Atheist Zombie World?
I’ve been hinting at this problem for a while now, but am finally ready to show you a draft of my paper discussing it: would Zombie World produce atheists or god-believers through evolutionary processes?
Here’s what I perceive as the problem–if there is space for a non-physicalist explanation of belief in god, then the cognitive anthropological projects have a flaw. We can appeal to something else, like the communication of god to our non-physical "mind." One way to explore this question is by using the Zombie World thought-experiment. Daniel Dennett is famous for thinking it’s a non-starter, and at the end of the day, I may agree with him, but I think the only way to get there is to test the experiment and see if it is plausible.
Follow this link to view a PDF version of "Would Zombies Believe in God?", a working first draft that tries to answer the question through exploration of the mental "modules" that evolutionary psychologists think are necessary to generate this belief, as well as some of the responses that might be put forward to answer the question in the negative.
Please leave me comments below, or email them to me. I’m really interested in your thoughts.
Image of Zombie Preacher from the Urban Dead Wiki.