Nesim Aslantatar

This paper examines religious disagreements between epistemic peers—individuals with equal cognitive capacities—focusing on the two dominant responses: conciliationism and steadfastness. While conciliationism advocates for a moderate attitude towards epistemic peers and revising one’s beliefs in case of disagreement, steadfastness argues that it is rational for an individual to maintain their current beliefs. I argue that conciliationism faces serious epistemic challenges, rendering it an unsustainable position. Building on a novel account of steadfastness, this study contends that retaining one’s belief in religious peer disagreement is rational if the following four conditions are met: (i) the believer’s evidence continues to support their belief within their interpretive and epistemic framework (independent justification); (ii) no genuine defeater undermines the belief either by rebutting it directly or undercutting the reliability of the evidence (absence of genuine defeat); (iii) the believer’s confidence remains above a rational threshold appropriate to the stakes of inquiry (confidence threshold);, and (iv) the believer holds a higher-order judgment affirming that their justification remains at least as strong as their peer’s (meta-belief endorsement). By integrating these conditions, the paper demonstrates that conciliationism (a) has a restrictive effects on religious and philosophical inquiry, (b) is internally inconsistent, (c) carries the risk of widespread epistemic uncertainty by opening the way to skepticism, and finally (d) carries the risk of weakening or even eliminating the function of evidence. Consequently, this study argues that this revised steadfastness framework offers a more defensible and epistemically responsible alternative to conciliationism, preserving the integrity of religious, inquiry while upholding the demands of epistemic rationality.

Alexandra Zinke argues that there are different ways of justifying suspension of judgment. In Zinke (Theoria 87:1050–1066, 2021), she claims that one suspends judgment not only as a result of a lack of evidence (_privatively_) but also _positively_, that is because there is evidence that provides reasons for suspending judgment. Zinke’s argument suggests that suspension goes beyond being a rational default in cases of insufficient evidence. I align with Zinke’s perspective on affirming that agnosticism is not simply a fallback position. Yet, I argue that her attempt to justify it through positive evidence fails. However, this paper argues that (i) the vagueness and chance-driven evidences of agnosticism espoused by Zinke exhibit non-rational aspects. I will draw parallels between these evidences and Bayesian agnosticism articulated by Fraassen (Analysis 58:212–220, 1998), as well as the degrees of belief account expounded by Hájek (Analysis 58:199–206, 1998) to show these aspects and contend that Zinke’s evidences align with certain trivialities clarified within the aforementioned conceptual frameworks and (ii) due to the unique nature of agnosticism, the relationship between agnosticism, evidence, and rationality takes place on a different ground from theism and atheism. Therefore, even if there is no positive evidence for agnosticism, it is still justified by a reference to two truth conditions: belief and awareness.

The problem of evil is generally taken as evidence for atheism. However, some philosophers can be referred as a sign that this is not necessarily so. For example, one of the leading philosophers of contemporary philosophy of religion, Paul Draper, for whom one can say that the problem of evil is a big problem by looking into the works he brought to the literature, defines himself as an agnostic. Draper does not argue that evil directly supports or justifies agnosticism, but rather that it does not have the power to justify atheism on its own. According to him, the evidence presented for and against theism and atheism leads to a balance between these two stances. The balance here does not mean that the evidence creates a fifty percent probability for both parties and makes a choice difficult as a result, but rather that an evaluation of all the evidence opens the way for an ambiguity that makes it difficult to choose between the two. He states that none of the available evidence is sufficient to decisively establish the truth of neither theism nor atheism; and that neither theism nor atheism/naturalism is true. However, while some evidence raises the possibility that theism is true over naturalism whereas others justify atheism by supporting naturalism. So, this kind of ambiguity justifies agnosticism as the true doxastic stance to adhere to. If the problem of evil was sufficient in terms of evidential power for Draper, he would have to be an atheist, not an agnostic. In an atmosphere where the problem of evil is generally associated with atheism, how Draper grounds agnosticism and why the problem of evil cannot necessarily be considered as a justification for atheism by and only itself is the main focus of this article. Thus, this study aims to reveal why the problem of evil cannot necessarily be a justification for atheism, as a result of a critical reading of Draper’s studies on the problem of evil and agnosticism, as well as the studies in the literature that deals with the discussion and criticize Draper. Likewise, in order to illustrate Draper’s argument regarding the grounding of agnosticism decisively, this study will briefly touch on the discussions of the grounding of agnosticism, and conclude that Draper’s move from “the problem of evil to agnosticism” is more rational than any transition from “evil to atheism”.