How to Be a Very Friendly Atheist Indeed

Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 20 (1):65-72 (2015)
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Abstract

Friendly atheists hold atheism to be true, and believe that theists may be rational when holding theism to be true. Theists may be rational, they claim, either because they lack the evidence for atheism, or because they are mistaken regarding the evidential force of the arguments for theism. Both these reasons canbe interpreted as suggesting that theists are making a mistake, and perhaps even that they are blameworthy for having made that mistake. In this paper, I arguethat friendly atheists might even say that the most intellectually oriented theists are rational and blameless for holding theism to be true. I give two reasons forthis. The first reason is based on the denial of doxastic voluntarism regarding at least some of our beliefs. Theists might not have voluntary control with respect totheir belief that God exists. The second reason is based on a meta-epistemological consideration. Often, we choose our epistemology by looking at paradigm examples of knowledge. Growing up in a theistic context might lead one to regard the belief that God exists as a paradigm example of knowledge, and a theist could be considered perfectly rational and blameless for doing so, even though they may be aware of reasonable arguments for atheism. With these odifications, I suggest that Friendly Atheism is very friendly indeed.

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Francis Jonbäck
Uppsala University

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