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  1. Gods Above: Naturalizing Religion in Terms of our Shared Ape Social Dominance Behavior.John S. Wilkins - 2015 - Sophia 54 (1):77-92.
    To naturalize religion, we must identify what religion is, and what aspects of it we are trying to explain. In this paper, religious social institutional behavior is the explanatory target, and an explanatory hypothesis based on shared primate social dominance psychology is given. The argument is that various religious features, including the high status afforded the religious, and the high status afforded to deities, are an expression of this social dominance psychology in a context for which it did not evolve: (...)
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  2. The Natural History of Secular Christianity.Michael D. Magee - manuscript
    Human beings are social animals, not solitary ones. Morality is an instinct we have because it helps us socialize, live together harmoniously. This paper reviews how the evolution of morality and other mental functions associated with our survival and sociality gave rise to cultural behavior among the small groups of humans during the Palaeolithic period when the tribe was personified as a supernatural identity and guardian, a totem, an ancestor and ultimately a god. Loyalty to the tribe required loyalty to (...)
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  3. Is Christian Belief Supernatural? Grace, Nature and the Cognitive Science of Religion.Stanisław Ruczaj - 2023 - TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 8 (1).
    The Cognitive Science of Religion represents a contemporary attempt at a naturalistic explanation of religion. There is debate as to whether its account of how religious beliefs arise is reconcilable with the religious account, which holds that religious beliefs are caused by God. In my paper, I argue that these two accounts cannot be reconciled when it comes to the specific question of how Christian religious beliefs arise if one accepts an important theological doctrine of the supernaturality of Christian belief. (...)
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  4. Methodological Naturalism and Scientific Success.Yunus Adi Prasetya - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1):231-256.
    Several metaphysical naturalists argue that the success of science, together with the claim that scientists adhere to methodological naturalism, amounts to strong evidence for metaphysical naturalism. I call this the scientific-success argument. It is argued that the scientific-success argument is similar to the no-miracles argument for realism in philosophy of science. On the no-miracles argument, the success of science is taken as strong evidence that scientific theories are true. Based on this similarity, some considerations relevant to one argument may also (...)
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  5. David Hume and the Philosophy of Religion.Paul Russell - 2021 - In Stewart Goetz & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 1-20.
    David Hume (1711-1776) is widely recognized as one of the most influential and significant critics of religion in the history of philosophy. There remains, nevertheless, considerable disagreement about the exact nature of his views. According to some, he was a skeptic who regarded all conjectures relating to religious hypotheses to be beyond the scope of human understanding – he neither affirmed nor denied these conjectures. Others read him as embracing a highly refined form of “true religion” of some kind. On (...)
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  6. Does the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism Defeat God’s Beliefs?Tina Anderson & Perry Hendricks - 2020 - Sophia 59 (3):489-499.
    Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that the naturalist who accepts evolutionary theory has a defeater for all of her beliefs, including her belief in naturalism and evolution. Hence, he says, naturalism, when conjoined with evolution, is self defeating and cannot be rationally accepted. This is known as the evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN). However, Tyler Wunder (Religious Studies 51:391– 399, 2015) has recently shown that if the EAAN is framed in terms of objective probability and theism is assumed to be (...)
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  7. Introduction. The Evolutionary Approach to Ethics: From Animal Prosociality to Human Morality.Daniele Bertini - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (3):3-22.
    Evolutionary research on the biological fitness of groups has recently given a prominent value to the role that prosocial behaviors play in favoring a successful adaptation to ecological niches. Such a focus marks a paradigm shift. Early views of evolution relied on the notion of natural selection as a largely competitive mechanism for the achievement of the highest amount of resources. Today, evolutionists from different schools think that collaborative attitudes are an irremovable ingredient of biological change over time. As a (...)
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  8. Does The Universe Have A Cause?Graham Oppy - 2020 - In Michael Peterson & Robert Van Arragon (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 1-26.
    In this paper, I set out a fairly careful argument for the claim that natural reality ("the universe') does not have--and could not have--a cause. I being with a discussion of the question whether causal reality could have a cause. I claim that it is obvious that causal reality cannot have a cause. I then turn to a discussion of natural reality. I contend that, necessarily, natural reality exhausts causal reality: necessarily, natural reality and causal reality are one and the (...)
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  9. Morality Does Not Depend On God.Graham Oppy - 2020 - In Problems in Value Theory: An Introduction to Contemporary Debates. New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 105-16.
    Naturalists have many and diverse reasons for thinking that morality does not depend upon God. In this paper, I do not aim to give an exhaustive inventory of these reasons. Rather, I aim to give reason that emerge from the kind of naturalism that I accept. After explaining what I mean by "God", "morality" and "dependence", I note that, on the kind of naturalism that I accept, it is impossible that God exists. Unsurprisingly, therefore, I hold that it is impossible (...)
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  10. True Religion and Hume's Practical Atheism.Paul Russell - 2020 - In Sceptical Doubt and Disbelief in Modern European Thought. Dordrecht, Netherlands: pp. 191-225.
    The argument and discussion in this paper begins from the premise that Hume was an atheist who denied the religious or theist hypothesis. However, even if it is agreed that that Hume was an atheist this does not tell us where he stood on the question concerning the value of religion. Some atheists, such as Spinoza, have argued that society needs to maintain and preserve a form of “true religion”, which is required for the support of our ethical life. Others, (...)
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  11. Neo-Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering.B. Kyle Keltz - 2019 - Nova et Vetera 17 (1):93-125.
    Proponents of the problem of animal suffering claim that the millions of years of apparent nonhuman animal pain and suffering provides evidence against the existence of God. Neo-Cartesianism attempts to avoid this problem mainly by denying the existence of phenomenal consciousness in nonhuman animals. However, neo-Cartesian options regarding animal minds have failed to compel many. In this essay, I explore an answer to the problem of animal suffering inspired by the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Instead of focusing on phenomenal consciousness, (...)
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  12. A Priori (Atheism).Felipe Leon - 2019 - In Joseph W. Koterski & Graham Oppy (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy. MacMillan Reference.
    The primary aim of this chapter is to evaluate whether considerations about a priori domains and abstract objects favor atheism over theism.
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  13. Final Reckoning: Atheism.Graham Oppy - 2019 - In Joseph Koterski & Graham Oppy (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy. Farmington Hills, MI, USA: pp. 679-94.
    This is the concluding chapter of a debate book about the existence of God: *Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy* (Gale, 2019). The book has a large number of contributors on both sides. My chapter suggests one way of unifying the contributions that are made on the atheistic side.
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  14. Introduction to Companion to Atheism and Philosophy.Graham Oppy - 2019 - In A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 1-11.
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  15. Naturalism and Naturalness: A Naturalist's Perspective.Graham Oppy - 2019 - In Paul Copan & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays on Theism's Reasonability. Lanham: Lexington Books. pp. 3-16.
    This chapter is an invited contribution to a book on the naturalness of theistic belief. I start by considering ordinary usage of the term 'natural'. I then clarify how I shall use the terms 'naturalism', 'theism', 'worldview' and 'big picture'. I consider the demographic spread of commitment to theistic big pictures and naturalistic big pictures. I consider the distribution of happiness over those committed to theistic big pictures and naturalistic big pictures. I consider the distribution of reasons over those committed (...)
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  16. Religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2019 - IOSR 24 (7):57-62.
    Religious exclusivism is the biggest threat for multi-religious society at the same time, ambivalent thoughts among religion in religious pluralism due to religious diversity often yields religious violence. In both of the extreme, (religious exclusivism and religious pluralism) there is the possibility of religious violence, i.e., religious riots, terrorism, mob lynching, and communalism. The objective of this paper is to discuss the significance of interreligious dialogue (IRD), its basic principle, how IRD will help us for addressing the problems of humanity (...)
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  17. The Atheistic Argument from Outrageousness.Bryan Frances - 2018 - Think 17 (48):107-116.
    When pressed, many atheists offer three reasons why they reject theism: there is strong evidence against theism, there is no strong evidence for theism, and theism is so outrageous that it needs a great deal of support in order for us to believe it in a reasonable manner. I examine the third reason, arguing that it fails.
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  18. The Evolutionary Argument for Atheism.Daniel Howard-Snyder - 2017 - In John-Christopher Keller (ed.), Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from van Inwagen. Oxford University Press.
    This essay assesses Paul Draper's argument from evolution to atheism.
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  19. An Argument for Atheism from Naturalism.Graham Oppy - 2017 - In Lenny Clapp (ed.), Philosophy for Us. Cognella. pp. 3-14.
    This paper outlines an argument for atheism from naturalism that I have developed in more detail elsewhere (in particular, in *The Best Argument against God*). The overall shape of the argument is as follows: first, naturalism is simpler than theism; second, there is no data that naturalism does not explain at least as well as theism; and, third, naturalism entails atheism; so we have good reason to prefer atheism to theism. Note that this statement of the shape of the argument (...)
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  20. The Problems of Divine Location and Age.Seungbae Park - 2017 - European Journal of Science and Theology 31 (2):41-53.
    I develop two problems, which I call the problem of divine location and the problem of divine age, to challenge the theist belief that God created the universe. The problem of divine location holds that it is not clear where God existed before he created the universe. The problem of divine age holds that it is not clear how old God was when he created the universe. I explore several theist responses to these two problems, and argue that all of (...)
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  21. The Explanatory Challenge of Religious Diversity.Jason Marsh & Jon Marsh - 2016 - In Helen De Cruz & Ryan Nichols (eds.), Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 61-83.
    The challenge from religious diversity is widely thought to be one of the most important challenges facing religious belief. Despite this consensus, however, many epistemologists think that standard versions of the challenge fail because they threaten to implicate many seemingly reasonable yet highly controversial non-religious beliefs. In light of this we develop an alternative, less discussed, diversity challenge that does not generalize. This challenge concerns why so much religious diversity exists in the first place given common religious, and in particular (...)
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  22. New Atheist Approaches to Religion.Trent Dougherty & Logan Paul Gage - 2015 - In Graham Oppy (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Routledge. pp. 51-62.
    In this article, we examine in detail the New Atheists' most serious argument for the conclusion that God does not exist, namely, Richard Dawkins's Ultimate 747 Gambit. Dawkins relies upon a strong explanatory principle involving simplicity. We systematically inspect the various kinds of simplicity that Dawkins may invoke. Finding his crucial premises false on any common conception of simplicity, we conclude that Dawkins has not given good reason to think God does not exist.
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  23. The Interstellar Stakes Against God.Julian Friedland - 2015 - The Humanist 1:6-8.
    Pope Francis takes the Big Bang as supplying empirical evidence for God’s existence, going so far as to credit God’s will as the force behind natural selection. So if natural selection is the emanation of divine will, then so too is what Richard Dawkins calls the “selfish gene” underlying it. The trouble is that the natural forces of self-interest may win out over the better angels of our nature, spelling disaster for the human species—and the planet sustaining it. For the (...)
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  24. The Problem of Natural Inequality: A New Problem of Evil.Moti Mizrahi - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (1):127-136.
    In this paper, I argue that there is a kind of evil, namely, the unequal distribution of natural endowments, or natural inequality, which presents theists with a new evidential problem of evil. The problem of natural inequality is a new evidential problem of evil not only because, to the best of my knowledge, it has not yet been discussed in the literature, but also because available theodicies, such the free will defense and the soul-making defense, are not adequate responses in (...)
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  25. Arguments for atheism.Graham Oppy - 2013 - In Stephen Bullivant & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford University Press. pp. 53.
    This paper consider three families of arguments for atheism. First, there are direct arguments for atheism: arguments that theism is meaningless, or incoherent, or logically inconsistent, or impossible, or inconsistent with known fact, of improbable given known fact, or morally repugnant, or the like. Second, there are indirect arguments for atheism: direct arguments for something that entails atheism. Third, there are comparative arguments for atheism: e.g., arguments for the view that (atheistic) naturalism is more theoretically virtuous than theism.
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  26. God.Graham Oppy - 2012 - In Neil Manson & Robert Barnard (eds.), Continuum Companion to Metaphysics. pp. 246-68.
    This paper argues that considerations about causal origins of the universe do not favour theism over naturalism. Indeed, if the only data that is relevant to the choice between theism and naturalism is data about causal origins, then it turns out that considerations about causal origins favour naturalism over theism.
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  27. Hume's Philosophy of Irreligion and the Myth of British Empiricism.Paul Russell - 2012 - In Alan Bailey & Dan O'Brien (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Hume. Continuum. pp. 377-395.
    This chapter outlines an alternative interpretation of Hume’s philosophy, one that aims, among other things, to explain some of the most perplexing puzzles concerning the relationship between Hume’s skepticism and his naturalism. The key to solving these puzzles, it is argued, rests with recognizing Hume’s fundamental irreligious aims and objectives, beginning with his first and greatest work, A Treatise of Human Nature. The irreligious interpretation not only reconfigures our understanding of the unity and structure of Hume’s thought, it also provides (...)
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  28. Intended and Unintended Life.Brooke Alan Trisel - 2012 - Philosophical Forum 43 (4):395-403.
    Some people feel threatened by the thought that life might have arisen by chance. What is it about “chance” that some people find so threatening? If life originated by chance, this suggests that life was unintended and that it was not inevitable. It is ironic that people care about whether life in general was intended, but may not have ever wondered whether their own existence was intended by their parents. If it does not matter to us whether one's own existence (...)
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  29. Prospects for Successful Proofs of Theism or Atheism.Graham Oppy - 2011 - In Joachim Bromand & Guido Kreis (eds.), Gottesbeweise von Anselm bis Gödel. Frankfurt, Germany: pp. 599-642.
    This paper is an English version of the paper that was published in German under the title: "Über die Aussichten erfolgreicher Beweise für Theismus oder Atheismus". My English paper was translated into German by Gabriele Schlegel. -/- The aim of this paper is to examine the prospects for proofs or successful arguments for the existence or non-existence of God.
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  30. What I believe.Graham Oppy - 2009 - In Russell Blackford & Udo Schuklenk (eds.), 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why we are Atheists. New York USA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 50-56.
    This article gives a brief sketch of the naturalistic beliefs that I hold. It is not intended as a *defence* of those beliefs; the aim of the paper is simply to get the beliefs out onto the table.
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  31. Das Elend der Theologie. [REVIEW]Edgar Dahl - 2008 - Aufklärung Und Kritik 2:246-248.
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  32. Die Zukunft einer Illusion.Edgar Dahl - 2007 - Aufklärung Und Kritik 2:61-63.
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  33. Der Gotteswahn. [REVIEW]Edgar Dahl - 2007 - Spektrum der Wissenschaft:118-120.
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  34. Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?Gregory W. Dawes - 2007 - Religion Compass 1 (6):711-24.
    A number of recent historians claim to have defeated what they call the ‘conflict thesis’, the idea that there exists some inevitable conflict between Darwinism and Christianity. This is often thought to be part of a broader ‘warfare thesis’, which posits an inevitable conflict between science and religion. But, all they have defeated is one, relatively uninteresting form of this thesis. There remain other forms of the conflict theses that remain entirely plausible, even in light of the historical record.
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  35. "Ważność" a naturalizm. Antypsychologizm Wilhelma Windelbanda.Tomasz Kubalica - 2007 - Idea Studia nad strukturą i rozwojem pojęć filozoficznych 19.
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  36. Irreligion and the Impartial Spectator in Smith’s Moral System.Paul Russell - 2005 - In Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy. New York, NY, USA: pp. 384-402.
    [First published in Italian as: “L’irreligione e lo spettatore imparziale nel sistema morale di Adam Smith”, in Rivista di Filosofia 3 (3):375-403 (2005). -/- Translated by E. Lecaldano.] -/- A number of commentators on Smith’s philosophy have observed that the relationship between his moral theory and his theological beliefs is “exceedingly difficult to unravel.” The available evidence, as generally presented, suggests that although Smith was not entirely orthodox by contemporary standards, he has no obvious or significant irreligious commitments or orientation. (...)
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  37. Arguments from Moral Evil.Graham Oppy - 2004 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 56 (2/3):59 - 87.
    In this paper, I argue that -- contrary to widely received opinion -- logical arguments from evil are well and truly alive and kicking.
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  38. Naturalism: A Critical Analysis. [REVIEW]G. Oppy - 2001 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4):576-577.
    Review of Craig And Mroeland: *Naturalism: A Critical Analysis*.
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  39. Evil Beyond the Burden of Belief. [REVIEW]Graham Oppy - 2000 - Philo 3 (2):104-107.
    Review of *Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defence of Theism* (by Andrea Weisberger). This paper was originally published at the Secular Web; it was later published in *Philo*. Details here are to the publication in *Philo*.
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  40. Could God Have Made the Big Bang? (On Theistic Counterfactuals).Duncan Macintosh - 1994 - Dialogue 33 (1):3-20.
    Quentin Smith argues that if God exists, He had a duty to ensure life's existence; and He couldn't rationally have done so and made a big bang unless a counter-factual like "If God had made a big bang, there would have been life," was true pre-creation. But such counter-factuals are not true pre-creation. I argue that God could have made a big bang without irrationality; and that He could have ensured life without making big bangs non-random. Further, a proper understanding (...)
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  41. Hume's Treatise and Hobbes's the Elements of Law.Paul Russell - 1985 - Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1):51.
    The central thesis of this paper is that the scope and structure of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature is modelled, or planned, after that of Hobbes's The Elements of Law and that in this respect there exists an important and unique relationship between these works. This relationship is of some importance for at least two reasons. First, it is indicative of the fundamental similarity between Hobbes's and Hume's project of the study of man. Second, and what is more important, by (...)
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  42. The Martingale Multiverse - How The Multiverse Accounts For This Fine Tuned Universe.Colin Mangan - manuscript
    This paper will attempt to offer a defence of to the Multiverse (MV) hypotheses, in the context of the theistic Fine Tuning Argument (FTA). It will be argued that theistic proponents of the FTA who argue that the MV hypothesis commits the Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy (IGF) are, themselves, guilty of moving the goalposts when it comes to assessing the validity of the MV hypothesis. The Cosmic Slot Machine analogy will be used to demonstrate how the This Universe Objection (TUO), first (...)
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  43. Naturally Fine Tuned For Life - A Defence of Metaphysical Naturalism.Colin Mangan - manuscript
    The Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) is an argument put forward by proponents of theism, in which they attempt to make a case from Bayesian inference, that the [apparently] fine tuned constants of our universe is more likely given a theistic hypothesis, than a naturalistic one. Some naturalists argue that this is not the case given the Multiverse (MV) hypothesis (that our universe is one of a plurality in a broader multiverse). The MV hypothesis is rejected by theists who argue it commits (...)
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  44. American Science and its Anti-Evolutionist Critics: it's the evidence stupid.Reed Richter - manuscript
    This is an unpublished talk written for a meeting of French philosophers. The paper describes the evolution versus creationism/intelligent design controversy in the U.S. A number of philosophers and scientists try to resolve this issue by sharply distinguishing the realm of science versus any talk of the supernatural. These pro-evolutionists often appeal to science's essential commitment to "methodological naturalism," the view that scientific methodology is essentially committed to naturalism and cannot meaningfully entertain hypotheses concerning the supernatural. I criticize methodological naturalism, (...)
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