Saints, Heretics, and Atheists

"Acknowledgements Preface 1. Plato's Euthyphro: What is Piety? 1.1. The setting 1.2. First attempt: examples of piety 1.3. Second attempt: what is dear to the gods 1.4. Third attempt: what all the gods love 1.5. Fourth attempt: piety is the part of justice that concerns the gods 1.6. Fifth attempt: the pious is what is dear to the gods 2. Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will: Where Does Evil Come From? 2.1. The setting 2.2. What is the cause of evil? 2.3. The well-ordered person 2.4. Sin and ignorance 2.5. An objection and two conclusions 2.7. Freedom and determinism 3. Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will: Why Do We Have Free Will? 3.1. Set up and structure 3.2. How is it manifest that God exists? 3.3. Do all things, insofar as they are good, come from God? 3.4. Should free will be counted as a good thing that comes from God? 3.5. Happiness and immortality 4. Augustine's On Free Choice of Will: Why Do We Sin? 4.1. Why do we sin, and who is to blame? 4.2. Is libertarian freedom consistent with divine foreknowledge? 4.3. Can't God be blamed for creating beings that he knows will sin? 4.4. Is it the case that some of us must sin? 4.5. Three views on divine foreknowledge 5. Anselm's Proslogion: Does Reason Prove that God Exists? 5.1. The setting 5.2. Anselm's ontological argument 5.3. A Perfect Island? 5.4. Two Objections 6. Ibn Sina's The Book of Salvation: What is the Nature of the Soul? 6.1. The setting 6.2. What does the intellect do? 6.3. Is the soul immaterial? 6.4. Is the soul immortal? 6.5. What am I? 7. Al-Ghazali's The Rescuer from Error: Is Religious Belief Founded in Reason? 7.1. The setting 7.2. Three views on faith and reason 7.3. The quest for certainty 7.4. Three false foundations 7.5. Is God hidden? 8. Al-Ghazali's The Rescuer from Error: Is Religious Belief Founded in Experience? 8.1. Al-Ghazali's turn to mysticism 8.2. Three accounts of religious experience 8.3. Is religious experience a good reason for belief? 9. Aquinas's Summa Theologica: Does Experience Prove that God Exists? 9.1. The setting 9.2. Is the existence of God self-evident? 9.3. Can we prove that God exists? 9.4. The argument from motion, the first step 9.5. The argument from motion, the second step 9.6. The argument from motion, the conclusion 9.7. The argument from providence 10. Aquinas's Summa Theologica: What is the Impersonal Nature of God? 10.1. Is God simple? 10.2. Is God perfect? 10.3. Is God infinite? 10.4. Is God one? 10.5. Analogical predication 11. Aquinas's Summa Theologica: What is the Personal Nature of God? 11.1. The big picture 11.2. Divine knowledge 11.3. Divine will 11.4. Divine love 11.5. Is God masculine? 12. Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls: What is Salvation? 12.1. The setting 12.2. Assent and annihilation 12.3. Heaven 12.4. Hell 12.5. Life after Death? 13. Pascal's The Wager: Should We Bet on God? 13.1. The setting 13.2. A wager 13.3. Pascal's wager 13.4. Background assumptions 13.5. Objections and replies 14. Spinoza's Ethics: Is God Nature? 14.1. The setting 14.2. Substance monism 14.3. The Master Argument 14.4. ""Deus sive Natura"" (God or Nature)? 15. Spinoza's Ethics: Are We Modes of God? 15.1. Substance, attributes, modes 15.2. Human beings 15.3. Against libertarian freedom 15.4. For compatibilist freedom 15.5 Moderating the passions 16. Spinoza's Ethics: Good without God? 16.1. Two accounts of goodness 16.2. Beyond egoism 16.3. Good without God? 17. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Is the Universe Designed? 17.1. The setting 17.2. The limits of reason 17.3. Cleanthes's first design argument 17.4. Cleanthes's second design argument 17.5. Is the universe fine-tuned? 18. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Design without a Designer? 18.1. The regress objection 18.2. The design argument and traditional theism 18.3. An immanent designer? 18.4. No designer at all? 18.5. Contemporary criticisms 19. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: True Religion? 19.1. The ""causal"" argument 19.2. The problem of evil 19.3. Consistency, evidence and evil 19.4. ""True religion"" 19.5. Two contemporary views on the problem of evil 20. Shepherd's The Credibility of Miracles: May we believe in miracles? 20.1. The setting 20.2. Against miracles 20.3. What is a miracle? 20.4. Believing in miracles? 21. Mills' Essays on Religion: Is Religion Useful? 21.1. The setting 21.2. On Nature 21.3. Raising the question 21.4. Is religion publicly useful? 21.5. Is religion privately useful? 21.6. What is secular humanism? 22. Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality: What do Good, Bad and Evil mean? 22.1. The setting 22.2. Three big ideas 22.3. Genealogy of values 22.4. Inversion of values 22.5. Evaluation of values 22.6. Debunking morality and religion? 23. Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality: Whence Conscience, Bad Conscience and Guilt? 23.1. The origin of conscience 23.2. The origin of bad conscience 23.3. The origin of moral guilt 23.4. Should we obey our conscience? 24. Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality: No Alternative? 24.1. What do ascetic ideals mean? 24.2. The puzzle of ascetic ideals 24.3. The ""vale of tears"" 24.4. ""pointless suffering"" 24.5. ""the ascetic priest"" 24.6. No alternative? 25. William James's Will to Believe: The Right to Believe? 25.1. The setting 25.2. The ethics of belief 25.3. The varieties of belief 25.4. A first argument 25.5. A second argument 25.6. Returning to Plato"