The Epistemic Significance of Agreement with Exceptional Theistic Philosophers

Abstract

Suppose that you realize that a substantial majority of the most important philosophers of all time agreed with you on some proposition p. Intuitively, you have gained additional evidence in favor of p and you should increase your confidence that p is true. It turns out that a large number of the most important philosophers of all time (in fact, the vast majority, if we consider, as we will, a recent poll conducted with contemporary philosophers) were theists. In this paper, I explore the epistemic significance of agreement with these philosophers with respect to their theistic beliefs. I argue that agreement with such philosophers does provide evidence in favor of theism.