There are Lots of Arguments Against Theism That Don't Reduce to the Problem of Evil

Rough draft:

Forget the god of classical theism for a moment. Consider instead the hypothesis that there is a being who is omnipotent and omniscient, yet morally indifferent, and who is reliable at achieving their goals. Call this view blahtheism. Suppose further that we add to blahtheism the hypothesis that such a god is interested in creating a hospitable environment for humans (suppose they have a goal  to be reliable in creating and conserving communities of humans in the way the some build and maintain ant farms). What would you then expect Earth to be like? The answer is simple: one that is hospitable to human life. Therefore, the datum that the Earth is inhospitable to humans is surprising on blatheism. By contrast, a human-inhospitable environment is not surprising on naturalism, since on that hypothesis, life on Earth is shaped solely by evolutionary factors, shaping the world into a hostile place, due to the competition for scarce resources. Therefore, the datum that the Earth is a human-inhospitable environment provides at least some confirming evidence for naturalism vis-a-vis blahtheism.

The point of this exercise isn't just to call attention to a piece of disconfirming evidence against blatheism; it is rather to point out that at least some data that supports naturalism vis-a-vis supernaturalistic hypotheses does not reduce to the problem of evil. Evil doesn't play a role one way or the other in the argument above; rather, (i) facts about rational omniscience and omnipotence, plus (ii) facts about the god's interests/aims, and (iii) facts suggesting the aims were not achieved, sufficed to generate the problem. This was highlighted by the fact that the blatheistic hypothesis excludes moral properties from the divine nature, and yet we could make reasonable predictions about what such a being would do, given certain intentions. The salient facts here were facts suggesting an aim/outcome mismatch between God's intentions and the world. 

I will go further. I'm betting that other lines of evidence for naturalism (see, e.g., many arguments on this list) seem to have the same feature, viz., their evidential force turns on aim/outcome mismatches of various sorts that don't essentially appeal to God's love or moral perfection (although of course I don't mean to imply that all other arguments against theism besides evil rely on aim/outcome mismatches).

The moral is that the widely held assumption that most arguments against theism reduce to the problem of evil is false.

The Argument from Autonomy Against Theism

Rough draft:

On another occasion, we noted Kahane's excellent (2011) paper, "Should We Want God to Exist?" (PPR 82(3): 674-696). The paper suggests a data point that can be transformed into an argument against the hypothesis of classical theism. 

The sort of argument I have in mind can be gleaned from the following passages:
“Imagine that instead of growing up to become an independent adult, you would forever remain a child, forever under the protection of wise and loving parents. Or imagine living in a land ruled by a benevolent monarch who, although keeping constant watch over everything his subjects do, grants them extensive liberties. These counterfactual worlds would be better, even much better, in various respects. Yet few of us, I believe, would prefer them to the way things actually are, however imperfect. The anti-theist believes we should make a similar choice.”
“The thought is that in a world where complete privacy is impossible, where one is subordinated to a superior being, certain kinds of life plans, aspirations, and projects cannot make sense. I suspect that certain actual life plans, aspirations, and projects that revolve around these values do not make sense, if the world is like that. (Compare: many life plans are incompatible with childhood. If it becomes clear that, contrary to appearance, there is no escape from childhood, then many lives would become absurd and pointless. And discovering that this childhood is eternal would make things worse, not better. As Williams reminds us, immortality is useless if one’s life has no meaning.) Theists sometimes claim that if God does not exist, life has no meaning. I am now suggesting that if God does exist, the life of at least some would lose its meaning. 
Of course this outcome wouldn’t be averted if God were to hide Himself—say if He were to hide Himself only from those who would, in this way, be most grievously hurt by His existence. This wouldn’t help. It would only give these persons the illusion that certain values can be realized—that their lives have meaning.”
It would take much more work to properly develop and defend the argument, but briefly, the way I have in mind to use his core point here as evidence against theism is as follows. If autonomy is required for the flourishing of properly functioning adult humans, then being a subordinate who lacks privacy to even their own thoughts is contrary to the flourishing of mature, properly functioning adult humans, in which case beings made for autonomy of this sort is prima facie surprising on theism. For one would expect God to create beings that are capable of flourishing within his universe.

By contrast, the existence of beings with a prima facie rational and fitting desire for autonomy of this sort is not surprising on naturalism, since on that hypothesis, there is no such being to which we are subordinate. Rather, evolution selected for a preference structure that desires this sort of autonomy -- an autonomy that's compatible with interdependence with similar creatures, but which favors using one's own judgement for navigating our way through life when (e.g.) the wisdom of others seems wrong. Beings with a natural desire or preference of this sort would seem to have an evolutionary advantage over those that do not, since the wisdom of the group might go wrong in ways that are contrary to their survival and reproduction. Therefore, the existence of a prima facie rational and fitting preference for this kind of autonomy provides at least some confirming evidence for naturalism vis-a-vis theism.

200 (or so) Arguments for Atheism

A popular view in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is that while there are many arguments[1] for theism -- cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments; moral arguments; arguments from consciousness; etc. (by Plantinga's lights, two dozen or so), there are only two arguments for atheism[2], viz., the problem of evil and (more recently) the problem of divine hiddenness. Indeed, some argue that the problem of divine hiddenness reduces to a version of the problem of evil, and thus that there is only one argument -- or at most, one category of argument -- for atheism.

This is a misconception. Here are over 200 arguments for atheism, spanning 28 categories:

I. Cosmological-Type Arguments
1. Epicurean cosmological arguments for naturalism 
2. The argument from metaphysical infinitism/coherentism

II. Ontological-Type Arguments
17. A minimal modal ontological argument for naturalism
18. Quantum modal realist ontological argument for naturalism

IV. Dysteleological Arguments
29. The argument from suboptimal design

V. Arguments from Religion/Religious Experience
34. The argument from idolatry

VIII. Arguments from Consciousness and Personhood
72. The argument from substance dualism to non-theism

X. Arguments from Reason

XI. Arguments from Logic


XIII. Arguments from the Nature of Causation
XIV. Nomological Arguments

XV. Arguments from General Ontology, Metaphysics, and Metametaphysics (that Don't Fit Neatly Into other Categories)

XVI. Epistemological Arguments
104. The argument from theism to radical skepticism
109, 110. The problem(s) of religious luck
111. The argument from Mandevillian intelligence
112. The argument from secondary qualities against the reliability of perception
113. The argument from Bayesian theories of perception (esp. prediction error minimization theories)
114. The argument from wave function realism against the reliability of perception
115. The problem of theistic evidentialist philosophers

XVII. Arguments from Aesthetics
116. The argument from ugliness
117. The argument from revulsion

XVIII. Normative Arguments (Apart from problems of evil)
118. The argument from the impropriety of worship
119. The argument from autonomy 

XIX. Arguments from Divine Hiddenness and Non-Belief
122. Deductive arguments from divine hiddenness
123. Probabilistic arguments from divine hiddenness
125. Drange's argument from non-belief

XX. Arguments from Incoherence Within/Among the Divine Attributes and Related Matters (Incomplete. These just scratch the surface. For more, see e.g. Oppy's Describing Gods)
126. Omnipotence (see also)
127. Omniscience (see also)
129. Beauty
130. Omnipresence
132. Eternity

XXI. Arguments from Lower Comparative Prior Probability

XXII. Arguments from Explanatory Inferiority 

XXIII. Arguments from Rival Supernaturalisms and/or Worldviews with Equal or Greater Explanatory Power and Related Matters
160. The problem of classical deism
178. The problem of the inclusive disjunction of rival supernaturalisms/worldviews

XXIV. Arguments from the Success of Naturalistic Explanations

XXV. Arguments from Private Evidence
180. Bartolome's argument from private evidence

XXVI. Arguments from Evil 
(See also these collections on problems of evil) 

XXVII. Pragmatic/Prudential Arguments
XVIII. Cumulative case/Combinatorial Arguments
233. Oppy’s abductive cumulative case argument for naturalism
237. Various cumulative IBE arguments from large conjunctive disjuncts of 1-229.

Some things worthy of note. First, there are very many more arguments for atheism than commonly supposed. Second, while categorization is inevitably somewhat arbitrary, there are clearly very many more types of atheistic arguments than commonly supposed -- on my reckoning, 27 other types of atheistic argument besides the problem of evil. Third, the list doesn't include arguments specifically against orthodox Christianity. If it did, the list would be considerably longer. Fourth, roughly 75-80% of atheistic arguments have nothing to do with the problem of evil -- problems of evil are in the minority. 

Fifth, the evidence against theism appears to be systemic -- it provides non-trivial grounds for thinking the data from virtually every major aspect of reality (e.g.: the origin, existence, and structure of the universe; consciousness; agency; morality and moral psychology; reason; logic; abstract objects; the nature of causation; the laws of nature; epistemology; religions, religious practices, and religious experience; aesthetics; the meaning of life; general ontology, metaphysics, and meta-metaphysics; and yes, suffering and hiddenness, too) points away from theism and towards some form of naturalism. One can cull very large subsets of compatible arguments from the list above to generate a variety of large abductive cumulative case arguments. Prima facie, there is very strong promise that when this is done, naturalism will embody the theoretical virtues (e.g., simplicity, scope, conservatism, etc.) better than orthodox theism. I would argue that this remains so even after throwing in all the viable data points standardly appealed to in the case for theism, in which case the relevant data renders a form of naturalism more probable than orthodox theism.  (A similar point applies to taking all these data points to run a comprehensive Bayesian argument for naturalism.)

Sixth, the previous points constitute non-trivial grounds for thinking the case for atheism doesn't essentially depend on the success of the problem of evil and hiddenness, in which case theists have much more work to do besides addressing those arguments. 

Finally, most people who care about arguments for and against theism are adherents of some form of orthodox religious monotheism or other. Among such groups, it's typically thought that the case for their faith must be persuasive, such that no (or almost no) mature, rational, properly functioning human being who appraised the relevant evidence could non-culpably fail to believe after assessing it (on the grounds that (i) God holds people morally responsible for their belief, and (ii) God would be less than perfectly good if he held people morally responsible for their belief if the evidence were less than persuasive). Thus, consider some rational, mature, properly functioning adult agnostic, Joewho has strongly grasped, internalized, and carefully appraised the above arguments, as well as all the arguments for theism on the other side of the ledger. Suppose further that after long and careful reflection, Joe finds the grounds for atheism to be either stronger than those for theism, or at least, counterbalanced with them. Finally, suppose that Joe thereby either disbelieves or suspends judgement about theism. According to the group of theists specified just above, there can be no one like Joe: The evidence for orthodox monotheism is so good that for any person S, if is a rational, mature, properly functioning agent, and (after careful reflection and deliberation) fails to find the evidence to support theism over atheism, or if S merely finds the evidence to be counterbalanced -- or indeed, if S finds themself unable to tell, with any confidence, which way the evidence points -- then S is morally culpable for failing to believe in the relevant version of orthodox monotheism. In light of the case for atheism expressed in the arguments listed above, this looks to be implausible, if not ridiculous. 

-----------------------------------------
Notes:
[1] Here and henceforth, I use the notion of an argument broadly, so as to include deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments. I also follow Richard Swinburne in recognizing the distinction between what he calls C-inductive arguments (which are arguments that raise the probabilities of their conclusions at least to some degree, although not necessarily rendering their conclusions more probable than not) and P-inductive arguments (which are arguments that raise the probabilities of their conclusions above 1/2), and include both C-inductive and P-inductive arguments to count as arguments for theism and for atheism.

[2] Here and henceforth, I follow Jeanine Diller and Paul Draper in distinguishing between global atheism (the denial of all gods) and local atheism (denial of a specific god or type of god). I'm taking the arguments in the list below to be arguments for local atheism with respect to the god of orthodox monotheism (although many arguments on the list provide at least some grounds for rejecting at least some other types of gods).

Helen De Cruz's Excellent Recent Work in Philosophy of Religion

On numerous occasions, we've noted Helen De Cruz's terrific work in philosophy of religion. Here I'd like to provide an update with some recent examples (if you haven't seen them already):

Religious Disagreement (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

"Religious conversion, transformative experience, and disagreement", Philosophia Christi, 20(1) (2018): 265 - 275.

"Etiological challenges to religious practices". American Philosophical Quarterly, 55 (4): 329 - 340.

These papers and many others can be found at her academic webpage. Check them out!

The Argument from Cognitive Biases

There is a lot of data indicating that human minds are riddled with cognitive biases that regularly distort our thinking. This is surprising on the hypothesis of theism, as one would expect such a god to design our cognitive faculties so as to reliably track the truth. By contrast, such data is expected on the hypothesis of naturalism, for then one would expect evolutionary pressures to produce haphazard, makeshift cognitive faculties that track the truth enough to ensure the ability to survive and reproduce, but not much more. The data of cognitive biases therefore provides at least some confirming evidence in favor of naturalism vis-a-vis theism.

UPDATE: I recently learned that Aron Lucas gave this argument in 2018

Kraay's New Paper on Divine Satisficing

On other occasions, we noted Klaas Kraay's important paper on divine satisfying, as well as Chris Tucker's important reply. Kraay's rejoinder, "Is Motivated Submaximization Good Enough for God?" is now out with Religious Studies. Here's the abstract:
In a recent article (Kraay 2013), I argued that some prominent responses to two important arguments for atheism invoke divine satisficing – and that the coherence and propriety of this notion have not been established. Chris Tucker (2016) agrees with my evaluation of divine satisficing, but disagrees with my exegesis of these responses. He argues that they should be understood as invoking motivated submaximization instead. After reviewing the dialectical situation to date, I assess whether motivated submaximization can be deployed in such a way as to defeat these arguments for atheism. I argue that it's far from clear that it can.

Robert M. Adams (1937-2024)

 Robert M. Adams, a seminal figure in philosophy of religion, has passed. Details here . Adams was a good man. I recall fondly when he and h...