•  13
    Monotheism and the Rise of Science
    Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    This Element traces the effects of science's rise on the cultural status of monotheism. Starting in the past, it shows how monotheism contributed to science's rise, and how, returning the favour, science provided aid and support, until fairly recently, for the continuing success of monotheism in the west. Turning to the present, the Element explores reasons for supposing that explanatorily, and even on an existential level, science is taking over monotheism's traditional roles in western culture…Read more
  •  26
    Renewing Philosophy of Religion: Exploratory Essays (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    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 …Read more
  •  5
    Divine Hiddenness
    In Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction and Background The Contemporary Scene: Versions of the Hiddenness Problem The Hiddenness Problem and the Problem of Evil The Contemporary Scene: Attempts to Solve the Hiddenness Problem Works cited.
  •  2
    Why Am I a Nonbeliever? – I Wonder …
    In Russell Blackford & Udo Schüklenk (eds.), 50 Voices of Disbelief, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
  •  27
    Three Ways to Improve Religious Epistemology
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 1-18. 2017.
    Religious epistemology is widely regarded as being in a flourishing condition. It is true that some very sharp analytical work on religion has been produced by philosophers in the past few decades. But this work, for various cultural and historical reasons, has been kept within excessively narrow bounds, and the result is that the appearance of flourishing is to a considerable extent illusory. Here I discuss three important ways in which improvements to this situation might be made.
  •  117
    Response to Tucker on hiddenness: J. L. SCHELLENBERG
    Religious Studies 44 (3): 289-293. 2008.
    Chris Tucker's paper on the hiddenness argument seeks to turn aside a way of defending the latter which he calls the value argument. But the value argument can withstand Tucker's criticisms. In any case, an alternative argument capable of doing the same job is suggested by his own emphasis on free will.
  •  92
    Reply to Aijaz and Weidler on Hiddenness
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 64 (3): 135-140. 2008.
    In this brief reply I argue that criticisms of the hiddenness argument recently published in this journal by Imran Aijaz and Markus Weidler are without force. As will be shown, their critique of my conceptual version of the argument misses the mark by missing crucial distinctions. Their critique of my analogical version of the argument misunderstands that argument and also misapplies the work of W. H. Vanstone. And their critique of my view that belief is necessary for a certain kind of relation…Read more
  •  35
    Replies to my colleagues
    Religious Studies 49 (2): 257-285. 2013.
  •  6
    Response to Jordan
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (1): 203--207. 2017.
  •  110
    Paul K. Moser, The elusive God: reorienting religious epistemology Content Type Journal Article Pages 227-232 DOI 10.1007/s11153-010-9278-x Authors J. L. Schellenberg, Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Hwy., Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3M2J6 Canada Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047 Journal Volume Volume 69 Journal Issue Volume 69, Number 3
  •  80
    Divine hiddenness: part 1
    Philosophy Compass 12 (4). 2017.
    Only 6 years have passed since I last published a critical survey article on the divine hiddenness discussion. But more than 60 papers and books dealing with hiddenness themes have been published in that time. Not all can be addressed here. Moreover, to enable a reasonable treatment of those that will make an appearance, I shall break the present survey into two parts. I begin in this piece with recent work—including my own—on the argument descended from Schellenberg (), which started the discus…Read more
  •  61
    Divine hiddenness: Part 2
    Philosophy Compass 12 (4). 2017.
    Offered here is Part 2 of a two-part critical survey of recent work in philosophy on divine hiddenness. Part 1 surveyed recent development of the discussion initiated by my 1993 book on the subject. Here, I examine some related work that expands the scope of the hiddenness discussion. Some of the enlargements take further the discussion of Stephen Maitzen's work on the demographics of theism. Others introduce new hiddenness problems and ways of dealing with them. A third category of new work urg…Read more
  •  90
    A New Logical Problem of Evil Revisited
    Faith 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.
  •  3
  •  13
    Getting oriented -- An (a)theological dead end -- Naturalism's shortcut -- Unexplored territory: moral evolution -- Updating God -- A relationally responsive god -- A kinder god -- A nonviolent god -- Challenging the new theism -- Atheism's brave new world.
  •  4
    What if our species is epistemically immature?
    American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (3): 227-240. 2020.
    . New insights about a variety of epistemological topics including skepticism, peer disagreement, and the nature of knowledge emerge when we give the right sort of attention to our epistemic immaturity at the species level. This large-scale developmentalist concern illustrates a new way of doing epistemology, here called big epistemology.
  •  16
    The Tribute of Faith: Theistic Commitment as Moral Gesture
    The Monist 105 (3): 408-419. 2022.
    In this paper I explore and defend the idea that those who struggle intellectually in theistic religious practice can be given a good reason to persist in it by treating their continuing practice as a way of paying tribute to people and projects and personal relationships and indeed to the whole moral dimension of human life, expressing how important and profoundly significant these things are to them. This ‘tribute of faith’ is a gesture that one makes with one’s life—a moral gesture. The key t…Read more
  •  537
    The Why and the How of Renewal in Philosophy of Religion
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1): 1-20. 2022.
    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 …Read more
  •  10
    Primordial Realism
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 45 483-504. 2021.
    Here I show how thinking of inquiry as immature can illuminate problems about metaphysical and scientific realism. I begin with the question whether human beings at the very beginning of systematic inquiry who held themselves to be thus situated, temporally speaking, and came to recognize their inability to prove or probabilify the truth of metaphysical realism would have been justified in believing or accepting metaphysical realism even so. Drawing on broadly Wittgensteinian ideas I defend an a…Read more
  •  29
    Comments for My Colleagues
    Roczniki Filozoficzne 69 (3): 231-249. 2021.
    In the paper, the originator of the hiddenness argument, J. L. Schellenberg, responds to papers that challenge his reasoning. In his remarks he puts an emphasis on the concept of divine love and he explains why it is not only connected to the idea of the Christian God. He also clarifies his position on ultimism.
  •  62
    The Hiddenness Argument
    Roczniki Filozoficzne 69 (3): 63-66. 2021.
    * This is a fragment of J. L. Schellenberg’s paper “Divine Hiddenness and Human Philosophy” originally published in Adam Green and Eleonore Stump, Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief, 23–25, 28. Reprinted by permission of the author
  •  208
    Replies to Leidenhag and Trakakis
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (2): 195-206. 2021.
    In this essay, I reply to the comments of Joanna Leidenhag and Nick Trakakis on my book Religion After Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity.
  •  23
    On Religious Skepticism
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 10 (3-4): 268-282. 2020.
    I seek to promote a fuller understanding of religious skepticism by defending five theses. These concern, respectively: its breadth, discussed in relation to theism on the one hand and naturalism on the other; why it should be distinguished from a general metaphysical skepticism; how it is supported by the consequences of recent cultural evolution, which at the same time enable new and stronger arguments for atheism; the relations it bears to non-doxastic religious faith; and, finally, its curio…Read more
  • The Evolutionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 2 (1). 2010.
  •  6
    Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion
    Cornell University Press. 2005.
    "There is no attempt here to lay down as inviolable or to legislate certain ways of looking at things or ways of proceeding for philosophers of religion, only proposals for how to deal with a range of basic issues-proposals that I hope will ignite much fruitful discussion and which, in any case, I shall take as a basis for my own ongoing work in the field."-from the Preface Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new b…Read more