If We Can’t Tell What Theism Predicts, We Can’t Tell Whether God Exists: Skeptical Theism and Bayesian Arguments from Evil

Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (forthcoming)
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Abstract

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 to be agnostic about whether God exists.

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Nevin Climenhaga
Australian Catholic University

Citations of this work

Epistemic Probabilities are Degrees of Support, not Degrees of (Rational) Belief.Nevin Climenhaga - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1):153-176.
Skeptical Theism.Perry Hendricks - 2023 - Springer Nature Switzerland.
Murphy's Anselmian theism and the problem of evil.Luke Wilson - 2024 - Religious Studies 60 (4):549-563.

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References found in this work

Truth and probability.Frank Ramsey - 2010 - In Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings. New York: Routledge. pp. 52-94.
God, freedom, and evil.Alvin Plantinga - 1974 - Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
What conditional probability could not be.Alan Hájek - 2003 - Synthese 137 (3):273--323.
The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.William L. Rowe - 1979 - American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (4):335 - 341.
Epistemic Probabilities are Degrees of Support, not Degrees of (Rational) Belief.Nevin Climenhaga - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1):153-176.

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