ex-apologist

Linford and Megill's New Paper on Two Underexplored Arguments Against Theism

Linford, Dan and Megill, Jason. "Idolatry, indifference, and the scientific study of religion: two new Humean arguments", Religious Studies (2018), doi:10.1017/S0034412518000653.

Here's the abstract:

We utilize contemporary cognitive and social science of religion to defend a controversial thesis: the human cognitive apparatus gratuitously inclines humans to religious activity oriented around entities other than the God of classical theism. Using this thesis, we update and defend two arguments drawn from David Hume: (i) the argument from idolatry, which argues that the God of classical theism does not exist, and (ii) the argument from indifference, which argues that if the God of classical theism exists, God is indifferent to our religious activity.

"The Will Not to Believe"

...is the title of an intriguing new paper (forthcoming in Sophia) by Joshua Cockayne and Jack Warman. Here's the abstract:

Is it permissible to believe that God does not exist if the evidence is inconclusive? In this paper, we give a new argument in support of atheistic belief modelled on William James’s The Will to Believe. According to James, if the evidence for a proposition, p, is ambiguous, and believing that p is a genuine option, then it can be permissible to let your passions decide. Typically, James’s argument has been used as a defence of passionally caused theistic belief. However, in the existing literature, little attention has been given to topic of passionally caused atheistic belief. Here, we give much needed attention to the issue of how areligious passions can justify atheistic belief. Following James, we argue that if atheism is a genuine option for an agent, it is permissible to believe that God does not exist based on her hopes, desires, wishes, or whatever passions incline her to disbelieve. After defending the coherence of passionally caused atheism, we go on to suggest why this position is a tenable one for the atheist to adopt.

Nice Critique of Earman's Hume's Abject Failure

Vanderburgh, William L. "Of Miracles and Evidential Probability: Hume’s “Abject Failure” Vindicated", Hume Studies 31:1 (2005): 37-61.

Wielenberg on the Absurdity of Life in a Christian Universe

Here.

McDaniel's New Critique of Grounding-Based Formulations of PSR

McDaniel, Kris. "The principle of sufficient reason and necessitarianism", Analysis (2018).

Here's the abstract:

Peter van Inwagen (1983: 202–4) presented a powerful argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I henceforth abbreviate as ‘PSR’. For decades, the consensus was that this argument successfully refuted PSR. However, now a growing consensus holds that van Inwagen’s argument is fatally flawed, at least when ‘sufficient reason’ is understood in terms of ground, for on this understanding, an ineliminable premiss of van Inwagen’s argument is demonstrably false and cannot be repaired. I will argue that this growing consensus is mistaken and that a powerful argument relevantly similar to van Inwagen’s should still concern us, even when we understand ‘sufficient reason’ in terms of ground.

The penultimate draft can be found here.

Ontological Arguments, Anselmianism, and Irony

*Quick thought. For kicks (sort of). In draft.*

Plantinga's modal ontological argument aims to demonstrate the existence of a modally ultimate being, upon which all else depends for its existence. But the argument seems to require an ontologically prior Platonic modal space, of which God's existence is a function (of its existence and structure).[1] To see this, just think about the way in which Plantinga's ontological argument proceeds, and its ontological underpinnings. On such a view, abstract objects are fundamental, and God is an intermediary, derivative layer of reality -- sandwiched between the layers of necessary abstracta and contingent concreta -- contrary to the aims of the argument (and to the Aseity-Sovereignty doctrine).

The theist might try to avoid this implication via theistic activism. But if the theist goes this route, then the bootstrapping problem rears its ugly head, in addition to other problems (e.g., the Benacerraf problem for God's knowledge of abstracta, etc.). On the other hand, if the theist takes the theistic conceptualist route, then this also leads to the bootstrapping problem and other problems (e.g., concepts are concrete, non-repeatable entities, and therefore not suitable to play the role of abstracta). On yet a third hand, if the theist goes the nominalist or fictionalist route, then the ontological argument fails. But this exhausts the relevant possibilities for the theist regarding abstracta: straight platonism, theistic activism, theistic conceptualism, nominalism, and fictionalism/pretense theory.[2], [3]

There is thus non-trivial pressure to think that Plantinga's ontological argument succeeds only if the being it proves to exist is not ontologically ultimate, but rather one that supervenes on an ontological foundation of platonic modal space.

[1] Rather like a modal analogue of the way in which (some argue that) our universe is a function of the nature and structure of relativistic quantum fields.

[2] Hybrid views tend to take on board the problems of pure views.

[3] Strictly speaking, other views are epistemic possibilities (e.g., structuralism) -- but seem to succumb to similar problems.

[4] Such a being would be what I have elsewhere called a necessary dependent being, and the platonic modal space on which it depends would be what I have elsewhere called a necessary independent being.