Foundations of Skeptical Theism

Abstract

Some skeptical theists use Wykstra's CORNEA constraint to undercut Rowe-style inductive arguments from evil. Many critics of skeptical theism accept CORNEA, but argue that Rowe-style arguments meet its constraint. But Justin McBrayer argues that CORNEA is itself mistaken. It is, he claims, akin to "sensitivity" or "truth-tracking" constraints like those of Robert Nozick; but counterexamples show that inductive evidence is often insensitive. We here defend CORNEA against McBrayer's chief counterexample. We first clarify CORNEA, distinguishing it from a deeper underlying principle that we dub 'CORE.' We then give both principles a probabilistic construal, and show how on this construal, the counterexample fails.The new "inductive atheism" argues that certain empirical features of evil are strong inductive (or "probabilistic") evidence against theism. A feature stressed by William Rowe, for example, is the "noseeum" character of much suffering. We can, try as we may, see no God-justifying 1 (good served by much suffering. And our seeing no God-justifying good served by an instance of suffering is, it is argued, strong evidence for there being no God-justifying good served by itand hence also, by a further short step, for there being no God. Against this reasoning, so-called "skeptical theists" press this question:Granted, atheism makes the feature you cite-here, the noseem feature-entirely expectable. But isn't this feature also pretty expectable if it were the case that God exists? If God were to exist, shouldn't we expect-God being God and us being us-to often not see the goods He purposes for many evils? And if that's so, how can this feature be regarded as strong evidence that God doesn't exist? The skeptical theist here employs a "neutralizing tactic"-a tactic for defusing alleged strong evidence-that we can find used in many contexts.

On an Epistemic Cornerstone of Skeptical Theism: in Defense of CORNEA

“…And some skeptical theistic criticisms might not rely on CORNEA (see, e.g., Perrine (2019)). Thus, it may be misleading to imply that CORNEA is "The Foundations of Skeptical Theism" as the title of Wykstra and Perrine's (2012) article does. Nonetheless, it does form an important half of an important critique of an influential argument from evil.…”

“…However, Wykstra and Perrine (2012) plausibly claim that we need not interpret grammatical subjunctives as counterfactual conditionals. Rather, they can be used to express conditional probabilities.…”

Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part I)

“…12 12 For discussions of Wykstra's skeptical theism, see Wykstra (1984), Russell and Wykstra (1988), Kraay (2007), McBrayer (2009), Dougherty (2012), Wykstra and Perrine (2012), Draper (2014), Wielenberg (2015), Benton et al. (2016), Rutledge (2017), Perrine (2019), and Oliveira (2020).…”

“…and (b) does that version of skeptical theism block some version of the problem of evil? An affirmative answer to the first question does not automatically yield an affirmative answer to the second: If W4 is true, we can say 'yes' to (a); if W4 and W1 are both true, we can then say 'yes' to (b).12 For discussions of Wykstra's skeptical theism, seeWykstra (1984),Russell and Wykstra (1988),Kraay (2007),McBrayer (2009),Dougherty (2012),Wykstra and Perrine (2012),Draper (2014),Wielenberg (2015),Benton et al (2016),Rutledge (2017),Perrine (2019), andOliveira (2020).13 An A can be representative of all A's in one sense but not in others: A randomly selected human is representative of all humans in the vital organs sense, but not in the spoken language sense.14 For discussions of Bergmann's skeptical theism, and/or similar arguments, see,Alston (1991), andHoward-Snyder (2009),Bergmann (2009), and Hendricks (2020.15 Unless noted otherwise, modal claims in this section are about metaphysical possibility.…”

Skeptical Theism and Morriston’s Humean Argument from Evil

“…The first part was his general epistemological principle "CORNEA." There is some dispute as to how best formulate CORNEA (see, e.g., McBrayer (2009) and Wykstra and Perrine (2012)). A crude version suffices here: a person is reasonable in inferring "I cannot see (or detect) an Φ" to "so, probably, there is no Φ" only if it is reasonable for that person to believe that, were there an Φ, it is likely that she'd see or otherwise detect it.…”