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4The Root of All Evil?In Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The Need for Certainty Indifference to the Goods of This World A Cause of Violence The Hope of the World?
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2Evil and the Meaning of LifeIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The Evidential Argument from Evil Theodicies A Limited Perspective Horrors The Defeat of Horror Sources of Meaning.
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6Philosophy and God's Existence, Part IIIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The Cosmological Argument of Leibniz and Clarke Ontological Arguments and the Concept of a Necessary Being Why Not a Self‐Existent Universe? The Contestable Principle of Sufficient Reason Concluding Remarks.
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4Religious ConsciousnessIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Simone Weil: The Philosophical Mystic The Varieties of Religious Experience Mysticism, its Varieties, and its Authority Sam Harris on Spiritual Experience Schleiermacher on the Essence of Religious Experience.
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4Science, Transcendence, and MeaningIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Religion vs. Superstition Virgin Mary Sightings Schleiermacher and the Transcendence of God Brains in Vats What Science Can and Cannot Say About the Transcendent The God of the Chance Gaps A Meaningful “God” The Meaning of Life Concluding Remarks.
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7Philosophy and God's Existence, Part IIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Mangling Aquinas The Argument from Design Why the Argument from Design Fails Dawkins' Case Against Theism A Fundamental Difficulty with Dawkins' Atheistic Argument.
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3Divine Tyranny and the Goodness of GodIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of Divine Goodness as a Tool of Criticism The Divine Command Theory – or, How to Strip God's Goodness of Significance The Fundamentalist Attack on Divine Goodness The Problem with Young Earth Creationism Concluding Remarks.
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3“The God Hypothesis” and the Concept of GodIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: New Atheist Definitions of God The Supremely Good God of Traditional Theism Non‐Substantive Definitions of “God” The Ethico‐Religious Hope God: The Ethico‐Religious Hope Fulfilled Continuity from the Ancients: Plutarch and Zoroaster Concluding Remarks.
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4On Religion and EquivocationIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The Meanings of “Religion” Einsteinian Religion and the Feeling of Piety The Art of Equivocation The Eloquent Equivocations of Sam Harris The Truth amidst the Mudslinging.
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1IntroductionIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The Spirit of Schleiermacher Ideology and Hope Overview.
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4ReferencesIn Is God a Delusion?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: The New Atheist Attack on Faith Fides and Fiducia Catholic Faith The Failure of the Catholic View of Faith A Lutheran Alternative Love and Revelation Reason for Trust? Pragmatic Faith The Ethico‐Religious Hope Revisited The Logic of Faith.
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35Ptolemy's Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy. By Liba Chaia Taub (review)Modern Schoolman 73 (2): 187-189. 1996.Review of Liba Taub, Ptolemy's universe; The natural philosophical and ethical foundations of Ptolemy's astronomy. Chicago: Open Court 1993. xiv, 188 p.
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14Review of "Love Divine: A Systematic Account", by Jordan Wessling (review)European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (3): 285-290. 2022.-
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39Is Annihilation More Severe than Eternal Conscious Torment?Southwest Philosophy Review 38 (1): 191-198. 2022.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 …Read more
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61Eternally Choosing Hell: Can Hard-Heartedness Explain Why Some Remain in Hell Forever?Sophia 61 (2): 365-382. 2022.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…Read more
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29Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation, written by Igor PrimoratzJournal of Moral Philosophy 14 (3): 357-360. 2017.
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9Is God a Delusion?: A Reply to Religion's Cultured DespisersWiley-Blackwell. 2008._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 consi…Read more
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The Moral Status of Violence Within the Framework of a Christian Love EthicDissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo. 1993.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 eth…Read more
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32Thomistic Natural Philosophy and the Scientific RevolutionModern Schoolman 73 (3): 265-281. 1996.
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21Substance and Modern Science. By Richard J. Connell (review)Modern Schoolman 69 (1): 64-66. 1991.
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41Self-Defense and the Principle of Generic ConsistencySocial Theory and Practice 32 (3): 415-438. 2006.
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41Private Property Rights, Moral Extensionism and the Wise-Use Movement: A Rawlsian AnalysisEnvironmental Values 13 (3). 2004.Efforts to protect endangered species by regulating the use of privately owned lands are routinely resisted by appeal to the private property rights of landowners. Recently, the 'wise-use' movement has emerged as a primary representative of these landowners' claims. In addressing the issues raised by the wise-use movement and others like them, legal scholars and philosophers have typically examined the scope of private property rights and the extent to which these rights should influence public …Read more
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91A Guarantee of Universal Salvation?Faith and Philosophy 24 (4): 413-432. 2007.Recent defenders of the Christian doctrine of eternal damnation have appealed to what I call the “No Guarantee Doctrine” (NG)—the doctrine that not evenGod can ensure both (a) that every person who is saved freely chooses to be saved and (b) that all are saved. Thomas Talbott challenges NG on the groundsthat anyone who is truly free will have no motive to reject God and will infallibly choose salvation. In response to critics of Talbott, I argue that in order toavoid Talbott ’s critique of NG, i…Read more
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52The Irreconcilability of Pacifism and Just War TheorySocial Theory and Practice 20 (2): 117-134. 1994.
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155Rape as an essentially contested conceptHypatia 16 (2): 43-66. 2001.: Because "rape" has such a powerful appraisive meaning, how one defines the term has normative significance. Those who define rape rigidly so as to exclude contemporary feminist understandings are therefore seeking to silence some moral perspectives "by definition." I argue that understanding rape as an essentially contested concept allows the concept sufficient flexibility to permit open moral discourse, while at the same time preserving a core meaning that can frame the discourse
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7Christianity and Partisan PoliticsLogos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 2 (4): 82-96. 1999.
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131Homosexuality, Misogyny, and God’s PlanFaith and Philosophy 16 (2): 213-232. 1999.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…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |