Hey, so, I’m starting a new instalment where I link the philosophy I’m consuming. This will mostly take the form of journal articles, I suppose, but also books, podcasts, essays, and other miscellanea. Most of you are total nerds, so finger-crossed that some of you find the series interesting.
The Problem of Evil for Atheists: this, Yujin Nagasawa’s latest book, is shaping up to be one of the best treatments of the problem of evil I’ve read. Currently open access (download it while you can!), and with the best cover-design I’ve ever seen on a philosophy book, it argues that the problem of evil—traditionally thought to be a problem just for traditional theists—is a problem of much broader scope. In section I, Nagasawa introduces the problem of evil, and provides a (near) exhaustive taxonomy of the ways the problem can be posed. I’ve only read two introductory books on the problem of evil, but Nagasawa’s stands athwart them. In section II, Nagasawa argues that the problem of evil is a problem not just for traditional theists (those who believe in a conscious, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly benevolent God), but also for pantheists (who may be charitably described as theists who naturalize God by conceiving him as identical to the universe, or, less charitably, as closet-atheists who, on their third round of puff-puff-pass, gaze into the Heavens and ask: ‘What if the universe, like, is God?’, to which everyone else on the rotation replies: ‘Woah…’) and axiarchists, who hold that the world and its contents are explained by a moral principle—i.e., the word exists because it should. Nagasawa convincingly shows that, on both views, there is a mismatch between the amount of evil we should expect to see, and the amount we actually do see. In section III, which I’ve only just started, Nagasawa argues that the problem of evil is a problem for regular atheists. I don’t yet know what he’ll argue, but I suspect it’s the part I’ll find least convincing.
If you’re interested in whether Jesus rose from the dead, as I am, you might have heard of the McGrews. Many years ago, in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Timothy and Lydia McGrew made a historical argument for the resurrection that hinged, quite conspicuously, on the historical reliability of the Gospels. The McGrew’s views on gospel reliability is not at all widely shared among New Testament critics (which the McGrews attribute to widespread epistemological malpractice in New Testament studies, and which their critics attribute to bias and quackery), and so—since then—Lydia McGrew has been publishing an impressive string of books and peer-reviewed articles in defence of her unorthodox views. (For a gorgeously-written summary of the McGrewvian case, Bethel McGrew—their daughter—has a series of posts on her Substack; part I is free, but the others are sadly paywalled. There’s a McGrewpie YouTube Channel, Testify, that makes fun animated videos defending every word the McGrew’s have ever spoken, and McGrew has a YouTube channel of her own.) Anyway, about their critics: by friend Josh Parikh—a talented Christian philosopher, who was at Oxford before my time—featured in a podcast that critiqued McGrewvianism in a polite and intelligent way. Here’s the link.
Big news! Matthew Adelstein—known round these parts as Bentham’s Bulldog—has just published a peer-reviewed paper in a very smart-brained philosophy journal called Synthese! It’s called “Alternatives to the Self-Indication Assumption are Doomed”, and it argues that the Self-Indication Assumption (a principle he’s been yammering about on his Substack for some time according to which theories that posit 100x as many people are, ceteris paribus, 100x more probable) is the only non-crazy view of anthropic reasoning (which is, roughly, the area of formal epistemology that discussed how people should reason probabilistically about their own existence.) Not only is this a stellar achievement, but it also has great significance. For if the Self-Indication Assumption is true, then, as Matthew and I argue in a currently unpublished paper, then God probably exists. (For a great summary of our argument, which is really mostly his, check out his essay on it here.)
James Reilly, proprietor of one of my favourite Substacks, has a neat paper in Religious Studies arguing that theists who think that God isn’t bound by moral and rational norms are doubly screwed, in that their view implies that many of the best arguments for theism don’t work, and also, more pressingly, that they ought to be radical skeptics. I found it entirely persuasive.
Perry Hendricks (who I’ve had reason to defend and criticise on this blog in the past, the rascal) has co-authored a paper with Justin Mooney that’s set to be published in Analysis, which I’ve been fruitlessly trying to publish in since the dawn of time. Their paper is on Stephen Law’s Evil God Challenge (briefly put: the surprisingly vexing challenge of why it’s more reasonable to believe in a Good God as opposed to an Evil God). They argue that it’s really just a variant of the age-old ‘gap problem’, and that the mainstream responses to the gap problem carry over to the Evil God Challenge.
good stuff!