...is the title of John Bishop and Ken Perszyk's new book defending a new, non-personal rival to classical theism, viz., euteleological theism. We therefore have yet another new view of ultimate reality that aims to have equal or greater explanatory power than classical theism.
The Argument from Necessitarian Accounts of Laws of Nature
Necessitarianism about the laws of nature is a fairly popular view in contemporary analytic philosophy (Cf. Shoemaker, Swoyer, Bird, Fales, Ellis, Bigelow et al.). According to such accounts, the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. One popular type of account of necessitarianism about the laws of nature is dispositional essentialism. According to this sort of account, physical individuals and stuffs have their dispositional properties essentially, so that (for example) salt (or at the very least, least salt-in-alpha, i.e., the stuff that plays the salt role in the actual world) is essentially and thus necessarily such that it dissolves in water. Similarly, matter-energy (or at the very least, matter-in-alpha) is essentially and thus necessarily such that the conservation laws hold. But if so, then it appears that God can't violate the laws of nature, which puts constraints on God's relation to the physical world. For example, it implies that he can't intervene in the world in such a way as to violate the laws of physics, or that (if some of the conservation laws are properly spelled out in terms of conserved quantities of matter-energy), can't create or sustain the universe. But such claims are incompatible with orthodox monotheism. Therefore, to the extent that one is persuaded by necessitarianism about the laws of nature, one thereby has reason to think orthodox monotheism is false.
Today, White Evangelical Protestants comprise Only 13.6% of Americans
From the Washington Post. Source with details here. Note also that twice as many Americans (26.8%) are religiously unaffiliated.
Koons' Nice Paper on Why Theists Should Oppose Criminalizing Sin
Koons, Jeremy. "Theism and the criminalization of sin", European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10:1 (2018).
Abstract: The free will theodicy places significant value on free will: free will is of such substantial value, that God’s gift of free will to humans was justified, even though this gift foreseeably results in the most monstrous of evils. I will argue that when a state criminalizes sin, it can restrict or eliminate citizens’ exercise of metaphysical free will with respect to choosing to partake in or refrain from these activities. Given the value placed on free will in the free will theodicy, theists who endorse this theodicy should thus oppose the criminalization of what I will call Millian sins —that is, actions which are immoral, but which do not directly harm another person. In other words, such theists should oppose legal moralism.
Happy reading!
The Argument from the Autonomy of Normative Ethics
The history of Western normative ethics has produced a wide range of plausible normative ethical theories that make no essential reference to God. Prominent examples include virtue ethics, consequentialism, social contract theory, Kantian ethics, Scanlonian contractualism, and care ethics. By contrast, the main theistic accounts -- divine command theory and theistic natural law theory -- have had a much harder time of it. The majority of ethicists therefore find divine command theory and theistic natural law theory among the most implausible. There are thus strong prima facie grounds for thinking normative ethics is autonomous, and thus independent of God. This is surprising on the hypothesis of orthodox monotheism, as the latter has naturally suggested to perhaps most theists that God is the ultimate ground of moral principles (which seems to be a straightforward implication of the widely-held aseity-sovereignty doctrine according to which (i) God is an absolutely independent being, dependent upon/derivative of nothing and (ii) everything distinct from God depends upon her for their existence). By contrast, the autonomy of normative ethics is not surprising on naturalism, for on the latter hypothesis, there is no such person as God, and thus there is no expectation that God is the ultimate ground of moral principles. The autonomy of ethics thus provides at least some evidence for naturalism vis-a-vis theism.
The Argument from Causal Nihilism/Eliminativism
Bertrand Russell famously argued that the notion of cause is an obsolete notion, on the grounds that the equations expressing the fundamental laws of physics make no appeal to causation, in which case causes can be dispensed with. This view is known as causal eliminativism (also sometimes referred to as causal nihilism). There are strong defenses of causal eliminativism to this day. But according to orthodox theism, God is the cause of at least the universe (and indeed very many standard arguments for theism rely on the reality of causation). Therefore, to the extent that one is persuaded by arguments for causal eliminativism, one thereby has at least some reason to think theism is false.
The Argument from Counterexamples to the "Laws" of Logic Against Theism
At least since Augustine, and arguably in the book of Proverbs and the Gospel of John, theists have thought it a natural to expect that if God exists, then we'd expect there to be exceptionless laws of logic that are necessary truths, which in turn are grounded in the mind of God. This expectation also seems to be a straightforward implication of the widely-held aseity-sovereignty doctrine, according to which (i) God is an absolutely independent being, dependent upon/derivative of nothing and (ii) everything distinct from God depends upon her for their existence. However, there are counterexamples to basic logical laws of deductive inference, such as modus ponens and modus tollens. Therefore, to the extent that laws of logic would provide at least some confirming evidence for theism, evidence against such laws is thereby at least some disconfirming evidence against theism.
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