Dougherty & Tweedt's New Survey Article on Recent Work in Religious Epistemology...
...has recently come out at Philosophy Compass. Here's the abstract:
Religious epistemology is the study of how subjects' religious beliefs can have, or fail to have, some form of positive epistemic status (such as knowledge, justification, warrant, and rationality) and whether they even need such status appropriate to their kind. The current debate is focused most centrally upon the kind of basis upon which a religious believer can be rationally justified in holding certain beliefs about God (whether God exists, what attributes God has, what God is doing, etc.) and whether it is necessary to be so justified to believe as a religious believer ought (in some sense of ‘ought’ more general than rational justification). Engaging these issues are primarily three groups of people who call themselves ‘fideists’, ‘Reformed epistemologists’, and ‘evidentialists’. Each group has a position, but the positions are not mutually exclusive in every case, and in the debate, the names better describe the groups' emphases than mutually exclusive positions in the debate. In this article, we will first give a brief historical survey of evidentialism, fideism, and reformed epistemology. Second, we will give the fideist's position. Third, we will give the evidentialist's position. Fourth, we will give the reformed epistemologist's position, and last, we will include some comments on the current state of the debate, where we will show that the groups' positions are not mutually exclusive.And if a copy should find its way to my inbox...
UPDATE: Thanks, all!
(Thanks to Clayton Littlejohn for the pointer.)
Videos and Podcasts: New Insights and Directions in Religious Epistemology
New Insights and Directions in Religious Epistemology was arguably the most important conference and workshop series in analytic philosophy of religion in recent memory. The videos and podcasts for its concluding event are now available online. Here's the list of speakers and topics:
International Conference on New Insights and Directions for Religious Epistemology
23 - 25 June 2015, Oxford University
Richard Cross (Notre Dame), “Testimony, Error, and the Reasonable Belief in Medieval Religious Epistemology"
John Hawthorne's Recent Defense of the Fine-Tuning Argument
Stay tuned for his recent talk, "Fine-Tuning Fine-Tuning".
(For what it's worth, here's my own worry for fine-tuning arguments for classical theism.)
Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 7...
...is due to come out next March. Here's the table of contents:
1. Evil and Evidence, Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs
2. Is Petitionary Prayer Superfluous?, Isaac Choi
3. Where Skeptical Theism Fails, Skeptical Atheism Prevails, Paul Draper
4. The Right, the Good, and the Threat of Despair: (Kantian) Ethics and the Need for Hope in God, Kyla Ebels-Duggan
5. A Problem with Theistic Hope, Jeff Jordan
6. Religious Skepticism and Higher-Order Evidence, Nathan L. King
7. Temporary Intrinsics and Christological Predication, Timothy Pawl
8. Can God Repent?, Rik Peels
9. Divine Creative Freedom, Alexander R. Pruss
10. The Permissibility of the Atonement as Penal Substitution, Jada Twedt Strabbing
1. Evil and Evidence, Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs
2. Is Petitionary Prayer Superfluous?, Isaac Choi
3. Where Skeptical Theism Fails, Skeptical Atheism Prevails, Paul Draper
4. The Right, the Good, and the Threat of Despair: (Kantian) Ethics and the Need for Hope in God, Kyla Ebels-Duggan
5. A Problem with Theistic Hope, Jeff Jordan
6. Religious Skepticism and Higher-Order Evidence, Nathan L. King
7. Temporary Intrinsics and Christological Predication, Timothy Pawl
8. Can God Repent?, Rik Peels
9. Divine Creative Freedom, Alexander R. Pruss
10. The Permissibility of the Atonement as Penal Substitution, Jada Twedt Strabbing
New Issue of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
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Aikin & Jones's New Atheistic Argument from Ugliness
Aikin, Scott F. and Nicholaos Jones. "An Atheistic Argument from Ugliness", European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7:1 (2015). The penultimate draft can be found here.
Megill & Linford's Paper on the Meaning of Life and a New Argument for Atheism
Megill, Jason and Daniel Linford. "God, The Meaning of Life, and a New Argument for Atheism", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (forthcoming). The penultimate draft can be found here.
An Ontological Disproof of Anselmian Theism
Suppose for reductio that it's metaphysically possible that a necessary being exists, and that this being is the god of classical Anselmian theism. Let's follow Plantinga's claim here that such a being has the property of maximal greatness, where: (i) a being's maximal greatness entails maximal excellence in every possible world, (ii) maximal excellence includes the classical attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection, and (iii) omnipotence includes the capacity to create or sustain concrete objects distinct from itself without a material cause. Therefore, if it's metaphysically possible that a maximally great being exists, then such a being exists in all metaphysically possible worlds. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in all metaphysically possible worlds. By the above conception of maximal excellence, for any world W that contains a universe of concrete objects distinct from God, if God exists in W, then God originates or sustains the universe in W without a material cause. But the origination or sustenance of any such universe without a material cause is metaphysically impossible. Now a universe of concrete objects exists at the actual world. Therefore, the god of classical Anselmian theism did not originate or sustain the universe that exists at the actual world. Therefore, the god of classical Anselmian theism doesn't exist at the actual world. But this contradicts the above line that he exists in all possible worlds. Therefore, the existence of the god of classical Anselmian theism is metaphysically impossible.
The upshot is that Plantinga appears to have been wrong: the crucial premise of the modal ontological argument -- viz., that a maximally great being (as Plantinga understands that notion) is metaphysically possible -- is contrary to reason. For we've just seen that the notion of a being that is the creator of all other concrete objects distinct from himself is on a par with the concept of a being that is the creator of round squares, as both entail a metaphysical impossibility.
The upshot is that Plantinga appears to have been wrong: the crucial premise of the modal ontological argument -- viz., that a maximally great being (as Plantinga understands that notion) is metaphysically possible -- is contrary to reason. For we've just seen that the notion of a being that is the creator of all other concrete objects distinct from himself is on a par with the concept of a being that is the creator of round squares, as both entail a metaphysical impossibility.
CfP: Explaining Religion: Cognitive Science of Religion and Naturalism
Submission deadline: September 15, 2015
Conference date(s):
December 4, 2015 - December 5, 2015
Conference Venue:
Department of Philosophy, Free University Amsterdam
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Topic areas
Workshop ‘Explaining Religion. Cognitive Science of Religion and Naturalism’
When: December 4th-5th 2015
Where: VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Organizers: Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink
Although Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is still a rather young discipline, its main theories have been the subject of considerable debate. One main point of discussion is whether cognitive theories explain religion. The title of Pascal Boyer’s book Religion Explained (2002) signals that at least one goal of CSR is to explain religion. Many authors have interpreted ‘explaining’ as explaining away and have argued that CSR-theories have not explained religion away because the truth of religion is compatible with the main theories in CSR.
This workshop will focus on a different question, viz. whether CSR-theories allow for a natural explanation of religion, where a natural explanation is a scientific one that does not involve anything supernatural or spooky. When it relies on the principle of parsimony (Occam’s Razor), a natural explanation of religion makes the existence of anything supernatural superfluous . Daniel Dennett already suggested something along these lines in his 2006 book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Since then, few scholars have discussed this particular issue in CSR. The topic raises questions about explanation, naturalism and the evidential weight of religious cognition.
Confirmed speakers:
- Dr. Helen de Cruz (Oxford University), author of the upcoming bookA Natural History of Natural Theology (2014)
- Prof. Dr. Robert McCauley (Emory University), co-author ofRethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (1993), Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not (2011)
- Prof. Dr. Aku Visala (University of Helsinki), author of Naturalism, Theism and the Cognitive Study of Religion (2011)
We invite contributions from philosophers, theologians and scientists. Please send a 1000 word abstract to h.m.r.a.van.eyghen@vu.nl by September 15th 2015. The abstract should be suitable for blind review. Questions can be sent to the same email address. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
· What do the main theories of CSR explain?
· Do the main theories in CSR amount to a naturalistic explanation of religion?
· Does a natural model of religious belief explain away religion?
· Does CSR speak in favor of naturalism?
· Is there a standard CSR explanation of religion?
· Is a naturalistic interpretation of CSR preferable to a theistic interpretation?
· Does a natural explanation of religious cognition make a difference to the epistemic status of religious belief?
(via)
Contrarian Philosophy of Religion Assertion Wednesday
The creation of a universe ex nihilo is metaphysically impossible, and so the posterior probability of cosmic fine-tuning on the hypothesis of classical theism is zero.
Contrarian Philosophy of Religion Assertion Wednesday
Saying that ex nihilo creation of concrete objects is possible with enough power is like saying that barfing up a missed lunch is possible with a sufficiently strenuous dry heave.
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