Epistemological Considerations Concerning Skeptical Theism

Abstract

The thesis of this short paper is that skeptical theism does not look very plausi ble from the perspective of a common sense epistemology. A corollary of this is that anyone who finds common sense epistemology plausible and is attracted to skeptical theism has some work to do to show that they can form a plausible whole. The dialectical situation is that to the degree that this argument is a strong one, to that same degree (at least) the theorist who would like to com bine common sense epistemology with skeptical theism has some work to do. I. What Is Skeptical Theism? In short, skeptical theism is a response to the evidential problem of evil, most notably formulated by William Rowe thusly:3

Skeptical theism, moral skepticism, and epistemic propriety

“…12 Here it is again as a refresher: we have no good reason for thinking that the goods, evils and entailment relations between them of which we are aware are representative of the goods, evils, and entailment relations between them there are. 13 One might respond in other ways: (i) following (Dougherty 2008), one might suggest that in the case of the evidential argument from evil, some sort of phenomenal conservatism principle is sufficient for inferring Q from P, (ii) perhaps there are other logical forms of the argument from evil to which one arguing against ST's truth is to argue that it commits skeptical theists to various sorts of untenable skepticisms. As noted above, we shall attend solely to the argument against skeptical theism which contends that it is committed to an extreme sort of moral skepticism.…”

Skeptical Theism Unscathed: Why Skeptical Objections to Skeptical Theism Fail

“…For example, some arguments from evil rely on the claim that it seems (in a phenomenal conservative sense, explained below in Section ) that there is gratuitous evil and that since God would not allow gratuitous evil, this seeming justifies the conclusion that God does not exist (see, e.g. Trent Dougherty () and (). While such an argument is possibly justified via phenomenal conservatism, I have argued elsewhere () that it is nevertheless implausible to suppose many (if any) people have this type of justification; while such arguments might be available to some persons, they will likely be few and far between.…”

Sceptical Theism and the Paradox of Evil

“…First, after 3 See, for example, Rowe [1991Rowe [ , 1996Rowe [ , 2006, Dougherty [2012], and Hudson [2014]. 4 See, for example, Draper [1989], Dougherty [2008], and Tooley [2012. 5 This aspect of EAE is too often ignored.…”