Paul Draper

The main focus of this book is on philosophy of religion-in-general instead of on the philosophy of a particular religion or family of religions. For example, in the first of four main parts of the book, J. L. Schellenberg and Robert McKim write chapters on future progress in religion. Hopefully, their efforts will jump-start work in the field on this important but neglected topic. The next part of the book (as well as the book's final chapter) addresses the issue of life after death. Mark Johnston follows the demands of morality wherever they lead, and arrives at a highly original conception of the after- (or elsewhere-) life, one that involves neither the resurrection of the body nor the survival of an immaterial soul. Dean Zimmerman, in his chapter, makes it clear that he will not be joining Johnston on this trip, though in some sense he arrives at the same destination by a different route. In the third part of the book, Mark Murphy pursues a highly unconventional approach to the problem of evil: he tries to solve it by denying that an absolutely perfect being must be morally perfect. Laura Ekstrom pushes back, arguing that a perfect God would have, not only justifying, but requiring reasons to prevent setbacks to the well-being of Her sentient creatures. The final part of the book, which consists of three chapters, addresses an additional topic in the philosophy of religion-in-general, namely, alternative concepts of God. Tim Mulgan defends a disjunction of two positions, one of which involves a conception of God that is very much like Murphy's, and the other of which, a form of axiarchism, is similar in some ways (but dissimilar in others) to the conception of God defended by Fiona Ellis in the chapter following Mulgan's. Although Mulgan, unlike Murphy, claims that the God he describes is morally perfect, he would agree with Murphy that God is not motivated by any moral requirements to prevent setbacks to our well-being. Ellis is unhappy with Mulgan's spin on classical theism in part because of its commitment to supernaturalism. Both she and Paul Draper, in the final two chapters of the book, attempt to articulate ideas of God that are compatible with the naturalism that some believe will guide religion into the future instead of signing its death warrant. However, Ellis and Draper pursue their common goal in opposite ways, Ellis by making God more abstract than Mulgan's God and Draper by making God more concrete.

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 book is animated by a shared conviction that philosophy of religion needs to change: thirteen new essays suggest why and how. The first part of the volume explores possible changes to the focus of the field. The second part focuses on the standpoint from which philosophers of religion should approach their field. In the first part are chapters on how an emphasis on faith distorts attempts to engage non-western religious ideas; on how philosophers from different traditions might collaborate on common interests; on why the common presupposition of ultimacy leads to error; on how new religious movements feed a naturalistic philosophy of religion; on why a focus on belief and a focus on practice are both mistaken; on why philosophy's deep axiological concern should set much of the field's agenda; and on how the field might contribute to religious evolution. The second part includes a qualitative analysis of the standpoint of fifty-one philosophers of religion, and also addresses issues about humility needed in continental philosophy of religion; about the implausibility of claiming that one's own worldview is uniquely rational; about the Moorean approach to religious epistemology; about a Spinozan middle way between 'insider' and 'outsider' perspectives; and about the unorthodox lessons we could learn from scriptures like the book of Job if we could get past the confessional turn in recent philosophy of religion.The goal of the volume is to identify new paths for philosophers of religion that are distinct from those travelled by theologians and other scholars 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.

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.

Merotheism is the view that God is a proper part of nature. Monopsychism is the view that there is exactly one mind or subject of consciousness. This chapter explores the idea of combining these two views. I call the resulting position "panpsychotheism" (all-minds-[are]-God-ism). The goal of this chapter is not the unrealistic one of showing that this position is true. I do, however, hope to show that panpsychotheism is not obviously false, and that it has some important advantages over other versions of theism. While this chapter is included in the section of the book on alternative concepts of God, it also has interesting implications for the future of religion, life after death, and the problem of evil. These implications can be summed up as follows: even if the future of religion is naturalistic, it is still reasonable to hope that there is a God who, by making a significant form of life after death possible, saves us from death without being blameworthy for our needing to be saved.

I define an ‘evidential argument from evil’ as an attempt to show that something we know about evil, while not provably incompatible with theism, is evidence against theism in the precise sense that it 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 theism – Pr(e/~G) – is greater than the antecedent probability of e given theism – Pr(e/G). To show that e is strong evidence against theism, such arguments must show that Pr(e/~G) is many times greater than 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 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). I argue that skeptical atheism is the more serious challenge of the two. I close by briefly discussing the implications of these results for the project of constructing a successful argument from evil against theism.

This paper 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 paper 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.

Scientific debates about the nature of light have nothing to do with the philosophical problem of evil if you focus on the subject matter of those debates, but quite a bit to do with it if you focus on the structure of the reasoning in those debates. Some theories of light have been shown to be improbable, at least other evidence held equal, by comparing them to incompatible theories, both with respect to how well they fit certain data and (at least implicitly) with respect to how probable they are intrinsically. Similarly, (a popular form of) theism can be shown to be improbable, at least other evidence held equal, by comparing it to the incompatible theory that physical reality is the source of mental reality. This theory of “source physicalism” fits a variety of data about good and evil much better than theism does. Further, primarily because of its modesty, source physicalism is many times more probable intrinsically than theism. It follows that, other evidence held equal, theism is very probably false.

Long before skeptical theism was called “skeptical theism,” Stephen Wykstra (1984) defended a version of it based on an epistemological principle he called CORNEA. In this paper, I use elementary confirmation theory to analyze CORNEA’s core. This enables me to show precisely what is right about Wykstra’s very influential defense of skeptical theism and, perhaps more importantly, precisely what is wrong with it. A key premise of that defense is that, on the assumption that God exists, we wouldn’t expect to know what God’s reasons for allowing certain evils are. I show that, while that premise together with CORNEA’s core shows that our inability to adequately explain the existence of those evils in terms of theism is not strong evidence against theism, it fails to show that the evils themselves are not strong evidence against theism.

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.