Birds Attack Peace Doves Released from Pope's Window

Here.

H/T: Spiros

(Semi-recent news in the same vein can be found here and here.)

Wielenberg's Forthcoming Book on Non-Theistic Moral Realism

Be on the lookout for Eric Wielenberg's book, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Here's the blurb:

Erik J. Wielenberg draws on recent work in analytic philosophy and empirical moral psychology to defend non-theistic robust normative realism and develop an empirically-grounded account of human moral knowledge. Non-theistic robust normative realism has it that there are objective, non-natural, sui generis ethical features of the universe that do not depend on God for their existence. The early chapters of the book address various challenges to the intelligibility and plausibility of the claim that irreducible ethical features of things supervene on their non-ethical features as well as challenges from defenders of theistic ethics who argue that objective morality requires a theistic foundation. Later chapters develop an account of moral knowledge and answer various recent purported debunkings of morality, including those based on scientific research into the nature of the proximate causes of human moral beliefs as well as those based on proposed evolutionary explanations of our moral beliefs. 

Further details can be found here.

New SEP Entry on Skeptical Theism

Here.

Review of Moser's The Severity of God: Religion and Philosophy Reconceived

Scott A. Davison (Morehead State University) reviews the book for NDPR.

Matter Is Metaphysically Necessary if Anything Is

Here's an argument I'm toying with. It's really rough at this stage, and it would take a good bit of work to flesh out the full reasoning, but the basic idea is that, prima facie, new stuff can only come from old stuff[1] -- ex nihilo creation of new stuff seems not to be in the cards. But if so, then given the existence of matter, it must've either always been here, or else it must've been made from other stuff (which in turn must've either always been here or must've been made from other stuff, which in turn...). So it seems there must've always been matter (or the stuff of which matter's composed, or the stuff of which matter's composed is composed, or the stuff of which...).

Now the next step is the biggest "if" -- it's the reason why I qualified "matter is metaphysically necessary" with "if anything is". The basic idea is that if there is some temporally first, eternal, uncaused stuff (as opposed to a beginningless series of new stuff coming from prior stuff), and if whatever occupies the role of being temporally first, eternal, and uncaused doesn't vary from world to world, then matter (or the stuff of which matter is ultimately composed) is metaphysically necessary.

Now my own view is that it's epistemically possible that what's temporally first, eternal, and uncaused (if indeed anything satisfies or can satisfy that description) can vary from world to world. If such an epistemic possibility is also a metaphysical possibility, then matter (or whatever matter is ultimately composed) is, at best, factually necessary, which is another reason why I say "if anything is".

In any case, that's an impressionistic sketch of the line of argument I'm toying with. Thoughts? (I should say that at this stage I'm looking for "big picture" questions and comments, and not those aimed at minor details.)

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[1] I tend to think such a causal/explanatory principle is at least on an an evidential par with those appealed to in cosmological arguments. 

Morriston's New Paper on Skeptical Theism

Morriston, Wes. "Skeptical Demonism: A Failed Response to a Humean Challenge", in McBrayer, Justin and Trent Dougherty (eds.). Skeptical Theism: New Essays (OUP, forthcoming).

The Winter 2013 Issue of The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion...

...is now out. It's a special issue devoted to exploring the nature of the second-person perspective and its bearing on issues in philosophy of religion.

(A related bleg: Does anyone know where to find EJPR's RSS feed?)