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Fourteen original essays by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists explore the challenges to moral and religious belief posed by disagreement and evolution. The collection represents both sceptical and non-skeptical positions about morality and religion, cultivates new insights, and moves the discussion forward in illuminating ways.
List of contents
- Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Overview and Future Directions
- I: Moral Disagreement and Religious Disagreement
- 1: Ralph Wedgwood: Moral Disagreement among Philosophers
- 2: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: Moral Disagreements with Psychopaths
- 3: Robert Audi: Normative Disagreement as a Challenge to Moral Philosophy and Philosophical Theology
- 4: John Pittard: Conciliationism and Religious Disagreement
- II: Disagreement Between Religious and Nonreligious Sources of Moral Belief
- 5: John Hare: Conscience and the Moral Epistemology of Divine Command Theory
- 6: Charles Mathewes: Theologies of Hell and Epistemological Conflict
- 7: Timothy Jackson: Not by "Reason" Alone, or Even First: The Priority of Sanctity over Dignity
- 8: Mark C. Murphy: Toward God's Own Ethics
- 9: Sharon Street: If Everything Happens for a Reason, Then We Don't Know What Reasons Are: Why the Price of Theism is Normative Skepticism
- III: Evolutionary Debunking of Moral and Religious Belief
- 10: Sarah F. Brosnan: Why an Evolutionary Perspective is Critical to Understanding Moral Behavior in Humans
- 11: Dustin Locke: Darwinian Normative Skepticism
- 12: William J. FitzPatrick: Why There Is No Darwinian Dilemma for Ethical Realism
- 13: Richard Sosis and Jordan Kiper: Religion is More Than Belief: What Evolutionary Theories of Religion Tell Us about Religious Commitments
- 14: Joshua C. Thurow: Does the Scientific Study of Religion Cast Doubt on Theistic Beliefs?
About the author
Michael Bergmann is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. In addition to numerous articles in epistemology and philosophy of religion in journals and edited volumes, he is author of Justification without Awareness (Clarendon Press, 2006) and co-editor of Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (OUP, 2010).
Patrick Kain is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. He is a co-editor and contributor to Essays on Kant's Anthropology (CUP, 2003), and has published numerous articles in edited volumes and journals such as Journal of the History of Philosophy, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Kantian Review, and Philosophy Compass.
Summary
Fourteen original essays by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists explore the challenges to moral and religious belief posed by disagreement and evolution. The collection represents both sceptical and non-skeptical positions about morality and religion, cultivates new insights, and moves the discussion forward in illuminating ways.
Additional text
The book is rich and heterogeneous ... a readable and stimulating set of papers. Challenges to religious and moral beliefs from disagreement and evolution have become prominent in the philosophical literature, and an edited collection on these topics is timely ... This book would work well as a set of readings for graduate or advanced undergraduate seminars in philosophy of religion or ethics
