Eric Reitan

_Is God a Delusion?_ addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the recent proliferation of popular books attacking religious beliefs. Winner of CHOICE 2009 Outstanding Academic Title Award Focuses primarily on charges leveled by recent critics that belief in God is irrational and that its nature ferments violence Balances philosophical rigor and scholarly care with an engaging, accessible style Offers a direct response to the crop of recent anti-religion bestsellers currently generating considerable public discussion.

Scott Aikin and Jason Aleksander have recently challenged the traditional retributive doctrine of hell on the grounds that, even if we grant the Anselmian view that human sin is infinitely grave, the view that an infinite punishment is warranted for human sin is false because in order to deserve an infinite penalty, the sinner must understand the infinite gravity of their offense—and most sinners (barring perhaps philosophers?) will fail to do so. While their critique of the traditional retributive doctrine suffers some problems, I contend here that something in the vicinity of it has promise: a critique of the retributive doctrine inspired by Albrecht Ritschl’s view that in order for punishment to serve its purpose, those punished must be capable of experiencing their punishment as just. And even philosophers who grasp the Anselmian argument would be unable to endure infinite punishment while continuing to experience it as just. Only the most saintly—namely the blessed in heaven—could do that.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:690 BOOK REVIEWS Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible. By RICHARD J. BLACKWELL. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1991. Pp. 272. $29.95 {cloth). Although this well-hound, manageable volume, complete with an artistic seventeenth-century dust jacket, has not received an official ecclesiastical "imprimatur," nevertheless, it is (according to this Dominican reviewer) both free from doctrinal error and filled with true and useful historical, philosophical, and theological information. Seemingly no other case in the history of our western intellectual tradition has generated more controversy, more ill feeling, and more mutual misunderstanding across more lines of intellectual, political, and religious division than the "Galileo affair." Few people today are equipped historically, scientifically, philosophically, and theologically to discuss accurately the wide range of issues surrounding this unfortunate incident. A seasoned veteran of the strong historical, philosophical tradition of the Jesuit-run St. Louis University, and himself an active member of the Roman Catholic Church, Richard J. Blackwell, historian of philosophy and philosopher of science, has done a marvelous service to the academic community hy presenting us with this volume. In this well-researched, well-argued, and very readable manuscript, Blackwell helps to place Galileo's intellectual and ecclesiastical struggle within the broader historical, philosophical, religious, and theological context of rthe late 16th and early 17th centuries. Quoting the words of Olaf Pedersen, Blackwell considers the Galileo affair " not only as an episode in the history of science, but also as an important event in the history of theology" {p. 3). His principal purpose in writing this book is " to study the Galileo affair from this perspective " and, in particular, to understand "the role played by the Bible in the Galileo affair" (p. 3). Without attempting to praise, to blame, or to excuse, Blackwell sets out to understand precisely how it was that the historical, religious, and theological factors came to have such a profound effect on the scientific and philosophical questions of Galileo's time. He argues convincingly that the Roman insistence on upholding the traditional interpretation of certain key biblical passages can he understood adequately only within the historical and religious climate of postTridentine theology, Jesuit obedience, and strict adherence to the Thomistic synthesis of philosophy and theology. Toward this end, Blackwell brings together for the first time certain important texts, concepts, and historical arguments that help to alleviate some of the " murkiness " blurring our view of the Galileo affair, and help to make that incident more intelligible to our modern minds. BOOK REVIEWS 691 Blackwell argues that the Roman hierarchy was not so much concerned with the content of the new astronomy as it was determined to reassert itself as the authentic interpreter of Scripture and tradition. According to Blackwell, the new astronomy challenged not only the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of Thomas Aquinas, but, perhaps more importantly, it challenged the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman hierarchy in its role as interpreter and teacher of the Apostolic faith. How could the new astronomy be anything but a hypothetical model, when it so clearly contradicted the words of Scripture as in· terpreted by the Church Fathers? How could mere mathematicians and astronomers insist on philosophical propositions that seemed to make the Bible false? No single individual was invested with the authority to interpret the Bible for the whole body of believers, as the Church had so painfully learned from the lessons of the Protestant Reformers. That authority lay solely with the "Church," that is, with the Roman hierarchy, the Pope in union with a council, as was clear from the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent. Moreover, strict obedience was the order of the day as many Jesuit thinkers so agonizingly came to realize. Blackwell divides his own text into seven chapters: (1) Trent and Beyond; (2) Bellarmine's Views Before the Galileo Affair; (3) Gali· leo's Detour into Biblical Exegesis; (4) Foscarini's Bombshell; (5) The Bible at Galileo's Trial (6) The Jesuit Dilemma: Truth or Obedience ; and (7) Reflections on Truth in Science and in Religion. In the first two chapters, he establishes a context for the Galileo affair by discussing :the theological interpretation and importance of the Council of Trent...

In Hell and Divine Goodness, James Spiegel defends the surprising position that of the two dominant non-universalist Christian views on the fate of the damned—the traditionalist view that the damned suffer eternal conscious torment, and the annihilationist view that the damned are put out of existence—the annihilationist view actually posits the more severe fate from the standpoint of a punishment. I argue here that his case for this position rests on two questionable assumptions, and that even granting these assumptions there are intuitive reasons, reasons Spiegel has not addressed, for supposing that ECT is more severe.

Recently, Eric Yang and Stephen Davis have defended what they call the separationist view of hell against an objection leveled by Jeremy Gwiazda by invoking the concept of hard-heartedness as an account of why some would eternally choose to remain in hell. Gwiazda’s objection to the separationist view of hell is an instance of a broader strategy of objection invoked by other universalists to argue that God could guarantee universal salvation while respecting libertarian freedom—an objection that Kronen and I have dubbed the Infinite Opportunity Argument. Yang’s and Davis’s reply to Gwiazda thus amounts to a response to the Infinite Opportunity Argument, and the merits of their reply bear on the feasibility of the freedom-respecting version of universalism that the argument supports. I argue that the kind of hard-heartedness that must be posited in order to derail the Infinite Opportunity Argument—the kind of absolute hard-heartedness that Yang and Davis explicitly invoke—suffers significant problems that prevent it from posing a serious challenge to freedom-respecting universalism.

_Is God a Delusion?_ addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the recent proliferation of popular books attacking religious beliefs. Winner of CHOICE 2009 Outstanding Academic Title Award Focuses primarily on charges leveled by recent critics that belief in God is irrational and that its nature ferments violence Balances philosophical rigor and scholarly care with an engaging, accessible style Offers a direct response to the crop of recent anti-religion bestsellers currently generating considerable public discussion.

Two interrelated questions drive this work. First, what moral status does violence have within the framework of the Christian tradition which gives the command to love one's "neighbor" the status of fundamental moral principle? Second, can an ethics of the sort articulated in this tradition stand on its own as a coherent and complete moral system? ;In exploring these questions, I focus attention on the following forseeable situation, which provides a special problem for the sort of Christian ethics I explore, and which therefore serves as a testing ground for the satisfactoriness of that ethic: suppose one is in a situation in which, in order to prevent a malevolent aggressor from harming or killing an innocent person, it seems one must inflict violence on the aggressor. This circumstance is problematic for Christian ethics because in doing violence to the aggressor one seems not to love the aggressor properly, and in refraining from violence one seems not to love the aggressor's victim properly. The question is whether this problem can be resolved. Just War theorists have sought to resolve this problem by arguing that it is sometimes not contrary to love to do violence to a person. Christian pacifists argue that it is always contrary to love to do violence to a person, but that it is not likewise contrary to love to defend innocent persons by nonviolent means alone, even when such means seem likely to fail. Christian realists maintain that the problem cannot be resolved, and that the love ethic of Christianity fails therefore to constitute a coherent and complete moral system: its sphere of application must be truncated, and outside that sphere other principles must hold sway. ;I conclude that the pacifist solution to the posed dilemma is the right one, but that there is nevertheless one sort of violence that is not contrary to love: namely, the violence associated with properly administered punishment. While current systems of criminal punishment are not properly loving, one may find examples of loving punishment in such micro-communities as the family

In response to powerful criticisms of older arguments, contemporary defenders of the Church’s traditional stance on homosexuality have fashioned a new kind of argument based upon the special relationship God created between the sexes. In this paper we examine two recent incarnations of this kind of argument and show that both fail to demonstrate the inherent immorality of homosexual relationships, and at most demonstrate that homosexual relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships in certain respects. At the end of the paper we argue that a good God would have reason to make a certain proportion of humanity homosexual in order to unmask sexist myths. In this way homosexuality could itself strengthen, rather than weaken, the special relationship God created between the sexes.

For the sake of developing and evaluating public policy decisions aimed at combating terrorism, we need a precise public definition of terrorism that distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violence. Ordinary usage does not provide a basis for such a definition, and so it must be stipulative. I propose essentially pragmatic criteria for developing such a stipulative public definition. After noting that definitions previously proposed in the philosophical literature are inadequate based on these criteria, I propose an alternative, which I call the 'group-target' definition and which distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violence by the distinctive principle of discrimination used by terrorists to identify legitimate targets. I argue that this definition meets the criteria for a satisfactory public definition, and suggest that based on it there is good reason to suspect the adequacy of anti-terrorism policies that rely predominantly on forceful interdiction of terrorists

One reason for the persistent appeal of Don Marquis' ‘future like ours’ argument is that it seems to offer a way to approach the debate about the morality of abortion while sidestepping the difficult task of establishing whether the fetus is a person. This essay argues that in order to satisfactorily address both of the chief objections to FLO – the ‘identity objection’ and the ‘contraception objection’ – Marquis must take a controversial stand on what is most essential to being the kind of entity that an adult human being is. Such a stand amounts to a controversial account of personhood. To the extent that FLO's success depends on accepting such a controversial metaphysical view, one apparent attraction of FLO proves illusory

Both Arne Naess and Warwick Fox have argued that deep ecology, in terms of “Selfrealization,” is essentially nonmoral. I argue that the attainment of the ecological Self does not render morality in the richest sense “superfluous,” as Fox suggests. To the contrary, the achievement of the ecological Self is a precondition for being a truly moral person, both from the perspective of a robust Kantian moral frameworkand from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. The opposition between selfregard and morality is a false one. The two are the same. The ecological philosophy of Naess and Fox is an environmental ethic in the grand tradition of moral philosophy.

Richard Swinburne’s formulation of the argument from evil is representative of a pervasive way of understanding the challenge evil poses for theistic belief. But there is an error in Swinburne’s formulation : he fails to consider possible deontological constraints on God’s legitimate responses to evil. To demonstrate the error’s significance, I show that some important objections to Swinburne’s theodicy admit of a novel answer once we correct for Swinburne’s Lapse. While more is needed to show that the resultant “deontological theodicy” succeeds, its promise highlights the significance of Swinburne’s Lapse and the prospects for theodicy it has obscured

When philosophers contribute to public debates as polarized as contemporary ones about theistic belief, it is common to encounter responses that, philosophically, are woefully misguided. While it is tempting to simply dismiss them, a closer examination of recurring responses can offer insight of philosophical significance. In this paper I exemplify the value of engaging with recurring but misguided popular objections by looking carefully at one such objection to my recent book, Is God a Delusion?