ATHEISM OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE RESEARCH GUIDE
Matt McCormick California State University, Sacramento
© 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
ISBN: 9780199808663 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction General Overviews Anthologies Important Historical Works Histories of Atheism Comprehensive Treatments In uential Popular Works Deductive Atheology Single-Property Disproofs Multiple-Property Disproofs Inductive Atheology Problem-of-Evil Anthologies Problem-of-Evil Arguments Against God’s Existence God, Atheism, and Cosmology Teleological Arguments and Atheism Atheism and Nonbelief Atheistic Naturalism Recent Continental Philosophy and Atheism Important Works On Theism Historical Works Recent Defenses Anthologies Defenses of God and Evil Oxford Bibliographies Online OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE RESEARCH GUIDE
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OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE | Philosophy
Authority and Innovation for Scholarly Research Written by a leading international authority and bearing the Oxford University Press stamp of excellence, this article is a de nitive guide to the most important resources on the topic. The article combines annotated citations, expert recommendations, and narrative pathways through the most important scholarly sources in both print and online formats. All materials recommended in this article were reviewed by the author, and the article has been organized in tiers ranging from general to highly specialized, saving valuable time by allowing researchers to easily narrow or broaden their focus among only the most trusted scholarly sources. This is just one of many articles within the subject area of Atlantic History, which is itself just one of the many subjects covered by Oxford Bibliographies Online—a revolutionary resource designed to cut through academic information overload by guiding researchers to exactly the right book chapter, journal article, website, archive, or data set they need.
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The term “atheist” describes a person who does not believe that God or a divine being exists. The sort of divine being that has received the most attention in atheological arguments has been the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe that is the central focus of the major monotheistic traditions. It has come to be widely accepted that to be an atheist is to deny that a God or gods exist. Atheism can be narrow or wide in scope; that is, a person can be a narrow atheist about the existence of a particular divine being, such as Zeus. Or a person can lack belief in the existence of any supernatural beings. Theism and atheism are primarily ontological positions about what sorts of things exist. Some theists believe that there is su cient evidence to rationally justify the conclusion that God is real; others believe in God, but take a weaker view about the state of the evidence, sometimes invoking faith. Atheists typically take the view that there is su cient evidence to justify concluding that there is no God. Agnosticism is an epistemological category; it describes someone who is not sure whether there is a God or not. Typically, the agnostic has the view that there is insu cient available evidence to draw a reasonable conclusion one way or the other, and as a result the responsible attitude is to suspend judgment. While some authors in the past have o ered criticisms of believing or argued against the existence of God, atheism as we know it is a relatively recent development. People began to consider the possibility of a fully viable alternative to theism after Darwin, and the practice of giving a direct philosophical argument for the nonexistence of God became common even later. GENERAL OVERVIEWS
There are surprisingly few good general overviews of the topic. Rowe 1998 covers the central issues, particularly concerning the problem of evil, but it does not summarize several important recent threads of argument. McCormick 2010 parallels this bibliography and discusses the important arguments at some length. Smart 2004 is not up to date with the key literature. Baggini 2003, Krueger 1998, and Flynn 2007 give useful but introductory accounts of the central issues.
‣Baggini, Julian. Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. A useful philosophical introduction to the topic and several related issues such as atheism and ethics.
‣Flynn, Tom, ed. The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007. A useful but somewhat eclectic survey of important people, movements, and concepts in atheism. Not con ned to philosophical sources.
‣Krueger, Douglas E. What is Atheism? A Short Introduction. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998. An introduction addressing many of the important issues, written for a general audience. This book is good but too brief. Useful only for the most basic distinctions and lines of justi cation.
‣Le Poidevin, Robin. Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. London: Routledge, 1996. A useful introduction and survey of the problems with the standard arguments for the existence of God. Written for undergraduates.
‣McCormick, Matt. “Atheism URL: (http://iep.utm.edu/atheism/).” In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. 2010. A more detailed survey of the atheism literature and the arguments that have become in uential in the 20th and 21st centuries; parallels this bibliography.
‣Rowe, William L. “Atheism.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1. Edited by Edward Craig, 530–534. London: Routledge, 1998. Covers the problem of evil, but leaves out several recent trends in the argument.
‣Smart, J. J. C. “Atheism and Agnosticism URL: (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism- agnosticism/).” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2004. An outdated and idiosyncratic survey of the topic. Heavily in uenced by early 20th-century positivism.
ANTHOLOGIES
A number of anthologies represent the stages of discussion on the topic in the last fty years. Early collections such as Flew and MacIntyre 1955 show the in uence of logical positivism on philosophical theism and the question of the nature and role of theological language. These in uences can still be seen in recent discussions. Later discussions turned to more a priori and formal analyses of the properties of God, as in Morris 1987 (cited under Important Works on Theism: Anthologies). The greatest number of anthologies by far have focused on the problem of evil and are cited under Problem-of-Evil Anthologies and Problem-of-Evil Arguments against God’s Existence. Finally, and most recently, the Martin and Monnier 2003, Martin and Monnier 2006, and Martin 2007 anthologies have served to crystallize the genre of direct deductive and inductive arguments for the nonexistence of God.
‣Flew, Antony, and Alasdair MacIntyre, eds. New Essays in Philosophical Theology. London: SCM, 1955. In uential early collection of British philosophers where the in uence of the Vienna Circle is evident in the “logical analysis” of religion. The meaning, function, analysis, and falsi cation of theological claims and discourse are considered.
‣Martin, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Useful but eclectic collection of recent essays on atheism. Includes reactions to atheism, the demographics and sociology of atheism, and some other neglected topics.
‣Martin, Michael, and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Impossibility of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2003. An important collection of deductive atheological arguments—the only one of its kind. A signi cant body of articles arguing for the conclusion that God not only does not exist, but is impossible.
‣Martin, Michael, and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Improbability of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2006. The companion to Martin and Monnier 2003. An important collection of inductive atheological arguments distinct from the problem of evil. Argues God’s existence is unreasonable. The only book of its kind.
‣Smart, J. J. C., and John Haldane. Atheism and Theism. 2d ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. DOI: 10.1002/9780470756225 Not an anthology, strictly speaking, but an in uential exchange between Smart (an atheist) and Haldane (a theist).
IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS
Philosophical atheism as part of a comprehensive metaphysical position is a relatively recent development; nevertheless, a number of historical works continue to be highly in uential. Darwin 2009 and Darwin 2005 provide scientists and philosophers with an alternative view to supernaturalism that has come to be widely accepted. The arguments in Hume 1935 concerning the empirical grounds for and against God’s existence, particularly those about miracles, continue to dominate the eld. Nietzsche 2007 and Camus 2000 give famous existential analyses of religion, morality, and God. Russell 1957 was the rst and perhaps most famous analytical treatment of atheism that addresses the range of arguments for the existence of God. Cli ord 1999 has long been taken to give the de nitive rejection of believing on faith.
‣Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Penguin Classics, 2000. English translation of Le Mythe de Sisyphe. A seminal work in 20th-century existentialism and atheism. Camus addresses the challenge of living with meaning in light of the conclusion that God is dead. Originally published in 1942.
‣Cli ord, W. K. “The Ethics of Belief.” In The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays. By W. K. Cli ord, 70– 96. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1999. Famously, Cli ord argues that it is wrong always and anywhere to believe anything on the basis of insu cient evidence. Important and in uential argument in discussions of atheism and faith. Originally published in 1879.
‣Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. In From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin (Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of the Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals). By Charles Darwin. New York: Norton, 2005. Twelve years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin makes a thorough and compelling case for the evolution of humans. He also expands on numerous details of the theory. Originally published in 1871.
‣Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Darwin’s rst book in which he explains his theory of natural selection. No explicit mention of humans is made, but the theological implications are clear for the teleological argument. Originally published in 1859.
‣Hume, David. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Edited by Norman Kemp Smith. Oxford: Clarendon, 1935. Hume o ers his famous dialogues between Philo, Demea, and Cleanthes in which he explores the empirical evidence for the existence of God. No work in the philosophy of religion, except perhaps those of Anselm or Aquinas, has received more attention or had more in uence. Originally published in 1778.
‣Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Nietzsche applies his famous master/slave morality distinction to the history of Christianity. Originally published in 1887.
‣Russell, Bertrand. Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. Edited by Paul Edwards. London: Allen and Unwin, 1957. Russell gives his famous analysis of the arguments for the existence of God and critique of Christianity. Originally published in 1927.
HISTORIES OF ATHEISM
Atheism should be understood as a social and historical movement on the one hand, and as a philosophical movement on the other. Berman 1990, Buckley 1987, and Jacoby 2004 bridge the two strands.
‣Berman, David. A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell. London: Routledge, 1990. One of the few accounts of the modern history of atheistic thought as it developed in the Enlightenment and post- Enlightenment.
‣Buckley, Michael J. At The Origins of Modern Atheism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. Traces the roots of modern atheism to 17th-century Catholic theologians and their quest to found belief in God in science.
‣Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan, 2004. Tracks the development of atheism and free thought as social and political movements in America since the Revolution. COMPREHENSIVE TREATMENTS
There are a number of book-length analyses of atheism that reconstruct and critique the important versions of the teleological, ontological, cosmological, and prudential arguments for God. All of these works also give thoughtful analyses of some of the properties of God that amount to single- or multiple-property disproofs; due to the scope of these books, they will be listed here, not in the Deductive Atheology section, even though many of their speci c arguments would t there. Martin 1990 is perhaps the best and most thorough of these works. Everitt 2004, Gale 1991, Mackie 1982, and Sobel 2004 also contain many thoughtful analyses. Flew 1984 and Nielsen 2005 are important in the history of the late 20th-century debate. Oppy 1995 is the best recent work on the ontological argument, and Oppy 2006 is epistemologically sophisticated.
‣Everitt, Nicholas. The Non-Existence of God. London: Routledge, 2004. Everitt considers and rejects signi cant recent arguments for the existence of God. O ers insightful analyses of ontological, cosmological, teleological, miracle, and pragmatic arguments. The argument from scale and deductive atheological arguments are of interest.
‣Flew, Antony. “The Presumption of Atheism.” In God, Freedom, and Immortality: A Critical Analysis. By Antony Flew, 13–30. Bu alo, NY: Prometheus, 1984. A collection of essays, some of which are now out of date. The most important are “The Presumption of Atheism” and “The Principle of Agnosticism.” ‣Gale, Richard M. On the Nature and Existence of God. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Gale gives a careful, advanced analysis of several important deductive atheological arguments as well as the ontological and cosmological arguments, and concludes that none for theism is successful. But he does not address inductive arguments and therefore says that he cannot answer the general question of God’s existence.
‣Mackie, J. L. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. In uential and comprehensive work. The author rejects many classic and contemporary ontological, cosmological, moral, teleological, evil, and pragmatic arguments.
‣Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justi cation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. A careful and comprehensive work that surveys and rejects a broad range of arguments for God’s existence. Particularly clear and structured, with many penetrating objections. One of the very best attempts to give a comprehensive argument for atheism.
‣Nielsen, Kai. Atheism and Philosophy. New York: Prometheus, 2005. A useful collection of essays from Nielsen that addresses various aspects of atheism, particularly epistemological ones. ‣Oppy, Graham. Ontological Arguments and Belief in God. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Perhaps the best and most thorough analysis of the important versions of the ontological argument.
‣Oppy, Graham. Arguing About Gods. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Main thesis: there are no successful arguments for the existence of orthodoxly conceived monotheistic gods. This project includes some very good, up-to-date analyses of rational belief and belief revision, ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, Pascal’s wager, and evil. He sees these all as tting into a larger argument for agnosticism.
‣Sobel, Jordan Howard. Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. A broad, conventionally structured work, in that it covers ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments, as well as evil, Pascal, and the properties of God. Notable for its attempts to bring some sophisticated technical logic tools to the reconstructions and analyses.
INFLUENTIAL POPULAR WORKS
A number of relatively nonscholarly works have achieved a great deal of attention, so much so that they have in uenced the shape and direction of the debate in philosophical circles. Dawkins 2006, Harris 2005, Harris 2008, and Hitchens 2007 are good examples. Dawkins 1996 has in uenced the terms of the debate over evolution and teleology. Stenger 2007 strives to bring recent scienti c research to the question.
‣Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, 1996. Dawkins gives an accessible and articulate explanation of the means whereby natural selection produced life on earth and argues for the superiority of that explanation over teleological arguments for the existence of God. In uential, but not a scholarly work.
‣Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mi in, 2006. Not a scholarly work, but in uential and popular enough to signi cantly a ect the direction and nature of the current debate.
‣Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: Norton, 2005. Another in uential New Atheist work, although it does not contend with the best philosophical arguments for God. Harris argues that faith is not an acceptable justi cation for religious belief, particularly given the dangerousness of religious agendas worldwide. Another popular, nonscholarly book that has had a broad impact on the discussion.
‣Harris, Sam. Letter to a Christian Nation. New York: Vintage, 2008. Harris focuses his critique of faith from Harris 2005 on fundamentalist Christianity and its negative impact on American culture and politics. ‣Hitchens, Christopher. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007. Hitchens o ers an excoriating attack on the role of religion in foolish, dangerous, and deadly behaviors. Rhetorically e ective, but philosophically thin.
‣Stenger, Victor J. God: The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007. An accessible work that gives a scienti c analysis of supernaturalism, cosmology, prayer, miracles, prophecy, morality, and su ering. Also addresses evolution. Not a scholarly work, but an interesting survey of relevant empirical evidence.
DEDUCTIVE ATHEOLOGY
A set of arguments for God’s impossibility have been presented in the philosophical literature. These have been based upon a priori analyses of single properties or of combinations of properties. These arguments implicitly or explicitly endorse the view that in order to be a being worthy of the name “God,” a being must have certain properties. So if no logically coherent account of the property or combination of properties can be given, then it would appear that no such being can possibly exist. Findlay 1948 argues that God must be necessary if he exists at all, but the failure of the ontological argument shows that God is not necessary. Atheological arguments are divided into single- and multiple-property disproofs. ‣Findlay, J. N. “Can God’s Existence be Disproved?” Mind n.s. 57 (1948): 176–183. In uential early argument: if there is a God, then he will be a necessary being and the ontological argument will succeed. But the ontological argument and our e orts to make it work have not been successful, so there is no God.
Single-Property Disproofs In their strongest form, single-property disproofs maintain that if a property is an essential feature of any being worthy of the title “God,” and no logically consistent or problem-free account of that property can be devised, then it would appear that there can be no such being. Important recent discussions have focused on giving a paradox-free account of omnipotence. See Flint and Freddoso 1983, Ho man and Rosenkrantz 1988, and Mavrodes 1977 for recent attempts to avoid the paradoxes of omnipotence. Cowan 1965 argues against omnipotence. Omniscience has also received a great deal of attention. Grim 1985, Grim 1988, and Puccetti 1963 argue that it is impossible to be omniscient. Many other properties have been analyzed. See Stump and Kretzmann 1981 for a good example. Also see also many of the works cited under Comprehensive Treatments for single-property analyses that are part of larger arguments.
‣Cowan, J. L. “The Paradox of Omnipotence.” Analysis 25 (1965): 102–108. DOI: 10.2307/3326724 No being can have the power to do everything that is not self-contradictory. That God has that sort of omnipotence is itself self-contradictory. Reprinted in Martin and Monnier 2003 (cited under Anthologies.) ‣Flint, Thomas P., and Alfred J. Freddoso. “Maximal Power.” In The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso, 81–113. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. Gives an account of omnipotence in terms of possible- worlds logic and with the notion of two world-sharing histories. It attempts to avoid a number of paradoxes.
‣Grim, Patrick. “Against Omniscience: The Case from Essential Indexicals.” Noûs 19 (1985): 151– 180. DOI: 10.2307/2214928 God cannot be omniscient because it is not possible for him to know indexical claims, or expressions whose reference shifts depending on context, such as “what I know when I know that I am making a mess.”
‣Grim, Patrick. “Logic and Limits of Knowledge and Truth.” Noûs 22 (1988): 341–367. DOI: 10.2307/2215708 Uses Cantor and Gödel to argue that omniscience is impossible within any logic we have.
‣Ho man, Joshua, and Gary Rosenkrantz. “Omnipotence Redux.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49 (1988): 283–301. DOI: 10.2307/2107977 Defends the authors’ account of omnipotence against criticisms o ered by Flint, Freddoso, and Wierenga.
‣Mavrodes, George I. “De ning Omnipotence.” Philosophical Studies 32 (1977): 191–202. DOI: 10.1007/BF00367729 Mavrodes defends limiting omnipotence to exclude logically impossible acts. It is no limitation upon a being’s power to assert that it cannot perform an incoherent act.
‣Puccetti, Roland. “Is Omniscience Possible?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 41 (1963): 92– 93. DOI: 10.1080/00048406312341561 An elaboration on the author’s view that there is no God because the notion of omniscience is contradictory.
‣Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann. “Eternity.” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 429– 458. DOI: 10.2307/2026047 How eternality is conceived a ects accounts of prayer, immutability, and omniscience. The authors examine reasons for considering it incoherent.
Multiple-Property Disproofs It is more common for authors to argue against the existence of God on the basis of some alleged incompatibility of di erent properties. If no being can have the conjoined features, and there are other good reasons to think that God must have them all, then it would appear that there is no God. Drange 1998 and Grim 2007 provide useful summaries of several of these approaches. Flew 1955 and Rowe 2004 explore God’s and humanity’s freedom, respectively. Blumenfeld 1978, Kretzmann 1966, McCormick 2000, and McCormick 2003 contain other interesting analyses. Also see many of the listings in Comprehensive Treatments for multiple-property arguments that t into a larger analysis. ‣Blumenfeld, David. “On the Compossibility of the Divine Attributes.” Philosophical Studies 34 (1978): 91–103. DOI: 10.1007/BF00364690 The standard Judeo-Christian divine and perfect being is impossible. The implications of perfection show that God’s power, knowledge, and goodness are not compatible. Reprinted in Martin and Monnier 2003 (cited under Anthologies.)
‣Drange, Theodore M. “Incompatible Properties Arguments: A Survey.” Philo 1.2 (1998): 49–60. A useful discussion of several property pairs that are not logically compatible in the same being: perfection/creator, immutable/creator, immutable/omniscient, and transcendent/omnipresent.
‣Flew, Antony. “Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom.” In New Essays in Philosophical Theology. Edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, 144–169. New York: Macmillan, 1955. An early work in deductive atheology that considers problems associated with God’s power and human freedom.
‣Grim, Patrick. “Impossibility Arguments.” In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Edited by Michael Martin, 199–214. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Grim outlines several recent attempts to salvage a workable de nition of omnipotence from Flint and Freddoso, Wierenga, and Ho man and Rosenkrantz. He argues that they do not succeed, leaving God’s power either impossible or too meager to be worthy of God. Indexical problems with omniscience and a problem involving Cantorian set theory also render it impossible.
‣Kretzmann, Norman. “Omniscience and Immutability.” Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966): 409–421. DOI: 10.2307/2023849 A perfect being is not subject to change. A perfect being knows everything. A being that knows everything always knows what time it is. A being that always knows what time it is subject to change. Therefore, a perfect being is subject to change. Therefore, a perfect being is not a perfect being. Therefore, there is no perfect being.
‣McCormick, Matt. “Why God Cannot Think: Kant, Omnipresence, and Consciousness.” Philo 3.1 (2000): 5–19. McCormick argues, on Kantian grounds, that being in all places and all times precludes being conscious because omnipresence would make it impossible for God to make an essential conceptual distinction between the self and not-self.
‣McCormick, Matt. “The Paradox of Divine Agency.” In The Impossibility of God. Edited by Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier, 313–325. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2003. God is traditionally conceived of as an agent, capable of setting goals and of willing and performing actions. God can never act, however, because no state of a airs that deviates from the dictates of his power, knowledge, and perfection can arise. Therefore, God is impossible. ‣Rowe, William L. Can God Be Free? Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. Rowe considers a range of classic and modern arguments attempting to reconcile God’s freedom in creating the world with God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness. Rowe argues against their compatibility with this reasoning: if an omniscient being creates a world when there is a better world that it could have created instead, then it is possible that there exists a being better than it—a being whose degree of goodness is such that it could not create that world when there is a better world it could have created instead.
INDUCTIVE ATHEOLOGY
The other main division in the literature includes inductive arguments that conclude that the existence of God is improbable or unreasonable. There have been a number of important and in uential developments in several of these types of arguments in recent years. In particular, it has become more common to see arguments that invoke Bayes’s probability calculus to argue that various observations are better explained, all things considered, on the hypothesis that there is no God. Several of the entries cited under Comprehensive Treatments present inductive arguments, particularly Mackie 1982. A much larger proportion of the literature concerning atheism has focused on the problem of evil than any other topic. These sources are divided into Anthologies, Arguments against God’s Existence, and Defenses of God and Evil. Inductive arguments are divided into The Problem of Evil (with subheadings); God, Atheism, and Cosmology; Teleological Arguments for Atheism; Atheism and Nonbelief; and Atheistic Naturalism. Note that there are deductive problem-of-evil arguments for atheism, but since the bulk of the recent problem-of-evil debate has involved the evidential argument, they are all listed here.
Problem-of-Evil Anthologies Adams and Adams 1990 is a collection focusing on more metaphysical and theoretical issues, Howard-Snyder 1996 and Rowe 2001 emphasize empirical evidential arguments. Larrimore 2001 gives a broad range of historical sources on the question.
‣Adams, Marilyn McCord, and Robert Merrihew Adams, eds. The Problem of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. A rst-rate collection of works from foremost philosophers in the eld addressing the problem of evil. Primarily contains works defending the existence of God.
‣Howard-Snyder, Daniel, ed. The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. An excellent collection of works responding to and elaborating on Rowe’s inductive argument from evil. Many re ect the epistemic turn that philosophy of religion has taken away from natural theology, particularly in response to Rowe’s argument.
‣Larrimore, Mark. The Problem of Evil: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Covers a wide range of historical responses to God and evil. Not con ned to philosophers. ‣Rowe, William, ed. God and the Problem of Evil. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. Another excellent anthology of works on the argument from evil. Representative works concerning the logical problem, the inductive argument, and important theodicies are contained here.
Problem-of-Evil Arguments Against God’s Existence Mackie 1955 gives the deductive atheistic argument from evil that framed the 20th-century debate. Madden and Hare 1968 gives a similar conceptual analysis. Rowe 1979 is the watershed inductive argument that has received the most attention. Rowe 2006 summarizes decades of discussion. Draper 1989, O’Connor 1998, Smith 1991, and Weisberger 1999 make valuable post-Rowe contributions to the evidential argument.
‣Draper, Paul. “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists.” Noûs 23 (1989): 331–350. DOI: 10.2307/2215486 Consider the hypothesis that neither the nature nor the condition of beings on earth results from benevolent or malevolent actions performed by nonhuman persons. What we know about the role of pain and pleasure from biology is much more antecedently probable given the hypothesis than on its alternative. Therefore we have good prima facie reasons to reject theism.
‣Mackie, J. L. “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind n.s. 64 (1955): 200–212. Early work that presents the logical or deductive problem of evil in one of its rst forms. Plantinga’s free will defense later becomes an important answer to it.
‣Madden, Edward H., and Peter H. Hare. Evil and the Concept of God. Spring eld, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1968. Madden and Hare argue against a full range of theodicies, suggesting that the problem of evil cannot be adequately answered by philosophical theology.
‣O’Connor, David. God and Inscrutable Evil: In Defense of Theism and Atheism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little eld, 1998. O’Connor makes a valuable contribution to the evidential argument from evil. He builds a case for the existence of instances of gratuitous evils and critiques several theistic arguments that attempt to show that God could or would produce a world with gratuitous evils in it. He also o ers important analyses of the skeptical-theist responses to Rowe’s argument.
‣Rowe, William L. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335–341. Very important work. Rowe insists that, even if there are some natural or moral evils that God could have had a good reason for creating, if there are instances of pointless evil that God could have prevented, then there is no God. And there are instances of pointless evil, such as the isolated su ering of a fawn burned in a forest re. So it is reasonable to conclude that there is no God. This work provoked an enormous response in the modern literature. ‣Rowe, William L. “Friendly Atheism, Skeptical Theism, and the Problem of Evil.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 59 (2006): 79–92. DOI: 10.1007/s11153-005-6178-6 Twenty- ve years after the publication of Rowe 1979, Rowe elaborates on and summarizes the multitude of developments in the argument and his position.
‣Smith, Quentin. “An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29 (1991): 159–174. DOI: 10.1007/BF00141329 A novel inductive argument from su ering: “The law of ‘eat or be eaten’ is probably ultimately evil and therefore God probably does not exist. If God existed, he would not have created carnivores but instead have created only vegetarian animals” (from Smith’s abstract).
‣Weisberger, A. M. Su ering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defense of Theism. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Weisberger argues that the problem of evil presents a disproof for the existence of the God of classical monotheism.
God, Atheism, and Cosmology Developments in cosmology, physics, and biology have contributed to a number of discussions of atheism. In some cases, contrary to the practice in philosophical theology, evidence from the cosmos has been presented for God’s nonexistence. Smith 1991 has dominated the atheistic arguments from cosmology. Craig and Smith 1995 is the most important recent proponent of the cosmological argument for God’s existence. Gale and Pruss 1999 takes a novel line: a deductive cosmological argument for God. Rowe 1998 is a useful historical overview of the cosmological debate.
‣Craig, William Lane, and Quentin Smith. Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Craig and Smith have an exchange on the cosmological evidence in favor of theism and atheism, as well as Hawking’s quantum cosmology. The work is part of an important recent shift that takes the products of scienti c investigation to be directly relevant to the question of God’s existence.
‣Gale, Richard M., and Alexander R. Pruss. “A New Cosmological Argument.” Religious Studies 35 (1999): 461–476. DOI: 10.1017/S0034412599005004 Gale and Pruss employ a weak principle of su cient reason in a deductive-cosmological argument for the necessary existence of God.
‣Rowe, William L. The Cosmological Argument. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998. Rowe o ers a thorough analysis of many important historically in uential versions of the cosmological argument, especially Aquinas’s, Duns Scotus’s, and Clarke’s.
‣Smith, Quentin. “Atheism, Theism, and Big Bang Cosmology.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991): 48–66. DOI: 10.1080/00048409112344511 Smith gives a novel argument and considers several objections: God did not create the big bang; if he had, he would have ensured that it would unfold into a state containing living creatures. But the big bang is inherently lawless and unpredictable and is not ensured to unfold this way.
Teleological Arguments and Atheism In the last twenty years or so, the biggest set of discussions of atheism has involved the question of design. Manson 2003 is the best single collection of discussions from the important authors on the topic. Several nonscholarly works advance design arguments for the existence of God on the basis of recent ndings in physics, chemistry, and astronomy. See Leslie 1996, Behe 2006, and Dembski 2006. Barrow and Tipler 1986 does not include important developments from recent years but is a useful overview. Kitcher 1982 critiques creationism. More technical and Bayesian critiques of teleological arguments include Sober 2002, Sober 2007, and Salmon 1978. Martin 1990 (cited under Comprehensive Treatments) also makes a useful inquiry into questions of teleology.
‣Barrow, John D., and Frank J. Tipler. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 A useful book-length analysis of anthropic principles, design arguments, and teleological reasoning in science and cosmology as they have gured in recent arguments for God’s existence. ‣Behe, Michael J. Darwin’s Black Box. New York: Free Press, 2006. Contains another one of the recent arguments for intelligent design that have in uenced many people outside of academic and scienti c circles.
‣Dembski, William A. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Contains one of the arguments for intelligent design that have resonated with nonacademics in recent years. Neither Dembski’s nor Behe’s arguments (see Behe 2006) have convinced scholars, but the popularity of their works has in uenced the debate.
‣Kitcher, Philip. Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. A useful but somewhat dated and nonscholarly presentation of the theory of evolution and critique of creationist arguments against it.
‣Leslie, John. Universes. London: Routledge, 1996. A popular and recent argument for theism based upon the alleged ne tuning of physical constants and principles in the universe to be conducive to the existence of life. This work, with others, has helped to shift the central theism/atheism discussion to teleological arguments.
‣Manson, Neil A., ed. God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science. London: Routledge, 2003. Perhaps the best recent academic collection of discussions of the design argument.
‣Salmon, Wesley C. “Religion and Science: A New Look at Hume’s Dialogues.” Philosophical Studies 33 (1978): 143–176. DOI: 10.1007/BF00571884 A novel Bayesian reconstruction of Hume’s treatment of design arguments. In general, since it is exceedingly rare for things to be brought into being by intelligence, and it is common for orderly things to come into existence by nonintelligence, it is more probable that the orderly universe is not the product of intelligent design.
‣Sober, Elliott. “Intelligent Design and Probability Reasoning.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52 (2002): 65–80. DOI: 10.1023/A:1019579220694 Sober argues, against advocates of intelligent design, that there is no probabilistic equivalent of modus tollens and that the evidence relation is essentially comparative. The intelligent-design movement must answer this question: what is the probability of adaptive features arising if they were produced by intelligent design?
‣Sober, Elliott. “What’s Wrong with Intelligent Design Theory?” Quarterly Review of Biology 82.1 (2007): 1–8. DOI: 10.1086/511659 An informed argument, incorporating Duhem, Popper, Gould, and others, that “in all its forms, intelligent design fails to constitute a serious alternative to evolutionary theory.” Atheism and Nonbelief A new family of arguments concerning divine hiddenness has been in uential on philosophical atheism. God’s existence, it is argued, could be more evident. This lack of evidence has led many people to have reasonable nonbelief. This nonbelief itself has been taken as evidence that there is not a supernatural being of great power, knowledge, and goodness. Howard-Snyder and Moser 2001, and Howard- Snyder 1996 have led attempts to reconcile God’s existence with apparent hiddenness. Schellenberg 2006a, Schellenberg 2006b, and Drange 1998 advance the view that a good and loving God who seeks belief would not remain hidden; therefore no such being exists.
‣Drange, Theodore M. Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998. Drange gives an argument from evil against the existence of the God of evangelical Christianity, and an argument that the God of evangelical Christianity could and would bring about widespread belief, and that such a God therefore does not exist.
‣Howard-Snyder, Daniel. “The Argument from Divine Hiddenness.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (1996): 433–453. Howard-Snyder argues that there is a prima facie good reason for God to refrain from entering into a personal relationship with inculpable nonbelievers, so there are good reasons for God to permit inculpable nonbelief. Therefore, inculpable nonbelief does not imply atheism. ‣Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Paul K. Moser. eds. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511606090 An important collection of essays concerning the question of God’s hiddenness. If there is a God, then why is his existence not more obvious? Authors in this collection outline a number of possibilities.
‣Schellenberg, J. L. Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006a. Schellenberg argues that the absence of strong evidence for theism implies that atheism is true. Important development of a new argument.
‣Schellenberg, J. L. “Divine Hiddenness Justi es Atheism.” In Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 30–41. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006b. Many people search in earnest for compelling evidence for God’s existence, but remain unconvinced and epistemically inculpable. This state of divine hiddenness itself implies that there is no God, independent of any positive arguments for atheism.
ATHEISTIC NATURALISM
For a number of reasons, the view that the world is entirely made up of spatiotemporal objects that are part of a causally closed system has gained traction throughout philosophy (and the other disciplines.) Arguments that all of reality is natural have been closely tied to atheistic arguments that deny the supernatural. Papineau 2007 gives a useful, broad overview of naturalism. Nielsen 2001 draws out the atheistic implications of naturalism. See Atran 2002, Boyer 2001, and Dennett 2006 for naturalized, evolutionary accounts of why humans are religious.
‣Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. An evolutionary and anthropological account of religious beliefs and institutions.
‣Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Another in uential anthropological and evolutionary work. Religion exists to sustain important aspects of social psychology.
‣Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking, 2006. Important work among the so-called new atheists. Dennett argues that religion can and should be studied by science. He outlines evolutionary explanations for religion’s cultural and psychological in uence.
‣Nielsen, Kai. Naturalism and Religion. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2001. Defends naturalism as atheistic and adequate for answering a number of larger philosophical questions. Considers some famous objections to naturalism, including Wittgenstein’s deism.
‣Papineau, David. “Naturalism URL: (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/).” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2007. A good general discussion of philosophical naturalism.
RECENT CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND ATHEISM
The reverberations of themes of nihilism, God’s death, and the crisis of meaning continue to be felt in contemporary continental philosophy. See Bloch 2009 and Habermas and Ratzinger 2006 for speci c discussions of Christianity in the context of postmodernism. Westphal 1998 attempts to answer Marxist, Nietzschean, and Freudian critiques of Christianity. Habermas 2002, Luijpen 1964, and Boghossian 2007 address atheism within the respective frameworks of critical theory, phenomenology, and constructivism.
‣Bloch, Ernst. Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of Exodus and the Kingdom. Rev. ed. Translated by J. T. Swan. London: Verso, 2009. An updated version of a well-regarded postmodernist and Marxist analysis of atheism in the Bible; rst published in 1968. ‣Boghossian, Paul. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford: Clarendon, 2007. Relevant background to the postmodern discussion of religion and atheism. Gives an important account of relativism and its relationship to constructivism in postmodern theory.
‣Habermas, Jürgen. Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. The collection, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, shows Habermas’s shifts in the application of critical theory to the role of religion.
‣Habermas, Jürgen, and Joseph Ratzinger. Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. Translated by Brian McNeil. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006. A leading neo-Marxist thinker and then-Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) discuss the role of reason in religious discourse, secularization, and free societies.
‣Luijpen, William A. Phenomenology and Atheism. Translated by Walter van der Putte. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1964. A useful history of atheism within the phenomenology and existentialism movements in philosophy.
‣Westphal, Merold. Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998. An attempt to address the critiques of religion by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud for a clerical audience.
IMPORTANT WORKS ON THEISM
Atheism, to some extent, is a negative position that de nes itself against the backdrop of belief and defenses of belief in God. As a result, the most in uential works in the philosophy of religion that de ne God and advance justi cations for belief have loomed large in the discussions of atheism.
Historical Works Arguments in Anselm 2007, Aquinas 1963–1981, and Paley 2006 have framed the discussion for believers and nonbelievers for centuries.
‣Anselm. Anselm: Basic Writings. Edited and translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007. Anselm’s work continues to be in uential in framing the debate about the existence of God. O ers the earliest important version of the ontological argument.
‣Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. 61 vols. London: Blackfriars in conjunction with Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1963–1981. Aquinas’s cosmological arguments still receive as much or more attention than any others in the philosophical literature concerning God. ‣Paley, William. Natural Theology; or, Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. The classic source that articulates the most widely known version of the design argument: Paley’s watch. Continues to be in uential in modern analyses of teleological approaches to theism.
Recent Defenses Several highly sophisticated defenses of theism, such as Plantinga 1977, Plantinga 2000, Swinburne 2004, Swinburne 1993, Swinburne 2005, and Wierenga 1989, have received critical attention from philosophical atheists.
‣Plantinga, Alvin. God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977. Important work in which Plantinga articulates a modern version of the free will defense thought by many to have refuted the deductive problem-of-evil argument for atheism.
‣Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Plantinga gives a full book-length development of reformed Christian epistemology, or the view that belief in God is basic to, not inferred from, the rest of one’s belief structure.
‣Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Swinburne 2004 presents a primarily empirical argument; in this volume, Swinburne explores the conceptual side of the attributes of God and their logical compatibility.
‣Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004 A modern classic and widely in uential. The existence of God is more probable than not on the basis of reformulations of the cosmological and teleological arguments, and arguments from consciousness, providence, and miracles. The author’s work on the epistemology of theism and his teleological arguments are of note.
‣Swinburne, Richard. Faith and Reason. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005. Swinburne develops an account whereby believing on the basis of argument is reconciled with the role of faith.
‣Wierenga, Edward R. The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Wierenga o ers an important, thorough, and recent attempt to work out the details of the various properties of God and their compatibilities. He responds to a number of recent counterexamples with di erent de nitions of omnipotence, omniscience, freedom, timelessness, eternality, and so on. Employs many innovations from developments in modern logic.
Anthologies There are many works in this area, but one notable anthology of attempts to work out the details of a logically consistent account of God is Morris 1987.
‣Morris, Thomas V., ed. The Concept of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. A valuable set of discussions about the logical viability of di erent properties of God and their compatibility.
Defenses of God and Evil Skeptical theism, or the view that we are not in an epistemological position to form a view about God’s toleration of seemingly pointless su ering, has been the central answer to Rowe’s arguments (see Problem-of-Evil Arguments Against God’s Existence). For more on this, see Alston 1991, van Inwagen 1996, and Wykstra 1984. In other cases, theodicies have been advanced that seek to reconcile God’s existence with su ering, such as Hick 2007, Adams 1972, Reichenbach 1980, Reichenbach 1982, and Stump 1985.
‣Adams, Robert Merrihew. “Must God Create the Best?” Philosophical Review 81.3 (1972): 317–332. DOI: 10.2307/2184329 Adams denies that a perfectly good moral agent must create the best world it can. And in creating a world that is not the best one it could create, it would not commit any moral wrong to anyone by the failure to create the best.
‣Alston, William P. “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition.” Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 29–67. DOI: 10.2307/2214090 Rowe’s in uential argument is built on the premise that there exist instances of gratuitous evil. Alston argues that we should be agnostic about that claim because there are a number of alternative explanations for those evils that could account for them, were they true. Furthermore, humans face substantial epistemic hurdles in trying to understand the point, or lack thereof, of God’s actions.
‣Hick, John. Evil and the God of Love. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Important modern theodicy. Hick argues, among other things, that we should not expect a loving God to create a “hedonistic paradise” for his creatures. Moral growth, character development, and intellectual advancement cannot be accomplished without a challenging, sometimes dangerous world, with free beings who make moral mistakes.
‣Reichenbach, Bruce R. “The Inductive Argument from Evil.” American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980): 221–227. Reichenbach gives a Bayesian reconstruction and critique of the atheological argument that evil discon rms the existence of God. The atheologian has failed to consider the total evidence relevant to the probabilities.
‣Reichenbach, Bruce R. Evil and a Good God. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. Reichenbach argues against the atheological claim that su ering makes the existence of God improbable or impossible. Then he advances a theodicy of his own. A work of some in uence in the debate.
‣Stump, Eleonore. “The Problem of Evil.” Faith and Philosophy 2 (1985): 392–423. Argues that neither Plantinga’s, Swinburne’s, nor Hick’s answers to the problem of evil are satisfactory and advances her own Christian theodicy involving original sin.
‣van Inwagen, Peter. “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence.” In The Evidential Argument from Evil. Edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, 151–174. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Important response from the skeptical theists to Rowe’s inductive argument. Frequently anthologized. If one is not in a position to assign any epistemic probability to the amount and distribution of su ering given theism, then one is not in a position to say that the epistemic probability of that su ering on the view that there is no God is higher than the probability of the su ering on theism.
‣Wykstra, Stephen J. “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Su ering: Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance.’” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 73–93. DOI: 10.1007/BF00136567 Wykstra employs his condition of reasonable epistemic access (CORNEA) against Rowe’s inductive argument. There are good reasons to think that even if there were divine justi cations that insured instances of su ering were not gratuitous, given our cognitive situation and the use we can make of our cognitive faculties, the situation would not be discernibly di erent to us. So we are not entitled to conclude that there are (or are not) instances of gratuitous evil. OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES ONLINE
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