De facto objections to theism purport to show that theism is false, whereas de jure objections to theism claim that, whether or not theism is true, belief in God is irrational. Divine hiddenness – the fact that there are people who non-resistantly lack belief in God – is sometimes used as an argument against theism. In this article I will show that accepting the argument from divine hiddenness carries a high cost: it eliminates all de jure objections to theism. So (...) atheists can either have de jure objections to theism or the objection from divine hiddenness, but they cannot have both. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a popular response to arguments from evil. Many hold that it undermines a key inference often used by such arguments. However, the case for skeptical theism is often kept at an intuitive level: no one has offered an explicit argument for the truth of skeptical theism. In this article, I aim to remedy this situation: I construct an explicit, rigorous argument for the truth of skeptical theism.

It is often thought that religious experiences provide support for the cumulative case for the existence of the God of classical monotheism. In this paper, I formulate an Evil-god challenge that invites classical monotheists to explain why, based on evidence from religious experience, the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god is significantly more reasonable than the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, evil god. I demonstrate that religious experiences substantiate the existence of Evil-god more so than they do the existence (...) of Good-god, and, consequently, that the traditional argument from religious experience fails: it should not be included in the cumulative case for the existence of Good-god. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga theorizes the existence of a sensus divinitatis – a special cognitive faulty or mechanism dedicated to the production and non-inferential justification of theistic belief. Following Chris Tucker, we offer an evidentialist-friendly model of the sensus divinitatis whereon it produces theistic seemings that non-inferentially justify theistic belief. We suggest that the sensus divinitatis produces these seemings by tacitly grasping support relations between the content of ordinary experiences (in conjunction with our background evidence) and propositions about God. Our model offers (...) advantages such as eliminating the need for a sui generis religious faculty, harmonizing the sensus divinitatis with prominent theories in the cognitive science of religion, and providing a superior account of natural revelation. (shrink)

This article is a response to Stephen Law's article ‘The evil-god challenge’. In his article, Law argues that if belief in evil-god is unreasonable, then belief in good-god is unreasonable; that the antecedent is true; and hence so is the consequent. In this article, I show that Law's affirmation of the antecedent is predicated on the problem of good (i.e. the problem of whether an all-evil, all-powerful, and all-knowing God would allow there to be as much good in the world (...) as there is), and argue that the problem of good fails. Thus, the antecedent is unmotivated, which renders the consequent unmotivated. Law's challenge for good-god theists is to show that good-god theism is not rendered unreasonable by the problem of evil in the same way that evil-god theism is rendered unreasonable by the problem of good. Insofar as the problem of good does not render belief in evil-god unreasonable, Law's challenge has been answered: since it is not unreasonable to believe in evil-god (at least for the reasons that Law gives) it is not unreasonable to believe in good-god. Finally, I show that – my criticism aside – the evil-god challenge turns out to be more complicated and controversial than it initially appears, for it relies on the (previously unacknowledged) contentious assumption that sceptical theism is false. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga’s religious epistemology has been used to respond to many debunking arguments against theistic belief. However, critics have claimed that Plantinga’s religious epistemology conflicts with skeptical theism, a view often used in response to the problem of evil. If they are correct, then a common way of responding to debunking arguments conflicts with a common way of responding to the problem of evil. In this paper, I examine the critics’ claims and argue that they are right. I then present (...) two revised versions of Plantinga’s argument for his religious epistemology. I call the first a 'religion-based argument' and the second an 'intention-based argument'. Both are compatible with skeptical theism, and both can be used to respond to debunking arguments. They apply only to theistic beliefs of actual persons who have what I call 'doxastically valuable relationships' with God – valuable relationships the goods of which entail the belief that God exists. (shrink)

This paper develops a challenge to theism. The challenge is to explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god should be considered significantly more reasonable than the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-evil god. Theists typically dismiss the evil-god hypothesis out of hand because of the problem of good–there is surely too much good in the world for it to be the creation of such a being. But then why doesn't the problem (...) of evil provide equally good grounds for dismissing belief in a good god? I develop this evil-god challenge in detail, anticipate several replies, and correct errors made in earlier discussions of the problem of good. (shrink)

This book provides an up to date, high-level exchange on God in a uniquely productive style. Readers witness a contemporary version of a classic debate, as two professional philosophers seek to learn from each other while making their cases for their distinct positions. In their dialogue, Joshua Rasmussen and Felipe Leon examine classical and cutting-edge arguments for and against a theistic explanation of general features of reality. The book also provides original lines of thought based on the authors’ own contributions (...) to the field, and offers a productive and innovative inquiry into on one of the biggest questions people ask: what is the ultimate explanation of things? (shrink)

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)

Skeptical theists endorse the skeptical thesis (which is consistent with the rejection of theism) that we have no good reason for thinking the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are. In his newest formulation of the evidential arguments from evil, William Rowe tries to avoid assuming the falsity of this skeptical thesis, presumably because it seems so plausible. I argue that his new argument fails to avoid doing this. Then I defend that skeptical thesis (...) against objections, thereby supporting my contention that relying on its falsity is a weakness in an argument. (shrink)

Internalists tend to impose on justification higher-level requirements, according to which a belief is justified only if the subject has a higher-level belief (i.e., a belief about the epistemic credentials of a belief). I offer an error theory that explains the appeal of this requirement: analytically, a belief is not justified if we have a defeater for it, but contingently, it is often the case that to avoid having defeaters, our beliefs must satisfy a higher-level requirement. I respond to the (...) objection that externalists who endorse this error theory will be forced to accept a radical form of scepticism. (shrink)

Conciliationism is the view that says when an agent who believes P becomes aware of an epistemic peer who believes not-P, that she encounters a defeater for her belief that P. Strong versions of conciliationism pose a sceptical threat to many, if not most, religious beliefs since religion is rife with peer disagreement. Elsewhere I argue that one way for a religious believer to avoid sceptical challenges posed by strong conciliationism is by appealing to the evidential import of religious experience. (...) Not only can religious experience be used to establish a relevant evidential asymmetry between disagreeing parties, but reliable reports of such experiences also start to put pressure on the religious sceptic to conciliate toward her religious opponent. Recently, however, Asha Lancaster-Thomas poses a highly innovative challenge to the evidential import of religious experience. Namely, she argues that an evil God is just as likely to explain negative religious experiences as a good God is able to explain positive religious experiences. In light of this, religious believers need to explain why a good God exists instead of an evil God. I respond to Lancaster-Thomas by suggesting that, at least within the context of religious experience, that the evil God hypothesis is only a challenge to certain versions of theism; and that the existence of an evil God and good God are compossible. (shrink)

This critical study of the third book of Plantinga's trilogy on proper-function epistemology begins by denying that classical foundationalism proposes a deontic conception of justification. Nor is it subject to Gettier counterexamples, as, I show, Plantinga's fallibilism is and must be. Plantinga's central thesis is that there's no way of attacking the rationality of central Christian beliefs without attacking their truth. That, I argue, is not so on several grounds, e.g., because one can demand independent evidence for the existence of (...) the _sensus divinitatis and Holy Spirit, because of doctrinal disagreements, and because of the morally checkered character of "saved" Christians. (shrink)

The Evil‐god challenge has enjoyed a flurry of attention after its resurrection in Stephen Law's, 2010 paper of the same name. Intended to undermine classical monotheism, the Evil‐god challenge rests on the claim that the existence of all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐evil god (Evil‐god) is roughly as likely as the existence of an all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐good god (Good‐god). The onus is then placed on those who believe in Good‐god to explain why their belief should be considered significantly more reasonable than belief in (...) Evil‐god. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive exposition of the Evil‐god challenge by exploring its history and recent developments. The forthcoming part II paper will present and address the main objections that have been posed to the Evil‐god challenge and consider its implications for classical monotheism. (shrink)

The Evil‐god challenge attempts to undermine classical monotheism by arguing that because the existence of an evil god is similar in reasonableness to the existence of a good god, the onus is on the theist to justify their belief in the latter over the former. In the Part I paper, I defined the Evil‐god challenge, distinguished between several types of Evil‐god challenge, and presented its history and recent developments. In this paper, I describe the merits of the challenge, outline and (...) address the main objections that have been posed to it, and discuss some of the implications for classical monotheism if the Evil‐god challenge remains untarnished by objections. (shrink)

The evil-god challenge holds that theism is highly symmetrical to the evil-god hypothesis and thus it is not more reasonable to accept one rather than the other. But, since it is not reasonable to accept the evil-god hypothesis, it is not reasonable to accept theism. This article will primarily focus on defending the challenge from two recent objections which hold that it follows from the nature of moral motivation that theism is intrinsically much more likely to be true than the (...) evil-god hypothesis. However, I will also argue that there is a different intrinsic asymmetry between the hypotheses which favours theism. (shrink)