Guilt, Enculturation and Religion: Response to Cordner

Abstract

<p>It is a pleasure to respond to Chris Cordner's thoughtful reading and response to our paper. Cordner thinks the issue we raise is serious – that of what the New Atheism might mean for our Judeo-Christian ethical tradition – but thinks our Nietzschean answer to this question fails to establish our view as to what this meaning entails (roughly – that it threatens the social reproduction of guilt morality in a context in which shame morality is not available as an alternative). We fail to do this, he says, because our "account of how guilt is sourced in God" is insufficient – indeed "infantile" and our account of "how else things must be seen once God is dispensed with" is, because of this insufficiency, mistaken.</p>