Showing papers on "Skeptical theism published in 1984"

The humean obstacle to evidential arguments from suffering: On avoiding the evils of “appearance”

Abstract: Many of us - believers as well as nonbelievers, car mechanics as well as philosophers - have at some times in our lives felt instances of suffering in this world to be evidence against theism, according to which the universe is the creation of a wholly good Being who loves his creatures, and who lacks nothing in wisdom and power If it has proven hard to turn this feeling into a good argument, it has, perhaps, proven just as hard to get rid of it Indeed, the most logically sophisticated responses to the "problem of evil" can leave one wondering whether our intuitive perplexities have not been lost in the gears of the formal machinery brought to bear on them Maybe this is an unavoidable epiphenomenon of analysis; nevertheless, I want to try to mitigate it here For this reason (and a second forthcoming one), my springboard will be William Rowe's recent formulation of the case from suffering against theism} Rowe exemplifies the recent turn away from "logical" (or "deductive," or "demonstrative s ) formulations, construing the case instead as "evidential" (or "inductive," or "probabilistic") in nature The crux of his argument is that much suffering "does not appear to serve any outweighing good" This "does not appear" defence is succinct and non-technical, affording considerable insight into our ordinary intuitions, but also making itself easy prey to misconstrual I shall thus be amplifying Rowe's argument and defending it against specious criticisms, as well as - ultimately rebutting it This close attention to Rowe and his critics, however, is not an endin-itself It is a means of elucidating and vindicating a perspective from which we can see why a theist should, as Hume puts it, "never retract his belief'' on account of the suffering atheologians are inclined to adduce as evidence against theism Vindicating this perspective requires coming to close grips with the most lucid atheological evidential case one can find - and this is my second reason for taking Rowe's work as a springboard