Arguments Against Theism

Modal cosmological arguments argue from the possible cause or explanation of some contingent feature of reality to the existence of a necessary being. Such arguments are often presented as more modest and defensible than traditional contingency arguments because they rely on purportedly weaker principles of explanation. However, I argue that the modal reasoning undergirding such principles undermines their claim to modesty when applied to the fact that a necessary being explains a contingent feature. I also argue that even where such (...) facts are left unexplained, this bruteness undercuts the motivation for positing a necessary being, leaving proponents of modal cosmological arguments no better off, dialectically, than traditional cosmological arguments. (shrink)

Plantinga’s modal ontological argument for the existence of God and the corresponding reverse modal ontological argument for atheism are often regarded as dialectically symmetric within modal system S5. In this paper, I reply to Fritz, Lo, and Schmid, who suggest that, unlike Plantinga’s modal ontological argument, the reverse modal ontological argument becomes dialectically effective when moving from S5 to the weaker systems S4 and KT. I argue that the alleged dialectical asymmetry in favor of atheism in these systems depends on (...) an incomplete characterization of the modal landscape. Once the full family of structurally parallel modal arguments is considered, and God’s modal nature is assumed to be relatively stable, the dialectical asymmetry in S4 and KT in favor of atheism dissolves. I further argue that, under a neo-Aristotelian, powers-based account of modality, the dialectical asymmetry may even reverse in favor of theism. (shrink)

Sean Carroll's criticism of theism in the 2014 God and Cosmology debate was not merely that theism lacks a mechanism or that naturalism currently has better physics. His sharper point was that theism has too much accommodation capacity. When a hypothesis can reinterpret almost any possible observation as compatible with divine intention, it loses the ability to discriminate among possible worlds. This paper develops that point as a general account of explanatory elasticity. A theory becomes elastically weak when its auxiliary (...) resources allow it to stretch around data without making risky, specific, antecedent expectations. The paper situates Carroll's point within philosophy of science, Bayesian confirmation, and model selection. Popper emphasized risk and falsifiability. Quine showed that hypotheses face evidence within a web of auxiliaries. Sober and Forster argue that simplicity and predictive accuracy are connected through constraints on accommodation. I argue that theism often treats auxiliary elasticity as a virtue: God might want life, beauty, discoverability, moral drama, hiddenness, lawlike order, miracles, simplicity, complexity, suffering, or rescue. But the more possible worlds theism can bless after the fact, the less evidential work any particular world performs. I formalize the problem with a flexibility penalty. A hypothesis (H) confirms poorly when its auxiliary set (A_H) can absorb a wide range of mutually different observations while offering few independent constraints. Theistic explanations frequently raise (P(E mid H,A_H)) only by expanding (A_H) after (E) is known. That strategy may preserve logical consistency, but it reduces predictive discipline. The paper concludes that Carroll's critique is best understood not as scientistic impatience with theology, but as a demand that cosmological explanations pay for their elasticity. (shrink)

I argue that textual variants pose a problem for religious belief. Specifically, the existence of hundreds of thousands of textual variants in the New Testament’s manuscript tradition, many of them large and ideologically motivated, should reduce a believer’s confidence in the Bible as a source of information. This problem is different from the problems of evil and divine hiddenness because, whereas those problems entail the falsity of a religious claim, such as theism, this problem poses an epistemic challenge instead.

The modal ontological argument for God’s existence faces a symmetry problem: a seemingly equally plausible reverse modal ontological argument can be given for God’s non-existence. Here we argue that there are significant asymmetries between the modal ontological argument and its reverse that render the latter more compelling than the former. Specifically, the latter requires a weaker logic than the former and, unlike the former, avoids the symmetry problem. We also explore to what extent these observations represent a new pathway to (...) atheism. (shrink)

Perfect Being Theology holds that God is the greatest possible being and that the divine nature is fixed by the perfections a being instantiates. This paper examines four ways of relating perfections to overall greatness: Distributivist Atomism, Collectivist Atomism, Distributivist Non-Atomism, and Collectivist Non-Atomism. I argue that each approach faces structural difficulties. The atomist views require that all perfections be jointly instantiated at their intrinsic maxima, which raises a substantive worry about whether the relevant set of perfections is compossible at (...) all. The non-atomist and collectivist views avoid that worry by permitting tradeoffs or relation-dependent maxima, but they generate new problems: they fail to single out a unique best package of perfections, they leave unresolved why any one package should fix the divine nature, and—given the standard claim that the greatest possible being exists necessarily—they produce a dilemma involving polytheism or the absence of any greatest possible being. (shrink)

This paper presents a formal Bayesian analysis evaluating the probability of three major metaphysical hypotheses: Atheism, Deism, and Theism. The evaluation is grounded in an epistemological framework where cumulative subjectivity pragmatically approximates normativity. Adopting the baseline position of a Negative Atheist, prior probabilities are assigned based on a strictly linear application of the principle of parsimony (Ockham’s Razor). Subsequently, 26 major arguments from the philosophy of religion are analyzed. By assigning specific likelihoods to each hypothesis across these arguments—where the sum (...) of the assignments for each argument strictly equals 1.0—and calculating the normalized posterior probabilities, the model determines the most mathematically and philosophically consistent worldview. (shrink)

Within the broader conversation about religion and science, no topic has sparked more interest than the Darwinian revolution and whether it can be fully reconciled with faith. Although the traditional focus concerned evolutionary biology and its implications for design arguments, biblical hermeneutics, human uniqueness, the problem of evil, and secularism, the past few decades have witnessed evolutionary attempts to explain religion itself. These explanations have produced new challenges for attempts to uncover the overall significance of evolution for religion. This entry (...) overviews evolutionary approaches to religion in both science and philosophy. After exploring broadly evolutionary (including cognitive) attempts to explain religion as a natural phenomenon, it considers whether these theories would, if on track, “explain away” religion, provide it with support, or lack relevance for religious belief and practice. The next section overviews evolutionary approaches to the philosophy of religion. This includes Darwin’s impact on arguments concerning God’s existence, or natural theology, and another area that might be called “evolutionary religious epistemology”. The latter subfield has produced a reliability challenge for naturalism and a more recent idea from J.L. Schellenberg called “evolutionary religion”, which imagines a non-theistic future of faith. A closing remark about the contemporary status of Stephen J. Gould’s suggestion that evolution and religion are best seen as non-overlapping spheres, rather than paradigms in conflict or overlapping harmony, will help to integrate diverse strands of thought. (shrink)

This article situates Omittoism—a philosophical framework of jurisdictional sovereignty—within contemporary analytic philosophy. The article critically engages the work of ten major philosophers—including Stephen Law, A. John Simmons, Christine Korsgaard, Michael Huemer, Elizabeth Anderson, James P. Sterba, Erik Wielenberg, Mark C. Murphy, Wes Morriston, and Graham Oppy—to demonstrate how Omittoism's central theses stand in convergent, divergent, and dialectically productive relationships with the contemporary landscape. Unlike the ontological (existence) or theodicial (goodness) axes, Omittoism asks whether any entity possesses legitimate authority over rational (...) agents without their consent. The paper argues that jurisdictional sovereignty is analytically independent of divine existence and develops the Cosmic Audit to evaluate divine governance by the standards of liberal political philosophy. (shrink)

Our universe appears to be fine-tuned for life. But once life emerges, it does not evolve randomly. Evolution has a trajectory. Both evolvability and cooperative integration increase as evolution proceeds. Until now, this trajectory has largely been driven blindly by gene-based natural selection. But humans are developing cognitive capacities that are far superior than natural selection at adapting and evolving humanity. These capacities will enable humanity to use an understanding of evolution's future trajectory to guide its own evolution, avoiding the (...) destructive selection that will otherwise reinforce the trajectory. Humans who help realize this potential will be fulfilling vital evolutionary roles that are meaningful and purposeful in a much larger scheme of things. The paper considers whether these roles remain meaningful when considered in the wider context of possible origins of the universe. But this analysis is faced with a potentially infinite number of origin hypotheses (including innumerable ‘God hypotheses’), which are not falsified by current knowledge. The paper addresses this challenge using methods that enable rational decision-making despite radical uncertainty. Broadly, this approach reinforces the conclusions reached by consideration of the evolutionary trajectory within the universe, and opens some new possibilities. Finally, the paper demonstrates that extending this analysis also largely overcomes Hume's critique of induction, placing scientific methodologies on a firmer footing. It achieves this by recognising that a universe which exhibits a trajectory towards increasing evolvability must contain discoverable regularities that provide adaptive advantages for evolvability. (open access). (shrink)

This paper presents a cumulative Bayesian analysis comparing the explanatory power of Theism (T) and Naturalism (N). Drawing upon the methodological frameworks of Swinburne and Oppy, the study evaluates a comprehensive set of arguments, including cosmological and teleological arguments, the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and arguments concerning logical coherence. By assigning epistemic probability ranges to each evidential factor, the posterior probabilities of the competing hypotheses are calculated under lower-bound, upperbound, and average scenarios. The results indicate that while Theism receives (...) significant support from fine-tuning and consciousness, the cumulative weight of existential and logical defeaters—specifically the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and modal collapse—renders Naturalism the dominant hypothesis with a probability exceeding 89% in the realistic average scenario. (shrink)

Any modern, moderately intellectually mature (MMIM) believer in God faces a variety of epistemic defeaters of their belief in God. Epistemic defeaters challenge the rationality of a belief. After explaining the notion of a defeater and discussing various ways and targets of defeat, this Element categorizes the many defeaters of belief in God into four classes: rebutting, undercutting, base defeaters, and competence defeaters. Then, several general defeaters of theistic belief are examined in some detail: the superfluity argument, the problem of (...) unpossessed evidence, various forms of debunking arguments, and a cumulative case competence defeater. The typical MMIM believer, it is argued, has resources to resist these defeaters, although the cumulative case competence defeater has some force. The strength of its force depends on the strength of grounds for theistic belief and of various defeaters and deflectors of the competence defeater. No easy general defeater of theistic belief is found. (shrink)

Just because God is omnipotent, it does not follow that he could create the universe out of nothing. It is possible for infinitely many events to have occurred, so the universe need not have had a beginning. To say that the universe does not have a beginning does not mean that an infinite amount of time has passed. If God is a necessary being, the universe is also a necessary being. It is problematic to claim that God caused the Big (...) Bang. If God is a timeless being, he cannot create the universe. Finally, the atheist position that the universe does not have a beginning is preferable to the theist position that God created the universe. (shrink)

This short (fictitious) dialogue is an exchange of ideas when meeting Jesus after our death if you do not need God. It tries to give the reasons why God would put you in a place where there is an eternal separation from God and what it is like.

This essay examines the psychological and social mechanisms that give rise to religion and modern ideological movements, arguing that the structures typically associated with theological belief are rooted in universal cognitive patterns rather than divine origins. Drawing on research in evolutionary psychology, social identity theory, and moral cognition, it proposes that fear, agency detection, and group cohesion lead individuals to elevate certain ideas to a sacred status. Once sacred, these ideas become existentially non-negotiable and resistant to critique, shaping identity and (...) moral behavior while inhibiting intellectual progress. The analysis extends beyond traditional religions to show how secular systems—nationalism, economic doctrines, political ideologies, and social movements—exhibit the same dynamics of sacredness, purity, and untouchability. The essay concludes by promoting a model of perpetual critique, where consciousness remains capable of reflecting upon and revising its own belief structures. In rejecting ideological rigidity, it advocates for a form of human autonomy grounded in self-awareness rather than unquestioned conviction. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, the evil God challenge has been developed by several authors as a parody argument. Proponents of this challenge contend that, given the goods in our world, the hypothesis of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnimalevolent God or the Evil God is absurd. Similarly, they argue, we should conclude that the hypothesis of a good God is also absurd due to the evils present in our world. This paper argues that, with the aid of this challenge and (...) other contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion, one can make the case that a reintroduction of Manichaeism into philosophy of religion is worthwhile. This argument will propose that, considering our total evidence, the Good-God and the Evil-God demonstrate a similar level of support. Additionally, under a reconstructed Manichaean hypothesis, good and evil are seen as mutually explanatory. Furthermore, the natural order can be understood within this framework. Therefore, the Manichaean hypothesis could serve as a viable alternative to monotheistic theism; it can account for the coexistence of good and evil and is compatible with the observed order in nature. (shrink)

Several philosophers contend that a theistic multiverse (TM), a collective of all possible universes worthy of divine creation, is the best possible world, and that this fact proves helpful to theism in the face of various objections. Almeida (2017), however, argues that proposed theories of TM are incoherent. After presenting TM, I distinguish three objections Almeida raises against it: God cannot create universes corresponding to other possible worlds, we cannot know whether TM includes only worthwhile universes, and TM violates the (...) principle of plenitude. I show that none of these undermine TM’s potential to address various objections to theism. (shrink)

Skeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I consider four challenges to three central versions of skeptical theism: (a) the problem of generalized skepticism, (b) the problem of moral skepticism, (c) the problem of unqualified modal skepticism, and (d) the challenge from Bayesian (...) epistemology. (shrink)

J.L. Schellenberg’s argument from divine hiddenness partly rests on the claim that non-resistant non-belief exists. In this paper, I take up the question of whether such non-belief is pervasive and argue that it is, in fact, relatively common. To support this claim, I present a novel argument grounded in a distinction between acquisition responsibility and maintenance responsibility. I argue that, for a non-believer to count as resistant in Schellenberg’s sense, they must be acquisition-responsible for their non-belief in God. I further (...) contend that many non-believers lack such responsibility and therefore qualify as non-resistant. This argument has the added benefit of showing that many prominent objections to the existence of non-resistant non-belief are irrelevant or incomplete. Finally, I highlight the broader significance of this conclusion, both for Schellenberg’s argument and in light of recent shifts in the literature toward more evidential approaches. (shrink)

Agnostics as well as theists should answer evidential arguments from evil, at least when confronted with them. In this paper, I answer such an argument by appealing to sceptical agnosticism. A sceptical agnostic is not only undecided about the existence of a perfectly good and omnipotent God, but also believes that we cannot make any judgement about whether or not seemingly gratuitous evil probably is gratuitous. I argue that such agnosticism has several advantages compared with sceptical theism.

This paper introduces the God in a Box Paradox, a critique of classical monotheistic descriptions of God. The paradox arises from the tension between two claims: (1) that God exists beyond logic and reason, and (2) that God can still be meaningfully described in logical terms such as “infinite,” “eternal,” or “uncaused cause.” If God is inside the bounds of logic, then contradictions apply and His definition collapses. If God is outside logic, then all descriptions of Him lose meaning, rendering (...) theology incoherent. Thus, either way, the concept of God as traditionally described cannot avoid paradox. (shrink)

From 2016 to 2024, we conducted a survey of philosophers to explore their views on proofs of God’s existence. The study asked participants about their overall assessment of such proofs, their perspectives on the definition of the concept of “God,” the most compelling theistic and atheistic arguments, the cultural impact of these proofs, whether Kant undermined natural theology, and their recommendations for relevant literature. 212 interviews with philosophers from 18 countries were collected. Among the contributors are Daniel Dennett, Simon Blackburn, (...) Colin McGinn, Linda Zagzebski, Xing Nan, Muhammad U. Faruque, On-cho Ng, Daniel Stoljar, John Milbank, Robert Kane, Vadim Vasilyev, Paolo Livieri, Timothy O’Connor, Eric Olson, Hamidreza Ayatollahy, Mikhail Epstein, Graham Oppy, Nazif Muhtaroglu, Gunnar Hindrichs, Eleonore Stump, Steve Fuller, Anton Koch, Samuel Lebens, Graham Priest, Philip Goff, Richard Swinburne, Graham Harman, Gunnar Hindrichs, Peter van Inwagen, and numerous other voices in contemporary philosophy. -/- The study results culminated in the book Loginov E.V. (Ed.) The Existence of God? Contemporary Positions and Approaches. Saint-Petersburg: Umozrenie, 2025. 928 pages (in Russian). The collected data were analyzed and compared with existing literature in the field. -/- Here are some notable findings from the study: 1. The Russian philosophical community was found to be significantly more theistic than its English-speaking counterpart. According to data from Chalmers and Bourget, only 14.6% (2009) and 12.5% (2020) of philosophers accept theism (or lean toward it). In contrast, data from surveys by the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies (Besedin, Volkov, Onosov, et al.) show 46% (2015) and 44.7% (2024). According to Chalmers and Bourget, the proportion of atheists (including those leaning toward atheism) is 72.8% and 74.2%, respectively, while data from MCCS indicate 21% and 28.5%. Interestingly, a similar survey among Chinese philosophers excluded the topic of God altogether. 2. 60% of our respondents view arguments for and against God as rational arguments, while the rest perceive them more as meditations or something similar. The evidence for the existence of God is rational arguments: 78% of analytic philosophers are in favor and only 27% of continentals are in favor. 3. Classical theism and the perfect being theology remain more popular in academic philosophy than alternative concepts such as weak God (an imperfect creator), process theology, the theology of a dead God, dark theology, and so on. 4. Only 19% of respondents believe that Kant refuted rational theology. An interesting trend emerged: 90% of analytic philosophers deny that Kant’s critique of theoretical proofs of God’s existence destroyed rational theology, whereas 80% of continental philosophers are more inclined to agree with this statement. Thus, a statistical divide between analytic and continental philosophical traditions is evident. 5. The ontological argument was the most popular argument for theism in our survey. This is surprising since Chalmers and Bourget’s data suggest it is the least popular argument. We hypothesize that this discrepancy arises because our survey included a higher percentage of continental philosophers. Hypothetically, when asked to identify an interesting argument for theism, a continental philosopher is more likely to choose the ontological argument. 6. The philosophers most frequently mentioned in our study were: Kant, Anselm, Aquinas, Hume, Plantinga, Plato, Descartes, Swinburne, Leibniz, and Aristotle. (shrink)

Tal como afirma Carl Schmitt sobre Bakunin: ¿Son los anarquistas teólogos de la anti-teología? ¿Es la ideología anarquista una mera transposición o secularización de conceptos religiosos? Si nos centramos en el estudio del cine anarquista, estas preguntas parecen chocar –o no– con los viejos sentimientos antirreligiosos que aparecen en sus guiones; son films repletos de escenas anticlericales y de violencia espontánea contra los símbolos católicos, donde se caricaturiza a toda la clase religiosa y la Iglesia es representada como una institución (...) inmoral que oculta casos de religiosos que perpetran abusos sexuales y todo tipo de reaccionarias actividades delictivas. Ahora bien, tras esa estereotípica pasión anticlerical, también encontramos cinematográficamente que estos anarquistas intentan rescatar aquellos principios cristianos con los que simpatizan, incorporándolos a la ideología anarquista. Teniendo en cuenta este escenario, el objetivo de este trabajo es descifrar hasta qué punto el anarquismo cinematográfico, aun negando en apariencia la teología y el milenarismo, recoge en sus textos fílmicos usos retóricos, persuasorios y propagandísticos de terminologías religiosas e incluso de rituales de corte mesiánico. (shrink)

Can one who takes Scripture to be the word of God, and who takes their independent moral judgements to be reliable, reconcile such beliefs with Scriptural injunctions that appear to permit and require evil actions? That is the Problem of Divinely Prescribed Evil. An ethics-first solution takes our independent moral judgements to be reliable and attempts to reconcile them with seemingly divinely prescribed evil. Amir Saemi (2024) offers a prima facie promising ethics-first solution: take Scriptural injunctions to be not moral, (...) but legal. In this paper, I critically examine this proposal. After raising worries about Saemi’s argument for his solution, I explore his analogy with the ethics and laws of war, raise three concerns for his solution, and present a dilemma which is, ultimately, an argument against Saemi’s solution. I end with some suggestions for further inquiry into this recalcitrant problem, and analytic philosophy of religion about Islam. (shrink)

Drawing on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, Duncan Pritchard argues for a position he calls quasi-fideism. Quasi-Fideism is the view that hinge commitments such as “God exists” are exempt from rational scrutiny within the language game of religion. However, other religious beliefs, which are not part of the framework of hinge commitments, can be rationally assessed and evaluated. This view is to be contrasted with pure fideism, in which all aspects of religion are exempt from rational scrutiny. The success of quasi-fideism depends (...) on demonstrating that “God exists” is, indeed, a hinge commitment. In this paper, I will review and criticize some of Pritchard’s reasons for arguing that God’s existence should be considered a hinge commitment. Additionally, I will offer reasons why “God exists” cannot be a hinge commitment. Considering the rational problem of evil, single and multiple divine attributes, and the emotional problem of evil, I will show that the non-circular rational criticism of God’s existence is possible. Following the distinction between subjective and objective certainty in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, I will suggest that a more fruitful line of inquiry for Wittgensteinians is to examine God as a subjective certainty. (shrink)

Noah McKay ( 2023 ) has proposed a novel argument against naturalism. He argues that while theism can explain our ability to arrive at a body of moral beliefs that are generally accurate and complete’, naturalism fails to do so. He argues that naturalism has only social and biological grounds to account for our moral beliefs, which means that naturalism can only claim pragmatic value for our moral beliefs. McKay dedicates his paper to arguing against naturalism. This paper will focus (...) on theism and examine whether theism can explain what naturalism cannot. Theism could rely on guided evolution or the miraculous intervention of God. In contrast to naturalism, theism has revelatory and supernatural grounds for our moral beliefs. This paper will demonstrate some of the challenges that these grounds would encounter. Finally, McKay’s argument implies a dichotomy between unguided evolution and theism, which rests on a problematic assumption about evolutionary theory; by abandoning the assumption, the dichotomy also dissolves. (shrink)

Together with the new translation of the Principia with the 1922 Preface by the editors as this collection, published in 2023 at Bompiani, this volume offers a perspective on the work of one of the 20th century leading moral philosophers. Moore, with Russell and Wittgenstein, is believed to have been one of the fathers of analytic philosophy. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Anscombe pointed to Moore in Modern Moral Philosophy as a contributor to the degeneration of English-language ethics and the 20th-century moral confusion. (...) She indicated Wittgenstein, Aristotle and Aquinas as the source of remedies for prevailing bewilderment. The essays translated in this collection highlight lesser-known aspects of Moore’s work. For those who only know the image of Moore as a ‘professional’ philosopher, and one of the fathers of analytic philosophy, it may be interesting to see him oscillate between the opposite poles of ‘naturalism’, a nostalgia for religion or at least for a substitute to it, alternately Neo-Hegelian idealism or a faith in beauty and love. Firstly, the collection includes two unpublished manuscripts, seven never reprinted essays, three reprinted but never translated, and only two already translated into in Italian, thus giving the possibility of a stereoscopic reading of Moore’s work that would rescue it from the simplified image that Moore himself had created in the 1930s and analytic philosophers have preserved by inertia. Secondly, it includes early writings verging on ethical issues from which the framework of themes and problems from which the answer outlined in the Principia Ethica to Socrates’ question ‘how should I live’ becomes clearer. Thirdly, the collection touches on aspects for which Moore was indebted to 19th-century British debates, which he did not easily find a way out of. As Keynes said, Moore had ‘one foot in the twentieth century’ but – we would add – not one but two or three in the nineteenth. With the formulation of the argument of the naturalistic fallacy, he opened the discussion of one of the themes of analytic ethics, but with his critique of intuitionism, hedonism, evolutionism, ‘metaphysics’ and his re-proposition of the Para-Hegelian notion of ‘organic unity’ he was fully immersed in the 19th-century debates. The discussion of his theses, which was for a century a discussion of something no one had really understood, can now start anew perhaps in the right way, from an understanding of the terms in which the problems really were posed at the time which Baldwin and Regan’s historiographical contributions by have made possible (and to which Mario Micheletti could have contributed if someone had been able to read literature in Italian). (shrink)

According to Perfect Being Theism, God is the absolutely perfect (i.e., greatest possible) being. The notion of absolute perfection can be analyzed in different ways. On one interpretation, to be absolutely perfect requires the exemplification of all absolute perfections. On another interpretation, to be perfect requires the exemplification of the best possible combination of perfections. It seems that the latter analysis is better than the former, because it does not fall prey to the problem of incompatible perfections, viz., that there (...) (probably) are perfections that cannot be coexemplified. Here I argue that even if perfect being theists accept the latter analysis, the problem of incompatibility does not go away. I argue that perfections are (probably) incomparable: it is false that some perfection is better than, worse than, or equally good to another perfection. If so, then it is impossible or at least extremely difficult to say that among the combination of perfections there are, there is one that is best among them. I also argue that adopting the former analysis with some restrictions (as Mark Murphy does) leads to the same incompatibility and incomparability problems. (shrink)

I’ve argued that those who endorse the argument from divine hiddenness must give up all pure de jure objections to theism, and this means that endorsing the argument is costly for atheists. Benjamin Curtis claims that this isn’t a significant cost for atheists. I show that—contrary to Curtis—there is a significant cost, and spell out why this is so. Furthermore, I show that my argument functions as a new argument for affirming reformed epistemology—the view that if theism is true, belief (...) in God is probably rational. (shrink)

One important objection to the Condition Of ReasonNable Epistemic Access (CORNEA) is that it is incompatible with inductive evidence. This objection, however, relies on a counterfactual interpretation of CORNEA, and Wykstra and Perrine have shown that CORNEA need not be interpreted in that way, but rather in terms of conditional probability. Here, we show that there is an important gap in this recent response to the counterfactual-based criticism of CORNEA. We argue that the main response to this criticism ultimately depends (...) on a specific semantics for counterfactual conditionals. More specifically, it ultimately depends on the denial of the conditional excluded middle principle. We then investigate and suggest a hitherto unknown defense of CORNEA’s counterfactual interpretation. (shrink)

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is perhaps the most solid and widely discussed argument for a caused creation of the universe. The usual objections to the argument mainly focus on the second premise. In this paper we discuss the dependency of the first premise on the topological structure of the space-time manifold adopted for the underlying cosmological model. It is shown that in chronology-violating space-times the first premise can also be violated. The chronology-violation, in turn, requires a massive violation of the (...) so-called energy conditions which might have observational effects that are briefly discussed here. Hence, astronomical observations could be relevant for the validity of the metaphysical argument. In this sense, it is possible to talk of “observational theology”. (shrink)

A premise of the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency says that no contingent fact can explain why there are any contingent facts at all. David Hume and Paul Edwards famously denied this premise, arguing that if every fact has an explanation in terms of further facts ad infinitum, then they all do. This is known as the Hume–Edwards Principle (HEP). In this paper, I examine the cosmological argument from contingency within a framework of metaphysical explanation or ground and defend a (...) ground-theoretic version of HEP which says, roughly, that the plurality of contingent facts is grounded in its members. (shrink)

Is skeptical theism tenable once one acknowledges, as proponents of that view do, one's cognitive limitations vis-à-vis religious matters? In this article, I aim to answer that question both by examining the apparent radical skeptical implications of the skeptical component of skeptical theism and by comparing this view with fideism and Pyrrhonism, which also lay emphasis on our cognitive limitations. My ultimate purpose is to determine which of the three stances it makes more sense to adopt once the limitations of (...) human cognitive powers are recognized. (shrink)

I raise the following six moral objections to the way God evaluates us. (i) He violates the human right to free thought. (ii) He makes the dubious assumption that it is praiseworthy and blameworthy, respectively, to believe and disbelieve that he exists. (iii) He excessively rewards believers and excessively punishes disbelievers. (iv) He only assigns to his evaluatees the two extreme grades: eternal bliss and eternal damnation. (v) He overlooks diverse factors related to the belief of God. (vi) He is (...) silent on the issue of whether to evaluate animals. Therefore, God, who is allegedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, does not exist. (shrink)

We argue that the evil-god challenge is not an additional challenge for theists above and beyond the (much older) gap problem. One version of the evil-god challenge is merely a specific instance of the gap problem, and another is dependent on that specific instance of the gap problem. Therefore, the various solutions to the gap problem that theists have developed double as responses to the evil-god challenge, placing the evil-god challenge in a more vulnerable position than has been supposed.

This work is the transcript of a theological dialogue I had with ChatGPT that spanned a couple of days. I began it merely out of curiosity over how ChatGPT might respond to questions and challenges I posed. As it progressed, I became increasingly impressed with the nuance, depth, and relevance of its responses. The dialogue became, for me, something of a contemplative exercise. I still don’t know quite how to understand the ability of generative A.I. to respond with such (apparent) (...) understanding and even insight. -/- I’ve decided to post this dialogue, not only because of the puzzle it poses concerning A.I, but even more, because I believe that the theological conclusions ‘we’ arrived at have real merit. -/- In the end, the theological views expressed here echo those that I’ve expressed in other works of mine, but the expression of these views are enhanced by the way ChatGPT picks up on them, rephrases them, elaborates upon them, and often places them in the context of the classical theological tradition. -/- I might add that I have been an A.I. skeptic for some time now, concerned over the potential dangers of A.I. in general. But this dialogue, anyway, reveals its potential use as a vehicle for reflection, even profound reflection. -/- . (shrink)

Tarihte herhalde çok az soru Tanrı’nın varlığı sorusu kadar sık sorulmuş, çok yanıtlanmış ve verilen birbirinden farklı onca yanıta rağmen kesin bir sonuca ulaştırılamayıp tartışılmaya devam etmiştir. Yine de geçmişe dönüp baktığımızda bu soruya verilen farklı yanıtların farklı uygarlıkların inşa edilmesine, bazılarının yıkılmasına, acımasız çatışmalara ve her şeye rağmen kucaklaşmalara da vesile olduğunu görüyoruz. Tanrı var mı? Varsa onu nasıl bilebiliriz? Tanrı yoksa her şey mubah mı? İnsan aklı ilahi olanı kavrayabilir mi? Tanrı’nın varlığı ahlaklı olmanın şartı mı? Evren akıllı (...) bir tasarımcının imzasını taşıyor mu? Bu kitapta felsefeci William David Beck, bu sorulara tarihte verilen yanıtları ve bu konudaki tartışmaları ele alarak meselenin genel ve tarihsel bir tablosunu bize sunuyor. Platon, Aristoteles, Marcus Aurelius gibi Eski Yunan ve Roma düşünürlerinden Anselmus, Thomas Aquinas, Augustinus ve Yahudi-Hıristiyan geleneğine, Doğu’nun bilgelerine, İbni Rüşd, Fârâbî ve Gazzâlî gibi İslam düşünürlerinden Alvin Plantinga, Graham Oppy, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Max Tegmark gibi Batılı modern ilahiyatçılara, bilim insanlarına ve Yeni Ateizm hareketine kadar uzanan bir çizgide “Tanrı var mı?” sorusuna verilen çeşitli yanıtları ve bu yanıtlara sunulan akılcı gerekçeleri ortaya koyarak soruya felsefece bir yanıt vermenin nasıl bir iş olduğunu da gösteriyor. (shrink)

Sam Harris, a previously unknown neuroscientist, single-handedly generated the New Atheism with his best-selling book The End of Faith, which quickly became a huge best-seller following its release in 2004. Sam Harris: Critical Responses is a collection of essays criticizing different aspects of Harris’s thinking from a range of diverse perspectives—left and right, Christian and atheist, philosophical, psychological, and political. These twenty serious criticisms of Sam Harris, written by experts from diverse political and ideological backgrounds, are often severe while maintaining (...) an approach that is reasonable and respectful. (shrink)

[REVIEW] "... this book is a significant contribution to the literature on Hume." --CHOICE.

Many philosophers of theistic religions claim (1) that there are powerful a posteriori arguments for God’s existence that make it rational to believe that He exists and at the same time maintain (2) that God always has the freedom to do otherwise. In this article, I argue that these two positions are inconsistent because the empirical evidence on which the a posteriori arguments for God’s existence rest can be explained better by positing the existence of a God-like being without the (...) freedom to do otherwise. (shrink)

This paper offers a defence of metaphysical naturalism, in the context of the Fine Tuning argument. Theistic objections to the Multiverse (MV) hypothesis are considered, specifically the claim that the MV hypothesis commits the Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy (IGF) and, as per the This Universe Objection (TUO), that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence. It is argued that the IGF claim moved the goalposts when it comes to assessing the validity of the MV hypothesis. The Cosmic Slot Machine analogy will (...) be used to demonstrate how the This Universe Objection (TUO), fails to adequately account for the anthropic principle (or selection effect) and how the MV hyptothesis does satisfy the Requirement for Total Evidence. -/- With respect to the Naturalistic Single Universe (NSU), the implications of the ex-nihilonihil- fit principle, for evaluating the epistemic probability of a Life Permitting Universe (LPU)under the NSU hypothesis, are considered. It is argued that the ex nihilo nihil fit principle entails that an LPU is not improbable under the NSU hypothesis. (shrink)

Perfect being theism is the view that the perfect being exists and the property being-perfect is the property being-God. According to the strong analysis of perfection, a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies all perfections. On the other hand, the weak analysis of perfection claims that a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies the best possible combination of compatible perfections. Strong perfect being theism accepts the former analysis while weak perfect being theism accepts the latter. In (...) this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to reject both versions of perfect being theism. On the one hand, strong perfect being theism is false if there are incompatible perfections; I argue that there are. On the other hand, if either no comparison can be made between sets of perfections, or they are equally good, then there is no best possible set of perfections. I argue for the antecedent of this conditional statement, concluding that weak perfect being theism is false. In the absence of other analyses of perfection, I conclude that we have reason to reject perfect being theism. (shrink)

In his article ‘Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism’ Stephen Maitzen (2006) develops a permutation of the argument from divine hiddenness which focuses on the uneven distribution of theistic belief around the globe. Max Baker-Hytch (2016) responds to this argument by providing a theodicy which appeals to the fact that humans are epistemically interdependent. In this article I argue that Baker-Hytch's response is at best incomplete and at worst relies on a faulty modal judgement. After exploring some ways Baker-Hytch (...) might salvage his theodicy and maintaining their failure, I conclude with the success of Maitzen's argument. (shrink)

This paper develops an internal critique of Graham Oppy’s metaphilosophy of religion – his theories of argumentation, worldview comparison, and epistemic justification. First, it presents Oppy’s views and his main reasons in their favor. Second, it argues that Oppy is committed to two claims – that only truth-conducive reasons can justify philosophical belief and that such justification depends entirely on one’s judgments about the theoretical virtues of comprehensive worldviews – that jointly entail the unacceptable conclusion that philosophical beliefs cannot be (...) justified. Third, it briefly argues that of his two claims, it is his thoroughgoing coherentism that should be rejected. (shrink)

This is a Portuguese translation of Jeffrey J. Jordan (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: The Key Thinkers. London and New York: Continuum. pp. 159-86 (2011). -/- Abstract -/- 1.1 The Concept of Evil The problem of evil, in the sense relevant here, concerns the question of the reasonableness of believing in the existence of a deity with certain characteristics. In most discussions, the deity is God, understood as an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person. But the problem of evil also arises, (...) as Hume saw very clearly, for deities that are less than all-powerful, less than all-knowing, and less than morally perfect. What is the relevant concept of evil, in this context? Here it is useful to distinguish between axiological concepts and deontological ones. First, there are judgments about whether certain states of affairs make the world better or worse, whether those states are good or bad, desirable or undesirable. Such normative concepts – of good and bad, or desirable and undesirable, states of affairs – are axiological concepts. Secondly, there are judgments about the rightness and wrongness of actions, about what one morally ought or ought not do, of what one’s duty is, of whether a certain action violates someone rights, and these concepts – of the rightness and wrongness of actions, of duties, of the rights of individuals, of what one should or should not do – are deontological concepts. Given this distinction, should the problem of evil be understood axiologically or deontologically? Often, and I think most commonly in this context, evils are equated with states of affairs that, all things considered, are bad or undesirable: they are states of affairs that make the world a worse place. But one can also interpret the problem of evil in a deontological fashion, equating evils with states of affairs that a person should have prevented, if he could have done so. Elsewhere (2008, 105-6), I have argued that the deontological interpretation is preferable. But for present purposes, either interpretation will be fine. -/- 1.2 Evil and the Reasonableness of Belief in the Existence of God That many things in the world – tsunamis, earthquakes, the suffering of non-human animals and innocent children, human actions such as the carrying out of the Holocaust – certainly appear to be evil is not a controversial matter. But whether such things are really evils, all things considered, is disputed. Assume, however, that the world does continue genuine evils, and not merely apparent ones. How, then does the existence of such evils bear upon the reasonableness of belief in the existence of God? First, the existence of evils can be used to show that certain arguments for the existence of God cannot establish that conclusion, or even render it probable. For some arguments, of course, one need not appeal to evil to make that point. If someone argues for the existence of a first cause, or an unmoved mover, or a necessary being having its necessity of itself, and then claims that this is what everyone understands by the term “God”, one can point out that no reason has been offered for thinking that the entity in question is even a person, let alone omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. By contrast, with the type of argument that Hume was concerned with when he discussed the problem of evil – namely, arguments from the existence of order in the world to the existence of a designer, or intelligent cause of that order – one does have a type of argument that, if sound, shows that there is a person who, even if not omnipotent and omniscient, is at least extremely powerful and very knowledgeable. But such arguments do not support for conclusions about the moral character of such a person, and so it is at this point that the existence of evils becomes crucial. For in providing a reason for holding that the one is not justified in attributing even moral goodness to such a being, let alone moral perfection, it supports the conclusion that that argument in question cannot be a successful argument for the existence of God. The existence of evils, then, can serve to block arguments for the existence of God. But a second, and very familiar possibility, is that the existence of evils can also provide the basis of arguments against the existence of God. A very important distinction here is between deductive, or logical incompatibility, versions of the argument from evil, and inductive, or evidential, or probabilistic versions of the argument. According to the former, there are facts about the existence of evils in the world that are logically incompatible with the existence of God. Thus, some have held that the mere existence of any evil whatsoever is incompatible with the existence of God; others, that that certain types of evil – such as natural evils – are incompatible with the existence of God; and others, that it is the amount of evil in the world, or the fact that some people suffer horrendous evils, that logically precludes the existence of God. Inductive (or evidential, or probabilistic) versions of the argument from evil, by contrast, do not claim that there are facts about the evils in the world that are logically incompatible with the existence of God. The claim is rather that there are facts about the evils found in the world that render the existence of God at the very least unlikely, and perhaps extremely so. -/- 1.3 Hume’s Use of the Existence of Evils The preceding discussion suggests two very different ways in which Hume might be employing the existence of evils. First, he might be appealing to the existence of evils simply to undercut certain arguments for the existence of God. In particular, he might be appealing to evils to show that, whatever the merits of the argument from order to design may be, it can nether establish, nor render probable, the existence of a morally good deity. Secondly, Hume might be advancing a version of the argument from evil, and that in turn could take the form either of an argument that claims that facts about evil are logically incompatible with the existence of God, or of an argument that claims, more modestly, that the apparent evils found in the world render the existence of God unlikely. (shrink)

Paul Draper has recently developed an account of intrinsic probability according to which a theory's intrinsic probability is determined by its modesty and coherence. He employs this account in an argument that Source Physicalism (SP) and Source Idealism (SI) are equally intrinsically probable. Since SP and SI are not exhaustive, and Theism is one very specific version of SI, it follows that the intrinsic probability of Theism is very low. I argue here that considerations of fundamentality show that more work (...) needs to be done to defend the claim that P(SP) = P(SI). (shrink)

In his article ‘Divine hiddenness and the demographics of theism’ (Religious Studies, 42 (2006), 177-191) Stephen Maitzen develops a novel version of the atheistic argument from divine hiddenness according to which the lopsided distribution of theistic belief throughout the world’s populations is much more to be expected given naturalism than given theism. I try to meet Maitzen’s challenge by developing a theistic explanation for this lopsidedness. The explanation I offer appeals to various goods that are intimately connected with the human (...) cognitive constitution, and in particular, with the way in which we depend upon social belief forming practices for our acquisition of much of our knowledge about the world – features about us that God would value but that also make probable a lopsided distribution of theistic belief, or so I argue. (shrink)