Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 7, July 2022.

The evil-god challenge is a challenge for theists to show that belief in God is more reasonable than belief in evil-god. In this article, I show that whether or not evil-god exists, belief in evil-god is unjustified. But this isn’t the case for belief in God: belief in God is probably justified if theism is true. And hence belief in God is (significantly) more reasonable than belief in evil-god, and the evil-god challenge has been answered.

In an essay titled Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge, Eleonore Stump rejects the idea that Aquinas's epistemology is foundationalist. I agree with Stump, and share in her conviction that the Angelic doctor developed instead what can be seen as a kind of theological reliabilism. In this article, I intend to take her position a step further. First, I would like to show that Thomistic reliabilism falls into a vicious circle if seen as based on a merely rational theism. Second, (...) I am going to argue that for Aquinas such reliabilism depends instead on Christian faith, construed as the act of believing the revealed truth by virtue of the love relationship that God allows human beings to have with him. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of religion have turned their attention to the topic of faith. Given the ubiquity of the word “faith” both in and out of religious contexts, many of them have chosen to begin their forays by offering an analysis of faith. But it seems that there are many kinds of faith: religious faith, non‐religious faith, interpersonal faith, and propositional faith, to name a few. In this article, I discuss analyses of faith that have been offered and (...) point out the dimensions along which they differ. (shrink)

الهیات طبیعی فهمی الهیاتی است که مستقل از حقایق وحیانی و تنها از طریق معارف بشری در پی ارائۀ دلیلی موجّه برای باور به وجود خداوند است. الهیات طبیعی همواره به عنوان حلقۀ ارتباط همدلانه میان علم و دین مورد توجه بوده است. زیرا اگر منظور از دین حقایق وحیانی و منظور از علم مجموعه معارف بشری است، الهیات طبیعی را می‌توان همواره تبلور تلاش خداباوران برای برقراری گونه‌ای ارتباط میان دین و معارف بشری دانست. آیا چنین شیوه‌ای اعتبار دارد (...) و در صورت اعتبار آیا ضرورت نیز دارد؟ پلانتینگا در این خصوص دو دیدگاه متفاوت را در حیات فکری خود برگزیده است. او در دیدگاه اول نه تنها الهیات طبیعی را غیرضروری بلکه آن را همچون الحاد طبیعی بی‌اعتبار می‌خواند، و در عین حال با تشبیه باور به وجود خدا به باور به دیگر اذهان بر عقلانیت آن تأکید می‌کند. اما در دیدگاه دوم، علی‌رغم تأکید بر نفی ضرورت الهیات طبیعی، آن را به لحاظ معرفتی معتبر می‌داند و کارکردهایی را برای آن برمی‌شمارد. (shrink)

El presente artículo introduce el lector a la filosofía analítica de la religión desde un punto de vista histórico y haciendo énfasis en su evolución. El objetivo es doble: primero dar a conocer una nueva disciplina que se ha desarrollado de manera notoria dentro del habla inglesa pero que ha sido ignorada dentro de la filosofía de habla hispana; segundo, comprender su nacimiento y algunas de sus principales características.

Reformed epistemology, roughly, is the thesis that religious belief can be rational without argument. After providing some background, I present Plantinga’s defense of reformed epistemology and its influence on religious debunking arguments. I then discuss three objections to Plantinga’s arguments that arise from the following topics: skeptical theism, cognitive science of religion, and basicality. I then show how reformed epistemology has recently been undergirded by a number of epistemological theories, including phenomenal conservatism and virtue epistemology. I end by noting that (...) a good objection to reformed epistemology must criticize either a substantive epistemological theory or the application of that theory to religious belief; I also show that the famous Great Pumpkin Objection is an example of the former. (shrink)

Looking back over the last 40 years of work in the philosophy of religion provides a fascinating vantage point from which to assess the state of the discipline today. I describe central features of American philosophy of religion in 1970 and reconstruct the last 40 years as a progression through four main stages. This analysis offers an overarching framework from which to examine the major contributions and debates of process philosophy of religion during the same period. The major thinkers, topics, (...) positions, and controversies are presented, analyzed, and critiqued. In the concluding section I offer a critical appraisal of the state of the field today based on the results of these historical analyses. (shrink)

Agnosticism has had some bad press in recent years. Nonetheless, I hope to show that agnosticism can be so formulated that it is no less philosophically respectable than theism and atheism. This is not a mere philosophical exercise; for, as it happens, the formulated position is--I think--the one to which I subscribe. I include a qualification here since it may be that the position to which I subscribe is better characterised as fallibilist atheism--but more of that anon.

In mainstream analytic epistemology, Reformed theology has made its presence prominently felt in Reformed epistemology, the view of religious belief according to which religious beliefs can be properly basic and warranted when formed by the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis, an inborn capacity or faculty for belief in God that can be prompted to generate certain religious beliefs when presented with things (e.g., certain majestic aspects of creation). A major competitor to Reformed epistemology is Wittgensteinian quasi-fideism, a position drawn (...) from the epistemology of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, according to which some foundational religious commitments are not properly basic beliefs but some kind of apodictic, unshakeable certainties that form part of the structure of one’s rationality and worldview. I argue that the Reformed tradition has contained elements of quasi-fideism at least as far back as Calvin’s account of faith from the Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 3, chapter 2. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 7, July 2022.

In this paper, I argue that hinge propositions are ways of acting that constitute abilities or skills. My starting point is Moyal-Sharrock's account of hinge propositions. However, Moyal-Sharrock's account leaves gaps to be filled, as it does not offer a unified explanation of the origin of our ungrounded grounds. Her account also lacks resources to respond to the issue of demarcation, since it does not provide a criterion for distinguishing ways of acting that can legitimately fulfill the role of ungrounded (...) grounds from those that cannot. Without an answer to this issue, the relativistic threat is serious. I then propose that by narrowing the ways of acting to those that are constitutive of abilities, we can deal with the relativistic threat. I provide an ecological approach to abilities through which I explain why abilities are reality-soaked and therefore why the ways of acting that constitute them are legitimate ungrounded grounds. Based on that approach, I provide an answer to the issue of demarcation that defuses the relativistic threat. (shrink)

Deontological evidentialism is the claim that we ought to form and maintain our beliefs in accordance with our evidence. In this paper, I criticize two arguments in its defense. I begin by discussing Berit Broogard’s use of the distinction between narrow-scope and wide-scope requirements against W.K. Clifford’s moral defense of. I then use this very distinction against a defense of inspired by Stephen Grimm’s more recent claims about the moral source of epistemic normativity. I use this distinction once again to (...) argue that Hilary Kornblith’s criticism of Richard Feldman’s defense of is incomplete. Finally, I argue that Feldman’s defense is insensitive to the relation between normative requirements and privileged values: values that have normative authority over us. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemology of religion may conveniently be treated as adebate over whether evidentialism applies to thebelief-component of religious faith, or whether we should insteadadopt a more permissive epistemology. Here evidentialism is theinitially plausible position that a belief is justified only if``it is proportioned to the evidence''. For example, supposea local weather forecaster has noticed that over the two hundred yearssince records began a wetter than average Winter is followed in 85% ofcases by a hotter than average Summer. Then, assuming for (...) simplicitythat the records are reliable, the forecaster is justified in believingwith less than full confidence that this Winter, which is wetter thanaverage, will be followed by a hotter than average Summer. Butevidentialism implies that it would not be justified to have fullbelief, that is belief with 100% confidence. Again, consider someonewho has a hunch that this Summer will be hotter than averagebut cannot justify that hunch further. Hunches are not consideredevidence, so the belief is not considered justified. If, however, thehuncher can cite a good track record of hunches about the weather thathave turned out correct then the belief would be consideredjustified. For although hunches are not considered evidence, memoriesabout past hunches are, as are the observations that corroborated thepast hunches. (shrink)

Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, (...) and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification. (shrink)

Reformed epistemology involves a view of knowledge of God which Kelly James Clark and Justin Barrett have brought cognitive science to bear on. They argue that the cognitive science of religio...

According to evidentialists about inferential justification, an agent’s evidence—and only her evidence—determines which inferences she would be justified in making, whether or not she in fact makes them. But there seem to be cases in which two agents would be justified in making different inferences from a shared body of evidence, merely in virtue of the different competences those agents possess. These sorts of cases suggest that evidence does not have the pride of place afforded to it by evidentialists; competence (...) seems to play at least as important a role as evidence in explaining which inferences an agent would be justified in making. -/- In this paper, I consider how two versions of evidentialism about inferential justification might try to account for the role of competence in inference, and I present problems specific to each version. I end by sketching and briefly defending an alternative to these evidentialist views, “inferential dogmatism”. While dogmatic views have gotten some attention in debates around non-inferential justification, they have largely been ignored in debates around inferential justification and are to that extent novel. (shrink)

Two cross-currents from the twentieth century have affected evangelical apologetics: apologetic methodology and Carl F. H. Henry. Henry was considered the dean of American evangelicalism, who shaped the movement by providing a rational and propositional apologetic. Henry also engaged the issues in the midst of a larger question of apologetic methodology, primarily, between presuppositionalists and evidentialists. This article continues to address the two cross-currents by offering a Henrecian evaluation of Michael Licona’s new historiographical approach to defending the resurrection. In particular, (...) the article attempts to evaluate Licona’s evidentialist approach through the lens of Henry’s presuppositional approach. (shrink)

If you were to take a time machine and travel back to the 1980s, Catholic epistemology would look drastically different than it does today, at least in analytic circles. One of those drastic changes relates to whether Catholic epistemology is consistent with Reformed epistemology. Another issue relates to whether St. Thomas Aquinas was a classical evidentialist. In this paper, I survey recent developments in Catholic epistemology. I do this by first looking at Gregory Stacey's recent work arguing the Catholic Church's (...) teaching on faith is best situated in a Reformed epistemological framework. I then engage decades old objections to Reformed epistemology from a Catholic perspective. I respond to these objections partly by surveying recent work by Catholic epistemologists. The paper then takes a turn to look at the recent scholarship on Aquinas' epistemology. I show that there is now an emerging consensus that Aquinas belongs not to a hard evidentialist camp as it was previously thought, but rather an externalist friendly tradition. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that the following Rule should be part of any characterization of science: Claims concerning specific disputed facts should be endorsed only if they are sufficiently supported by the application of validated methods of research or discovery, and moreover that acceptance of this Rule should lead one to reject religious belief. This paper argues, first, that the Rule, as stated, should not be accepted as it suffers from a number of problems. And second, that even if (...) the Rule were to be acceptable, it should not lead one to reject religious belief. (shrink)

Recently, hinge epistemologists have applied Wittgenstein’s metaphor of hinges to religious belief. The most prominent proposal in this context is Pritchard’s “quasi-fideism”. This paper examines some historical precursors of the notion of religious hinges, with the aim of shedding more light on it. After outlining the framework of hinge epistemology and its application to religious belief, I briefly examine the views of Thomas Reid and John Henry Newman as acknowledged forerunners of this framework (or cognate views). Next, I turn to (...) two hitherto unacknowledged forerunners, the pragmatists William James and Charles S. Peirce. I then focus on some insights that the pragmatists offer. On this basis, I conclude that religious beliefs are a special class of hinges. As such, while they can be defended through hinge epistemology, they cannot constitute a model through which we can interpret the nature of hinges in general. (shrink)

In this paper I explore, in sections 2 and 3, respectively, Herman Dooyeweerd’s notion of naive experience and the notion of common sense as found in the writings of Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore. I argue in section 4 that naive experience and common sense are assigned a structurally similar functional role by their advocates—viz., the role of touchstone for philosophy. In the final section I stage a conversation between Dooyeweerd and Reid about the touchstones they adopt.