Slater Simek

According to recent accounts of doxastic wronging, we can morally wrong others by the beliefs that we form about them. This paper shows that the case for doxastic wronging yields a novel moral argument both against beliefs about evil prevalent in theistic responses to the problem of evil, as well as against theistic beliefs that posit the existence of a morally perfect God. The moral risks incurred by these beliefs generate an additional epistemic argument against them. Various responses to these arguments are considered—denying doxastic wronging altogether, rejecting moral encroachment, or adopting a nondoxastic theory of religious commitments—and are found to be either unsuccessful in meeting both the moral and epistemic objections and/or to face several significant challenges of their own. The paper contends that the risk of doxastic wronging makes belief in a morally perfect God and beliefs instrumental in responses to the problem of evil more difficult to epistemically justify than previously thought.

Christians commonly respond to the problem of evil by defending a theodicy according to which God’s creating us for the purpose of participating in a loving relationship with him requires his giving us libertarian freedom. As I demonstrate, this response to the problem of evil commits many of its proponents to a striking conclusion: the Trinitarian persons have libertarian freedom to participate in the Triune communion of love (TrLF). Whether TrLF is a problematic conclusion to be committed to ultimately depends upon the strength of the arguments for and against it, neither of which have yet been developed. I will partially rectify that here by sketching out a preliminary biblical case for TrLF.

J. L. Schellenberg’s divine hiddenness argument contends that, necessarily, the existence of non-resistant non-belief is incompatible with the existence of a perfectly loving God. I will argue, contra Schellenberg, that it is epistemically possible that non-resistant non-belief is compatible with the existence of a perfectly loving God. As I will argue, were God to fully reveal himself, God would be irresistible, and that presents a problem for humans freely (in a libertarian sense) entering into a relationship with God. Given that it is epistemically possible that libertarian free will is required in order for a personal divine-human relationship to be inaugurated, it is epistemically possible that God has justifiable reason to partially hide himself, even if the result of such hiddenness is the occurrence of non-resistant non-belief. I will conclude by demonstrating why Schellenberg’s previous rejection of this conclusion as not epistemically possible is unwarranted.

The “Argument from Surpassability” (AFS) concludes that God does not exist based upon the premises that 1) If God exists, he would only create a world if there is no better world that he could have created instead and 2) If God exists, he could have created a better world than this one. Given the seemingly widespread perception that (2) is unassailable, most responses to the (AFS) have focused on (1). In this paper, I will argue for the contrary approach: regardless of whether any rejections of (1) have thus far been successful, (2) should not be affirmed, on grounds of skepticism. We do not know whether our world is surpassable and therefore do not know whether God, if he exists, could have created better.

Skeptical theists contend that human cognitive limitations undermine atheistic arguments from evil. One recent challenge to skeptical theism has been posed by Climenhaga (2025), who argues that if we should—as some skeptical theists argue—be agnostic about the probability of the total collection of evils we observe given theism, Pr(E|T), we should also be agnostic about the probability of theism given these evils, Pr(T|E), and therefore be agnostic with respect to God’s existence. If one is persuaded, as I am, that Climenhaga’s argument is correct, the most promising skeptical theist response available seems to be one of mitigation: concede that Pr(E|T) is not inscrutable—and thereby concede skeptical theism cannot undermine arguments from the total collection of observable evils to the nonexistence of God—but maintain that skeptical theism is still able to undermine other Bayesian problems of evil; namely, those which argue from some individual instance of observable evil to the nonexistence of God. However, as I will argue, this mitigation strategy is not viable: if Pr(Ei|T) is inscrutable, where Pr(Ei|T) is the probability of any individual instance of observable evil occurring given theism, so too is Pr(E|T) correspondingly inscrutable. Therefore, absent demonstrating Climenhaga to be incorrect, skeptical theism cannot undermine any Bayesian arguments from evil.

C.S. Lewis’s ‘Argument from Desire’ is best summed up by his famous line, ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world’. In short, unfulfilled ‘seemingly transcendent desires’ point to fulfilment in another realm. Lewis’s argument is fraught with disagreement, and subsequently, questions remain as to its efficacy as a theistic argument. In this essay, I will take a novel approach by using Bayes’ theorem to assess the success of Lewis’s argument in support of theism over and against naturalism. As I will argue, a strength of this approach is that it allows me to largely bypass a significant area of disagreement within the literature, namely, whether these desires are best seen as natural or artificial. Additionally, I will argue for why these desires are the sort of good God would be interested in giving to persons. Then, I will proceed to outline what I take to be the best naturalistic accounts of these desires and outline some of the challenges these accounts face. Finally, I will conclude with plugging these results into Bayes’ theorem.