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Notes
Schellenberg is an atheist in the weak sense of believing there is no personal God.
Faith-in is, however, consistent with belief (2005: 124).
In addition, Schellenberg is somewhat skeptical about our ability to discover probabilities (2005: 218).
Schellenberg puts ‘generally’ in italics. I would put ‘intellectuals’ in italics – several things make me cringe; being called an intellectual is one of them, being called a Christian is not.
My word, not Schellenberg’s. In fact I prefer ‘the Divine’ for ‘the Ultimate’ and would like to re-cycle ‘divinity’ to mean the same as ‘ultimology.’
See my discussion of iterated doubt inferences below. Replacing scientific realism by scientific agnosticism either introduces an extra iteration or renders the case of science useless as analogical support for progressivism more generally.
Schellenberg does not use the term ‘agape,’ but various remarks suggest that my preference for love conceived of more broadly is in agreement with his conception of love.
Of ‘continental’ philosophy I think the words of Leonard Cohen are apt, ‘The whole damn place goes crazy twice; it’s once for the devil and once for Christ!’ (‘Closing Time’).
Here I construe the probability of ‘If p then q’ as Prob(q/p).
My understanding is that Schellenberg’s thesis that religious belief is not justified carries with it a recommendation to accompany (involuntary) religious belief with a (voluntary) skeptical disclaimer. This is an interesting contrast to the standard recommendation to accompany (involuntary) religious doubt with a (voluntary) act of faith.
For convenience, I call the proponent of Schellenberg’s epistemology ‘Schellenberg,’ and I take this Schellenberg to believe that his epistemology is correct.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to John Schellenberg for correcting some misinterpretations of his trilogy.
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Forrest, P. An Examination of John Schellenberg’s Austere Ultimism:. SOPHIA 52, 535–551 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-013-0375-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-013-0375-z