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God Collapses: Theism and Moral Responsibility book cover

1st Edition

God Collapses Theism and Moral Responsibility

By Stephen Kershnar, Nathan Bray Copyright 2027
288 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Many worldviews assume that God exists and is the greatest possible being. Religious traditions, philosophical arguments, and billions of believers hold that God is perfectly good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. This book argues that this worldview is false. It provides four arguments for this conclusion that build on the philosophy of religion and moral responsibility literatures in original and... Read more

Table of Contents 

Introduction 

Part One. If God exists, then he is the greatest possible being 

Chapter One: Greatness 

Chapter Two: Greatest Possible Being 

Chapter Three: Maximal Greatness and Responsibility 

Chapter Four: Greatness and Self-Explanation 

Part Two. The greatest possible being is not significantly responsible 

Chapter Five: Basic Responsibility-Maker 

Chapter Six: Blameworthiness 

Chapter Seven: Responsibility and Value 

Chapter Eight: God and Responsibility 

Chapter Nine: Divine Foreknowledge 

Chapter Ten: The Benevolence-Responsibility Tradeoff 

Part Three. The greatest possible being is not insignificantly responsible 

Chapter Eleven: Insignificant Responsibility 

Chapter Twelve: Universe Creation 

Part Four. The greatest possible being does not lack responsibility 

Chapter Thirteen: Arbitrary Benevolence 

Part Five: Conclusion 

Chapter Fourteen: Conclusion 

Part Six: Appendix: On the Best Possible World 

Index 

Bibliography 

Biography

Stephen Kershnar is a distinguished teaching professor in the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He is also an attorney. Kershnar focuses on applied ethics and political philosophy. He has written more than one hundred articles and book chapters on such diverse topics as abortion, desert, moral responsibility, punishment, and religion. He is the author of twelve books, including Morality Collapses: Against the Right and the Good (New York: Routledge, 2025), Responsibility Collapses: Why Moral Responsibility is Impossible (New York: Routledge, 2023), and Desert Collapses: Why No One Deserves Anything (New York: Routledge, 2022). 

 

Nathan Bray is a doctoral candidate at the University of St Andrews. He works mainly in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics. Within these fields, his favorite topics, in no particular order, are the cosmological argument, divine freedom, and animal ethics. His works have appeared in Public Affairs Quarterly and Between the Species. 

“Stephen Kershnar and Nathan Bray join their mind and produce an exciting discussion about God’s existence. The book is a tour de force of relentless, careful argumentation.”

Carlo Alvaro, St. John’s University, USA

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