The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today最新文献

Skeptical theism 怀疑有神论

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-4

Justin P. McBrayer

{"title":"Skeptical theism","authors":"Justin P. McBrayer","doi":"10.4324/9781351139601-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351139601-4","url":null,"abstract":"Most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God take the following form: (1) If God exists, the world would not be like this (where ‘this’ picks out some feature of the world like the existence of evil, etc.) (2) But the world is like this. (3) Therefore, God does not exist. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise (1). According to skeptical theism, if there were a God, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond our ken, and thus we are not justified in making all-things-considered judgments about what the world would be like if there were a God. In particular, the fact that we don’t see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X. Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God. What follows is an account of the nature of skeptical theism, an application of skeptical theism to both the argument from evil and the argument from divine hiddenness, and a review of the cases for and against skeptical theism. 1. The Nature of Skeptical Theism Skeptical theism is a conjunction of a metaphysical thesis and an epistemological thesis. The metaphysical thesis is that God exists, where ‘God’ is an honorific title describing the most perfect being possible. The epistemological thesis is that humans are not justified in making all-things-considered judgments about what God has done or would do in any given situation. It is the second, epistemological, thesis of skeptical theism that is crucial, and for this reason the name ‘skeptical theism’ is an unfortunate one. There are theists who deny the epistemological thesis (e.g. Swinburne 1998; Hasker 2004) and non-theists who accept it (e.g. Draper 1992). The skeptical component of skeptical theism is used as a criticism of so-called ‘noseeum’ inferences. A noseeum inference takes the following form: As far as we can tell, there are no X’s. Therefore, there are no X’s. A noseeum inference essentially begins with a statement about the absence of evidence and concludes that there is evidence of absence (e.g. Kraay 2007). Surely such an inference is sometimes warranted. For example, suppose that as far as you can tell, there are no donkeys in your office. From this premise it is reasonable to conclude that there are no donkeys in your office. But just as clearly, this same inference pattern is sometimes unwarranted. For example, as far as you can tell, there is no life elsewhere in the universe. However, this fact alone does not license the conclusion that there is not life Philosophy Compass 5/7 (2010): 611–623, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00306.x a 2010 The Author Journal Compilation a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd elsewhere in the universe. Skeptical theism claims that inferences concerning what God would do are of this second type. 2. How Skeptical Theism is Deployed In the contemporary literature, skeptical theism f","PeriodicalId":243492,"journal":{"name":"The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124852216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 33

Process theodicy and climate change 过程正义论和气候变化

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-20

D. Griffin

引用次数: 1

Divine impassibility, divine passibility and evil 神圣的不可抗拒，神圣的不可抗拒和邪恶

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-6

P. Helm

引用次数: 0

Feminist theorizations of evil 邪恶的女权主义理论

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-17

Melissa R Raphael

引用次数: 0

The science of evil and the evil of science 邪恶的科学和邪恶的科学

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-15

T. Peters

引用次数: 3

Why religious pluralism is not evil and is in some respects quite good 为什么宗教多元化不是邪恶的，在某些方面是相当好的

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-13

R. McKim

引用次数: 1

Resist locally, accept cosmically 局部抵制，全盘接受

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-14

R. Gottlieb

引用次数: 0

A new look at evidential arguments from evil 以新的眼光看待来自邪恶的证据论证

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-3

M. Tooley

引用次数: 0

Pacifism and evil 和平主义和邪恶

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-19

Andrew G. Fiala

引用次数: 0

Horrendous evils and Christ 可怕的邪恶和基督

The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today Pub Date : 2018-06-14 DOI: 10.4324/9781351139601-5

S. Davis

引用次数: 0