King, Nathan. "The Apologist's Dilemma", in Matthew A. Benton and Jonathan L. Kvanvig, eds. Religious Disagreement and Pluralism. Oxford University Press, 2022. Here's a few snippets to whet your appetite:
Sanford Goldberg's Important Case for Religious Disagreement as a Defeater for Religious Belief
Read these papers:
Goldberg, Sanford C. “Does Externalist Epistemology Rationalize Religious Commitment?” In Timothy O’Connor and Laura Frances Callahan, eds., Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue. Oxford University Press, 2013.
-----. "How Confident Should a Believer Be in the Face of Religious Pluralism?" In Matthew A. Benton and Jonathan L. Kvanvig, eds. Religious Disagreement and Pluralism. Oxford University Press, 2022.
For further contextualization and for his line of response to the worry of overgeneralizing, see his "Defending Philosophy in the Face of Systematic Disagreement", in Diego E. Machuca, ed., Disagreement and Skepticism. Routledge, 2013.
A Cogent Argument Against Orthodox Christianity
Barnes, Gordon. "The Sins of Christian Orthodoxy", Philo 10:2 (2007).
Abstract: Christian orthodoxy essentially involves the acceptance of the New Testament as authoritative in matters of faith and conduct. However, the New Testament instructs slaves and women to accept a subordinate status that denies their equality with other human beings. To accept such a status is to have the vice of servility, which involves denying the equality of all human beings. Therefore the New Testament asserts that slaves and women should deny their equality with other human beings. This is false. Moreover, these same passages in the New Testament implicitly assert that slavery and the subordination of women are morally permissible. This is also false. Therefore orthodox Christianity is false.
Absolutely required reading.
The Everettian Problem of Evil
Post stub
There are infinitely many decohering branches of the universal wave function, such that infinitely many branches contain gratuitous evil.
Lancaster-Thomas's Phil. Compass Papers on Law's Evil-god Challenge
Lancaster-Thomas, Asha. "The Evil-god challenge part I: History and recent developments", Philosophy Compass 13 (7), 2018.
___. "The Evil-god challenge part II: Objections and responses", Philosophy Compass 13 (8), 2018.
Fantastic Recent Empirically Informed Atheistic Argument from Moral Psychology
Teehan, John. "Cognitive Science, Evil, and God", in De Cruz, H and Nichols, R. (2016). Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 39-60.
Here's a summary of the paper from the editors' introduction to the book:
John Teehan looks in more detail at the problem of evil, a classic challenge to theism in philosophy of religion. This problem has received a lot of attention in mainstream philosophy of religion, and according to Teehan, cognitive science can further strengthen it. He shows this by considering the features of our evolved morality. Traditionally, the fact that humans have some unlearned (probably innate) sense of what is right and wrong has been regarded as evidence for theism; see, for example, formulations of the moral argument by Swinburne (2004). A crucial and often-overlooked feature of evolved morality is that it is an in-group adaptation. As a result, humans are more morally sensitive to those they consider in-group members, and conversely, they can be indifferent or cruel to those they consider part of the out-group. Teehan surveys empirical evidence for this, for instance, that people are less empathetic toward people who experience pain if they believe them to be out-group members (e.g., of different ethnic groups). This suggests that some moral evil, such as prejudice, between-group violence, and dehumanization, results from a properly working system of evolved moral cognition. This presents a challenge to theism. Teehan proceeds to consider some theodicies and argues that none is successful.
Absolutely required reading.
Perhaps the Best Argument from Religious Diversity
...is Jason and Jon Marsh's "The Explanatory Challenge of Religious Diversity."
Abstract: 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 theistic, views. Although there are some interesting scientific explanations of such diversity, satisfying theistic explanations of its existence are still required.
Required reading.
Marsh on the Problem of Natural Non-Belief
Marsh, Jason. "Darwin and the Problem of Natural Non-Belief", The Monist 96(3): 349-376.
Abstract: Problem one: why, if God designed the human mind, did it take so long for humans to develop theistic concepts and beliefs? Problem two: why would God use evolution to design the living world when the discovery of evolution would predictably contribute to so much nonbelief in God? Darwin was aware of such questions but failed to see their evidential significance for theism. This paper explores this significance. Problem one introduces something I call natural nonbelief, which is significant because it parallels and corroborates well-known worries about natural evil. Problems one and two, especially when combined, support naturalism over theism, intensify the problem of divine hiddenness, challenge Alvin Plantinga’s views about the naturalness of theism, and advance the discussion about whether the conflict between science and religion is genuine or superficial
Liz Goodnick's Argument Against Reliably Caused Theistic Belief
Goodnick, Liz. "A De Jure Criticism of Theistic Belief", Open Theology 2 (Feb 2016): 23-33.
Abstract: An evolutionary by-product explanation entails that religious belief is an unintended consequence of a cognitive process selected for by evolution. In this paper, I argue that if a by-product explanation is true, then religious belief is unwarranted (even if God exists). In particular, I argue that if the cause of religious belief is the god-faculty (HADD + ToM + eToM + MCI), then it is likely unreliable; thus, religious belief is unwarranted. Plantinga argues that de jure criticisms are not independent of de facto criticisms: without knowing whether or not God exists, one can’t say that belief in God is unwarranted, since if God exists, it is possible that God has planned that this mechanism would lead to belief in Him. Against Plantinga, I show that in order for de jure criticisms to have force, it is not necessary to know that God does not exist. Instead, one only needs to doubt His existence. And if by-product explanations turn out to be supported by the evidence, this fact alone gives us reason to doubt God’s existence. Thus, if the by-product explanation is true, belief in God is not warranted; if we know this, then we have reason to doubt theism.
Grim Variations
Grim Variations: By Fabio Lampert and John Waldrop, Published on 04/01/21
Conclusion: "...the paradoxicality of divine omniscience, by the lights of Grim-style considerations, resides in a heretofore undertheorized feature of God’s knowledge: God’s status as a being of perfect rationality from a logical point of view."
Jeremy Koons' New Paper on Theism and the Meaning of Life
Koons, Jeremy. "God's Goodness, Divine Purpose, and the Meaning of Life: Meet the New Euthyphro Dilemma", European Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 14:2 (2022).
Abstract: The divine purpose theory —according to which that human life is meaningful to the extent that it fulfills some purpose or plan to which God has directed us—encounters well-known Euthyphro problems. Some theists attempt to avoid these problems by appealing to God’s essential goodness, Ã la the modified divine command theory of Adams and Alston. However, recent criticisms of the modified DCT show its conception of God’s goodness to be incoherent; and these criticisms can be shown to present an analogous set of problems for the DPT. Further, the argument can be extended to any account of meaningfulness according to which the value of what humans do can only be conferred by God. Thus, it would seem that there is no tenable version of the view that meaningfulness is conferred on human life by some act or attitude of God’s.
I haven't yet read the paper, but for what it's worth, I've sketched a Euthyphro-stye dilemma for theistic accounts of the meaning of life here, back in 2012.
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