Does the Theist Have an Epistemic Advantage over the Atheist?
Journal of Philosophical Research 34:305-328 (2009)
Abstract
Recent iterations of Alvin Plantinga’s “evolutionary argument against naturalism” bear a surprising resemblance to a famous argument in Descartes’s Third Meditation. Both arguments conclude that theists have an epistemic advantage over atheists/naturalists vis-à-vis the question whether or not our cognitive faculties are reliable. In this paper, I show how these arguments bear an even deeper resemblance to each other. After bringing the problem of evil to bear negatively on Descartes’s argument, I argue that, given these similarities, atheists can wield a recent solution to the problem of evil against theism in much the way Plantinga wields the detailsof evolutionary theory against naturalism. I conclude that Plantinga and Descartes give us insufficient reason for thinking theists are in a better epistemic position than atheists and naturalists vis-à-vis the question whether or not our cognitive faculties are reliable
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ISBN(s)
1053-8364
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ROEDTT
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Archival date: 2019-03-06
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2011-12-02
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186 ( #27,139 of 56,864 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
48 ( #16,147 of 56,864 )
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