Peter Adamson
speaker
1,322 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard yesterday
Peter Adamson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
But since you don't know this, your duty to tackle the child is no less real, as you can explain to the parents when they run outside to ask why you just rugby tackled their daughter.
Similarly, Bale argues that if it were right to persecute others on behalf of a true religion, then anyone who takes their own religion to be true would have a duty to persecute on behalf of that religion, regardless of whether the religion they uphold is in fact true.
This is absurd, since it would mean that Catholics and Protestants are both following their duty and acting rightly when they persecute one another, and indeed that Muslims would act rightly in persecuting Christians.
Again, it's possible to respond to bail here.
While it is plausible that we all have a duty to follow the judgment of our conscience, it's less plausible that this duty remains even when the judgment is flagrantly misguided.
Go back to the example of the paddling pool.
If I infer that it is a well simply because there's a bucket next to it, ignoring the fact that it's made of bright pink plastic and has an inflatable giraffe floating in it, then it's my fault that I leapt to conclusions, and therefore also my fault for leaping at the child.
My supposed duty is undermined by my insufficient caution in forming my beliefs.
Thus in the religious case, the Calvinists would say that there's abundance evidence for the truth of Christianity, and that the Bible is very clear in supporting Calvinist doctrine on matters like predestination and grace.
So anyone who rejects their views is being inexcusably careless or stubborn and is thus blameworthy.
In the technical terminology of the scholastics, a person who makes a morally crucial mistake is only justified if the mistake results from invincible ignorance.
But in the case of religion, ignorance is not inevitable.
We can find the right answer and have a duty to do so, which means that no duties can arise for people who get things wrong.
This is where Bell's skeptical approach becomes relevant.
His dictionary returns time and again to the difficulty of determining the truth in matters of religion.
A prime example is his handling of the point raised by Meslier against God's existence, the problem of evil.
Bale addresses this problem in several sections of the dictionary, including an entry on Manichaeanism and one of the clarifications that concludes the work.
Daringly, he suggests that the Manichaeans had convincing reasons to reject the monotheist belief in a single perfectly good god.
Instead, they postulated a second supernatural force, a kind of anti god who is responsible for evils.
Bale says that one can give what he calls a priori arguments in favor of nanotheism.
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