Dawkins’ Ballet In the Garden of Theology. A Critical Assessment of Richard Dawkins’ Epistemological Theses On Theistic Beliefs From The God Delusion. Part I My paper presents a detailed analysis and assessment of Richard Dawkins’ epistemological theses from The God Delusion concerning the nature of religious belief, the existence of God and treating belief in God as a scientific hypothesis. In the first part of the article, I am interpreting Dawkins’ statement that atheism deserves respect as (...) an epistemic achievement. I suggest that rationality of that assessment depends on Dawkins’ success in arguing that science shows that God does not exist. My second aim is to show that the real object of Dawkins’ attack is not some abstract theistic hypothesis, as he suggests, but the Western ethical monotheism, mainly the Christian faith in God. If I am right, then his rejection of thus interpreted theism is not enough to justify his more general thesis that God hypothesis is false or improbable. The first part of the paper prepares the ground for the second, with criticism of Dawkins’ reasoning to the conclusion that almost certainly there is no God. (shrink)

Dawkins’ Ballet in the Garden of Theology. A Critical Assessment of Richard Dawkins’ Epistemological Theses on Theistic Beliefs from the God Delusion. Part II My paper presents an analysis and assessment of Richard Dawkins’ assumption from his book The God Delusion that there are no reason against treating belief in God as a scientific hypothesis, because even if the God existence is not disprovable, we could and maybe should ask if His existence is probable or highly improbable. (...) My first aim is to examine Dawkins' argumentation against if he is aware multiple possible ways interpretation of the claim that religious belief in God, construed as the hypothesis that existence of Creator may be treated as a scientific kind of hypothesis. My second aim is to show a nature of relation between his scientific God-hypothesis and his criticism of Thomas Henry Huxley agnosticism. I maintain that the he can't treat his probabilistic account of theism/atheism controversy as a ground for possible evidence for his controversial claim, that scientific knowledge could solve the problem of God's existence. As the matter of facts , things are just the opposite. I argue for claim that his construal of belief in God in terms of probabilistic scientific hypothesis is normatively weak and he can't use it in argumentation against rationality of belief in God even if he would be succesfully show that God-hypothesis is very weak and improbable explanation of origins and complexity of life. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie, in "The Miracle of Theism" (OUP 1981), chapter 1, argues that "it is pretty well impossible that reported miracles should provide a worthwhile argument for theism addressed to those who are initially inclined to atheism or even to agnosticism." I argue that Mackie fails to establish this conclusion. All that he can show is that those who are initially inclined to theism or agnosticism may be justified in predicting that the next miracle report they (...) examine will not be such as to form the basis for a worthwhile argument for theism. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie distinguished himself in twentieth-century philosophy by presenting an important objection to the traditional free will explanation for why God would allow evil: If evil is due to the free choice of creatures, why wouldn’t an omnipotent God simply create free creatures who would choose better? Alvin Plantinga, in turn, distinguished himself with his critique of Mackie. Plantinga’s main point is that Mackie made a mistake in assuming that it is within the power of omnipotence fully to create (...) just any possible world. However, Mackie made a second questionable assumption which Plantinga does not critique, and which I aim to clarify in this article. Mackie assumes that a God, as construed by classical theistic belief, who could create either of two people—one of whom would freely choose right and the other of whom would freely choose wrong—must create the one who would freely choose right. This assumption motivates Plantinga’s own account of trans-world depravity, which suggests that every free creature God might have created would have sinned had God created them. I consider Plantinga’s suggestion highly improbable. More importantly, under Mackie’s assumption, if there is at least one possible creature who would choose rightly, then there is no possibility of God ever allowing any other creature to sin, which would seem to be incompatible with their having any free will. -/- This version of the paper does have the same pagination as the published version. Permission has been granted from the Editor of Philosophia Christi to upload this contribution according to Philosophy Documentation Center terms of use. Learn more about the Journal by going to wwwepsociety. org/philchristi. (shrink)

Preprinted in God and the Problem of Evil(Blackwell 2001), ed. William Rowe. Many people deny that evil makes belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism. After all, they say, the grounds for belief in God are much better than the evidence for atheism, including the evidence provided by evil. We will not join their ranks on this occasion. Rather, we wish to consider the proposition that, setting aside grounds for belief in (...) God and relying only on the background knowledge shared in common by nontheists and theists, evil makes belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism. Our aim is to argue against this proposition. We recognize that in doing so, we face a formidable challenge. It’s one thing to say that evil presents a reason for atheism that is, ultimately, overridden by arguments for theism. It’s another to say that it doesn’t so much as provide us with a reason for atheism in the first place. In order to make this latter claim seem initially more plausible, consider the apparent design of the mammalian eye or the apparent fine-tuning of the universe to support life. These are often proposed as reasons to believe in theism. Critics commonly argue not merely that these supposed reasons for theism are overridden by arguments for atheism but rather that they aren’t good reasons for theism in the first place. Our parallel proposal with respect to evil and atheism is, initially at least, no less plausible than this proposal with respect to apparent design and theism. (shrink)

Many theistic religions place a high value on faith in God and some traditions regard it as a virtue. However, philosophers commonly assign either very little value to faith in God or significant negative value, or even view it as a vice. Progress in assessing whether and when faith in God can be valuable or disvaluable, virtuous or vicious, rational or irrational, or otherwise apt or inapt requires understanding what faith in God is. This Special Issue on the normative appraisal (...) of faith in God for Religious Studies includes nine articles, from a diverse range of perspectives, which explore issues related to the core questions ‘What is faith in God?’ and ‘What normative questions about faith in God need to be addressed?’ In this Introduction, we briefly introduce each article. (shrink)

J.L. Schellenberg argues that divine hiddenness provides an argument for the conclusion that God does not exist, for if God existed he would not allow non-resistant non-belief to occur, but non-resistant non-belief does occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the stakes involved in theistic considerations put pressure on Schellenberg’s premise that non-resistant non-belief occurs. First, I specify conditions for someone’s being a resistant non-believer. Then, I argue that many people fulfill these (...) conditions because, given some plausible assumptions, there is a very good pragmatic reason to be a theist rather than an atheist. I assume it is more likely that theists go to heaven than atheists, and I argue there is a non-zero probability that one can receive infinite utility and a method of comparing outcomes with infinite utilities in which the probability of each outcome affects the final expected values. Then, I show how this argument entails there is no good reason to think that there are very many non-resistant non-believers. (shrink)

In ‘Professor Mackie and the Kalam Cosmological Argument’ , 367–75), Professor William Lane Craig undertakes to demonstrate that J. L. Mackie's analysis of the kalam cosmological argument in The Miracle of Theism is ‘superficial’, and that Mackie ‘has failed to provide any compelling or even intuitively appealing objection against the argument’ . I disagree with Craig's judgement; for it seems to me that the considerations which Mackie advances do serve to refute the kalam cosmological argument. Consequently, the purpose of (...) this paper is to reply to Craig's criticisms on Mackie's behalf. (shrink)

In this chapter, Logan Paul Gage examines the only real attempt to disprove God’s existence by a New Atheist: Richard Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit.” Central to Dawkins’s argument is the claim that God is more complex than what he is invoked to explain. Gage evaluates this claim using the main extant notions of simplicity in the literature. Gage concludes that on no reading does this claim survive scrutiny. Along the way, Dawkins claims that there are no good positive arguments (...) for God’s existence. Gage attempts to show that Dawkins’s argument depends upon distinctively philosophical assumptions that do not appear to withstand scrutiny. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that J. L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness Argument is committed to a problematic implication that is weakened by research in cognitive psychology on affective forecasting. Schellenberg’s notion of a nonresistant nonbeliever logically implies that for any such person, it is true that she would form the proper belief in God if provided with what he calls “probabilifying” evidence for God’s existence. In light of Schellenberg’s commitment to the importance of both affective and propositional belief (...) components for entering into the proper relationship with God, this implication of his argument becomes an affective prediction or forecast. However, research in cognitive psychology has shown that in multiple and varied circumstances humans often make inaccurate predictions of their future affective states or reactions. Thus, this research provides strong empirical reasons to doubt that the implication is warranted. (shrink)

I examine the central atheistic argument of Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion (“Dawkins’s Gambit”) and illustrate its failure. I further show that Dawkins’s Gambit is a fragment of a more comprehensive critique of theism found in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Among the failings of Dawkins’s Gambit is that it is directed against a version of the God Hypothesis that few traditional monotheists hold. Hume’s critique is more challenging in that it targets versions of the God (...) Hypothesis that are central to traditional monotheism. Theists and atheists should put away The God Delusion and pick up Hume’s Dialogues. (shrink)

(in lieu of abstract, first paragraphs here) For philosophers, reading Richard Dawkins is often a frustrating experience. Many of Dawkins’ writings treat important philosophical topics, such as the existence of God, the meaning of life, the relationship of randomness to order. Dawkins has original ideas, but he lacks the philosophical training and vocabulary to articulate these ideas properly and to develop them coherently. In Believing in Dawkins, Eric Steinhart sets himself an ambitious task: to use the writings of Dawkins (...) to present a coherent, naturalistic alternative to religious metaphysics, specifically to Christian theism. Using an architectural metaphor, he summarizes the project of Believing in Dawkins as follows -/- It is helpful to think of the Dawkinsian texts in architectural terms. His fragmentary sketches for spiritual naturalism are like architectural drawings. Sometimes they depict little windows, while other times they portray enormous spires reaching towards the stars. The edifice is vast. But these architectural diagrams are often unclear, incomplete, and inconsistent. I want to clarify them, fill in their missing parts, and resolve their conflicts. So I’m using his writings to construct a novel building. … To fit his fragmentary plans into a coherent and self-supporting structure, I will add some large-scale frameworks (10). -/- Steinhart’s wide-ranging book covers many topics: complexity, ontology, possibility, humanity, spirituality, among many others. He does not sneak theism into Dawkins’ writings. In fact, Steinhart argues that many practices and ideas that he uses to construct the edifice of Dawkins’ spiritual naturalism have been hijacked by theism, such as the notion of an afterlife, sacredness, holiness, and even the notion of gratitude. (shrink)

Inanimate explanation is to be analysed in terms of substances having powers and liabilities to exercise their powers under certain conditions; while personal explanation is to be analysed in terms of persons, their beliefs, powers, and purposes. A crucial criterion for an explanation being probably true is that it is (among explanations leading us to expect the data) the simplest one. Simplicity is a matter of few substances, few kinds of substances, few properties (including powers and liabilities), few kinds of (...) properties, and mathematically simple relations between properties. Explanation of the existence of the universe by the agency of God provides the simplest kind of personal explanation there can be, and one simpler than any inanimate explanation. I defend this view more thoroughly than previously in light of recent challenges. (shrink)

"Richard Dawkins' God Delusion" is not only a fascinating battle with the book written by the famous British atheist. It is a clash of two epochs - the old atheistic school of the XIX and XX centuries, full, as it turns out, of an irrational chaos of assertions, contradictions and intolerance - with the modern Christianity of XXI century, focused on the accuracy, consistency and objectivity of the presented position. It is a confrontation of two different worldviews, philosophical and (...) biological, in a dispute about the value system based on modern scientific achievements of man. There are also other works by dr Paweł Bloch: Ateistoteles and The Great Dictator, yet still in preparation. (shrink)

This paper examines whether atheists, who believe that God does not exist, can have faith. Of course, atheists have certain kinds of faith: faith in their friends, faith in certain ideals, and faith in themselves. However, the question we’ll examine is whether atheists can have theistic faith: faith that God exists. Philosophers tend to fall on one of two extremes on this question: some, like Dan Howard-Snyder (2019) and Imran Aijaz (2023), say unequivocally no; others, like Robert Whitaker (2019) and (...) Sam Lebens (2023), say unequivocally yes. Here, I take a middle position: I argue that atheists can have action-focused theistic faith (faith in how they act) but not attitude-focused theistic faith (faith in what attitudes they have). (shrink)

In 1993, for the first time, John L. Schellenberg, the contemporary philosopher of religion, proposed the “Hiddenness Argument’’. According to this argument, as God doesn’t provide for many people sufficient evidence for His existence, He is Hidden. In the other words, that many people inculpably fail to find sufficient evidence for the existence of God constitutes evidence for atheism. Schellenberg argues that since a loving God would not withhold the benefits of belief, the lack of evidence for God’s existence (...) is incompatible with divine love. This paper argues that his defense of two controversial premises of his argument is unsuccessful: one is that God’s love is incompatible with His allowing some to remain in doubt in His existence, and the other is: the nonbelief of some agnostics is inculpable. Theistic Religions have plausible reasons, which Schellenberg has not succeeded in refuting, for thinking that all nonbelief is culpable. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of Richard Dawkins’ “argument from improbability” against the existence of God. This argument, which forms the core of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, provides an interesting example of the use of scientific ideas in arguments about religion. Here I raise three objections: (1) The argument is inapplicable to philosophical conceptions of God that reduce most of God’s complexity to that of the physical universe. (2) The argument depends on a way of estimating probabilities that (...) fails for the probability of an entity that creates natural laws. (3) The argument supposes that complexity arises from past physical causes; however, some forms of complexity known to mathematics and logic do not arise in this way. After stating these three criticisms, I show that some of these same considerations undermine Dawkins’ critique of agnosticism. I close the paper with some remarks on Dawkins’ conception of God. (shrink)

A descriptive polytheist thinks there are at least two gods. John Hick and Richard Swinburne are descriptive polytheists. In this respect, they are like Thomas Aquinas and many other theists. What sets Swinburne and Hick apart from Aquinas, however, is that unlike him they are normative polytheists. That is, Swinburne and Hick think that it is right that we, or at least some of us, worship more than one god. However, the evidence available to me shows that only Swinburne, (...) and not Hick, is a cultic polytheist: he actually worships more than one god. I conclude that only Swinburne is a polytheist par excellence. (shrink)

Nowadays the argument for the existence of God based on the common consent of mankind is taken to be so bad that contemporary atheists do not even bother to mention it. And it seems very few theists think that the argument is worth defending. In this paper I shall argue to the contrary: not only is the argument better than usually thought, but widespread belief in God constitutes a prima facie defeater for every reasonable atheist.

Jim Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? looks to resurrect J. L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil. Sterba accepts the general framework that theists seeking to give a theodicy have favored since Leibniz invented the term: the search for some greater good provided or greater evil averted that would justify God in permitting the type and variety of evil we actually observe. However, Sterba introduces a deontic twist, drawing on the Pauline Principle (let us not do evil that good (...) may come) to introduce three deontic side constraints on God’s choice of action. He then splits the possible goods into four categories: first- vs. second-order goods, goods to which we have a right, and goods to which we do not have a right. He argues that his deontic constraints rule out each combination, thereby showing that no God-justifying good is on offer. To defuse the argument, I draw on a pair of ideas from Marilyn McCord Adams: (i) God is outside the bounds of morality, and (ii) God can defeat evils by incorporating them into an incommensurately valuable friendship with each human. Properly appreciated, these show that the new logical argument relies on a false premise that is not easily repaired. (shrink)

This paper assesses J. L. Schellenberg’s account of propositional faith and, in light of that assessment, sketches an alternative that avoids certain objections and coheres better with Schellenberg’s aims.

New Atheists and Anti-Theists (such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hutchins) affirm that there is a strong connection between being a traditional theist and being a religious fundamentalist who advocates violence, terrorism, and war. They are especially critical of Islam. On the contrary, I argue that, when correctly understood, religious dogmatic belief, present in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is progressive and open to internal and external criticism and revision. Moreover, acknowledging that human knowledge is finite (...) and that humans are fallible and have much to learn, dogmatic religious believers accept that they ought to value and seek to acquire moral and intellectual virtues, including the virtues of temperance and reasonability. (shrink)

In recent ”secular’ Epistemology, much attention has been paid to formulating an ”anti-luck’ or ”safety’ condition; it is now widely held that such a condition is an essential part of any satisfactory post-Gettier reflection on the nature of knowledge. In this paper, I explain the safety condition as it has emerged and then explore some implications of and for it arising from considering the God issue. It looks at the outset as if safety might be ”good news’ for a view (...) characteristic of Reformed Epistemology, viz. the view that if Theism is true, many philosophically unsophisticated believers probably know that it’s true. A sub-conclusion of my paper though suggests that as safety does not by itself turn true belief into knowledge, the recent focus on it is not quite such good news for Reformed Epistemologists as they may have hoped: it’s not that safety provides a new route by which they can reach this sort of conclusion. But safety is still good news for their view at least in the sense that there is no reason arising from considering it to count these philosophically unsophisticated believers as not knowing that there’s a God. I conclude by reflecting that good news for Reformed Epistemology is perhaps bad news for the discipline of Philosophy of Religion more generally, as there’s a possible ”reflection destroys knowledge’-implication to be drawn. Those who have been led to their religious beliefs in at least some philosophically unsophisticated ways seem to enjoy much safer religious beliefs than those who have been led to their religious beliefs by philosophical reflection, so the discipline as a whole will be adversely affected if safety is eventually accorded the role of a necessary condition for knowledge. (shrink)

Reconciling the existence of a perfectly good God with the reality of evil in the world seems to be an impossible - or rather an unimaginable endeavour for some scholars. J. L. Mackie, for instance, maintains a logical incompatibility thesis, stating that three of the essential attributes of God, namely: omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence can not be consistently upheld like the theists maintain, in the face of the reality of evil and human suffering in the world. Scholars like William Rowe, (...) David Hume and J. S. Mill also contend that every instance or trace of evil and suffering in the actual human world makes the existence of the creator of the world who is also perfectly good at best, probable. However, some scholars have attempted to explain the compatibility of the existence of a perfectly good God with the reality of evil in the world. This very endeavour is known in philosophy of religion and theology as theodicy. There are four traditional types of theodicy: The Augustinian tradition, the Irananaean tradition, the Hickian Soul making tradition and process theodicy. Using the methods of analysis and critical argumentation, we attempt a critical re-evaluation of these theodicies in this paper. Our critical investigation reveals that these theodicies inhere some weaknesses which render them insufficient in the rationalisation of the compatibility of the existence of a perfectly good God with the reality of evil in the world. The problems with each of the theodicies are meticulously explained in the paper. (shrink)

In this article, I outline a strategy for challenging J.L. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument, and specifically the premise within the argument that asserts the existence of what Schellenberg calls nonresistant nonbelief. Drawing on some of the philosophical resources of skeptical theism, I show how this premise is based on a particular “noseeum assumption”—what I call Schellenberg’s Noseeum Assumption—that underwrites a particular “noseeum argument.” This assumption is that, regarding putative nonresistant nonbelievers, more likely than not we’d detect these nonbelievers’ resistance toward (...) God if there were any. I give reasons for thinking that it is not more reasonable to affirm than to refrain from affirming Schellenberg’s Noseeum Assumption, and so reason to think that the hiddenness argument is not a good argument for atheism. I also defend the strategy I outline against several objections. (shrink)

The axiological question in the philosophy of religion is the question of what impact, if any, God’s existence does make to the axiological value of our world. It has recently been argued that we should prefer a theistic world where God is hidden to an atheistic world or a theistic world where God isn’t hidden. This is because in a hidden theistic world all of the theistic goods obtain in addition to the experience of atheistic goods. I complete this line (...) of argument by showing that theistic goods do indeed obtain in a world where God hides. In doing so I indirectly argue against proponents of divine hiddenness arguments such as J.L. Schellenberg. The correct answer to the axiological question turns out to be a solution to the problem of divine hiddenness. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science of religion (CSR) is beginning to converge on a very interesting thesis—that, given the ordinary features of human minds operating in typical human environments, we are naturally disposed to believe in the existence of gods, among other religious ideas (e.g., seeAtran [2002], Barrett [2004; 2012], Bering [2011], Boyer [2001], Guthrie [1993], McCauley [2011], Pyysiäinen [2004; 2009]). In this paper, we explore whether such a discovery ultimately helps or hurts the atheist position—whether, for example, it lends (...) credence to atheism by explaining away religious belief or whether it actually strengthens some already powerful arguments against atheism in the relevant philosophical literature.We argue that the recent discoveries of CSR hurt, not help, the atheist position—that CSR, if anything, should not give atheists epistemic assurance. (shrink)

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.

Is belief in God rational? The atheist says “No” due to the lack of evidence. Theists who say “Yes” fall into two major categories: (1) those who claim that belief in God has sufficient evidence for it to be rational (i.e. Theistic evidentialists), and 2) those who claim that belief in God does not require evidence for it to be rational (i.e. Reformed epistemologists). Theists who say “No” are those who claim that belief in God does (...) not belong to the realm of the rational (i.e. Philosophical fideists). This paper seeks to explore the contention that there is enough evidence to ground rational belief in God. While this paper does not attempt to do a detailed analysis of the arguments for the existence of God, the writer will try to examine 1) what is rationality?, (2) is it rational to believe in God?, (3) what are the arguments against the rationality of belief in God?, and (4) what are the arguments for the rationality of belief in God? (shrink)

Moral error theory of the kind defended by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be (...) mistaken, because the assumption does not contaminate the meaning or truth-conditions of moral claims. These are determined by the essential application conditions for moral concepts, which are relational rather than absolute. An analogy is drawn between moral judgements and motion judgements. (shrink)

This paper examines Richard Swinburne's definitions of 'mental property' and 'physical property'. After some preliminary tidying up (Section 1), the paper introduces eight putative counter-examples to Swinburne's definitions (Section 2). The paper then considers amendments to Swinburne's account of 'mental property' (Section 3) and 'physical property' (Section 4) which deal with these counter-examples. Finally, the paper closes with some brief remarks about the metaphysics of properties (Appendix). Along the way, the paper provides various reasons for thinking that Swinburne's definitions (...) are hardly likely to be acceptable to non-theists. (shrink)

David Hume was clearly a critic of religion. It is still debated, however, whether or not he was an atheist who denied the existence of God. According to some interpretations he was a theist of some kind and others claim he was an agnostic who simply suspends any belief on this issue. This essay argues that Hume’s theory of belief tells against any theistic interpretation – including the weaker, “attenuated” accounts. It then turns to the case for the (...) view that Hume’s criticisms of theism were limited to the “soft” skeptical (agnostic) aim of discrediting theist arguments, and shows that he is committed to a “harder” skeptical view that denies the theist hypothesis (in all its forms). Hume’s atheistic commitments are, the paper concludes, entirely consistent with his mitigated skeptical principles. (shrink)

This paper argues that (1) Richard Swinburne’s general account of the simplicity of empirical hypotheses fails because it involves a deeply problematic notion of postulating a property, while there is a wide range of hypotheses where the assessment of simplicity rests entirely on the number and kinds of postulated properties, (2) Swinburne’s main argument in ’The Christian God’ for the simplicity of theism, the one based on considerations about pure limitless intentional power, is significantly weaker than he seems (...) to believe. The paper does not draw a conclusion about whether theism is simple. (shrink)

Richard Dawkins tries to establish an analogy between computer viruses and theistic belief systems, analyzing the latter in terms of his concept of the meme. The underlying thrust of Dawkins' argument is to downplay the role of truth and logic in the survival of theories and to emphasize humankind's helpless liability to incurable infection by doctrines that Dawkins regards as absurd. Dawkins supplies a list of "symptoms” of mind-infection. However, on closer investigation these characteristics are found to be (...) either rather weak protection against criticism or quite virtuous. Dawkins relies on a crude justificationism that could just as well be called a mind-virus. Applying Dawkins’ own selection of the general characteristics of a good meme protector and propagator leads to the conclusion that his particular theistic examples would actually impair copyability. -/- Scientific theories are better examples of memes with high longevity, fecundity, and fidelity. A Darwinian analysis of wishful and fearful thinking as useful to hypotheses-testing and goal-seeking organisms undermines Dawkins' attribution of absolute irrational stubbornness to theists. To counterbalance Dawkins' emphasis on the propagation of the absurd, I rehabilitate the Socratic emphasis on the importance of truth and logic in rhetoric, interpreted broadly as the theory of the successful propagation of a message. I use Popper's notion of situational analysis, and an evolutionary perspective to argue that rational standards of a message enhance its copyability. I further apply Popper’s notions of World 3, 2, and 1 to memes; this helps us see the perpetuation of a doctrine as a logical task. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically analyse Jerome Gellman’s proposal that there existsa type of experience in which a subject experiences evil and perceives in this evil that there is no God. This a-religious experience gives prima facie support to the belief that there is no God. I show how accepting Gellman’s pro-posal allows us to go beyond the classical distinction between the intellectualand the emotional problem of evil. It also allows us to defend the rationality of some atheists, who (...) do not believe in God because they experienced evil, but do not know the relevants arguments from evil. I suggest that there are twoproblems with Gellman’s account. The first is that there are no clear criteria of identifying a given experience of evil as the perception of God’s non-existence. The second problem concerns the scope of Gellman’s proposal. It is possible that some experiences of evil, which lead people to the belief that there is no God, do not count as perceptions that there is no God. In case of beliefsformed on the basis of such experiences, one must therefore look for another,non-perceptual grounds for justifying such beliefs. (shrink)

The paper is a polemic with Richard Swinburne. According to him, both the possible worlds -- the ’world with God’ and the ’world without God’ -- contain moral properties. The ’world with God’, however, is morally "richer" because the existence of God entails some additional obligations; God may affect moral "facts" through creating some nonmoral facts; God may formulate some additional commands. I think that these differences lead to a greater difference in understanding morality: in the ’world without God’ (...) morality is at most a consequence of some contingent nonmoral states of affairs; whereas in the ’world with God’ it is the correlate and intended "work" of a perfect personal being. (shrink)

It can be easy to assume that since the “theist in the street” is unaware of any of the traditional arguments for theism, he or she is not in position to offer independent rational support for believing that God exists. I argue that that is false if we accept with William Alston that “manifestation beliefs” can enjoy rational support on the basis of suitable religious experiences. I make my case by defending the viability of a Moorean-style proof for (...) class='Hi'>theism—a proof for the existence of God that parallels in structure G. E. Moore’s famous proof for the existence of the external world. I argue that this shows that even if the theist in the street has nothing to offer for helping to convince the religious sceptic, this needn’t entail that she cannot offer independent rational support in defense of her theistic belief. (shrink)

If you want to understand McDowell's spatial metaphors when he talks about perceptual knowledge, place him side-by-side with Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Though McDowell shows no evidence of reading Dretske's writings on knowledge from the late 1960s onwards (McDowell mentions "Epistemic Operators" once in passing), McDowell gives the same four arguments as Dretske for the conclusion that knowledge requires "conclusive" reasons that rule of the possibility of mistake. Despite various differences, we think it is best to read McDowell as re-discovering (...) Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Since Dretske is easy to understand, all of McDowell's metaphors become easy to understand. But what about McDowell's disjunctivism? Turns out McDowell is not an ontological disjunctivist, and his epistemological disjunctivism is really just the banal point that some perceptual experiences provide conclusive reasons for perceptual belief and some do not. Perceptual experiences are either conclusive or inconclusive. Dretske would agree. (shrink)

Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all (...) of us. But this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and especially how we could pretend to know that God is person. (shrink)

De facto objections to theism purport to show that theism is false, whereas de jure objections to theism claim that, whether or not theism is true, belief in God is irrational. Divine hiddenness – the fact that there are people who non-resistantly lack belief in God – is sometimes used as an argument against theism. In this article I will show that accepting the argument from divine hiddenness carries a high cost: it eliminates (...) all de jure objections to theism. So atheists can either have de jure objections to theism or the objection from divine hiddenness, but they cannot have both. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

People in many parts of the world link morality with God and see good ethical values as an important benefit of theistic belief. A recent survey showed that Americans, for example, distrust atheists more than any other group listed in the survey, this distrust stemming mainly from the conviction that only believers in God can be counted on to respect morality. I argue against this widespread tendency to see theism as the friend of morality. I argue that our (...) most serious moral obligations -- the foundations of what can be called “ordinary morality ” -- remain in place only if God doesn’t exist. In recent years, some atheists have reacted to society’s distrust of them by claiming that atheism accommodates ordinary morality just as well as theism does. The truth is even stronger: only atheism accommodates ordinary morality. Logically speaking, morality is not common ground between theists and atheists. Morality depends on atheism. (shrink)

Depuis Gintis est un économiste senior et j’ai lu certains de ses livres précédents avec intérêt, je m’attendais à un peu plus de perspicacité dans le comportement. Malheureusement, il fait les mains mortes de la sélection de groupe et la phénoménologie dans les pièces maîtresses de ses théories du comportement, et cela invalide en grande partie le travail. Pire encore, puisqu’il montre un si mauvais jugement ici, il remet en question tout son travail précédent. La tentative de ressusciter la sélection (...) de groupe par ses amis à Harvard, Nowak et Wilson, il y a quelques années, c’était l’un des principaux scandales en biologie au cours de la dernière décennie, et j’ai raconté la triste histoire dans mon article 'Altruism, Jesus and the End of the World-how the Templeton Foundation bought a Harvard Professorship and attacked Evolution, Rationality and Civilization -- A review of E.O. Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' (2012) et Nowak and Highfield 'SuperCooperators' (2012).' Contrairement à Nowak, Gintis ne semble pas être motivé par le fanatisme religieux, mais par le fort désir de générer une alternative aux sombres réalités de la nature humaine, facilitée par le manque (quasi universel) de compréhension de la biologie humaine fondamentale et le slateisme vierge des scientifiques comportementaux, d’autres universitaires et du grand public. Gintis attaque à juste titre (comme il l’a fait à maintes reprises) les économistes, les sociologues et d’autres scientifiques du comportement pour ne pas avoir un cadre cohérent pour décrire le comportement. Bien sûr, le cadre nécessaire pour comprendre le comportement est évolutif. Malheureusement, il ne parvient pas à en fournir un lui-même (selon ses nombreux critiques et je suis d’accord), et la tentative de greffer le cadavre pourri de la sélection de groupe sur toutes les théories économiques et psychologiques qu’il a généré dans ses décennies de travail, n’a fait qu’invalider tout son projet. Bien que Gintis fasse un vaillant effort pour comprendre et expliquer la génétique, comme Wilson et Nowak, il est loin d’être un expert, et comme eux, le calcul l’aveugle juste aux impossibilités biologiques et bien sûr c’est la norme en science. Comme Wittgenstein l’a noté sur la première page de la culture et de la valeur « Il n’y a pas de dénomination religieuse dans laquelle l’utilisation abusive des expressions métaphysiques a été responsable de tant de péchés qu’il l’a en mathématiques. » Il a toujours été clair que un gène qui provoque un comportement qui diminue sa propre fréquence ne peut pas persister, mais c’est le cœur de la notion de sélection de groupe. En outre, il a été bien connu et souvent démontré que la sélection de groupe réduit juste à la condition physique inclusive (sélection de parents), qui, comme Dawkins l’a noté, est juste un autre nom pour l’évolution par sélection naturelle. Comme Wilson, Gintis a travaillé dans cette arène pendant environ 50 ans et n’a toujours pas compris, mais après le scandale a éclaté, il ne m’a fallu que 3 jours pour trouver, lire et comprendre le travail professionnel le plus pertinent, comme détaillé dans mon article. Il est ahurissant de se rendre compte que Gintis et Wilson n’ont pas été en mesure d’y parvenir en près d’un demi-siècle. Je discute des erreurs de sélection de groupe et de phénoménologie qui sont la norme dans le milieu universitaire comme des cas spéciaux de l’échec quasi universel de comprendre la nature humaine qui détruisent l’Amérique et le monde. Ceux qui souhaitent un cadre complet à jour pour le comportement humain de la vue moderne de deux systemes peuvent consulter mon livre 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Ceux qui s’intéressent à plus de mes écrits peuvent voir «Talking Monkeys --Philosophie, Psychologie, Science, Religion et Politique sur une planète condamnée --Articles et revues 2006-2019 3e ed (2019) et Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2020) et autres. (shrink)

We show how removing faith-based beliefs in current philosophies of classical and constructive mathematics admits formal, evidence-based, definitions of constructive mathematics; of a constructively well-defined logic of a formal mathematical language; and of a constructively well-defined model of such a language. -/- We argue that, from an evidence-based perspective, classical approaches which follow Hilbert's formal definitions of quantification can be labelled `theistic'; whilst constructive approaches based on Brouwer's philosophy of Intuitionism can be labelled `atheistic'. -/- We then adopt what may (...) be labelled a finitary, evidence-based, `agnostic' perspective and argue that Brouwerian atheism is merely a restricted perspective within the finitary agnostic perspective, whilst Hilbertian theism contradicts the finitary agnostic perspective. -/- We then consider the argument that Tarski's classic definitions permit an intelligence---whether human or mechanistic---to admit finitary, evidence-based, definitions of the satisfaction and truth of the atomic formulas of the first-order Peano Arithmetic PA over the domain N of the natural numbers in two, hitherto unsuspected and essentially different, ways. -/- We show that the two definitions correspond to two distinctly different---not necessarily evidence-based but complementary---assignments of satisfaction and truth to the compound formulas of PA over N. -/- We further show that the PA axioms are true over N, and that the PA rules of inference preserve truth over N, under both the complementary interpretations; and conclude some unsuspected constructive consequences of such complementarity for the foundations of mathematics, logic, philosophy, and the physical sciences. -/- . (shrink)

In recent decades, Richard Swinburne has offered an influential view of the relationship between faith and reason. In doing so, he focused to a considerable extent on Aquinas’s view of faith. For Swinburne, Aquinas’ view of faith is that to have faith in God is simply to have a belief-that. In contrast, it is another view of faith, which Swinburne calls ‘Lutheran,’ that involves both theoretical beliefs-that and a trust in the Living God. In this article, I argue (...) that Swinburne’s view is not faithful to Aquinas’s doctrine of faith. In the first section, I will explain Swinburne’s view of belief in detail and its application to Aquinas’s doctrine of faith. In the second section, I will bolster my argument by showing that Swinburne’s reading is inconsistent with Aquinas’ statements regarding three relationships, which are essential to Aquinas’s faith. I am referring to the relationships between faith and will, between faith and merit and between faith and doubt. (shrink)

In 'Weak agnosticism defended' Graham Oppy set out to ’show that agnosticism can be so formulated that it is no less philosophically respectable than theism and atheism’. Oppy begins by differentiating between strong agnosticism, which obliges rational persons to suspend judgment on the question of God’s existence, and weak agnosticism, which allows rational persons to do so. Weak agnosticism is thus the philosophical position that it is possible and rational - but not obligatory - to suspend judgment on the (...) question of God’s existence. The question I discuss in this paper is whether one can consistently practice agnosticism, as opposed to merely suspending judgment regarding the existence of God? Does acceptance of the the sis that ’agnosticism can be so formulated that it is no less philosophically respectable than theism and atheism’ entail the possibility of actual consistent practice of agnosticism? (shrink)

Some contemporary theologically inclined epistemologists, the reformed epistemologists, have attempted to show that belief in God is rational by appealing directly to a special kind of experience. To strengthen the appeal to this particular, and admittedly peculiar, type of experience these venture to draw a parallel between such experiences and normal perceptual experiences in order to show that, by parity of reasoning, if beliefs formed on the basis of the later are taken to be justified and rational to hold, (...) then beliefs formed on the basis of the former should also be regarded as justified and rational to hold. Such appeals to religious experience have been discussed and/or made by Robert Pargetter, Alvin Plantinga and William Alston and they claim that they provide sufficient warrant for religious beliefs, specifically for the belief that God exists. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of this notion of religious experience itself and whether such appeals to religious experience really provide justification for belief in the existence of God.<br><br>. (shrink)

Which way does causation proceed? The pattern in the material world seems to be upward: particles to molecules to organisms to brains to mental processes. In contrast, the principles of quantum mechanics allow us to see a pattern of downward causation. These new ideas describe sets of multiple levels in which each level influences the levels below it through generation and selection. Top-down causation makes exciting sense of the world: we can find analogies in psychology, in the formation of our (...) minds, in locating the source of consciousness, and even in the possible logic of belief in God. (shrink)