_____________________
_____________________
1 This chapter is a revised version of my essay, “Dawkins's Best Argument: The Case Against God in The God Delusion,” which appeared in Philosophia Christi, Series 2, 10/1 (2008): 39–56; and chapter 7 of my book, Reasonable God: Engaging the Face of Atheism (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009).
2 R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 55.
3 For simplicity, I equate a naturalistic universe with an atheistic universe (one in which God does not exist.) For the purposes of this essay, I take as the most viable alternatives the atheistic universe and the theistic universe. I do not consider the possibility of views such as Buddhism or polytheism.
4 For the standard example, see J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind 64 (1955): 200–12. Few philosophers today defend the claim that theism requires a universe without evil.
5 Dawkins, God Delusion, 31.
6 R. Van Gulick lists seven features of consciousness including the qualitative character of conscious experience, the phenomenal structure, the intrinsic subjectivity of consciousness, the self-perspectival organization, and the unity of conscious experience. See R. Van Gulick, “Consciousness,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalt, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#4.
7 To be sure, we do not know directly all of our mental states. We do have privileged access to some of them.
8 The following discussion owes much to cautions and suggestions put forward in conversation by Bill Alston.
9 Some argue in this way. For example, J. P. Moreland, “The Argument from Consciousness,” in The Rationality of Theism, ed. P. Copan and P. K. Moser (London: Routledge, 2003), 204–20, and C. Taliaferro, “Naturalism and the Mind,” in Naturalism: A Critical Analysis, ed. W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland (London: Routledge, 2000), 133–55.
10 D. J. Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3) (1995): 200–19, http://www.imprint.co.uk, and The Conscious Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
11 An example is D. Pereboom. See his Living Without Free Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
12 For examples of the compatibilists, see the many essays in The Oxford Companion to Free Will, ed. R. Kane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). D. Dennett's work on human freedom is Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
13 Others who make similar arguments include P. Unger, “Free Will and Scientificalism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2002): 1–25; and S. Goetz, “Naturalism and Libertarian Agency,” in Naturalism: A Critical Analysis, ed. Craig and Moreland, 156–86.
14 Of course a full defense of the reality of objective obligations would have to engage all of the alternative theories. Such a defense is far outside the scope of this essay. It is enough to note that many people think there are such obligations.
15 J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 115–16.
16 Besides The Miracle of Theism, chap. 6, see his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977). For a variety of views that seem to deny the objectivity of obligations, see S. Blackburn, Spreading the Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); and his Ruling Passions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Also see A. Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) and M. Timmons, Morality Without Foundations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
17 Some examples include Richard Boyd, “How to Be a Moral Realist,” in Essays on Moral Realism, ed. G. S. McCord (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 181–228; D. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and P. Railton, “Moral Realism,” Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 163–207. Theistic philosopher R. Swinburne also wants to ground moral obligations apart from God. See The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), chap. 9.
18 P. Draper, e-mail correspondence, October 28, 1999, cited in G. E. Ganssle, “Necessary Moral Truths and the Need for Explanation,” Philosophia Christi Series 2, vol. 2, no. 1 (2000): 105–12.