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Defenseless

In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil. Indiana University Press. pp. 193--205 (1996)

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  1. Skeptical Theism and Morriston’s Humean Argument from Evil.Timothy Perrine - 2019 - Sophia 58 (2):115-135.
    There’s a growing sense among philosophers of religion that Humean arguments from evil are some of the most formidable arguments against theism, and skeptical theism fails to undermine those arguments because they fail to make the inferences skeptical theists criticize. In line with this trend, Wes Morriston has recently formulated a Humean argument from evil, and his chief defense of it is that skeptical theism is irrelevant to it. Here I argue that skeptical theism is relevant to Humean arguments. To (...)
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  • Skeptical Theism and the 'Too-Much-Skepticism' Objection.Michael C. Rea - 2014 - In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil. Wiley. pp. 482-506.
    In the first section, I characterize skeptical theism more fully. This is necessary in order to address some important misconceptions and mischaracterizations that appear in the essays by Maitzen, Wilks, and O’Connor. In the second section, I describe the most important objections they raise and group them into four “families” so as to facilitate an orderly series of responses. In the four sections that follow, I respond to the objections.
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  • Some Considerations Concerning CORNEA, Global Skepticism, and Trust.Kenneth Boyce - 2014 - In Trent Dougherty Justin McBrayer (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays (Oxford University Press). pp. 103-114.
    Skeptical theists have been charged with being committed to global skepticism. I consider this objection as it applies to a common variety of skeptical theism based on an epistemological principle that Stephen Wykstra labeled “CORNEA.” I show how a recent reformulation of CORNEA (provided by Stephen Wykstra and Timothy Perrine) affords us with a formal apparatus that allows us to see just where this objection gets a grip on that view, as well as what is needed for an adequate response. (...)
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  • The Father of Lies?Hud Hudson - 2014 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 5:147-166.
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  • The moral skepticism objection to skeptical theism.Stephen Maitzen - 2014 - In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil. Wiley. pp. 444--457.
    Skeptical theism combines theism with skepticism about the ability of human beings to know God's reasons for permitting suffering. In recent years, it has become perhaps the most prominent theistic response from philosophers to the evidential argument from evil. Some critics of skeptical theism charge that it implies positions that theists and many atheists alike would reject, such as skepticism about our knowledge of the external world and about our knowledge of our moral obligations. I discuss these charges, with emphasis (...)
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  • The normatively relativised logical argument from evil.John Bishop & Ken Perszyk - 2011 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70 (2):109-126.
    It is widely agreed that the ‘Logical’ Argument from Evil (LAFE) is bankrupt. We aim to rehabilitate the LAFE, in the form of what we call the Normatively Relativised Logical Argument from Evil (NRLAFE). There are many different versions of a NRLAFE. We aim to show that one version, what we call the ‘right relationship’ NRLAFE, poses a significant threat to personal-omniGod-theism—understood as requiring the belief that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good person who has created our world—because it (...)
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  • Grounds for belief in God aside, does evil make atheism more reasonable than theism?Daniel Howard-Snyder & Michael Bergmann - 2003 - In Michael L. Peterson (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion. Hoboken: Blackwell. pp. 140--55.
    Preprinted in God and the Problem of Evil(Blackwell 2001), ed. William Rowe. Many people deny that evil makes belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism. After all, they say, the grounds for belief in God are much better than the evidence for atheism, including the evidence provided by evil. We will not join their ranks on this occasion. Rather, we wish to consider the proposition that, setting aside grounds for belief in God and relying only on (...)
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  • (1 other version)On the a priori rejection of evidential arguments from evil.Daniel Howard-Snyder & John Hawthorne - 1994 - Sophia:33-47.
    Recent work on the evidential argument from evil offers us sundry considerations which are intended to weigh against this form of atheological arguments. By far the most provocative is that on a priori grounds alone, evil can be shown to be evidentially impotent. This astonishing thesis has been given a vigorous defense by Keith Yandell. In this paper, we shall measure the prospects for an a priori dismissal of evidential arguments from evil.
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  • Reasonable Action, Dominance Reasoning, and Skeptical Theism.Timothy Perrine - 2022 - Faith and Philosophy 39 (3):407-424.
    This paper regiments and responds to an objection to skeptical theism. The conclusion of the objection is that it is not reasonable for skeptical theists to prevent evil, even when it would be easy for them to do so. I call this objection a “Dominance-Reasoning Objection” because it can be regimented utilizing dominance reasoning familiar from decision theory. Nonetheless, I argue, the objection ultimately fails because it neglects a distinction between justifying goods that are necessary for the existence of a (...)
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  • (1 other version)Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part I).Luis R. G. Oliveira - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (10).
    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 briefly explain three versions of these arguments from evil (two from William Rowe and one from Paul Draper) and the three versions of skeptical theism tailor-made to block them (from Stephen Wykstra, Michael Bergmann, and (...)
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  • (1 other version)Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part II).Luis R. G. Oliveira - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (10):e12946.
    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 (...)
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  • God and gratuitous evil: Between the rock and the hard place.Luis R. G. Oliveira - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (3):317-345.
    To most of us – believers and non-believers alike – the possibility of a perfect God co-existing with the kinds of evil that we see calls out for explanation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the belief that God must have justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see has been a perennial feature of theistic thought. Recently, however, a growing number of authors have argued that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the existence of gratuitous (...)
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  • If We Can’t Tell What Theism Predicts, We Can’t Tell Whether God Exists: Skeptical Theism and Bayesian Arguments from Evil.Nevin Climenhaga - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion.
    According to a simple Bayesian argument from evil, the evil we observe is less likely given theism than given atheism, and therefore lowers the probability of theism. I consider the most common skeptical theist response to this argument, according to which our cognitive limitations make the probability of evil given theism inscrutable. I argue that if skeptical theists are right about this, then the probability of theism given evil is itself largely inscrutable, and that if this is so, we ought (...)
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  • (1 other version)Skeptical Theism.Timothy Perrine & Stephen Wykstra - 2017 - In Chad V. Meister & Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 85-107.
    Skeptical theism is a family of responses to the evidential problem of evil. What unifies this family is two general claims. First, that even if God were to exist, we shouldn’t expect to see God’s reasons for permitting the suffering we observe. Second, the previous claim entails the failure of a variety of arguments from evil against the existence of God. In this essay, we identify three particular articulations of skeptical theism—three different ways of “filling in” those two claims—and describes (...)
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  • The Pandora’s box objection to skeptical theism.Stephen Law - 2015 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78 (3):285-299.
    Skeptical theism is a leading response to the evidential argument from evil against the existence of God. Skeptical theists attempt to block the inference from the existence of inscrutable evils to gratuitous evils by insisting that given our cognitive limitations, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were God-justifying reasons we can’t think of. A well-known objection to skeptical theism is that it opens up a skeptical Pandora’s box, generating implausibly wide-ranging forms of skepticism, including skepticism about the external world and (...)
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  • Skeptical theism.Justin P. McBrayer - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (7):611-623.
    Most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God take the following form: (1) If God exists, the world would not be like this (where 'this' picks out some feature of the world like the existence of evil, etc.) (2) But the world is like this . (3) Therefore, God does not exist. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise (1). According to skeptical theism, if there were a (...)
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  • Agnosticism, Skeptical Theism, and Moral Obligation.Stephen Maitzen - 2014 - In Justin McBrayer Trent Dougherty (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays. Oxford University Press.
    Skeptical theism combines theism with skepticism about our capacity to discern God’s morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil. Proponents have claimed that skeptical theism defeats the evidential argument from evil. Many opponents have objected that it implies untenable moral skepticism, induces appalling moral paralysis, and the like. Recently Daniel Howard-Snyder has tried to rebut this prevalent objection to skeptical theism by rebutting it as an objection to the skeptical part of skeptical theism, which part he labels “Agnosticism” (with an intentionally (...)
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  • The Copernican Principle, Intelligent Extraterrestrials, and Arguments from Evil.Samuel Ruhmkorff - 2019 - Religious Studies 55:297-317.
    The physicist Richard Gott defends the Copernican principle, which claims that when we have no information about our position along a given dimension among a group of observers, we should consider ourselves to be randomly located among those observers in respect to that dimension. First, I apply Copernican reasoning to the distribution of evil in the universe. I then contend that evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life strengthens four important versions of the argument from evil. I remain neutral regarding whether this (...)
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  • (1 other version)Skeptical Theism.Timothy Perrine - 2023 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Skeptical Theism, Moral Skepticism, and Divine Commands.Brian Ribeiro & Scott Aikin - 2013 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (2):77-96.
    Over the last twenty-five years skeptical theism has become one of the leading contemporary responses to the atheological argument from evil. However, more recently, some critics of skeptical theism have argued that the skeptical theists are in fact unwittingly committed to a malignant form of moral skepticism. Several skeptical theists have responded to this critique by appealing to divine commands as a bulwark against the alleged threat of moral skepticism. In this paper we argue that the skeptical theists’ appeal to (...)
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  • Can God Satisfice?Klass Kraay - 2013 - American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (4):399-410.
    Three very prominent arguments for atheism are (1) the argument from sub-optimality, (2) the problem of no best world, and (3) the evidential argument from gratuitous evil. To date, it has not sufficiently been appreciated that several important criticisms of these arguments have all relied on a shared strategy. Although the details vary, the core of this strategy is to concede that God either cannot or need not achieve the best outcome in the relevant choice situation, but to insist that (...)
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  • Are skeptical theists really skeptics? Sometimes yes and sometimes no.Justin P. McBrayer - 2012 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 72 (1):3-16.
    Skeptical theism is the view that God exists but, given our cognitive limitations, the fact that we cannot see a compensating good for some instance of evil is not a reason to think that there is no such good. Hence, we are not justified in concluding that any actual instance of evil is gratuitous, thus undercutting the evidential argument from evil for atheism. This paper focuses on the epistemic role of context and contrast classes to advance the debate over skeptical (...)
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  • Why skeptical theists are not in a scenario of Olly-style deception.Francis Jonbäck - 1970 - Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 23 (1):59-68.
    According to Michael Bergmann, Skeptical Theism consists of two components: firstly, the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good immaterial person who created the world, and secondly, the skeptical claim that we have no reason to believe that the possible goods and evils we know of are representative of the goods and evils that exist. According to the Global Skepticism Objection, Skeptical Theism entails that we should not be surprised if we are radically deceived by God: there (...)
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  • The Skepticism of Skeptical Theism.Edward Wierenga - 2019 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 21 (3):27-42.
    Skeptical theism is a type of reply to arguments from evil against God’s existence. The skeptical theist declines to accept a premiss of some such argument, professing ignorance, for example, about whether God is justified in permitting certain evils or about the conditional probability that the world contains as much evil as it does, or evils of a particular sort, on the hypothesis that God exists. Skeptical theists are thus not supposed to be skeptical about theism; rather, they are theists (...)
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  • Skeptical theism and the problem of moral aporia.Mark Piper - 2007 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 62 (2):65 - 79.
    Skeptical theism seeks to defend theism against the problem of evil by invoking putatively reasonable skepticism concerning human epistemic limitations in order to establish that we have no epistemological basis from which to judge that apparently gratuitous evils are not in fact justified by morally sufficient reasons beyond our ken. This paper contributes to the set of distinctively practical criticisms of skeptical theism by arguing that religious believers who accept skeptical theism and take its practical implications seriously will be forced (...)
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