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84A New Logical Problem of Evil RevisitedFaith and Philosophy 35 (4): 464-472. 2018.In this article I state concisely the central features of a new logical problem of evil developed elsewhere and take account of a response to this problem recently published in this journal by Jerome Gellman. I also reflect briefly on how theology can play a role in such philosophical discussions.
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18Religion After Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious ImmaturityCambridge University Press. 2019.In this provocative work, J. L. Schellenberg addresses those who, influenced by science, take a negative view of religion, thinking of it as outmoded if not decadent. He promotes the view that transcendently oriented religion is developmentally immature, showing the consilience of scientific thinking about deep time with his view. From this unique perspective, he responds to a number of influential cultural factors commonly thought to spell ill for religion, showing the changes – changes favorab…Read more
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941The Epistemology of Modest AtheismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (1): 51--69. 2015.Distinguishing between the old atheism, the new atheism, and modest atheism, and also between belief and acceptance, and belief and acceptance tokens and types, I defend the disjunctive view that either modest atheistic belief or modest atheistic acceptance, construed as type, is today epistemically justified in the context of philosophical inquiry. Central to my defence is a deductive version of the hiddenness argument and an emphasis on the early stage of philosophical inquiry that we presentl…Read more
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3Divine Hiddenness and Human ReasonInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 40 (2): 121-124. 1996.
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53The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in GodOxford University Press UK. 2015.In many places and times, and for many people, God's existence has been rather less than a clear fact. According to the hiddenness argument, this is actually a reason to suppose that it is not a fact at all. The hiddenness argument is a new argument for atheism that has come to prominence in philosophy over the past two decades. J. L. Schellenberg first developed the argument in 1993, and this book offers a short and vigorous statement of its central claims and ideas. Logically sharp but so clea…Read more
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72A Reply to WykstraPhilo 14 (1): 101-107. 2011.Wykstra’s paper defends two objections to my reasoning in The Wisdom to Doubt. One says that we in fact do take evidence to be representative of all the relevant evidence that exists when forming the judgment that it makes some proposition probable, the other that our judgments as to the representativeness of evidence are often justified, and can be justified even in matters of religion. Both objections are instructive but ultimately unsuccessful, as I show here.
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58Stalemate and Strategy: Rethinking the Evidential Argument from EvilAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 37 (4). 2000.
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1336Religious Diversity and Religious SkepticismIn Kevin Schilbrack (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Religious Diversity, Wiley-blackwell. forthcoming.In this paper I argue that given the present state of relevant inquiry, the facts of religious diversity justify religious skepticism. Because of the diversity of religious claims, the denial of any detailed religious proposition is equivalent to a large disjunction of alternative claims. The same is true of the denial of metaphysical naturalism. And having typically acquired no detailed understanding of the whole panoply of religious views, religious believers and metaphysical naturalists are r…Read more
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8Part V. Keeping Faith Skeptical Religion as Reason’s DemandIn The will to imagine: a justification of skeptical religion, Cornell University Press. pp. 235-250. 2009.
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102On reasonable nonbelief and perfect love: Replies to Henry and LeheFaith and Philosophy 22 (3): 330-342. 2005.Some Christian philosophers wonder whether a God really would oppose reasonable nonbelief. Others think the answer to the problem of reasonable nonbelief is that there isn’t any. Between them, Douglas V. Henry and Robert T. Lehe cover all of this ground in their recent responses to my work on Divine hiddenness. Here I give my answers to their arguments
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56God, the Best, and Evil, by Bruce LangtryMind 118 (472): 1155-1160. 2009.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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67The will to imagine: a justification of skeptical religionCornell University Press. 2009.Ultimism and the aims of human immaturity -- Faith without details, or how to practice skeptical religion -- Simple faith and the complexities of tradition -- The structure of faith justification -- How skeptical faith is true to reason -- Anselm's idea -- Leibniz's ambition -- Paley's wonder -- Pascal's wager -- Kant's postulate -- James's will -- Faith is positively justified : the many modes of religious vision.
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2992God for All Time: From Theism to UltimismIn Andrei A. Buckareff & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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13Part II. Testing Faith Is the Best Religion Good Enough ?In The will to imagine: a justification of skeptical religion, Cornell University Press. pp. 67-96. 2009.
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IndexIn The will to imagine: a justification of skeptical religion, Cornell University Press. pp. 263-268. 2009.
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44Evolutionary religionOxford University Press. 2013.J.L. Schellenberg offers a path to a new kind of religious outlook. Reflection on our early stage in the evolutionary process leads to skepticism about religion, but also offers a new answer to the problem of faith and reason, and the possibility of a new, evolutionary form of religion.
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2073The Hiddenness Problem and the Problem of EvilFaith and Philosophy 27 (1): 45-60. 2010.The problem of Divine hiddenness, or the hiddenness problem, is more and more commonly being treated as independent of the problem of evil, and as rivalling the latter in significance. Are we in error if we acquiesce in these tendencies? Only a careful investigation into relations between the hiddenness problem and the problem of evil can help us see. Such an investigation is undertaken here. What we will find is that when certain knots threatening to hamper intellectual movement are unravelled,…Read more
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56Breaking Down the Walls That DivideFaith and Philosophy 21 (2): 195-213. 2004.In this paper I argue that moral virtue is sometimes causally necessary both for theistic belief and for nonbelief. I then argue for some further connectionsbetween these results and the Calvinist view, recently revived in the philosophy of religion, according to which theistic belief is typically warranted and all those who dissent from such belief persist in their nonbelief because of sin. Specifically, I maintain that the virtue of belief militates against its being warranted, and that the vi…Read more
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781Skepticism as the beginning of religionIn Ingolf Dalferth (ed.), Skeptical Faith, Mohr Siebeck. 2011.
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1815Skeptical Theism and Skeptical AtheismIn Justin McBrayer Trent Dougherty (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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57Religious Experience and Religious Diversity: A Reply to Alston: J. L. SCHELLENBERGReligious Studies 30 (2): 151-159. 1994.William Alston's Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience is a most significant contribution to the philosophy of religion. The product of 50 years' reflection on its topic , this work provides a very thorough explication and defence of what Alston calls the ‘mystical perceptual practice’ – the practice of forming beliefs about the Ultimate on the basis of putative ‘direct experiential awareness’ thereof . Alston argues, in particular, for the rationality of engaging in the Chris…Read more
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23On the Nature and Existence of God (review)Review of Metaphysics 46 (2): 402-404. 1992.The aim of this book, reflected in its title, is to clarify the theist's conception of God while supporting skepticism with respect to its instantiation. The first half of this task is carried out through an investigation of atheological arguments. These are arguments that seek to deduce a contradiction from properties traditionally ascribed to God--omnipotence, absoluteness, immutability, timelessness, benevolence, and so on--with the help of only necessarily true additional premises. Arguments…Read more
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120How to be an atheist and a sceptic too: Response to MccrearyReligious Studies 46 (2): 227-232. 2010.Mark McCreary has argued that I cannot consistently advance both the hiddenness argument and certain arguments for religious scepticism found in my book The Wisdom to Doubt (WD). This reaction was expected, and in WD I explained its shortsightedness in that context. First, I noted how in Part III of WD, where theism is addressed, my principal aim is not to prove atheism but to show theists that they are not immune from the scepticism defended in Parts I and II. To the success of this aim, McCrea…Read more
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1What the hiddenness of God reveals: A collaborative discussionIn Daniel Howard-Snyder & Paul K. Moser (eds.), Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 57. 2002.
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40Christianity saved? Comments on Swinburne's apologetic strategies in the tetralogyReligious Studies 38 (3): 283-300. 2002.This paper begins by surveying some of the problems facing Swinburne 's general approach, finding unfortunate the absence from his tetralogy of a strategy that might have helped to alleviate them, namely an attempt to show that a traditional Christian creed is more probable than the creed of any other religion. It then discusses certain particular arguments of the tetralogy – arguments offered in defence of the traditional Christian doctrine of the Atonement – which are central to the detailed w…Read more
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595The evolutionary answer to the problem of faith and reasonIn Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 2, Oxford University Press. 2009.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Normative Ethics |
General Philosophy of Science |