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Philosophical arguments against the existence of God

anonymous person

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Yep. For example, some Christians reject the religious eyewitness testimony of billions of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.

Are you claiming those Christians are unjustified in doing so?

If I knew what eyewitness testimony you were referring to, I would venture to answer.
 
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anonymous person

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Please find my response in these sources. Please read them and share with me your thoughts.
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  • Appiah, K.A., 2008, Experiments in Ethics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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  • –––, 2006, “Biology to Ethics: An Evolutionist's View of Human Nature,” in Boniolo, G. and De Anna, G., Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology, pp. 141–58.
  • Bedke, M., 2009, “Intuitive Non-Naturalism Meets Cosmic Coincidence,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90: 188–209.
  • Berker, S., 2009, “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 37: 293–329.
  • –––, 2014, “Does Evolutionary Psychology Show that Normativity is Mind-Dependent?” in J. D'Arms and D. Jacobson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Essays on the New Science of Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Boniolo, G. and De Anna, G., 2006, Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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  • –––, 2014, “Moral Epistemology: The Mathematics Analogy,” Noûs, 48(2): 238–255.
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  • Darwin, C., 1859, The Origin of Species, London: John Murray.
  • –––, 1871, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: John Murray.
  • Dawkins, R., 1982, The Extended Phenotype, New York: Oxford University Press.
  • –––, 1989, The Selfish Gene, 2nd edition, expanded, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • –––, 2006, The God Delusion, New York: Houghton Mifflin.
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  • –––, 2006, Primates and Philosophers, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Diamond, J., 1992, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, New York: Harper Collins.
  • Enoch, D., 2011, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • FitzPatrick, W.J., 2000, Teleology and the Norms of Nature, New York: Garland.
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  • –––, 2014a, “Debunking Evolutionary Debunking of Ethical Realism,” Philosophical Studies, doi: 10.1007/s11098-014-0295-y.
  • –––, 2014b, “Why There is No Darwinian Dilemma for Ethical Realism,” in M. Bergmann and P. Kain (eds.), Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Fodor, J., 1998, “The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism,” London Review of Books, 20(2): 11–13.
  • –––, 2000, The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Foot, P., 2001, Natural Goodness, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Gibbard, A., 1990, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Glover, J., 2000, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century, New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Gould, S.J., 1997a, “Darwinian Fundamentalism,” New York Review of Books, 44(10): 34–7.
  • –––, 1997b, “Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books, 44(15): 55–8.
  • Gould, S.J. and Lewontin, R.C., 1979, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 205: 581–98.
  • Greene, J.D., 2003, “From Neural ‘Is’ to Moral ‘Ought’: What are the Moral Implications of Neuroscientific Moral Psychology?”, Nature Neuroscience Reviews, 4: 847–50.
  • –––, 2008, “The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul,” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology, Volume 3, pp. 35–80.
  • Griffiths, P. and J. Wilkins, forthcoming, “When Do Evolutionary Explanations of Belief Debunk Belief?” in P. Sloan (ed.), Darwin in the 21st Century: Nature, Humanity and God, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.
  • Haidt, J., 2001, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review, 108(4): 814–34.
  • –––, 2003, “The Emotional Dog Learns New Tricks: A Reply to Pizarro and Bloom (2003),” Psychological Review, 110(1): 197–98.
  • Hamilton, W.D., 1964, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior,” I and II, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7: 1–52.
  • Holldobler, B and Wilson, E.O., 2008, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, New York: Norton and Company.
  • Joyce, R., 2006, The Evolution of Morality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • –––, 2013, “Irrealism and the Genealogy of Morals,” Ratio, 26(4): 351–72.
  • –––, Forthcoming, “Evolution, Truth-Tracking, and Moral Skepticism,” in B. Reichardt (ed.), Problems of Goodness, Bonn: Bernstein Verlag.
  • Kamm, F., 1998, “Moral Intuitions, Cognitive Psychology, and the Harming-versus-Not-Aiding Distinction,” Ethics, 108 (April): 463–488.
  • –––, 2007, Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Katz, L.D., (ed.), 2000, Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives, Exeter: Imprint Academic.
  • Kitcher, P., 1985, Vaulting Ambition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • –––, 1993, “The Evolution of Human Altruism,” Journal of Philosophy, 90(10): 497–516.
  • –––, 1994, “Four Ways of ‘Biologizing’ Ethics,” in E. Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Ethics, pp. 439–50.
  • –––, 2006a, “Biology and Ethics,” in Copp, D. ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 163–85.
  • –––, 2006b, “Between Fragile Altruism and Morality: Evolution and the Emergence of Normative Guidance,” in G. Boniolo and G. De Anna (eds.), Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology, pp. 159–77.
  • –––, 2006c, “Ethics and Evolution: How to Get Here from There,” in F. de Waal, Primates and Philosophers, pp. 120–39.
  • –––, 2011, The Ethical Project, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Knobe, J. and Leiter, B., 2007, “The Case for Nietzschean Moral Psychology,” in Nietzsche and Morality, B. Leiter & N. Sinhababu (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Korsgaard, C., 2006, “Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action,” in de Waal, Primates and Philosophers, pp. 98–119.
  • Leiter, B., 2007, “Nietzsche's Theory of the Will,” Philosopher's Imprint, 7(7): 1–15.
  • Locke, D., 2014, “Darwinian Normative Skepticism,” in M. Bergmann and P. Kain (eds.), Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Lott, M., 2012, “Have Elephant Seals Refuted Aristotle? Nature, Function and Moral Goodness,” Journal of Moral Philosophy, 9: 1–23.
  • Machery, E. and R. Mallon, 2010, “Evolution of Morality,” in J. Doris (ed.), The Moral Psychology Handbook, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Maynard Smith, J., 1982, Evolution and the Theory of Games, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • McDowell, J., 1995, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Hursthouse, R., Lawrence, G., and Quinn, W., eds., Virtues and Reasons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 149–80.
  • Mele, A., 2008, “Free Will: Action Theory Meets Neuroscience,” in Lumer, C., ed., Intentionality, Deliberation and Autonomy: The Action-Theoretic Basis of Practical Philosophy, Burlington: Ashgate.
  • Mikhail, J., 2011, Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls' Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Nagel, T., 1979, “Ethics Without Biology”, in Mortal Questions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 142–46.
  • –––, 1997, The Last Word, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Nichols, Shaun, 2004, Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Pinker, S., 1997a, “Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books 44(15): 55–8.
  • –––, 1997b, How the Mind Works, New York: Norton.
  • –––, 2008, “The Moral Instinct,” The New York Times Magazine, January 13: 32–58.
  • Pizarro, D. and Bloom, P., 2003, “The Intelligence of the Moral Intuitions: Comments on Haidt (2001),” Psychological Review, 110(1): 193–96.
  • Prinz, J., 2008, “Is Morality Innate?”, in Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Moral Psychology, 1: 367-406.
  • Rachels, J., 1990, Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Rosati, C., 1995, “Naturalism, Normativity, and the Open Question Argument,” Noûs, 29(1): 46–70.
  • Rosenberg, A., 2006, “Will Genomics Do More for Metaphysics than Locke?”, in G. Boniolo and G. De Anna (eds.), Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology, pp. 178–98.
  • Rottschaefer, W., 1998, The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Ruse, M., 1988, “Evolutionary Ethics: Healthy Prospect or Last Infirmity?”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Supplement), 14: 27–73.
  • –––, 2006, “Is Darwinian Metaethics Possible (And If It Is, Is It Well Taken)?”, in G. Boniolo and G. De Anna (eds.), Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology, pp. 13–26.
  • Schafer, K., 2010, “Evolution and Normative Skepticism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 88: 471–88.
  • Shafer-Landau, R., 2012, “Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 7(1): 1–37.
  • Singer, P., 2005, “Ethics and Intuitions,” Journal of Ethics, 9: 331–52.
  • Sinnott-Armstrong, W., 2005, “Moral Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology,” in Horgan, T., and Timmons, M., eds., Metaethics After Moore, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 339–66.
  • –––, (ed.), 2008, Moral Psychology, Vol. 1: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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  • –––, (ed.), 2008b, Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Sober, E., (ed.), 1994, Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Ethics, 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Sober, E. and Wilson, D.S., 1998, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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  • Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L, 2005, “Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology,” in Buss, D. (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 5–67.
  • Trivers, R., 1971, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology, 46: 35–57.
  • Wheatley, T. and Haidt, J., 2005, “Hypnotically Induced Disgust Makes Moral Judgments More Severe,” Psychological Science, 16: 780–84.
  • Wielenberg, E., 2010, “On the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality,” Ethics, 120: 441–64.
  • Wilson, E.O., 1975, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 1978, On Human Nature, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 1998, “The Biological Basis of Morality,” The Atlantic Monthly (April): 53–70.
  • Wilson, E.O. and Ruse, M., 1986, “Moral Philosophy as Applied Science,” Philosophy, 61: 173–92.
  • Wilson, J.Q., 1993, The Moral Sense, New York: The Free Press.
  • Wrangham, R., 1987, “The Evolution of Social Structure,” in B. Smuts, et al. (eds.), Primate Societies, Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 282–96.
  • Wright, R., 1994, The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, New York: Pantheon.
From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/. I can find dozens of more lists of references, if this is how the "discussion" is going to proceed.


I presented an article to read which would take all of five minutes to read. I see I was asking too much.
 
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anonymous person

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Why don't you discuss the article? That's normally what people do in these discussions when they reference something.
I will be glad to if you read the article first. Is that too much to ask? Is it too long?
 
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Davian

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Your belief that belief is not a conscious choice is not falsifiable.
I do not state it as a belief, but as a tentative conclusion based on the modern theory of mind. To falsify that, you would need a model of the how the brain works that has greater explanatory power, and/or can be used to make more accurate predictions about brain function.

I am curious though; can you consciously choose to believe things? Can you consciously choose to believe that you were abducted by aliens last night?

And what has this to do with apologetics, as you use the word?
 
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KCfromNC

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Tell that to the atheists that make the claim. Do you need their names?

I'd be very curious to see your list of the names of atheists who think that god is the source of objective morality. There's obviously some confusion there, and based on the rest of this train-wreck of a thread, I think I know the common point of failure.
 
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Loudmouth

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anonymous person

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I'd be very curious to see your list of the names of atheists who think that god is the source of objective morality. There's obviously some confusion there, and based on the rest of this train-wreck of a thread, I think I know the common point of failure.
Pay close attention to what I said.

I said there are atheists that acknowledge that objective moral values would be more plausibly grounded in a transcendent moral law giver as opposed to some mundane ground.

Of course such atheists are not moral objectivists for they deny objective moral values and duties exist.
 
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Loudmouth

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Pay close attention to what I said.

I said there are atheists that acknowledge that objective moral values would be more plausibly grounded in a transcendent moral law giver as opposed to some mundane ground.

Of course such atheists are not moral objectivists for they deny objective moral values and duties exist.

What is their reasoning, in your own words?
 
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anonymous person

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This is not a suggested reading forum. Please discuss your references.

BTW, by definition, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe God exists.

Read it or not. It's up to you. And yes I know what an atheist is.
 
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