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This is an invited response to Peter Forrest’s review of my trilogy on the philosophy of religion, which appeared in a previous issue of this journal.

The manner in which physicians deliver difficult diagnoses is an area of discontent for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The American Academy of Neurology's Practice Parameter for care of the ALS Patient recommended teaching and evaluating strategies for disclosing the diagnosis (10). Our objective was to examine residents' ability in and perceptions of communicating the diagnosis of ALS. Twenty-two resident physicians were videotaped and rated by two ALS neurologists as they delivered an ALS diagnosis to a standardized patient (SP) during an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). Residents self-rated immediately after the OSCE, again after viewing their videotape, and completed a survey regarding the OSCE and delivering difficult diagnoses. OSCE performance was suboptimal, particularly for communication skills and empathy. The two examiners' scores correlated except for the empathy subscore. Residents' self-assessments did not align with the examiners' scores either before or after watching their videotape. The survey uncovered residents' apprehension and dissatisfaction with their training in diagnosis delivery. The results highlight a need for resident education in delivering an ALS diagnosis. The lack of correlation between residents' and examiners' scoring requires further study. Evaluation of empathy is particularly challenging. Residents agreed that OSCE participation was worthwhile.

The optimum yield-scaled global warming potential (GWP) of perennial crops on arid land requires effective strategies for irrigation and fertilization. In 2009–2010, N2O emissions and CH4 oxidation were measured from an almond [Prunus dulcis (Mill.) D.A. Webb] production system irrigated with nitrogen (N) fertilizers. Individual plots were selected within a randomized complete block design with fertilizer treatments of urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) and calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN). Event-related N2O emissions from irrigation and fertilization were determined for seasonal periods of post-harvest, winter, spring and summer. Peak N2O emissions in summer occurred within 24 h after fertilization, and were significantly greater from UAN compared to CAN (p

Mark McCreary has argued that I cannot consistently advance both the hiddenness argument and certain arguments for religious scepticism found in my book The Wisdom to Doubt (WD). This reaction was expected, and in WD I explained its shortsightedness in that context. First, I noted how in Part III of WD, where theism is addressed, my principal aim is not to prove atheism but to show theists that they are not immune from the scepticism defended in Parts I and II. To the success of this aim, McCreary's arguments are not so much as relevant, for a thoroughgoing scepticism embracing even the hiddenness argument is quite compatible with its success. But I also explained how someone convinced that the hiddenness argument does prove atheism escapes the grip of religious scepticism because of that argument's reliance on apparent conceptual truths. McCreary's critique obscures this point but does not defuse it.

The problem of Divine hiddenness, or the hiddenness problem, is more and more commonly being treated as independent of the problem of evil, and as rivalling the latter in significance. Are we in error if we acquiesce in these tendencies? Only a careful investigation into relations between the hiddenness problem and the problem of evil can help us see. Such an investigation is undertaken here. What we will find is that when certain knots threatening to hamper intellectual movement are unravelled, the hiddenness problem emerges as a contender in its own right – one that may generate serious difficulties for theism regardless of conclusions drawn concerning the force of the problem of evil.

Abstract: This is the inaugural Jay Newman Memorial Lecture in Philosophy of Religion, as delivered to the Canadian Theological Society in May 2009. Its themes are four: (1) the influence of conservative Christian theology in the shaping of contemporary (broadly analytical) philosophy of religion; (2) the resulting difficulty of demarcating philosophy of religion from theology or theological apologetics; (3) the possibility of a new, more progressive evolutionary approach to philosophy of religion, and how not just theological assumptions but certain philosophical assumptions too are standing in its way; and (4) the interesting parallel between where an imaginative, evolutionary philosophy of religion might take us and certain features of non-conservative Christian theology.

Little information is available about how farmers in transition to organic practices should manage short- and long-term N fertility. The objectives of this research were (1) to evaluate the leguminous cover crops lablab (Dolichos lablabL.), soybean (Glycine maxL.), sunn hemp (Crotalaria junceaL.) and a mixture of sunn hemp and cowpea (Vigna sinensisEndl.) as N sources; (2) to compare N availability and broccoli yield when cover crops were incorporated with conventional tillage (CT) or retained as a surface mulch using no-tillage (NT) practices; and (3) to quantify the amount of supplemental sidedress nitrogen required to maximize the yield of organic broccoli (Brassica oleraceaGroup Italica) on transition soils. Broccoli was grown during the first year after organic transition in the spring and fall of 2006 at the Kentland Agricultural Research Farm near Blacksburg, VA. Spring (PP−1, and showed a quadratic correlation with leaf N (P=R2=0.80 andP=R2=0.38, respectively). There was no difference in spring broccoli yield between CT and NT; however, CT produced the highest yield in the fall crop. At low sidedress N rates, leaf N was highest in CT plots, but tillage had no effect on N uptake at high N rates. This indicates that early season and perhaps total plant-available mineralized N was greater in CT than NT; however, potential N deficiency in NT soil may be compensated by sidedress N. Broccoli yield was not affected by leguminous cover crop, even though the quantity of cover crop biomass and N contribution was different among species. This suggests that N availability from leguminous cover crops may be impacted by other ecological processes such as soil microbial activity. This study shows that organic CT and NT growers can maximize broccoli yield in transition soils low in N availability, by using leguminous cover crops in combination with moderate amounts of sidedress N.

An open-market window has been identified in Virginia for fall broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica). Vegetable producers using plasticulture systems can capitalize on this opportunity by growing broccoli as a second crop after summer vegetables. The objective of this project was to evaluate suitability of two broccoli cultivars, Everest and Gypsy, for the fall production of large single-heads (>6 inches in diameter) for the fresh market. Planting density and rate of nitrogen (N) fertilizer (25, 60, and 100 lb/acre N) effects on yield characteristics were evaluated in a plasticulture system during a 3-year study (2003–05) conducted with broccoli transplants at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Kentland Agricultural Research Farm near Blacksburg, VA. The percentage of large heads was cultivar, plant density, and N rate dependent. The midseason ‘Gypsy’ produced significantly higher total yield and head weight compared with the early-season ‘Everest’. The optimum density to maximize floret production per area was 12,500 plants/acre and a supplemental N rate of 100 lb/acre. This N rate significantly (P < 0.002) improved marketable yield, large head yield, and leaf N accumulation compared with the lower rates. The data indicate that the feasibility of growing fall broccoli using a plasticulture system depends on the number of large heads produced for the fresh market. This in turn will depend on the choice of cultivar, stand establishment, and the requirement for supplemental N fertilizer over the residual level available in the soil after the first crop.

Chris Tucker's paper on the hiddenness argument seeks to turn aside a way of defending the latter which he calls the value argument. But the value argument can withstand Tucker's criticisms. In any case, an alternative argument capable of doing the same job is suggested by his own emphasis on free will. The many ways in which creatures might choose and the little we know about their likely choices are central themes in Chris Tucker's paper. His argu ment can be summarized as follows. For all we know, there is in some world including God a spiritually capable and non-resistant creature S who likely would at some time t fail to relate herself to God despite having the opportunity to do so, and God knows this before t. Now God is provided with little reason to act by value that will likely not be realized. Thus if God knows before t that the value of relationship with S will likely not be realized at t, and knows also that keeping S in the 'relating position' anyway would not improve anyone else's spiritual state, God is provided with little reason to keep S in the relating position at t by relationship-related value. Furthermore, in such circumstances even relatively weak competing con siderations would override what little reason God has to keep S in the relating position. Now, as Tucker notes, I have sought to deal with various purported competing considerations by means of an accommodationist strategy. Do we know that this countermove works? We do not, says Tucker, for the free choices of various individuals affected by any attempted accommodation need to be made in certain particular ways in order for it to work. And we do not know or, at least, we do not know without appeal to arguments other than those concerned with the value of divine-creature relationship that they would likely be made thus. Hence, he concludes, for all we know, the value of divine-creature relationship provides no reason at all to keep S in the relating position at ty and the argument that we are justified in supposing it necessarily provides sufficient reason to do so always and for all creatures like S is shown to be without force.1 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.181 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 06:18:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 290 J. L. SCHELLENBERG Tucker's aim in all of this is to assess the prospects of the latter argument, which he calls the value argument. As is evident, he construes this argument as an independent defence of the hiddenness argument's universal claim. I do not myself have a horse in this race, having emphasized in my work on the hidden ness argument not only the benevolence here at issue but also certain important features of divine love distinct from benevolence.2 But let us begin by considering how the independent force of the value argument can be defended against Tucker's criticisms.3 I agree, of course, with the idea that if God knows that some relationship that would be valuable cannot be realized, God will not pursue the relationship for the sake of its value. But in trying to press this idea into philosophical service in connection with the hiddenness problem, Tucker overlooks some pretty import ant contextual facts. For example, even before we decide how much reason the value of possible divine-creature relationship gives God to perform the specific action of keeping someone in the relating position, we need to think about certain other actions it gives God reason to perform. Tucker himself allows that God needs to be in a situation where an especially good thing cannot be got' no matter what He does' before the good thing provides no reason for its pursuit (274). Well then, what might God do to make it more likely that when S is kept in the relating position at ty S's response is the desired one which realizes the value of divine-creature relationship at f? Surely there is a lot that can be done. After all, we are talking about God here. (Tucker's God, I'm afraid, sometimes sounds like one finite, limited actor among others.) Just for example, God might ahead of time make experientially accessible for S more of the achingly beautiful divine nature (this can always be done, no matter how susceptible to distraction the subject may be, because there must always be more beauty to be revealed in a divine reality). Thinking about such facilitating actions which God might do, it becomes less and less plausible that, for all we know, there are spiritually capable and also non-resistant creatures who likely would yet at some time be so indifferent to divine overtures as to fail to respond positively to God.4 Assuming, as Tucker does, that judgments of likelihood are possible here, we must surely say that the varying degrees and possible contents of religious experience are such that a free positive response on the part of such individuals is not at all unlikely, if God does everything God can do to assure this result. How can we suppose otherwise without either seriously and in appropriately downgrading our conception of divine greatness and beauty or neglecting the import of that phrase ' spiritually capable and non-resistant' ? On these grounds, I suggest, Tucker's criticisms of the value argument must be held to fail. Whatever plausibility they may seem to have comes from giving such points insufficient attention. But let us suppose, for the sake of further argument, that I am mistaken about this. What I want to do next is to show how even if the value argument is unsuccessful, by looking more closely at the very free will This content downloaded from 157.55.39.181 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 06:18:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

In this brief reply I argue that criticisms of the hiddenness argument recently published in this journal by Imran Aijaz and Markus Weidler are without force. As will be shown, their critique of my conceptual version of the argument misses the mark by missing crucial distinctions. Their critique of my analogical version of the argument misunderstands that argument and also misapplies the work of W. H. Vanstone. And their critique of my view that belief is necessary for a certain kind of relationship with God overlooks both some central features of that kind of relationship and some good reasons for not accepting acceptance or anything similarly nonbelieving as a substitute for belief in this context.

I argue that Poston and Dougherty are mistaken in supposing that the hiddenness argument contains ambiguities about the nature of belief. And the attempt to extract from their mistaken account some reasons for favouring a broad, disjunctive view of divine – creature relationship that will be convincing for individuals not in the grip of theological assumptions comes up dry.

More than a few philosophers have sought to answer the atheistic argument from reasonable non-belief (a.k.a. the argument from divine hiddenness or the hiddenness argument) presented in my 1993 book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. In this first of two essays in response, I focus on objections sharing the defect – sometimes well-hidden – of irrelevance, using their shortcomings to highlight important features of the argument that are commonly overlooked.

This paper criticizes the assumption,omnipresent in contemporary philosophy ofreligion, that a perfectly good and loving Godwould wish to confer on (at least some) finitepersons free will. An alternative mode ofDivine-human relationship is introduced andshown to be as conducive to the realization ofvalue as one involving free will.Certain implications of this result are thenrevealed, to wit, that the theist’s free willdefence against the problem of evil isunsuccessful, and what is more, that free will,if it exists, provides positive support foratheism.

This paper begins by surveying some of the problems facing Swinburne's general approach, finding unfortunate the absence from his tetralogy of a strategy (suggested at the end of the previous trilogy) that might have helped to alleviate them, namely an attempt to show that a traditional Christian creed is more probable than the creed of any other religion. It then discusses certain particular arguments of the tetralogy arguments offered in defence of the traditional Christian doctrine of the Atonement which are central to the detailed working out of the approach, concluding that they are unacceptable. Richard Swinburne is an unusually disciplined and single-minded philos opher. As a recent autobiographical statement reveals, the articles and books he has produced over the last forty years, though many and varied, are all most fundamentally motivated by one aim an apologetic aim. They all fall within what he calls his 'programme', which has been 'to use the criteria of modern natural science, analysed with the careful rigour of modern philosophy, to show the meaningfulness and justification of Christian theology'.' It is therefore not inap propriate to view Swinburne's recently completed tetralogy, in which Christian doctrine is for the first time front and centre, as the culmination of all the work for which he is known and admired in philosophy.2 Everything else, in one way or another, has been leading up to this. (All that philosophy of science, for example, was done with an eye to the confirmation of Christianity; and his The Coherence of Theism was just stage one, awaiting fulfilment in The Christian God.) And, for the most part anyway, here it all ends. As he has expressed it: 'When that last book [of the tetralogy] is completed, I do not see myself as having anything further to say at book length on the philosophy of religion. I shall have said what I have to say. '3 But if Swinburne is now able to relax (does anyone think he really will?), his assessors are just getting geared up. And what they will naturally want to know

Offered here is Part 2 of a two-part critical survey of recent work in philosophy on divine hiddenness. Part 1 surveyed recent development of the discussion initiated by my 1993 book on the subject. Here, I examine some related work that expands the scope of the hiddenness discussion. Some of the enlargements take further the discussion of Stephen Maitzen's work on the demographics of theism. Others introduce new hiddenness problems and ways of dealing with them. A third category of new work urges theological constraints, of one sort or another, on hiddenness reasoning, thus raising new methodological issues.

Only 6 years have passed since I last published a critical survey article on the divine hiddenness discussion (Schellenberg, 2010a). But more than 60 papers and books dealing with hiddenness themes have been published in that time. Not all can be addressed here. Moreover, to enable a reasonable treatment of those that will make an appearance, I shall break the present survey into two parts. I begin in this piece with recent work—including my own—on the argument descended from Schellenberg (1993), which started the discussion. Part 2, yet to come, will consider ways in which this area of inquiry has recently been enlarged beyond its original parameters.

The transfer reaction of negative muons from muonic protium to 3 and 4 in binary and triple gas mixtures was studied. In the binary mixtures the transfer rates to the two helium isotopes were determined from the time distribution of the 7-keV X-rays of the intermediate muonic molecule (pµHe)*. The experimental transfer rate to 4 is in good agreement with theoretical predictions, whereas the rate to 3 is a factor 2 to 3 smaller than the predicted ones. Radiative branching ratios of the (pµHe)8 molecular decay were obtained. Muon transfer from excited states of muonic protium gives the main contribution to the total intensity of the µHe Lyman series in the binary mixtures. Values of q 1s He are determined.

The scientific program and the experimental setup of the DEAR (DAΦNE Exotic Atom Research) experiment at the new φ-factory DAΦNE of Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati are described. The objective of DEAR is to perform a 1% measurement of the K α line shift due to the strong interaction in kaonic hydrogen. A measurement will also be performed on kaonic deuterium for the first time. The aim is to investigate low-energy $$\overline K N$$ physics and to understand SU(3) chiral symmetry breaking. The setup takes advantage of the unique features of the “kaon beam” from the φ decay in DAΦNE; of a low-temperature pressurized gaseous target; and of a detector for soft X-rays – the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) – characterized by a very good energy (and spatial) resolution and by an unprecedented background rejection capability. The DEAR experiment represents a major effort in the study of low energy $$\overline K N$$ interactions and has the potential to produce a breakthrough in the field.

The energy and time distributions of the decay X-rays of excited, metastable, molecular (dµHe)*-resonances were measured. The comparison of the observed energy spectra with calculated ones suggests that decay from the rotational state J = 1 dominates at the investigated conditions. The muon transfer rates from ground state deuterium to the helium isotopes 3He and 4He at low temperatures were determined from the time distributions of these spectra. Additionally, the temperature dependence of the muon transfer rate was clearly established in deuterium / 4He mixtures.

The DEAR (DAΦNE Exotic Atom Research) experiment at the new φ-factory DAΦNE of Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati aims for a 1% measurement of the line shift of the K-complex due to strong interaction in kaonic hydrogen. This presentation is meant to prove that the high statistics and good resolution obtainable with DEAR will be able to disentangle the kaonic hydrogen K-complex lines (a cascade unconstrained fit), obtaining in this way constraints for what concerns the cascade parameters and, consequently, information regarding the physical processes involved in the kaonic hydrogen atomic cascade.

The present status of research of muon transfer from the ground state of muonic protium to 4He is reviewed. The analysis of a recent measurement in a triple gas mixture of H2+4He+Ne at 15 bar and room temperature is presented and the result is compared to the existing experimental and theoretical rates. The average muon transfer rate from protium to 4He determined from all lifetime measurements is .

The charge exchange reaction of negative muons from the \((\mu {\text{p}})_{1{\text{s}}} \) atom to oxygen has been measured in gaseous mixtures of H2 + O2. The measurements were performed at three different relative oxygen concentrations ranging from 0.2% to 0.8% and total pressures 3.5–15 bar. A mean transfer rate of \(\lambda _{{\text{pO}}}^{\text{t}} = 0.85(2) \times 10^{11} {\text{s}}^{{\text{ - 1}}} \), describing the transfer from the ground state of thermalized \(\mu {\text{p}} \) atoms to oxygen, was determined. In order to investigate the energy dependence of the transfer rate, Monte Carlo simulations of the \((\mu {\text{p}})_{1{\text{s}}} \) thermalization and the muon transfer were carried out. The comparison of measured and simulated time spectra yielded an epithermal transfer rate \(\lambda _{{\text{pO}}}^{\text{e}} \)=3.9 \(\times \) 1011 s-1 in the energy interval 0.12–0.22 eV. The analysis with the model of “Two components” shows that all measured time spectra can be reproduced with the same set of parameters.