While some of these attempts have received social and political support, within the scientific community the arguments that causal closure is false and that God as a cause is a superior scientific hypothesis to naturalistic explanations have not received significant support. Science can cite a history of replacing spiritual, supernatural, or divine explanations of phenomena with natural ones from bad weather as the wrath of angry gods to disease as demon possession.
The assumption for many is that there are no substantial reasons to doubt that those areas of the natural world that have not been adequately explained scientifically will be given enough time. Increasingly, with what they perceive as the failure of attempts to justify theism, atheists have moved towards naturalized accounts of religious belief that give causal and evolutionary explanations of the prevalence of belief.
See Atrans, Boyer, Dennett In 20 th century moral theory, a view about the nature of moral value claims arose that has an analogue in discussions of atheism. Moral non-cognitivists have denied that moral utterances should be treated as ordinary propositions that are either true or false and subject to evidential analysis. I want you to share those negative feelings. A non-cognitivist atheist denies that religious utterances are propositions.
They are not the sort of speech act that have a truth value. They are more like emoting, singing, poetry, or cheering. They express personal desires, feelings of subjugation, admiration, humility, and love. As such, they cannot and should not be dealt with by denials or arguments any more than I can argue with you over whether or not a poem moves you. When I do these things I feel joyful, I want you to feel joyful too.
Rather, when people make these sorts of claims, their behavior is best understood as a complicated publicizing of a particular sort of subjective sensations. Strictly speaking, the claims do not mean anything in terms of assertions about what sorts of entities do or do not exist in the world independent of human cognitive and emotional states. The non-cognitivist characterization of many religious speech acts and behaviors has seemed to some to be the most accurate description.
For the most part, atheists appear to be cognitivist atheists. They assume that religious utterances do express propositions that are either true or false. Positive atheists will argue that there are compelling reasons or evidence for concluding that in fact those claims are false. Drange , Diamond and Lizenbury , Nielsen Few would disagree that many religious utterances are non-cognitive such as religious ceremonies, rituals, and liturgies.
Non-cognitivists have argued that many believers are confused when their speech acts and behavior slips from being non-cognitive to something resembling cognitive assertions about God. Insisting that those claims simply have no cognitive content despite the intentions and arguments to the contrary of the speaker is an ineffectual means of addressing them.
So non-cognitivism does not appear to completely address belief in God. It appears that even our most abstract, a priori, and deductively certain methods for determining truth are subject to revision in the light of empirical discoveries and theoretical analyses of the principles that underlie those methods. The prospects for a simple, confined argument for atheism or theism that achieves widespread support or that settles the question are dim. That is because, in part, the prospects for any argument that decisively settles a philosophical question where a great deal seems to be at stake are dim.
The existence or non-existence of any non-observable entity in the world is not settled by any single argument or consideration. Every premise is based upon other concepts and principles that themselves must be justified. So ultimately, the adequacy of atheism as an explanatory hypothesis about what is real will depend upon the overall coherence, internal consistency, empirical confirmation, and explanatory success of a whole worldview within which atheism is only one small part.
The question of whether or not there is a God sprawls onto related issues and positions about biology, physics, metaphysics, explanation, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophy of language, and epistemology. The reasonableness of atheism depends upon the overall adequacy of a whole conceptual and explanatory description of the world.
Matt McCormick Email: mccormick csus. Table of Contents What is Atheism? What is Atheism? The Epistemology of Atheism We can divide the justifications for atheism into several categories.
Rowe , Rowe and most modern epistemologists have said that whether a conclusion C is justified for a person S is a function of the information correct or incorrect that S possesses and the principles of inference that S employs in arriving at C. Deductive Atheology Many discussions about the nature and existence of God have either implicitly or explicitly accepted that the concept of God is logically coherent.
Single Property Disproofs Deductive disproofs have typically focused on logical inconsistencies to be found either within a single property or between multiple properties. Multiple Property Disproofs Another form of deductive atheological argument attempts to show the logical incompatibility of two or more properties that God is thought to possess.
Blumenfeld , Drange b, Flew , Grim , Kretzmann , and McCormick and The combination of omnipotence and omniscience have received a great deal of attention. Failure of Proof Disproof When attempts to provide evidence or arguments in favor of the existence of something fail, a legitimate and important question is whether anything except the failure of those arguments can be inferred. Inductive Atheology a.
The Prospects for Inductive Proof The view that there is no God or gods has been criticized on the grounds that it is not possible to prove a negative. Below we will consider several groups of influential inductive atheological arguments. Problem of Evil The existence of widespread human and non-human animal suffering has been seen by many to be compelling evidence that a being with all power, all knowledge, and all goodness does not exist.
Cosmology Questions about the origins of the universe and cosmology have been the focus for many inductive atheism arguments. We can distinguish four recent views about God and the cosmos: Naturalism: On naturalistic view, the Big Bang occurred approximately Craig The objections to these arguments have been numerous and vigorously argued.
Arguments from Nonbelief Another recent group of inductive atheistic arguments has focused on widespread nonbelief itself as evidence that atheism is justified. Atheistic Naturalism The final family of inductive arguments we will consider involves drawing a positive atheistic conclusion from broad, naturalized grounds.
See Atrans, Boyer, Dennett 5. Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism In 20 th century moral theory, a view about the nature of moral value claims arose that has an analogue in discussions of atheism. Drange , Diamond and Lizenbury , Nielsen Few would disagree that many religious utterances are non-cognitive such as religious ceremonies, rituals, and liturgies. Future Prospects for Atheism 20 th century developments in epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, and philosophy of language indicate that many of the presumptions that supported old fashioned natural theology and atheology are mistaken.
New York: Oxford University Press. An evolutionary and anthropological account of religious beliefs and institutions. Amherst, N. New York: Basic Books. An influential anthropological and evolutionary work. Religion exists to sustain important aspects of social psychology. Clifford, W. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Famously, Clifford argues that it is wrong always and anywhere to believe anything on the basis of insufficient evidence.
Important and influential argument in discussions of atheism and faith. Cowan, J. 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.
Craig, William L. Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Darwin, Charles, London: John Murray. Twelve years after 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. No explicit mention of humans is made, but the theological implications are clear for the teleological argument.
Dennett, Daniel, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking Penguin. Important work among the so-called New Atheists. Dennett argues that religion can and should be studying by science. Diamond, Malcolm L. A collection of articles addressing the logical coherence of the properties of God. Drange, Theodore, a.
Nonbelief and Evil. 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, therefore such a God does not exist.
Drange, Theodore, b. A useful discussion of several property pairs that are not logically compatible in the same being such as: perfect-creator, immutable-creator, immutable-omniscient, and transcendence-omnipresence. Drange, Theodore, Drange argues that non-cognitivism is not the best way to understand theistic claims.
Everitt, Nicholas, The Non-Existence of God. London: Routledge. Everitt considers and rejects significant recent arguments for the existence of God.
Offers insightful analyses of ontological, cosmological, teleological, miracle, and pragmatic arguments. The argument from scale and deductive atheological arguments are of particular interest Findlay, J. Influential 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 efforts to make it work have not been successful.
So there is no God. Flew, A. The meaning, function, analysis, and falsification of theological claims and discourse are considered. Flew, Antony. Flew, Antony, Buffalo, N. Freddoso, ed. Notre Dame, Ind.
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. Gale, Richard, On the Nature and Existence of God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 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 are successful.
Grim, Patrick, God cannot be omniscient because it is not possible for him to have indexical knowledge such as what I know when I know that I am making a mess. Grim outlines several recent attempts to salvage a workable definition of omnipotence from Flint and Freddoso, Wierenga, and Hoffman and Rosenkrantz. Indexical problems with omniscience and a Cantorian problem render it impossible too.
Gutting, Gary, Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism. Useful for addressing important 20 th century linguistic and epistemological turns in theism discussions. Harris, Sam, The End of Faith. Another influential New Atheist work, although it does not contend with the best philosophical arguments for God. Harris argues that faith is not an acceptable justification for religious belief, particularly given the dangerousness of religious agendas worldwide.
A popular, non-scholarly book that has had a broad impact on the discussion. Hoffman, Joshua and Rosenkrantz, A good overview of the various attempts to construct a philosophically viable account of omnipotence.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Moser, Paul, eds. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays. Cambridge University Press. If there is a God, then why is his existence not more obvious? Howard-Snyder, Daniel, 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.
Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Hume offers 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 Anselm or Aquinas has received more attention or had more influence. Kitcher, Philip, Abusing Science Cambridge, Mass.
A useful, but somewhat dated and non-scholarly, presentation of the theory of evolution and critique of creationist arguments against it.
Kretzmann, Norman, 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. Mackie, J. The Miracle of Theism. An influential and comprehensive work. He rejects many classic and contemporary ontological, cosmological, moral, teleological, evil, and pragmatic arguments.
Madden, Edward and Peter Hare, eds. Evil and the Concept of God. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Madden and Hare argue against a full range of theodicies suggesting that the problem of evil cannot be adequately answered by philosophical theology. Manson, Neil A. The best recent academic collection of discussions of the design argument. Martin, Michael, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, One of the very best attempts to give a comprehensive argument for atheism. Martin, Michael and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Impossibility of God. An important collection of deductive atheological arguments—the only one of its kind. A significant body of articles arguing for the conclusion that God not only does not exist, but is impossible.
The Improbability of God. The companion to The Impossibility of God. An important collection of inductive atheological arguments distinct from the problem of evil. Matson, Wallace I. The Existence of God. Ithaca, N. Another strategy that is pursued by constructivists such as Korsgaard is to link the value ascribed to humans to the capacity for rational reflection.
The idea is that insofar as I am committed to rational reflection, I must value myself as having this capacity, and consistently value others who have it as well. It is far from clear that human rationality provides an adequate ground for moral rights, however. Many people believe that young infants and people suffering from dementia still have this intrinsic dignity, but in both cases there is no capacity for rational reflection.
Wolterstorff in this work defends the claim that there are natural human rights, and that violating such rights is one way of acting unjustly towards a person. Why do humans have such rights? Wolterstorff says these rights are grounded in the basic worth or dignity that humans possess. When I seek to torture or kill an innocent human I am failing to respect this worth. If one asks why we should think humans possess such worth, Wolterstorff argues that the belief that humans have this quality was not only historically produced by Jewish and Christian conceptions of the human person, but even now cannot be defended apart from such a conception.
In particular, he argues that attempts to argue that our worth stems from some excellence we possess such as reason will not explain the worth of infants or those with severe brain injuries or dementia. Does a theistic worldview fare better in explaining the special value of human dignity? In a theistic universe God is himself seen as the supreme good.
Indeed, theistic Platonists usually identify God with the Good. If God is himself a person, then this seems to be a commitment to the idea that personhood itself is something that must be intrinsically good. This argument will of course be found unconvincing to many. Some will deny premise 1 , either because they reject moral realism as a metaethical stance, or because they reject the normative claim that humans have any kind of special value or dignity.
Others will find premise 2 suspect. They may be inclined to agree that human persons have a special dignity, but hold that the source of that dignity can be found in such human qualities as rationality.
With respect to the status of infants and those suffering from dementia, the critic might bite the bullet and just accept the fact that human dignity does not extend to them, or else argue that the fact that infants and those suffering mental breakdown are part of a species whose members typically possess rationality merits them a special respect, even if they lack this quality as individuals. Others will find premise 2 doubtful because they find the theistic explanation of dignity unclear.
Another alternative is to seek a Constructivist account of dignity, perhaps regarding the special status of humans as something we humans decide to extend to each other. Perhaps the strongest non-theistic alternative would be some form of ethical non-naturalism, in which one simply affirms that the claim that persons have a special dignity is an a priori truth requiring no explanation. In effect this is a decision for a non-theistic form of Platonism. The proponent of the argument may well agree that claims about the special status of humans are true a priori, and thus also opt for some form of Platonism.
However, the proponent of the argument will point out that some necessary truths can be explained by other necessary truths. The theist believes that these truths about the special status of humans tell us something about the kind of universe humans find themselves in.
To say that humans are created by God is to say that personhood is not an ephemeral or accidental feature of the universe, because at bottom reality itself is personal Mavrodes As already noted, the most famous and perhaps most influential version of a moral argument for belief in God is found in Immanuel Kant Kant himself insisted that his argument was not a theoretical argument, but an argument grounded in practical reason.
Morality is grounded in pure practical reason, and the moral agent must act on the basis of maxims that can be rationally endorsed as universal principles. Moral actions are thus not determined by results or consequences but by the maxims on which they are based. However, all actions, including moral actions, necessarily aim at ends. However, I must seek the highest good only by acting in accordance with morality; no shortcuts to happiness are permissible. This seems to require that I believe that acting in accordance with morality will be causally efficacious in achieving the highest good.
However, it is reasonable to believe that moral actions will be causally efficacious in this way only if the laws of causality are set up in such a way that these laws are conducive to the efficacy of moral action. Certainly both parts of the highest good seem difficult to achieve. We humans have weaknesses in our character that appear difficult if not impossible to overcome by our own efforts. Furthermore, as creatures we have subjective needs that must be satisfied if we are happy, but we have little empirical reason to think that these needs will be satisfied by moral actions even if we succeeded in becoming virtuous.
If a person believes that the natural world is simply a non-moral machine with no moral purposiveness then that person would have no reason to believe that moral action could succeed because there is no a priori reason to think moral action will achieve the highest good and little empirical reason to believe this either.
Even if the Kantian highest good seems reasonable as an ideal, some will object that we have no obligation to achieve such a state, but merely to work towards realizing the closest approximation to such a state that is possible See Adams , Without divine assistance, perhaps perfect virtue is unachievable, but in that case we cannot be obliged to realize such a state if there is no God. Perhaps we cannot hope that happiness will be properly proportioned to virtue in the actual world if God does not exist, but then our obligation can only be to realize as much happiness as can be attained through moral means.
Kant would doubtless reject this criticism, since on his view the ends of morality are given directly to pure practical reason a priori, and we are not at liberty to adjust those ends on the basis of empirical beliefs. Morality requires me to sacrifice my personal happiness if that is necessary to do what is right. Yet it is a psychological fact that humans necessarily desire their own happiness.
Reason both requires humans to seek their own happiness and to sacrifice it. Sidgwick himself noted that only if there is a God can we hope that this dualism will be resolved, so that those who seek to act morally will in the long run also be acting so as to advance their own happiness and well-being. Interestingly, Sidgwick himself does not endorse this argument, but he clearly sees this problem as part of the appeal of theism.
A contemporary argument similar to this one has been developed by C. Stephen Layman The critic of this form of the Kantian argument may reply that Kantian morality sees duty as something that must be done regardless of the consequences, and thus a truly moral person cannot make his or her commitment to morality contingent on the achievement of happiness.
From a Kantian point of view, this reply seems right; Kant unequivocally affirms that moral actions must be done for the sake of duty and not from any desire for personal reward.
Nevertheless, especially for any philosopher willing to endorse any form of eudaimonism, seeing myself as inevitably sacrificing what I cannot help but desire for the sake of duty does seem problematic.
The critic may reply to this by simply accepting the lamentable fact that there is something tragic or even absurd about the human condition. The world may not be the world we wish it was, but that does not give us any reason to believe it is different than it is.
If there is a tension between the demands of morality and self-interest, then this may simply be a brute fact that must be faced. This reply raises an issue that must be faced by all forms of practical or pragmatic arguments for belief. Many philosophers insist that rational belief must be grounded solely in theoretical evidence. The fact that it would be better for me to believe p does not in itself give me any reason to believe p.
This criticism is aimed not merely at Kant, but at other practical moral arguments. For example, Robert Adams argues that if humans believe there is no moral order to the universe, then they will become demoralized in their pursuit of morality, which is morally undesirable , The atheist might concede that atheism is somewhat demoralizing, but deny that this provides any reason to believe there is a moral order to the universe.
Similarly, Linda Zagzebski argues that morality will not be a rational enterprise unless good actions increase the amount of good in the world. However, given that moral actions often involve the sacrifice of happiness, there is no reason to believe moral action will increase the good unless there is a power transcendent of human activity working on the side of the good.
Here the atheist may claim that moral action does increase the good because such actions always increase good character. However, even if that reply fails the atheist may again simply admit that there may be something tragic or absurd about the human condition, and the fact that we may wish things were different is not a reason to believe that they are. So the problem must be faced: Are practical arguments merely rationalized wish-fulfillment?
The theist might respond to this kind of worry in several ways. The first thing to be said is that the fact that a naturalistic view of the universe implies that the universe must be tragic or absurd, if correct, would itself be an important and interesting conclusion.
However, apart from this, it makes a great deal of difference how one construes what we might call the background epistemic situation. If one believes that our theoretical evidence favors atheism, then it seems plausible to hold that one ought to maintain a naturalistic view, even if it is practically undesirable that the world have such a character. In that case a practical argument for religious belief could be judged a form of wish-fulfillment.
However, this does not seem to be the way those who support such a practical argument see the situation. See also — Thus, if rational grounds for belief in God come from practical reason, theoretical reason will raise no objections.
Human beings are not purely theoretical spectators of the universe, but agents. It is not always rational or even possible to refrain from action, and yet action presupposes beliefs about the way things are For a good interpretation and defense of this view of Kant on the relation between action and belief, see Wood , 17— Thus, in some cases suspension of judgment is not possible.
The critic may object that a person may act as if p were true without believing p. However, it is not clear that this advice to distinguish action on the basis of p and belief that p can always be followed.
For one thing, it seems empirically the case that one way of acquiring belief that p is simply to begin to act as if p were true. Hence, to begin to act as if p were true is at least to embark upon a course of action that makes belief in p more likely. This is obviously the case on pragmatist accounts of belief.
But even those who reject a general pragmatic account of belief may well find something like this appealing with respect to religious belief. Thus, a person who is willing to act on the basis of a religious conception, especially if those actions are risky or costly, is truly a religious believer, even if that person is filled with doubt and anxiety.
Perhaps the right way to think of practical moral arguments is not to see them as justifying belief without evidence, but as shifting the amount of evidence seen as necessary. Here is an example of pragmatic encroachment:. A plausible interpretation of this scenario is that ordinarily claims such as the one I made, based on memory, are justified, and count as knowledge.
Pragmatic encroachment is controversial and the idea of such encroachment is rejected by some epistemologists. However, defenders hold that it is reasonable to consider the pragmatic stakes in considering evidence for a belief that underlies significant action see Fantl and McGrath If this is correct, then it seems reasonable to consider the pragmatic situation in determining how much evidence is sufficient to justify religious beliefs.
In theory the adjustment could go in either direction, depending on what costs are associated with a mistake and on which side those costs lie. In any case it is not clear that practical moral arguments can always be clearly distinguished from theoretical moral arguments. The reason this is so is that in many cases the practical situation described seems itself to be or involve a kind of evidence for the truth of the belief being justified.
In other words, the existence of human persons understood as moral beings can itself be understood as a piece of evidence about the character of the universe humans find themselves in. However, it is not clear that only those who already believe in God will find this premise attractive.
The reason for this is that humans are themselves part of the natural universe, and it seems a desirable feature of a metaphysical view that it explain rather than explain away features of human existence that seem real and important.
It seems likely therefore that any appeal to a practical argument will include some theoretical component as well, even if that component is not always made explicit. Nevertheless, this does not mean that practical arguments do not have some important and distinctive features. For Kant it was important that religious beliefs stem from practical reason.
For any practical argument makes religious belief existential; the issue is not merely what I believe to be true about the universe but how I shall live my life in that universe. Each version contains premises that many reasonable thinkers reject. However, this does not mean the arguments have no force. Some philosophers will certainly be willing to pay the cost, and indeed have independent reasons for doing so. However, it would certainly be interesting and important if one became convinced that atheism required one to reject moral realism altogether, or to embrace an implausible account of how moral knowledge is acquired.
For those who think that some version or versions of the arguments have force, the cumulative case for theistic belief may be raised by such arguments. Aquinas, Saint Thomas Darwinism Kant, Immanuel: and Hume on morality Kant, Immanuel: philosophy of religion Mackie, John Leslie metaethics Mill, John Stuart moral anti-realism moral epistemology moral non-naturalism moral realism naturalism: moral Nietzsche, Friedrich Platonism: in metaphysics pragmatic arguments and belief in God religious experience Sidgwick, Henry voluntarism, theological.
The author wishes to thank Trent Dougherty, Mark Linville, and David Baggett for reading a draft of this essay and making many useful suggestions. Matthew Wilson also deserves thanks for tracking many bibliographical references and page numbers.
The Goals of Theistic Arguments 2. Arguments from Moral Knowledge or Awareness 5. Arguments from Human Dignity or Worth 6. Practical Moral Arguments for Belief in God 7. God provides the best explanation of the existence of objective moral facts. The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.
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