A Phenomenological Approach to Skeptical Theism

"The purpose of the present essay is to present a version of the evidential argument from evil and to propose a ‘skeptical theistic’ response from a phenomenological point of view. In a word, the problem with the evidential argument from evil is that it attempts to put forth as justified an interpretation of the moral significance of historical events which actually exceeds the limits of human knowledge and which is based on a misinterpretation of experience. The essay also corrects certain analytic-philosophical notions regarding the nature of appearance, terminating with a discussion of the familiar critiques of analytic skeptical theism and the question of whether the belief in the existence of God might not be affected by the apparent skepticism implied by the phenomenological approach to knowledge in general. Keywords: existence of God, argument from evil, skeptical theism, phenomenology, analytic philosophy "

On William Rowe’s Evidential Arguments from Evil

William Rowe has put forward four popular evidential arguments from evil. I argue that there was already a prominent distinction between logical and evidential arguments from evil—the IN-IM-distinction, and that its adoption leads to two important results. First, all three non-Bayesian evidential arguments are actually not evidential but logical, while the Bayesian evidential argument genuinely evidential. Second, and most importantly, Rowe’s Bayesian evidential argument is redundant, in the sense that it has the same difficulties his three non-Bayesian arguments have. His move from the three earlier non-Bayesian arguments to the Bayesian argument is futile.

At the juncture between evidentiality and argumentation

The contribution discusses the theoretical problem of the relationship between evidentiality and argumentative justification. Within a framework that combines semantic and syntactic analysis with a topics-based approach to argument schemes, it is argued that the functional domains of information source and argumentation overlap in utterances in which the former is linguistically marked, rather than entailed or implicated: explicit linguistic evidential marking is a special case of argumentation. The connection between a proposition and its source gives rise to a class of arguments from a reliable procedure that are similar to arguments from authority. When the indicated source is an inferential procedure (rather than direct experience or hearsay), the evidential argument may be combined with additional arguments that lay out part of that procedure. The particular case of inferential sources is illustrated by means of an analysis of weakly grammaticalized constructions in Italian, based on verbs of thought, communication and perception that relate a propositional complement to a subject NP or to source / place complements of the verb. The analysis shows that such further complements can either refine the categorization of the inferential source signalled by the verb, thereby contributing to the main argument from a reliable procedure, or express a premise that allows the hearer to reconstruct the internal structure of the procedure.

The “Whence” of Evil and How the Demiurge Can Alleviate Our Suffering

Mid-twentieth century witnessed a renewal of the interest in the problem of evil, presented by Mackie et al. in the form of the logical argument from evil. However, this argument was proven ineffective in securing victory over theism. A more successful strategy was devised by Rowe and Draper—the so-called evidential argument from evil. I believe that the current responses to it fail to defend God. In this paper, I try to face the evidential argument by embracing a triple strategy, which involves an alternative theology. First, a shift of focus regarding suffering from the prevalent anthropocentrism to the perspective of soteriological teleology is proposed. Second, I present a theodicy in line with Plato’s approach in the Timaeus, as well as with some aspects of the theodicy in the Vedānta-sūtra II.1.32–36. Third, I argue that, if the previous two steps contribute towards a plausible answer to the problem of evil, the modified concept of the deity and the associated cosmogonical account should be brought close to the picture of Plato’s demiurge and his act of creation. If it is to provide a successful defense of theism against the problem of evil, that price should not be considered too dear.

Organic Unities

The principle of organic unities is a metaphysical claim regarding the nature of moral value. It states that the value of the whole is not equal to the summation of its parts. Even though this principle has a major impact on moral theory, it has been neglected in the consideration of the problem of God and evil. I claim that the theist can utilize the principle of organic unities to undermine the problem of evil. First, I explain the principle of organic unities and how it affects one’s understanding of moral value. Next, I explicate the two major historical versions of the problem of evil: the logical argument from evil and the evidential argument from evil. Lastly, I argue that the principle of organic unities demonstrates that God may logically co-exist with evil and that the atheologian lacks rational warrant appealing to gratuitous evil against God’s existence. As a result, both problems fail.

Perspectival Skeptical Theism

Skeptical theists have paid insufficient attention to non-evidential components of epistemic rationality. I address this lacuna by constructing an alternative perspectivalist understanding of epistemic rationality and defeat that, when applied to skeptical theism, yields a more demanding standard for reasonably affirming the crucial premise of the evidential argument from suffering. The resulting perspectival skeptical theism entails that someone can be justified in believing that gratuitous suffering exists only if they are not subject to closure-of-inquiry defeat; that is, a type of defeat that prevents reasonable belief that p even if p is very probable on an agent’s evidence.

An Evidential Argument for Islamic Theism

In this paper, I argue that Islamic theism is best explained by the hypothesis of Divine Commission (HDC), whereby Muhammad is viewed as being divinely commissioned to serve the overall salvific purposes of God. To this end, I present three observation reports relating to Islamic theism and evaluate HDC against an alternative hypothesis, the hypothesis of Non-Commission (NC) whereby Muhammad is not viewed as being divinely commissioned. I argue that the probability of the observation reports is greater on the assumption that HDC is true than on the assumption that NC is true. Accordingly, this gives us reason to prefer HDC as a better explanation of Islamic theism.