The Best Argument Against God...

...is the title of Graham Oppy's new book.  Here's the blurb:

The best way to work out whether or not to believe in God is to compare the best theory that says that God exists with the best theory that says that God does not exist, taking into account all of the relevant data. This book compares Theism – the best theory that says that God exists – with Naturalism – the best theory that says that God does not exist – on a very wide range of data. The conclusion of the comparison is that Naturalism is a better theory than Theism: for Naturalism is simpler than Theism, and all of the considered data is explained at least as well by Naturalism as it is by Theism. The argument for Naturalism is novel both in outline, and in the details of the case that there is no data that Theism explains better than Naturalism does.

Further details and purchasing information can be found here.

Samuel Scheffler on the Afterlife

...on Philosophy Bites. Here's the plug:

What gives value to what we do? If all sentient life were to end a few minutes after my death, how would that affect the meaning of what I'm doing now? Samuel Scheffler discusses this sort of question with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. 

New Paper on the Kalam Argument

Christopher Alan Bobier, "God, Time, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument", Sophia (May 2013).

Here's the abstract:

The Kalām cosmological argument deploys the following causal principle: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Yet, under what conditions does something ‘begin to exist’? What does it mean to say that ‘X begins to exist at t’? William Lane Craig has offered and defended various accounts that seek to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for when something ‘begins to exist.’ I argue that all of the accounts that William Lane Craig has offered fail on the following grounds: either they entail that God has a cause or they render the Kalām argument unsound. Part of the problem is due to Craig’s view of God’s relationship to time: that God exists timelessly without creation and temporarily with creation. The conclusion is that Craig must abandon either the Kalām argument or his view of God’s relationship to time; he cannot consistently hold both

And if a copy should find its way to my inbox...

Update: Thanks!

Favorite Thing of the Moment

This.

Mizrahi's New Argument from Evil

Mizrahi, Moti. "The Problem of Natural Inequality: A New Problem of Evil", Philosophia (forthcoming).

Here's the abstract:

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 (not logical or incompatibility) 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 the face of this particular evil, or so I argue.

Review of Zagzebski's Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief

Anne Baril (U of New Mexico) reviews the book for NDPR.