Arguing for and against God's existence: Course schedule and literature

Within a month I will start to lecture a new master course at VU University. The course is entitled Arguing for and against God's existence and it is part of the new master Philosophy and Religion. The schedule of the course and the corresponding course literature are as shown below. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Tuesday 30 October
The cosmological argument: two traditional paradigmatic forms
- Rutten (2012). A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments. Towards a Renewed Case for Theism, chapter I & II.

Friday 2 November
Koons' cosmological argument (and objections)
- Idem., chapter III.

Tuesday 6 November
Gale and Pruss' cosmological argument (and objections)
- Idem., chapter IV.

Friday 9 November
On Philipse’s Attempt to Write Off All Deductive Cosmological Arguments
- Philipse (2012). God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (OUP), chapter 12.
- Rutten (2013). On Philipse’s Attempt to Write Off All Deductive Cosmological Arguments. Philo 16(1).

Tuesday 13 November
The argument from atomism and causalism (and objections)
- Rutten (2012). A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments. Towards a Renewed Case for Theism, chapter VI & VII.

Friday 16 November
Anselm's and Alvin Plantinga's ontological argument (and objections)
- Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland, 2009, chapter 10 (pages to be decided).

Tuesday 20 November
Alexander Pruss' ontological argument (and objections)
- Pruss (2009). A Godelian ontological argument improved. Religious Studies, 45, pp. 347–353.
- Pruss, A. (2012). A Godelian ontological argument improved even more. In Miroslaw Szatkowski (ed.), Ontological Proofs Today. Ontos Verlag.

Friday 23 November
The modal-epistemic argument (and objections)
- Rutten (2014). A modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God. Faith and Philosophy, 31(4), 386–400.

Tuesday 27 November
Stefan Wintein's critique of the modal-epistemic argument (and rebuttals)
- Wintein (2018). The modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God is flawed. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.

Friday 30 November
The teleological or fine-tuning argument (and objections)
- Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland, 2009, chapter 4 (pages to be decided).

Tuesday 4 December
The moral argument (and objections)
- Idem., chapter 7 (pages to be decided).

Friday 11 December
The semantic argument (and objections)
- Rutten (2015). Positive Universally Held Properties Are Necessarily Universally Held.

Course literature
1. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland, 2009.
2. Pruss, A. (2009). A Godelian ontological argument improved. Religious Studies, 45, pp. 347–353.
3. Pruss, A. (2012). A Godelian ontological argument improved even more. In Miroslaw Szatkowski (ed.), Ontological Proofs Today. Ontos Verlag: http://www.alexanderpruss.com/papers/Goedelian2.pdf (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..
4. Rutten, E. (2012). A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments. Towards a Renewed Case for Theism: gjerutten.nl.
5. Philipse, H. (2012). God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
6. Rutten, E (2013). On Philipse’s Attempt to Write Off All Deductive Cosmological Arguments. Philo 16(1): gjerutten.nl.
7. Rutten, E. (2014). A modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God. Faith and Philosophy, 31(4), 386–400.
8. Stefan, W. (2018). The modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God is flawed. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-018-9664-3 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.