Probability in the Philosophy of Religion

We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and against the (...) Resurrection hypothesis. (shrink)

In this chapter, Logan Paul Gage examines the only real attempt to disprove God’s existence by a New Atheist: Richard Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit.” Central to Dawkins’s argument is the claim that God is more complex than what he is invoked to explain. Gage evaluates this claim using the main extant notions of simplicity in the literature. Gage concludes that on no reading does this claim survive scrutiny. Along the way, Dawkins claims that there are no good positive arguments for (...) God’s existence. Gage attempts to show that Dawkins’s argument depends upon distinctively philosophical assumptions that do not appear to withstand scrutiny. (shrink)

There’s a growing sense among philosophers of religion that Humean arguments from evil are some of the most formidable arguments against theism, and skeptical theism fails to undermine those arguments because they fail to make the inferences skeptical theists criticize. In line with this trend, Wes Morriston has recently formulated a Humean argument from evil, and his chief defense of it is that skeptical theism is irrelevant to it. Here I argue that skeptical theism is relevant to Humean arguments. To (...) do this, I reveal the common structure of skeptical theism’s critiques. Seeing the common structure reveals why some versions of skeptical theism are irrelevant to Humean arguments from evil. It also points the way forward to formulating a relevant version. By combining skeptical theism with a plausible principle concerning reasonable belief, I formulate a version of skeptical theism that undermines Morriston’s argument that is also immune from his objections. (shrink)

The hypothesis that God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead is argued by William Lane Craig to be the best explanation for the empty tomb and postmortem appearances of Jesus because it satisfies seven criteria of adequacy better than rival naturalistic hypotheses. We identify problems with Craig’s criteria-based approach and show, most significantly, that the Resurrection hypothesis fails to fulfill any but the first of his criteria—especially explanatory scope and plausibility.

Many think that Pascal’s Wager is a hopeless failure. A primary reason for this is because a number of challenging objections have been raised to the wager, including the “many gods” objection and the “mixed strategy” objection. We argue that both objections are formal, but not substantive, problems for the wager, and that they both fail for the same reason. We then respond to additional objections to the wager. We show how a version of Pascalian reasoning succeeds, giving us a (...) reason to pay special attention to the infinite consequences of our actions. (shrink)

Contemporary arguments for and against the existence of God are often formulated within a broadly Bayesian framework. Arguments of this sort focus on a specific feature of the world that is taken to provide probabilistic evidence for or against the existence of God: the existence of life in a ‘fine-tuned’ universe, the magnitude of suffering, divine hiddenness, etc. In each case, the idea is that things were more likely to be this way if God existed than if God did not (...) exist—or the other way around. Less attention, however, has been paid to the deeper question of what it takes for something to count as evidence for or against the existence of God. What exactly is being claimed when it is said that some feature of the world is more or less likely given the existence of God, and how should we go about assessing such a claim? This paper is about epistemological issues—and in particular, certain potential cognitive errors—that arise when we reason probabilistically about the existence of God. The moral is not that we should refrain from reasoning in this way, but that we should be mindful of potential errors when we do. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a resurgence of scholarly criticisms regarding the plausibility of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Papacy. Broadly speaking, these problems include scholarly criticisms of the scriptural passages which Roman Catholic theologians claim support the papacy, historical discrepancies regarding apostolic succession from the Apostle Peter, and a priori intuitions about the moral nature of those who attain Papal Status. In this paper, I respond to these objections by utilizing Swinburne’s C-inductive strategy (Bayesian Confirmation Theory) – found in (...) his text, The Existence of God – and conclude that overall, there is a strong P-Inductive argument for the Papacy. (shrink)

Why does God allow evil? One hypothesis is that God desires the existence and activity of free creatures but He was unable to create a world with such creatures and such activity without also allowing evil. If Molinism is true, what probability should be assigned to this hypothesis? Some philosophers claim that a low probability should be assigned because there are an infinite number of possible people and because we have no reason to suppose that such creatures will choose one (...) way rather than another. Arguments like this depend on the principle of indifference. But that principle is rejected by most philosophers of probability. Some philosophers claim that a low probability should be assigned because doing otherwise violates intuitions about freewill. But such arguments can be addressed through strategies commonly employed to defend theories with counterintuitive results across ethics and metaphysics. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that faith’s going beyond the evidence need not compromise faith’s epistemic rationality. First, I explain how some of the recent literature on belief and credence points to a distinction between what I call B-evidence and C-evidence. Then, I apply this distinction to rational faith. I argue that if faith is more sensitive to B-evidence than to C-evidence, faith can go beyond the evidence and still be epistemically rational.

In this public debate with Philippe Deterre (research director in immunology at the CNRS) – held at l'Enclos Rey in Paris' 15th district during the biennial Conference of the Réseau Blaise Pascal in March 2017 –, I defended the usefulness of natural theology. I first clarify theology's nature and understanding, then I speak about a tradition that upheld the public and exterior knowledge of God, and make an effort to show the presence of a theme reminiscent of natural theology behind (...) attempts at the good life. I then ask whether natural theology would only exist for the Christian. In the reply to my opponent's own reaction, I insist on the incongruity of separating our knowledge of God from our knowledge of science's wonderful discoveries, I ask whether nature could be said to be crafty and "ingenious," and I conclude by building a case for the return of God in public conversation, as part of an effort that our world needs in terms of finding back its compass, and restoring an ideal of living rationally. (shrink)

This paper challenges a common assumption in the literature concerning the problem of divine hiddenness, namely, that the following are inconsistent: God's making available adequate evidence for belief that he exists and the existence of non-culpable nonbelievers. It draws on the notions of defeated evidence and glimpses to depict the complexity of our evidential situation with respect to God's existence.

According to the premises of the fine-tuning argument, most nomologically possible universes lack intelligent life; and the fact that ours has intelligent life is best explained by supposing it was created. However, if our universe was created, then the creator chose the laws of nature, and hence chose in favor of lifeless universes. In other words, the fine-tuning argument shows that God prefers universes without intelligent life; and the fact that our universe has intelligent life provides no new evidence for (...) God's existence. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall be arguing for what I hope is a modern version of a very traditional view, which is that God can explain two very basic phenomena: the first is the existence of the universe as we know it: the second is the particular way in which the universe is organised. I shall also, though briefly, try to counter the view that the totally unwelcome features of our universe make it impossible to reconcile the universe as it (...) is with anything like traditional theistic belief. This project, however, is quite a daunting one. So I would wish to make it clear right at the start that, while I would claim that my views are reasonable, and indeed more reasonable than belief in the denial of these views would be, I still do not hold that it is unreasonable for someone to reject each of the conclusions for which I shall argue. For plainly anyone, whether myself or any opponent, can be both reasonable and mistaken. (shrink)

In his article ‘God and Probability’, 1 Hugh Mellor introduced the notion of the ‘bridge-hand fallacy’, allegedly committed by those who think they can appeal to probabilities in arguments for design. I should like to give this notion another airing, partly because of its recent criticism in two interesting books - R. G. Swinburne' The Existence of God and D. J. Bartholomew's God of Chance - and partly because it seems worth asking how it fares in relation to the most (...) recent examples of design argument, namely those which appeal to the so-called ‘anthropic principle’ in cosmology. (shrink)

Coady misrepresents Hume as a reductivist about testimony. Hume occasionally writes carelessly as if what goes for beliefs based on induction will also go for beliefs obtained from testimony. But, in fact, he has no theory of testimony at all, though in his more considered remarks he rightly thinks, as does Reid, that the natural response to a bit of testimony is simply to accept the information which it contains. The sense in which we owe the beliefs we get from (...) testimony to experience, according to Hume, is this: we each learn about the business of testimony from being exposed to it, and in particular to cases where what is told is manifestly true. Hume is also interested in the question of how we may be prompted to view some testimonies with suspicion, and how we should then respond to them. It is wrong, however, to take his thoughts about this as embodying an implicit theory of the basic mechanism of testimony. In fact he has a problem accounting for the human propensity to accept extraordinary testimonies within the general framework of his doctrine; the Treatise solution is wisely abandoned in the Enquiry.Author Keywords: Hume; Reid; Coady; Testimony; Reductivism; Knowledge. (shrink)

We use Bayesian tools to assess Law’s skeptical argument against the historicity of Jesus. We clarify and endorse his sub-argument for the conclusion that there is good reason to be skeptical about the miracle claims of the New Testament. However, we dispute Law’s contamination principle that he claims entails that we should be skeptical about the existence of Jesus. There are problems with Law’s defense of his principle, and we show, more importantly, that it is not supported by Bayesian considerations. (...) Finally, we show that Law’s principle is false in the specific case of Jesus and thereby show, contrary to the main conclusion of Law’s argument, that biblical historians are entitled to remain confident that Jesus existed. (shrink)

I argue that, while Hume’s approach to Newton is sometimes critical and sometimes not, Hume’s position with regard to newtonian method is coherent overall. Rather than speaking of two Humes, from an humean perspective we should rather speak of two Newtons: the positivist and the theologian.

Evolution is a time process. It proceeds in steps of definite length. The probability of each step is relatively high, so self organization of complex systems will be possible in finite time. Prerequisite for such a process is a selection rule, which certainly exists in evolution. Therefore, it would be wrong to calculate the probability of the formation of a complex system solely on the basis of the number of its components and as a momentary event.

Richard Swinburne's tetralogy on Christian doctrine, together with his earlier trilogy on the philosophy of theism, is one of the most important apologetic projects of recent times. This paper focuses on some difficulties with this project that stem from Swinburne's use of confirmation theory. Arguably, the problem of dwindling probabilities, pointed out by Plantinga, has not been solved. The paper is principally focused, however, on the ways in which Swinburne's confirmation theory contributes to his comparative neglect of the personal, existential (...) dimension of Christianity. A solution for these difficulties is suggested but not elaborated. (shrink)

Naturalism has been characterized both as a claim about what exists and as a commitment to a certain methodology . The fine-tuning argument for God's existence presents a significant challenge to each way of characterizing naturalism. The claim naturalist faces the fact that the best response to the fine-tuning argument requires the existence of many universes that are not clearly naturalistic themselves. Method naturalism faces the challenge that it does not have the resources to ground the preference of the many-world (...) hypothesis to the designer hypothesis. (shrink)

Is the no-minimum claim true? I have argued that it is not. Andrew Cullison contends that my argument fails, since human sentience is variable; while Michael Schrynemakers has contended that the failure is my neglect of vagueness. Both, I argue, are wrong.

William Wood’s study, Blaise Pascal on duplicity, sin, and the fall, is an in-depth exploration of Pascal’s views of sin, human fallenness, and self-deception. While Wood is a tutorial fellow in Theology at Oriel College, Oxford University, his book engages work in analytic philosophy, as well as historical theology. Concisely put, according to Pascal, sin is a kind of idolatry, with some created thing replacing God as the sinner’s highest good. This replacement involves a turning away from the truth, as (...) God is the source of truth or even identical with it. As sin involves choosing a lesser good over the greatest good, it involves self-deception on the part of the sinner. One deceives herself in choosing the lessor good, and so sin is a fall into duplicity and an on-going adoption of a false self-image. Presenting this false self-image to others, one deceives other people and even oneself. As Woods puts it:... having spontaneously imagined a false, but alluring, interpretation of his m .. (shrink)

Christian theologians have historically described a 'saving faith in God' as containing a fundamental element of 'belief'. However, philosophers present strong arguments exist that we are not capable of freely deciding which beliefs we will hold. Rather, we simply find ourselves believing things as the evidence before us seems to dictate. So, if belief is indeed involuntary, and if certain beliefs are requisite for Christian faith, then how can the matter of one's salvation rest on whether one has freely put (...) one's faith in God? After unpacking this objection to the Christian affirmation that faith is a voluntary matter for which God will hold all people morally accountable, this study in philosophical theology explores how the Christian theist might respond to this objection. Kinghorn uses experimental studies within the psychological literature on self-deception to make sense of the Christian idea of 'spiritual blindness'; and he argues that whether or not a person willfully contributes to self-deception will hinge on decisions s/he makes either to embrace or avoid the truth as s/he sees it. Kinghorn then attempts to show that decisions of this type - more specifically, decisions to embrace or avoid the truth about God, wherever the truth lies - are ultimately more fundamental to the kind of relationship with God commended by the Christian religion than is the question of what a person believes. Kinghorn's conclusion is that the Christian theist can indeed rebut the pending objection about the involuntariness of faith, but only by providing a sharper distinction between faith and belief than is generally found within the Christian tradition. (shrink)

Why would God institute the practice of efficacious petitionary prayer? Why would God not simply give us what we need before we ask? I examine recently proposed solutions to this puzzle and argue that they are inadequate to explain why an omniscient and perfectly good God would act differently in response to prayer. I propose that God has reasons to not always maximize a creature’s good, even in a sinless world, and that petitionary prayer functions as a means to reward (...) those who trust God, to enable us to actively love those we cannot otherwise help, and to give the petitioner personal evidence of God’s existence and care for her, creating a virtuous cycle of increasing faith. I refine this proposal by responding to several objections involving human responsibility and the epistemology of divine action. Along the way, I offer several ways petitioners can recognize God’s having answered a prayer and how God might help us with some common obstacles to prayer. (shrink)

The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal (...) conception of evidence and the knowledge-first view of evidence. (shrink)

For Pascal, how are human beings related, or how do they relate themselves, to the summum bonum in this life? In what sense do they share in it, and how do they come to share in it? These are questions that emerge in many ways in Pascal’s writing, significantly in his concept of repos. To answer these questions, especially by elucidating what repos is for human beings in this life, I would like to begin with Graeme Hunter’s “Motion and Rest (...) in the Pensées”. Hunter’s account of Pascal is important because his purpose is to specifically address how certain aspects of modernity affect how Pascal understood repos. Hunter is certainly correct when he argues that for Pascal, repos is an orderly, directed seeking of truth—what Hunter designates as “search.” However, Hunter’s account of Pascal’s repos falls short of completion, because he neglects a crucial part of Pascal’s articulation of repos: his emphasis on the role of God’s grace in searching. By neglecting Pascal’s emphasis on grace, Hunter inadvertently depicts Pascal as reducing repos to motion, rather than envisioning them together in dialectical unity. I argue that for Pascal, it is correct to say that someone who is anxiously searching has indeed “already found,” but this cannot be solely due to human efforts: rather, it because the whole enterprise is entirely infused by grace. (shrink)

Bolzano hat seine Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre in 15 Punkten im § 14 des zweiten Teils seiner Religionswissenschaft sowie in 20 Punkten im § 161 des zweiten Bandes seiner Wissenschaftslehre niedergelegt. (Ich verweise auf die Religionswissenschaft mit 'RW II', auf die Wissenschaftslehre mit 'WL II'.) In der RW II (vgl. p. 37) ist seine Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre eingebettet in seine Ausführungen "Über die Natur der historischen Erkenntniß, besonders in Hinsicht auf Wunder", und die Lehrsätze, die er dort zusammenstellt, dienen dem ausdrücklichen Zweck, mit mathematischem Rüstzeug (...) Lehrmeinungen entgegentreten zu können, gemäß denen Wundererzählungen keine Glaubwürdigkeit zukommen könne. In der WL II (vgl. p. 171) führt Bolzano im großen und ganzen dieselben Lehrsätze an wie in der RW II, entwickelt nun aber die Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre innerhalb seiner Lehre von den Sätzen an sich. Dabei orientiert er sich zwar durchaus an den Lehrsätzen in den damaligen "Schriften über die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung" (vg. WL II, p. 190), korrigiert aber dort, wo es ihm nötig erscheint (vgl. WL II, pp. 187–191), und leistet so im Grunde eine Reformulierung des elementaren Teils der Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre seiner Zeit innerhalb seiner logischen Theorie von den Sätzen an sich. — Ich bezwecke hier keine historische Studie über Bolzanos Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre, obwohl es von Interesse sein mag, herauszuschälen, worin Bolzano mit welchen Wahrscheinlichkeitstheoretikern seiner Zeit übereinstimmt, und worin nicht, insbesondere welche Schwächen von Bolzanos Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre Schwächen aller damaligen Wahrscheinlichkeitslehren waren. Eine wichtige systematische Studie über Bolzanos Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre bestünde — wie von Berg (1962, pp. 148-149) ansatzweise begonnen — in einer exakten Rekonstruktion seiner Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre innerhalb eines konsistenten logischen Systems der Sätze an sich. Ich werde im folgenden etwas bei weitem Bescheideneres, doch möglicherweise durchaus Fruchtbares versuchen, nämlich die Lehrsätze von Bolzanos Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre in die Sprache einer heutigen Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie zu übersetzen und die übersetzten Lehrsätze dort herzuleiten, soweit dies möglich ist. Man könnte dann in einem zweiten Schritt, der hier nicht mehr unternommen wird, untersuchen, inwieweit jene Thesen, die den Herleitungstest überstanden haben, jenen Zweck erfüllen, den Bolzano ihnen ursprünglich zugedacht hat: als mathematisches Rüstzeug für seine Argumentationen gegen die Auffassung zu dienen, Wundererzählungen könnten nicht glaubwürdig sein. (shrink)

Probability theory promises to deliver an exact and unified foundation for inquiry in epistemology and philosophy of science. But philosophy of religion is also fertile ground for the application of probabilistic thinking. This volume presents original contributions from twelve contemporary researchers, both established and emerging, to offer a representative sample of the work currently being carried out in this potentially rich field of inquiry. Grouped into five parts, the chapters span a broad range of traditional issues in religious epistemology. The (...) first three parts discuss the evidential impact of various considerations that have been brought to bear on the question of the existence of God. These include witness reports of the occurrence of miraculous events, the existence of complex biological adaptations, the apparent 'fine-tuning' for life of various physical constants and the existence of seemingly unnecessary evil. The fourth part addresses a number of issues raised by Pascal's famous pragmatic argument for theistic belief. A final part offers probabilistic perspectives on the rationality of faith and the epistemic significance of religious disagreement. (shrink)

Does postulating skeptical theism undermine the claim that evil strongly confirms atheism over theism? According to Perrine and Wykstra, it does undermine the claim, because evil is no more likely on atheism than on skeptical theism. According to Draper, it does not undermine the claim, because evil is much more likely on atheism than on theism in general. I show that the probability facts alone do not resolve their disagreement, which ultimately rests on which updating procedure – conditionalizing or updating (...) on a conditional – fits both the evidence and how we ought to take that evidence into account. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate the implications for the discussion of theism in philosophy of religion for the beliefs of ordinary Christians and conclude that, in light of its historical development, those implications are minimal.

This paper provides an account of what it is to have faith in a proposition p, in both religious and mundane contexts. It is argued that faith in p doesn’t require adopting a degree of belief that isn’t supported by one’s evidence but rather it requires terminating one’s search for further evidence and acting on the supposition that p. It is then shown, by responding to a formal result due to I.J. Good, that doing so can be rational in a (...) number of circumstances. If expected utility theory is the correct account of practical rationality, then having faith can be both epistemically and practically rational if the costs associated with gathering further evidence or postponing the decision are high. If a more permissive framework is adopted, then having faith can be rational even when there are no costs associated with gathering further evidence. (shrink)

In “Can it be rational to have faith?”, it was argued that to have faith in some proposition consists, roughly speaking, in stopping one’s search for evidence and committing to act on that proposition without further evidence. That paper also outlined when and why stopping the search for evidence and acting is rationally required. Because the framework of that paper was that of formal decision theory, it primarily considered the relationship between faith and degrees of belief, rather than between faith (...) and belief full stop. This paper explores the relationship between rational faith and justified belief, by considering four prominent proposals about the relationship between belief and degrees of belief, and by examining what follows about faith and belief according to each of these proposals. It is argued that we cannot reach consensus concerning the relationship between faith and belief at present because of the more general epistemological lack of consensus over how belief relates to rationality: in particular, over how belief relates to the degrees of belief it is rational to have given one’s evidence. (shrink)

In God, Mind and Logical Space István Aranyosi takes the reader on a journey for the mind by revisiting the fundamental questions and the everlasting debates in philosophy of religion, ontology, and the philosophy of mind. The first part deals with issues in ontology, and the author puts forward a radical view according to which all thinkable objects and states of affairs have an equal claim to existence in a way that renders existence a relative notion. In the second part (...) another radical view is argued for, according to which some objects and states of affairs that do not exist in our world are nevertheless present in our surroundings by being real in their consequences. The final part argues that the only way to prove the existence of God is to accept a view called Logical Pantheism, according to which God is identical to Logical Space. (shrink)

In his essay, "Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes", Roger White examines the extent to which a multiple-universe hypothesis lessens the ’surprisingness’ that our universe should be life-sustaining. White offers two main conclusions. His first conclusion -- that the existence of our world is not itself evidence for the existence of multiple universes -- is sound. However, his second conclusion is that, on the hypothesis that multiple universes exist, the further hypothesis of an intelligent designer does not lesson the surprisingness that our (...) universe should be life-permitting. This second conclusion, which would undercut most design arguments, is shown to rest on a mistake. (shrink)

The poetic joy voiced in this book's title reflects the hope in God of a poet who sacrificed his art not long after his conversion, but then received back the use of his native talents with even deeper inspiration. As a young Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins offered up the use of his creative abilities in frustrating silence as part of his quest to make a complete donation of himself to God. Only years later did a well-attuned alertness to the stirrings (...) of divine grace propel him to poetry once more, but now a poetry chastened of his early infatuation with Victorian sensibilities and enlivened by a consciously Medieval approach to reading the signs of God's presence everywhere. (shrink)

This is a richly suggestive book but, like Immanuel Kant's own work, it is not easy to bring into focus. Its basic argument is "that aesthetic necessity is justified through the relation of fine art to morality" as a practical relation between subjects and not simply on epistemological grounds. The work has the distinctive merit of drawing heavily upon the total corpus of Kant's works, especially the more neglected works collected in English in On History which deal with the development (...) of culture. In the process, we get a view not only of fine art, but also of the unity of Kant's thought that extends significantly beyond the usual epistemological and/or moral foci and centers upon the historical development of culture. Of course, the center of Kemal's attention is the Critique of Aesthetic and Teleological Judgment, the expressed aim of which is to establish the unity of experience in face of the tension between the clockwork universe of the Critique of Pure Reason and the world of moral freedom focused by the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

My object in this paper is to consider what relevance, if any, current analyses of probability have to problems of religious belief. There is no doubt that words such as ‘probable’ are used in this context; what is doubtful is that this use can be analysed as other major uses of such words can. I shall conclude that this use cannot be so analysed and hence, given the preponderance of the other uses that can, that it is misleading.

Mr D. H. Mellor, in his article of this title in Religious Studies, Vol. 5 (December 1969), distinguishes three senses of words such as ‘probable’ which might be used in a religious context, especially in that of attempted theistic proofs: statistical, subjective, and inductive probability. In each case he concludes that it is misleading to use these words in such contexts at all. With his discussion of the second I do not wish to quarrel; but there seem to me to (...) be serious defects in his discussions of the first and third. (shrink)