Quotes from Peter van Inwagen

At some point, for all eternity, there will be no more unmerited suffering: this present darkness, "the age of evil", will eventually be remembered as a brief flicker at the beginning of human history. Every evil done by the wicked to the innocent will have been avenged, and every tear will have been wiped away

To get the xs to compose something, one need only bring them into contact; if the xs are in contact, they compose something; and if they are not in contact, they do not compose anything.

I have found it helpful to ask not 'In what circumstances is a plank a part of a ship?' but, rather, 'In what circumstances do planks compose (add up to, form) something?

Let us always remember Abraham Lincoln's undeservedly neglected riddle: How many legs has a dog got if you call a tail a leg? The answer, said Lincoln, and he was right, is four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Can we stipulate that or establish a convention that or make it true by definition that there is an object that has X, Y, and Z (and no other atoms) as parts? Let us ask what one might actually say in order to accomplish something along these lines.

War is too important to be left to the generals.

It used to be widely held that evil was incompatible with the existence of God: that no possible world contained both God and evil. So far as I am able tell, this thesis is no longer defended

You certainly wouldn't want to invest much time in an argument with someone who would believe it in the first place.