In order to keep the original URL working, I decided to post updates to the original post rather than make new posts. I am announcing it here for those of you who may not have noticed the updates to the original post.
In my reply, I cover the following topics: purpose, values, standards, duties, freedom, and human dignity.
Enjoy!
It is an honor to announce that Mount Saint Vincent University philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has a new book coming out on the philosophy of Christianity: What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Schellenberg motivates the need for this book on OUP's website in a provocative blog post entitled, "Has Christian philosophy been having it too easy?" Schellenberg writes:
Oddly—I almost said bizarrely—the past half century has seen no thorough discussion by analytical philosophers of arguments that directly oppose classical Christian ideas about the nature of reality: arguments against, say, Christian ideas about sin or salvation or the divinity of Jesus. And so Christian philosophy has been able to grow and grow and grow without ever encountering a serious challenge to the truth of the doctrine on which it relies.
And so it should come as no surprise that, In What God Would Have Known, Schellenberg scrutinizes the content of the Christian revelation against all of the new information humanity has learned in the many centuries since Christian doctrine was first formed. What sort of new information does Schellenberg have in mind? According to the book's description:
Newly discovered facts, not just about such things as evolution and the formation of the New Testament but also about mental illness, violent punishment, the relations between women and men, and the status of same-sex intimacy, suggest detailed new arguments against the content of the Christian revelation —Schellenberg designs and defends twenty—when the prior understanding of the purported revealer is taken into account.
If this sounds interesting to you, then I have good news. I'm told the book will be available for purchase in the UK at the end of May; it will be available in North America in July. For a limited time, OUP is offering early buyers of the book a 30% discount code if they buy the book directly from OUP. Use the discount code in the image below and then head on over to the book's page at OUP to order.
LINK to Book at OUP: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/what-god-would-have-known-9780198912323?q=9780198912323&cc=gb&lang=en#
1. No Good Reason to Think (1) Is True
2. There is Good Reason to Think (1) Is False
2.1. Values
2.2.1. Terminology
2.2.2. Arguments for a Theistic Grounding of Moral Values
2.2.3. Arguments for a Non-Theistic Grounding of Moral Values
2.2. Duties
2.2.1. Exposition
2.2.2. Arguments for a Theistic Grounding of Moral Obligation
2.2.3. Arguments for a Non-Theistic Grounding of Moral Obligation
2.3. Freedom
2.3.1. Terminology
2.3.2. Arguments for the Necessity of Free Will
2.3.3. Arguments against the Necessity of Free Will
2.4. Purpose
2.4.1. Exposition
2.4.2. Arguments for the Necessity of (Agential) Purpose
2.4.3. Arguments against the Necessity of (Agential) Purpose
2.5.1. Exposition
2.5.1.1. General Systems of Ethics
2.5.1.2. "Thin" and "Thick" Moral Standards
2.5.2. Arguments for a Theistic Grounding of Moral Standards
2.5.3. Arguments for a Non-Theistic Grounding of Moral Standards
2.6. Human Dignity
2.6.1. Exposition
2.6.3. Arguments against the Necessity of Dignified Beings
2.6.4. Arguments against Human Exceptionalism
