Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution
Michael Bergmann and Patrick Kain
Abstract
This volume contains fourteen original Chapters by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists on challenges to moral and religious belief from disagreement and evolution. Three main questions are addressed: Can one reasonably maintain one’s moral and religious beliefs in the face of interpersonal disagreement with intellectual peers? Does disagreement about morality between a religious belief source, such as a sacred text, and a non-religious belief source, such as a society’s moral intuitions, make it irrational to continue trusting one or both of those belief sources? Should evolutiona ... More
This volume contains fourteen original Chapters by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists on challenges to moral and religious belief from disagreement and evolution. Three main questions are addressed: Can one reasonably maintain one’s moral and religious beliefs in the face of interpersonal disagreement with intellectual peers? Does disagreement about morality between a religious belief source, such as a sacred text, and a non-religious belief source, such as a society’s moral intuitions, make it irrational to continue trusting one or both of those belief sources? Should evolutionary accounts of the origins of our moral beliefs and our religious beliefs undermine our confidence in their veracity? This volume places challenges to moral belief side-by-side with challenges to religious belief, sets evolution-based challenges alongside disagreement-based challenges, and includes philosophical perspectives together with theological and social science perspectives, with the aim of cultivating insights and lines of inquiry that are easily missed within a single discipline or when these topics are treated in isolation.
Keywords:
morality,
religion,
disagreement,
evolution,
epistemology,
skepticism,
metaethics,
evolutionary psychology,
God,
divine commands
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199669776 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669776.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Michael Bergmann, editor
Purdue University
Patrick Kain, editor
Purdue University
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