant contribute anything of value to philosophy? If so, then what?