Nathan King's "The Apologist's Dilemma"

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

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There are infinitely many decohering branches of the universal wave function, such that infinitely many branches contain gratuitous evil.

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.

Alimi's New Paper on the Problem of Divine Domination

Alimi, Toni. Divine domination . Religious Studies (2025), 1–19. doi:10.1017/S0034412525100917 Abstract: This article develops the problem ...