Paul Draper

Chapter 2 explores the implications for classical theism of the possibility that God makes “hard choices.” A choice between two actions is _hard_ if the chooser believes that each action is better than the other in some respects, but believes neither that one action is better overall than the other nor that the two actions are equally valuable overall. Even an omniscient God might be forced to make hard choices if, as seems plausible, “better than,” “worse than,” and “equal in value to” do not exhaust the relevant value relations that one action can bear to another. This chapter seeks to show that, if God does make hard choices of a certain sort, then God can be essentially perfectly rational and still have morally significant freedom. This is important because _maximal_ praiseworthiness both requires morally significant freedom and, like perfect rationality, is required for divinity in the classical sense.

This chapter examines and critically discusses the role of simplicity in Swinburne’s probabilistic natural theology. After describing that role and the details of his theory of simplicity, the chapter challenges Swinburne’s view that the criterion of simplicity is a _fundamental_ criterion for evaluating causal explanations, proposing instead that what is right about that criterion can be derived from a more fundamental criterion of (probabilistic) “coherence,” which measures the degree of fit between the known entailments of a hypothesis. It is further argued that if this proposal is correct, then Swinburne’s cumulative case for the existence of God is significantly weakened.

An ‘evidential argument from evil’ is defined as an attempt to show that something we know about evil lowers the epistemic probability of theism being true. Such arguments must show that, for some statement e about evil that we know to be true, the antecedent probability of e given the denial of theism—Pr(e/~G)—is greater than the antecedent probability of e given theism—Pr(e/G). Skeptical theists seek to refute such arguments by denying that Pr(e/G) can be assessed with sufficient specificity to draw any interesting conclusions about how it compares to Pr(e/~G). Skeptical atheists seek to refute such arguments by denying that Pr(e/~G) can be assessed with sufficient specificity to draw any interesting conclusions about how it compares to Pr(e/G). Skeptical atheism is the more serious challenge of the two. The implications of these results for the project of constructing a successful argument from evil against theism are discussed.

Atheism and the Problem of Evil motivates, constructs, and defends two arguments from evil against “core theism.” Core theism is the thesis that an omnipotent, omniscient, and loving agent created the cosmos. Core atheism is the denial of that thesis. Each argument involves comparing core theism to an alternative hypothesis and showing that the alternative is much more probable than core theism, which implies that core theism is very probably false. In the case of the first “decisive evidence” argument, a form of deism is shown to fit the relevant data much better than theism does despite being no less plausible than theism. In the case of the second “decisive priors” argument, a naturalistic hypothesis called “anaxiarchism” is shown to fit the relevant data at least as well as theism does despite being much more plausible than theism. Since these arguments conclude that core atheism is very probable all things considered, their defense cannot ignore alleged evidence for core theism, including ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, fine-tuning arguments, and arguments based on religious experience. The book includes rigorous and original critiques of such arguments, making it more comprehensive than other volumes on the problem of evil, which typically focus only on evidence against theism. In addition, the book includes a chapter critiquing the strongest forms of “skeptical theism,” which is the view that human ignorance makes us unqualified to judge how well core theism fits the relevant data, including data about the well- or ill-being of conscious living things. Another chapter examines attempts to expand or “version” theism by adding various auxiliary hypotheses to it, whether in the form of Christian doctrines or sceptical claims or speculations about God's reasons for allowing suffering. These attempts are shown to be of no help to the core theist. Finally, in a concluding chapter, the justificatory gap between the belief that core atheism is very probably true and the belief that it is true is bridged by arguing that the high probability of core atheism is stable.

In World Without Design, Michael Rea says that naturalists are disposed to take the methods of science, and those methods alone, as basic sources of evidence. Supernaturalists, he says, share with naturalists the disposition to trust the methods of science in the basic way---that is, in the absence of any epistemic reason to do so. But unlike naturalists, supernaturalists are also disposed to take religious experience as a basic source of evidence. I raise a number of objections to these characterizations of naturalism and supernaturalism. First, they mistakenly presuppose both that the methods of science are all methods of inquiry and that the demarcation problem can be solved. Also, if they are correct, then both naturalism and supernaturalism are committed to an undesirable form of scientism. Finally, they overlook both the fact that most of the methods of science are not basic sources of evidence and the fact that the methods of science include the method of searching only for natural causes of natural phenomena. I close by proposing an alternative characterization of naturalism.

Do the evils in the world make it unlikely that God exists? In the first half of this chapter, Paul Draper formulates a Humean argument from evil for an affirmative answer to this question. He compares the theistic hypothesis that an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good God exists to a competing hypothesis called naturalism. He claims both that naturalism is simpler than theism, and that naturalism fits or “predicts” a variety of facts about good and evil much better than theism does. After sketching a defense of these two claims, he briefly discusses several theistic responses to his argument. In the second half of the chapter, Trent Dougherty raises several important objections to Draper's argument.

In this paper, we aim to get clear about why renewal is needed in philosophy of religion and how to achieve it. We begin with a fundamental distinction between someone’s perspective in the field and the perspective of the field, arguing that any philosopher of religion is responsible to both. Then we identify eight problems that should prevent the status quo in philosophy from appearing acceptable to anyone who takes the perspective of the field, as well as seven practical suggestions which, if implemented, would help to solve these problems. The problems include such things as tribalism, ignorance about religion, and viewing issues exclusively in terms of what is religiously familiar; the mitigations such things as allowing non-Christians to join the Society of Christian Philosophers, broadening the education of philosophers of religion, and paying more attention to the deep history of religion.

Do the evils in the world make it unlikely that God exists? In the first half of this chapter, Paul Draper formulates a Humean argument from evil for an affirmative answer to this question. He compares the theistic hypothesis that an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good God exists to a competing hypothesis called naturalism. He claims both that naturalism is simpler than theism, and that naturalism fits or “predicts” a variety of facts about good and evil much better than theism does. After sketching a defense of these two claims, he briefly discusses several theistic responses to his argument. In the second half of the chapter, Trent Dougherty raises several important objections to Draper's argument.

This chapter appeals to natural selection in order to show that the failure of many humans and animals to flourish is strong evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God. Treating theism and naturalism as hypotheses that aim to explain certain features of our world, Draper sets out to test each hypothesis against various known facts, including facts about human and animal suffering. After demonstrating that, prior to such testing, naturalism is more probable than theism in virtue of its smaller scope (i.e. greater modesty) and greater simplicity, Draper goes on to argue that naturalism has far greater "predictive power" than theism, concluding that this provides strong grounds for rejecting theism.

Robin Collins argues that three facts implicate a designer of the universe--that life depends upon the precise tuning of physical constants, that the laws of physics show evidence of beauty, and that the universe is intelligible. But Collins' case is pervaded by vague arguments which shift between defending theism specifically and defending a more generic design hypothesis. This provides the appearance of having all of the advantages of the generic design hypothesis, such as greater initial plausibility, while masking the implication that intelligent life is just as unlikely given design with unspecified motives as it is given "chance." If design is to provide us with any expectations at all about what the world would be like, Collins has to defend theism in particular throughout. Moreover, while on single-universe naturalism the existence of anything as impressive as human beings may be very unlikely, on theism the existence of intelligent beings as unimpressive and flawed as humans is also very unlikely. And given that human beings do exist, single-universe naturalism, but not theism, entails that they exist in this particular universe.

This paper critiques Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. Plantinga argues that, since unplanned evolution is not likely to produce trustworthy cognitive faculties, evolutionary naturalists cannot rationally believe anything--including naturalism itself. This paper contends that this argument rests on a crucial but faulty inference from the premise that the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable given unplanned evolution is low or inscrutable. The conclusion that evolutionary naturalists cannot rationally believe in unplanned evolution does not follow from this "probability thesis." If the thesis were amended to claim that the probability of reliable cognitive faculties given unplanned evolution is low (as opposed to "low or inscrutable"), then it would follow that naturalists cannot trust their cognitive faculties; but this amended thesis is demonstrably false, and thus Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism fails.

Some facts about life on earth appear to support theism. For example, the complexity, value, and fragility of intelligent life on earth make its existence surprising on what many consider to be the most plausible atheistic hypotheses; yet it is just the sort of thing one would expect to exist if theism were true. Theism does not, however, appear to fit as well with certain other facts about life, especially facts about the history and condition of life on earth. This chapter focuses on some of these other facts and examines their impact, not on the credibility of theism in general, but instead on the credibility of specifically Christian theism.

In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections previously noted, we show that, given certain highly plausible assumptions about evidence and epistemic probability, the proposition which it treats as evidence cannot coherently be regarded as evidence for anything. This raises the question of whether to reject the assumptions or accept that such a proposition cannot be evidence.

In "A Cosmological Argument for a Self-Caused Universe," one of us (Smith) argued that the universe explains its own existence because (i) its existence is entailed by (and so explained by) the existence of the infinitely many instantaneous universe states that compose it, and (ii) each of those states is caused by (and so explained by) infinitely many earlier universe states.[1] Moreover, (ii) is true even if the universe is finitely old because, given standard Big Bang cosmology (Friedmann cosmology), the universe does not exist at t0 (i.e., the Big Bang singularity is not real) and no matter how close some moment tn (at which the universe does exist) is to t0, there are infinitely many (indeed continuum-many) moments at which the universe exists that are even closer. Thus, even a finitely old universe has no beginning in the sense of a first moment, and hence its state at any moment is (sufficiently) caused by (all of) the universe states that precede it. Further, since this explanation of the existence of the universe is complete despite making no reference to God, and since God by definition is a part of any complete explanation of the universe, it follows that God does not exist.

My project is to examine and critically discuss the role of simplicity in Swinburne’s probabilistic natural theology. After describing that role and the details of his theory of simplicity, I challenge Swinburne’s view that the criterion of simplicity is a fundamental criterion for evaluating causal explanations, proposing instead that what is right about that criterion can be derived from a more fundamental criterion of “coherence.” I close by exploring the implications of my proposal for Swinburne’s natural theology.