While I think that Andy is quite right to note that the problem of evil is normally framed in terms of suffering instead of happiness, I nevertheless want to add a couple of remarks concerning the possibility that happiness is the ultimate end of the human being, and how this might relate to the problem of evil, and then to take up the issue of whether human beings deserve happiness, a deep and interesting question in its own right. Philosophers from Aristotle through Kant have taken happiness to be an end, if not the ultimate end, of human beings, although they have cashed out the respect in which happiness might play this role in very different ways. Indeed, Christian philosophers have traditionally believed that the blessed in Heaven will be rewarded with a vision of God that constitutes bliss. Now such philosophers recognize that in this life, at least, human beings may not experience happiness at all, but nevertheless this constitutes no block to their thinking that ultimately the worthy will...

It's not altogether clear to me that it is correct to draw such a sharp distinction between philosophical and religious questions: for one thing, certain philosophers, like Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and others deny that such a distinction may be drawn; for another thing, depending on what's at stake in appealing, say, to Jesus, one may invoke Jesus while giving a 'purely' philosophical answer to a question. For example, consider the following question treated by the early modern philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (I simplify somewhat to focus the issue as sharply as possible): Why does a completely self-sufficient God create the finite world? Malebranche's answer is that God creates the world in order to incarnate Jesus Christ, on the grounds that only if an infinite being is joined to the finite world will the world merit being created by God. Malebranche appeals to Jesus in this context in order to provide a sufficient reason for God's creation of the world--a sufficient reason, I should note,...

In order to determine what role, if any, religion generally should play in knowledge about "how things are or came to be," it is essential first to know just what 'things' are at issue. For example, it seems to me that if the 'things' in question are truths about morality, then religion generally may well have a role to play; by contrast, it seems to me that if the 'things' in question are truths about the nature of the physical world, say, then it's not clear to me that religion has any role whatsoever to play in helping us to gain knowledge of such truths. (I write here not from any particular standpoint on the issue: indeed, even the great seventeenth-century French philosopher and theologian Nicolas Malebranche, who famously believed in the truth of occasionalism, the view that God is the only real cause in the universe, and, hence that all changes in the universe were effected by God's causal power, did not think that appeals to God were relevant in the context of giving scientific explanations. ...

Not having read Hawking's book, I can't present _his_ answer; I'll try to respond to the question from the standpoint of someone who--as Hawking seems to do--thinks that theoretical physics is the ultimate explanatory authority. The question of where did the laws in virtue of which phenomena are to be explained come from amounts to the question of what explains why the particular laws of physics that apply to our world do apply to it. It seems to me that someone with Hawking's views would probably might that this simply is a question that we cannot answer at the moment: we lack the information necessary to give such an explanation, although, in principle, one could give such an explanation, and one might even--I can't do this, but someone else might--sketch the form that such an explanation would take. (I don't think that someone who shared Hawking's conviction could state conclusively that this is a question that cannot be answered: to do so would be to bet against science.) ...

You're quite right about Kant. The purposiveness--orderliness--of organisms in particular and, indeed, of nature in general, while manifest in experience, cannot themselves, according to Kant, be proven from experience. In the Critique of Judgment (henceforth referred to as 'KU' and cited from James Creed Meredith's translation, revised by Nicholas Walker [Oxford University Press, 2007]), Kant explains that the principle of the intrinsic purposiveness of organisms "must be derived from experience....But owing to the universality and necessity which that principle predicates of such purposiveness, it cannot rest on merely empirical grounds, but must have some underlying a priori principle" (§ 66). Since, however, according to Kant, and in accordance with Kant's understanding of Newtonianism, nature itself is merely a realm of efficient causes, there is no room in nature for purposiveness (KU § 66), which leads to an antinomy of teleological judgment (KU §§. 69-78, esp. §§. 69-71), very roughly...

The question of God's omniscience is a deep one that has received considerable attention from philosophers. Your formulation of the issue, I think, raises three distinct questions: whether (divine) omniscience is compatible with temporal existence; whether (divine) omniscience can be achieved by a sentient being; and the nature of (divine) omniscience itself. I'll treat each of these issues in reverse order. First, the omniscience at issue in treatments of divine omniscience isn't merely (!) knowledge of what will happen to that being itself at any given moment, but what will happen everywhere in the universe at any given moment, throughout time: so the knowledge at issue is very broad in scope indeed. Second, and given that omniscience is knowledge of what is happening everywhere in the universe, throughout time, it seems impossible that a being that receives all knowledge from the senses--which is what I take you to mean by "sentient"--could know everything that is happening everywhere in the...

It should be noted, first, that there is considerable disagreement even in the French Parliament regarding the ban on the wearing of the burqa; it has been suggested that the ban is a political ploy on the part of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. (For more on the internal disagreement regarding the law, see a recent article in The New York Times .) Despite the disagreement in the French Parliament, as noted in the Times article, it is likely that the bill will be passed by the French Senate in September and then become law. Does France thus risk, as Daniel Garrigue, the legislator who cast the sole vote against the law, said, slipping into totalitarianism? I think not; indeed, I think that the law is very much in keeping with France's secularism. The basic rationale for the law, which I think is untouched by the considerations advanced by Nussbaum and differs greatly from those considered by Andy in his response--although, to be sure, issues about security and the public space have been...

Can one retain a commitment to divine benevolence even if one has abandoned the interventionist conception of God? It is a standard feature of early modern thought about God that "the time of miracles has ceased," and that God no longer directly intervenes in the natural world, or acts to bring about events in the world by particular volitions (i.e., God does not will that a particular house be destroyed). Rather, God governs the natural world by means of general laws, and all particular events in the natural world admit of natural explanations in terms of laws of nature. As for why natural evils befall one man rather than another: this is due to the operation of natural laws, not to God's particular volitions, so God is not directly responsible either for the destruction of one house or for the fact that another house was spared. This does not imply that God has withdrawn from the world: He sustains the world in existence, and it is in virtue of His power that natural events take...

The question seems to imply that 'true freedom' requires that agents must be the author of their own natures, and if one is the author of one's own nature, then no being--not even God--could predict how a truly free agent would act. The assumption that one needs to be the author of one's own nature in order to be free seems to be too strong, however, for it implies that only God can be free, because only God is traditionally conceived to be the author of His own nature. Suppose that one drops the requirement that a free agent must be the author of his/her own nature, and weakens it to the requirement that a free agent must be the author of his/her own choices. Then, the worry goes, if an agent is indeed the author of his/her own choices, then those choices cannot be foreseen. The assumption that God could not foreknow the actions of a truly free agent is extraordinarily problematic, for it would compromise God's omniscience, and hence would be rejected by most believers. ...

I wanted to add some remarks regarding the relation between divine foreknowledge and free will. According to most orthodox Christians, the fact that God is omniscient implies that He has foreknowledge. Indeed, if God didn't have foreknowledge, it would be difficult to see how all events could be subject to His providential control, as all orthodox Christians agree. Depending on how one conceives of free will, tdifferent questions arise regarding the nature of divine foreknowledge. If one holds an incompatibilist view of free will, according to which an agent's choice is free iff that choice is not determined by some preceding cause, then it is difficult to see what basis there is for God's foreknowledge of those free choices. One famous option for reconciling this conception of free will with divine foreknowledge was elaborated by Luis de Molina, and involves an appeal to 'middle knowledge'. Roughly, what the appeal to middle knowledge amounts to is the claim that God knows all possible free...