Introduction to Philosophy Philosophy of Religion

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Throughout most of Western history, philosophy and religion have been deeply interconnected rather than separate domains, with the majority of philosophers holding religious beliefs that often shaped their philosophical work.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Historical intertwining: From ancient Greece through the 1800s, philosophy and religion were not distinct categories but overlapping pursuits addressing life's "Big Questions."
• Shared vocabulary and concepts: Greek philosophical terms (especially Logos from Stoicism and Platonism) directly influenced Jewish and Christian theological writings, including the New Testament.
• Modern shift: Only in the 1800s–1900s did atheistic philosophy gain a foothold, partly due to Logical Positivism's theory of meaning (not simple closed-mindedness).
• Common confusion: The reputation of philosophers as dogmatically atheist stems from misunderstanding one 20th-century school (Logical Positivism) and ignoring 2,000+ years of history.
• Contemporary resurgence: Since mid-20th century, philosophy of religion has experienced renewed growth, with ~15% of philosophers and over 70% of philosophy-of-religion specialists affirming belief in God.

🏛️ Ancient foundations: Philosophy as spiritual practice

🏛️ Pre-Socratic and classical Greek thought

• Early Greek philosophers regularly discussed divine matters:
  • Thales: "all things are full of gods"
  • Pythagoras: taught reincarnation and mystical practices
  • Parmenides: presented philosophy as a spiritual vision revealed by divine beings
• Aristotle called his Metaphysics "theology," not a separate secular discipline.

🧘 Plato's spiritual philosophy

Ancient Platonists summarized Plato's philosophy as homoiosis theou—"becoming like God."

• Plato described philosophy as "practicing for death"—separating the soul from the body to gain pure knowledge.
• His descriptions sound like out-of-body mystical experiences, not merely "thinking deeply."
• The Republic frames philosophy as answering "how we are to live our lives"—the same goal many religious believers pursue.
• Don't confuse: Modern "philosophy" (critical thinking about questions) with ancient "philosophy" (a spiritual path with theoretical underpinning).

🌉 The Logos as bridge concept

• Stoics: believed the universe was guided by divine Logos ("Word" or "Reason").
• Philo of Alexandria (Jewish philosopher, c. 20 BCE–50 CE): described the Logos as "second god," "first-born Son of God," drawing on both Stoicism and Platonism.
• New Testament: The Gospel of John opens with "In the beginning was the Logos," using Philo's term.
• This term functioned as a conceptual bridge between Jewish and Hellenistic (Greek) thinking.

Example: When the author of Hebrews contrasts the earthly temple with a heavenly "copy and shadow," this echoes Plato's Analogy of the Cave (prisoners seeing only shadows of copies). The vocabulary is philosophical, the context is religious—showing no sharp boundary.

📜 Medieval synthesis: Theology and philosophy unified

📜 Neo-Platonism as spiritual science

• Plotinus (c. 203–270 CE): described mystical experiences of union with "The One" (Plato's highest principle), calling it "Father" and "God."
• He saw Platonism not as mere theory but as a spiritual path leading to direct experience.
• Numenius of Apamea: explicitly tried to show overlap between Platonism and Judaism, coining the phrase "What else is Plato than a Moses who speaks Greek?"

⚔️ Competing spiritual schools

• Early Christians criticized "philosophy" (meaning Platonism) not because they opposed critical thinking, but because Christianity and Platonism were rival schools of spirituality with overlapping yet conflicting teachings.
• Porphyry (Plotinus' student): wrote a 15-volume work Against the Christians because he saw Christianity as a major threat to Platonism.
• Later Platonists incorporated theurgy (ritualistic practices) to compete with Christian liturgy.

🕌 Medieval thinkers across traditions

After 529 CE (when public funding for pagan schools ended), philosophical work continued within religious contexts:

Tradition	Representative thinkers
Greek-speaking Christians	Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, John of Damascus, Gregory Palamas
Latin-speaking Christians	Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Ockham
Muslims	Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd
Jews	Saadia Ben Gaon, Maimonides, Gersonides

• All gave "intense scrutiny to many philosophical questions" but "always did so with one eye towards the religious or theological implications."

🔬 Modern period: Questioning yet still engaged

🔬 Early Modern Rationalists and Empiricists

Despite revolutionary changes (Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, Reformation), Early Modern philosophers remained deeply concerned with religious questions:

Rationalists:

• Descartes: Meditations largely concerned with proving God's existence and the soul's distinction from body.
• Spinoza: argued for pantheism in his Ethics.
• Leibniz: wrote versions of Cosmological and Ontological arguments, plus Theodicy (response to Problem of Evil).

British Empiricists:

• Locke: deeply religious; his political philosophy begins from the premise that we are God's property.
• Berkeley: a bishop; his idealism required God as the mind that perceives and sustains all things.
• Hume: the first who could reasonably be called atheist, though more accurately held "attenuated deism"—belief in some Creator, but unknowable and uninvolved.

🌍 German Idealism

• Kant: described his Critique of Pure Reason as denying knowledge "in order to make room for faith."
• Hegel: conceptualized his philosophy around the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which he was trying to revive.

⚡ The 1800s turning point

• Only with Marx and Nietzsche do atheistic philosophies gain a lasting foothold.
• Yet both were deeply concerned with religious questions—they simply came down on the negative side.
• Nietzsche even called Christianity "Platonism for the masses," acknowledging the connection.

🔄 20th century to present: Reputation vs reality

🔄 The Logical Positivist episode

• Logical Positivists (Vienna Circle, 1924–1936) held that religious talk was meaningless (not just false).
• This sounds insulting, but it followed logically from their theory: the meaning of a sentence is just the conditions under which it could be verified to be true.
• From this premise, talk about God, morality, aesthetics, and cause-and-effect all became meaningless—religion wasn't singled out.
• Don't confuse: Logical Positivism's dismissal of religious language with general philosophical closed-mindedness. It was a consequence of a specific (now-defunct) theory of meaning, not mere prejudice.

🌱 Continued engagement even among non-believers

Even during 20th-century atheism's peak, many philosophers remained engaged with religion:

• Wittgenstein: said "I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view"; expressed regret when his influence made a friend less religious.
• Anscombe and Geach: Wittgenstein's students, both devout Roman Catholics and major philosophers.
• Continental philosophers: Husserl converted to Christianity in his twenties; Heidegger began as a Catholic seminarian; Sartre described existentialism as "an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position" (showing the question's importance); Foucault and Derrida remained deeply engaged with religious themes.

📈 Contemporary resurgence

Since mid-20th century, especially in Analytic Philosophy:

• Alvin Plantinga and colleagues (William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Peter van Inwagen, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig) mounted sustained defenses of theistic belief's rationality.
• Philosophy of religion has seen an "explosion" of interest.
• Current data: ~15% of professional philosophers believe in or lean toward God; ~30% among medievalists; over 70% among philosophy-of-religion specialists.

Two interpretations of the last statistic:

1. Arguments for religious belief are stronger, and specialists (best positioned to judge) find them convincing.
2. Self-selection: atheists are less likely to specialize in philosophy of religion.

❓ Open questions for the future

❓ Historical accident or natural affinity?

The excerpt leaves unresolved whether:

• The 2,000+ year connection between philosophy and religion reflects a "deep, natural affinity between the two," OR
• The decline in the 1800s–1900s means "philosophy finally managed to rid itself of an irrational relic," OR
• The recent resurgence will prove lasting, making the atheistic century "the blip on the radar."

❓ Definitions matter

Throughout the excerpt, the difficulty of sharply distinguishing "philosophy" from "religion" recurs:

• Scholars debate whether Confucianism and Buddhism are "really" religion or "only" philosophy—or both, or neither.
• In the West, a sharp division developed only after the Enlightenment.
• Before then, thinkers "did not see two categories here, but one."

Key insight: How we define these terms shapes whether historical facts (like Aristotle calling his work "theology" or the New Testament using Stoic/Platonic terms) seem natural or puzzling.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Theoretical arguments for God's existence attempt to prove God either by invoking him as the best explanation for observable features of the world (teleological and cosmological arguments) or by analyzing the concept of God itself (ontological argument), though each faces significant philosophical challenges.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Three main argument types: teleological (design), cosmological (cause/reason for existence), and ontological (conceptual analysis).
• Empirical vs. conceptual: teleological and cosmological arguments work like ordinary empirical reasoning (inferring God from evidence), while the ontological argument works like mathematics (deriving existence from the concept of God).
• Common confusion: the teleological argument is not claiming "complexity proves God," but rather "complex arrangement serving a function (like an eye) is analogous to artifacts (like a watch) and thus suggests a designer."
• Reformed epistemology alternative: belief in God may be "properly basic" (justified without argument) if it arises from a reliable faculty, rather than requiring proof from other beliefs.
• Why it matters: these arguments raise deep questions about causality, time, existence, and the nature of concepts—showing that philosophy of religion intersects with core philosophical problems.

🔭 The teleological argument

🎯 Core idea: design implies a designer

Teleological argument: takes as its starting point the appearance of purpose or design in the world; if there is design, there must be a designer.

• "Telos" = Greek for "purpose" or "goal."
• Ancient and cross-cultural: appears in Hindu thought and the Psalms ("The heavens declare the glory of the Lord").
• The argument moves from observed design-like features to the hypothesis of a designing mind.

👁️ Paley's watch analogy

William Paley's formulation (1802):

• Organisms (e.g., an eye) are analogous to human-made artifacts (e.g., a watch).
• Both involve:
  • A complex arrangement of parts.
  • Parts serving sub-functions ordered toward a higher function.
  • Even slight alterations would prevent the function from being served.
• Inference: just as a watch implies a watchmaker, an eye implies a designer (God).
• Example: the eye's intricate structure (lens, retina, optic nerve) all work together for vision; if any part were slightly different, vision would fail—this suggests intentional design rather than random forces.

Don't confuse: Paley is not saying "complexity alone proves God," but rather "complexity plus functional arrangement plus sensitivity to alteration" together suggest design.

🧨 Hume's criticisms

David Hume questioned the analogy in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:

Objection	Explanation
Disanalogy in creation	We make artifacts from pre-existing materials; God supposedly creates from nothing.
Unclear purpose	Artifacts have evident purposes to us; God's purpose in creating creatures or the world is unclear.
Limited experience	We've seen artifacts manufactured many times, but never an organism or the world being made.
Multiple designers	Artifacts often result from collaboration; the design in the world could imply polytheism, not one God.
Designer's qualities	An artifact's qualities don't determine the designer's qualities (a giant need not build a skyscraper); so design in the world doesn't prove an exalted being.

🧬 Darwin's challenge

• Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is widely taken to show that complex biological arrangements and functions can arise without a designing mind.
• The appearance of design is "merely appearance"; the analogy between artifacts and organisms is misleading.
• God becomes an "obsolete hypothesis" for explaining biological phenomena.
• Intelligent Design proponents (e.g., Behe 1996) contest this, offering examples they claim cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution—but critics argue they invoke miraculous intervention unprincipled and lack serious methodology (Forrest 2011).

🎛️ Modern fine-tuning argument

A contemporary version of the teleological argument:

• Our universe is governed by laws of nature (gravity, strong nuclear force, etc.).
• These laws could have been different in unfathomable ways (e.g., gravity a billion times stronger or weaker).
• Most conceivable variations would not allow for embodied moral agents (or life) by preventing the emergence of complex matter.
• If God exists, he would wish there to be embodied moral agents, so we'd predict laws finely-tuned for that purpose.
• If no God, there's no particular reason to predict such laws.
• Our universe does have such laws → more consistent with theism → probably God exists.

Richard Swinburne adds: the fact that our universe is governed by laws at all (rather than being chaotic) demands a design-based explanation.

Ongoing debate: Do these phenomena really need a special explanation? Could non-theistic alternatives supplant the design explanation?

🌍 The cosmological argument

🌌 Core idea: God as the reason for existence

Cosmological argument: suggests God as the only adequate hypothesis in explaining why there is something rather than nothing.

• "Cosmos" = Greek for "world."
• Goes back at least to Plato; influential formulations by Aquinas, Leibniz, and Samuel Clarke.

🔗 Clarke's formulation: necessary being

Samuel Clarke's argument (1705) proceeds by eliminating alternatives:

1. Something must have existed from eternity (since something from nothing is absurd).
2. This eternal something must be independent of the universe:
   • Every individual thing in the universe is contingent (could fail to exist)—demonstrated by the fact that it once did not exist and is susceptible to change/destruction.
   • A sapling's reason for existing must be sought outside it (parent tree, soil, sun, air).
   • If everything in the universe is contingent, the universe itself is contingent, and its reason must be sought outside it.
3. Even an infinite succession doesn't solve the problem:
   • Even if the universe had no beginning and we could trace causes backward indefinitely, we'd still need to explain why there is this endless succession rather than nothing.
   • Analogy: "pass the parcel" game—even with infinite players or eternal passing, if every player must receive the parcel from another, we still face the question of where the parcel came from in the first place.
4. The being outside the universe must have necessary existence:
   • It contains the reason for its existence within itself.
   • It could not fail to exist.
   • This is God.

Clarke admits necessary existence is difficult to conceive (since all beings we encounter are contingent), but holds it's the only adequate hypothesis.

🧩 Hume's objections to Clarke

Objection	Explanation
Fallacy of composition	Just because every individual thing in the universe is contingent doesn't prove the universe itself is contingent. (A flock may be composed of sheep destined for slaughter, but the flock itself need not be destined for slaughter.) Perhaps the universe's existence is necessary despite the contingency of its parts—lent credibility by the physical principle that matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
No necessary beings?	Necessary claims (like "2+2=4") have contraries that cannot be conceived without contradiction (like "2+2=5"). But we can coherently conceive any being's nonexistence without contradiction—including God's (as shown by the fact that we debate God's existence). So there may be no such thing as a necessary being.

📜 Principle of sufficient reason

• Clarke's argument (and many cosmological arguments) invoke the principle of sufficient reason: every state of affairs has a reason why it is so and not otherwise.
• This principle drives us to insist the universe must have a reason for its existence, rather than being an unaccountable "brute fact."
• Problem: Why accept this principle? It doesn't seem to be a necessary truth or something we can infer from experience (Pruss 2006).

⏰ Craig's kalām cosmological argument

William Lane Craig, drawing on Islamic philosophers (9th–12th centuries, e.g., al-Ghazali):

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, God must be invoked as its cause.

Why believe the universe began to exist?

• Argument from successive addition: the successive addition of finites cannot add up to something infinite. Just as one cannot "count to infinity," the compounding of moments in time could not add up to an infinite temporal duration.
• Argument from absurdity: if the universe has infinite temporal duration, absurdities arise.
  • Example: Sundays are one-seventh of all days. A deity counting six non-Sundays for every Sunday would count infinitely many Sundays and infinitely many non-Sundays. But then the subset (Sundays) equals the set (all days)—an absurdity.
• Scientific evidence: Big Bang theory; entropy (if the universe had infinite temporal duration, complex matter wouldn't exist now).

Advantage: Craig's argument avoids referring to necessary beings or the principle of sufficient reason; it requires only "if something begins to exist, then it has a cause."

🕰️ Why the cause must be a personal agent

• The cause of the universe must be timeless (outside of time entirely).
• Physical causes bring about effects immediately (e.g., water freezes as soon as temperature drops below zero). If the cause is timeless and physical, the universe would have always existed—but it didn't.
• So the cause must be non-physical.
• Personal agents bring about effects spontaneously when they will to do so, in a way different from and not entirely determined by physical causes.
• Therefore, the cause of the universe is plausibly the action of a personal, non-physical agent (God).

Objection: It's difficult to make sense of a personal agent who acts but is outside of time. Also, we're relying too heavily on our limited repertoire of concepts—for all we know, there might be causes neither physical nor like personal agency.

🧠 The ontological argument

💡 Core idea: existence proven by conceptual analysis

Ontological argument: God's existence is proven by reflection on the concept of God, not by calling upon God as an explanation for anything.

• "Ontos" = Greek for "being" or "existence."
• Extremely unfamiliar way of proceeding: ordinarily, analyzing a concept reveals predicates that will be true if it exists, but not that it exists.
• Example: analyzing the concept "my child" tells me that if I have a child, the predicate "has a grandfather named Patrick" will be true of it—but not that I have a child.
• The ontological argument proposes to abolish this "if" and proceed directly from the concept of God to his existence.

🏰 Anselm's formulation

Anselm of Canterbury (1078) in Proslogion:

• God is characterized as "a being than which nothing greater can be conceived" (the greatest conceivable being).
• It is part of the concept of God that it is impossible to conceive of any being greater than God.
• Existence is greater than nonexistence.
• If we conceive of God as nonexistent, we can conceive of something greater than God (e.g., a shoe, a flea—which exist).
• But God is the greatest conceivable being, so our assumption of God's nonexistence must be false.
• Therefore, God must exist.

Another way: "The being which must exist does not exist" seems like a contradiction. Anselm anticipates Hume's objection that no being's existence is necessary (since any being's nonexistence can be conceived without contradiction) by insisting that the idea of God, properly understood, does give rise to contradiction if we suppose his non-existence.

🏝️ Gaunilo's island objection

Gaunilo of Marmoutier (994–1083) offers a parody:

• Imagine "the greatest island that can be conceived."
• If such an island is to be greater than, say, Corsica, it must exist.
• Must we then say such an island exists? Surely not.
• Problem raised: it seems the predicate of existence can be bolted on to any concept illicitly.

Anselm's response:

• His argument applies uniquely to the greatest being that can be conceived (not a given, limited kind of being like an island).
• Only for the greatest being is it part of the concept that it be greater than everything else, so only for it can we infer existence from its concept.
• Alternative response: contingency is part of the concept of an island (or dog, horse, or any specific, limited kind of being we're acquainted with), so a necessarily existing island would be a contradiction. Only with the non-specific concept of "a being" in general would contingency not be included in the concept.

🚫 Kant's objection: existence is not a predicate

Immanuel Kant (1781) in Critique of Pure Reason:

• Existence is not a predicate.
• Think about the concept of a banana: we can attribute predicates like "yellowness" and "sweetness." Over time we might add "nutritional potassium source."
• Now suppose bananas exist. The concept is not changed at all.
• To say something exists is not to say anything about the concept of it, only that the concept is instantiated in reality.
• If existence cannot be part of a concept, it cannot be part of the concept of God, and cannot be found by analysis.

Impact: Kant's argument was widely taken to be calamitous to the ontological argument.

🔄 Modern revivals

Norman Malcolm (1960s):

• Although existence may not be a predicate, necessary existence is a predicate.
• Contingent beings can come into and go out of existence. If God exists, he is a necessary being, so he cannot go out of existence.
• This is a predicate God enjoys, even if existence per se is not a predicate.
• Intuitively, "indestructibility" and "immortality" are predicates that alter the concept of a thing.

Lynne Rudder Baker (2013):

• Avoids the claim that existence is a predicate.
• Individuals who do not exist have mediated causal powers (they cause effects only because individuals who do exist have thoughts/beliefs about them).
  • Example: Santa Claus has the mediated causal power to get children to leave cookies out, because children (who have unmediated causal powers) believe in him.
• To have unmediated causal powers is intuitively greater than having mediated causal powers.
• Given that God is the greatest being that can be conceived, God must have unmediated causal powers.
• Therefore, God must exist.

❓ Do these arguments prove the God of Abraham?

A final difficulty for all three theistic proofs:

• Do they prove the existence of the God of Abraham or the God of classical theism?
• The teleological argument may show a designer (corresponding to God's creatorhood), but seems to fall short of showing God's other attributes (like omnibenevolence).
• The world-cause or necessary being shown by the cosmological and ontological arguments may seem distant from a personal God interested in our affairs.

Theistic responses:

• These arguments may work in combination.
• They may be supplemented by evidence of revelations, religious experiences, and miracles.
• We may find ways in which one divine attribute implies the others.
• There are many less well-known theistic arguments beyond these three traditional ones.

🧱 Reformed epistemology: belief without argument

🤔 The oddness of basing belief on arguments

• It strikes some as odd to base belief in God on theoretical arguments.
• Someone who did so would be obliged to regularly check philosophical journals to ensure their favorite argument hadn't been undermined.
• The fortunes of each argument wax and wane over time.
• Surely belief in God should not depend on such vicissitudes.
• But without relying on such arguments, wouldn't belief become theoretically unjustified, irrational, and dogmatic?

🏗️ Plantinga's properly basic beliefs

Alvin Plantinga (1983), drawing on Reformed theology of John Calvin:

Belief structure:

• Some beliefs are high-up in the structure: justified only by complicated arguments from other beliefs (e.g., "inflation reduces unemployment").
• Other beliefs are at the foundation: not based on other beliefs, so are themselves "basic."

Properly basic beliefs:

Properly basic: basic beliefs are justified if they arise from the exercise of reliable faculties such as our senses or our reason.

• Example: "I am cold"—I don't infer this from other beliefs; I justifiably believe it since it's evident to my senses.
• Example: "2+2=4"—although a mathematician could prove this from axioms, ordinary people justifiably believe it since it's self-evident to their reason.

🙏 Could belief in God be properly basic?

The apparent objection:

• God's existence is neither evident to the senses nor self-evident to reason.
• If a belief doesn't meet either criterion, how can it be properly basic?

Plantinga's response:

• Many beliefs seem to be properly basic for us yet don't meet these criteria.
• Example: belief that other people have minds (are not automatons).
  • This belief is usually basic for us—we believe it spontaneously when we see a human form, not because of a complicated argument.
  • Is it evident to the senses? No, we cannot "see" other people's minds, only their outward behavior.
  • Is it self-evident to reason? No, we can conceive of other people being mindless robots without contradiction.
  • So this belief is basic for us despite neither being self-evident nor evident to the senses.
  • It's properly basic if the faculty that delivers this belief is reliable.

Belief in God as properly basic:

• Perhaps belief in God is the same way: something we spontaneously believe in certain circumstances (e.g., viewing a dramatic sunset, following prevention of impending peril).
• Such a belief will be properly basic if it results from the exercise of a reliable faculty.
• Plantinga postulates such a faculty: sensus divinitatis ("sense of divinity"), following Calvin.

🛡️ Not dogmatic

• Taking belief in God as basic need not be dogmatic.
• Basic beliefs can be overturned if:
  • They are shown to be false.
  • They are shown to have resulted from unreliable faculties.
• Plantinga conjectures the failure of the arguments against God's existence (addressed in Chapter 4).

Don't confuse: "properly basic" does not mean "arbitrary" or "immune to revision"—it means "justified by arising from a reliable faculty, not by inference from other beliefs."

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Non-standard arguments for God's existence—including Pascal's Wager, arguments from religious experience, and Lewis's argument from desire—attempt to show that belief in God is either rational or well-evidenced through approaches not typically covered in introductory philosophy textbooks.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What "non-standard" means: arguments beyond the ontological, design, and cosmological arguments usually taught in introductory courses.
• Pascal's Wager is not a proof: it argues one should believe in God based on self-interest even without evidence, not that God exists.
• Religious experience as evidence: if experiences seem to be of God, they provide initial (prima facie) evidence for God's existence, similar to how sensory experiences justify beliefs about the physical world.
• Common confusion—desire vs. proof: Lewis's argument from desire is not "God exists because I want God to exist" but rather that a natural, unsatisfied longing points to something beyond nature.
• Many other non-standard arguments exist: moral arguments, arguments from consciousness, beauty, intelligibility, and others have been developed in recent philosophy.

🎲 Pascal's Wager

🎲 What the wager claims

Pascal's wager: an argument that one should believe in God even if there is no evidence for or against God's existence, because it is in one's own best interest.

• Pascal (1623-1662) was a polymath and founder of probability theory.
• The wager is not strictly an argument that God exists.
• Instead, it argues that believing is the rational choice given the possible outcomes.

🎯 The four possibilities

Pascal identifies four options when evidence is absent:

Option	God exists?	You believe?	Outcome
(a)	Yes	Yes	Unlimited gain
(b)	Yes	No	Unlimited loss
(c)	No	Yes	Limited loss/gain
(d)	No	No	Limited loss/gain

• Key insight: unlimited gains/losses always outweigh limited ones.
• Therefore, rational self-interest dictates choosing to believe (option a).
• Example: If God exists and rewards belief, you gain infinitely; if God doesn't exist, you lose only finite pleasures or gain finite benefits from living differently.

🛡️ Objections and responses

🛡️ The moral objection

• Objection: Believing based on self-interest is morally problematic.
• Response: People act in self-interest blamelessly all the time (eating, sleeping). The benefits may include others' good, not just selfish gain.

🛡️ The many-gods objection

• Objection: Why assume the Christian God? Perhaps a perverse deity rewards unbelief, or other religions' gods exist.
• Response to perverse deity: Such "cooked up" hypotheses are so bizarre they warrant neglect, like ignoring the possibility a coin will disappear mid-toss.
• Response to world religions: The basic wager struggles here, but the ecumenical wager groups all religions promising unlimited gain together versus all other options, showing one should pursue some religion from that group.

⚖️ The ecumenical wager

• Revised version: choose between (1) religions offering unlimited gain or (2) disbelief/religions without such promises.
• Shows one ought to believe one of them, even if it doesn't specify which.
• Encourages exploring certain types of religions.

🙏 Arguments from Religious Experience

🙏 What religious experience is

• Religious experiences range from general divine presence to mystical visions.
• Not the same as ordinary happiness or pleasure.
• Ubiquitous across human history and cultures.
• Authors like William James and Rudolf Otto described types and features; contemporary philosophers argue these provide justifying grounds for belief.

📜 The basic argument structure

1. Some people have experiences that seem to be experiences of God.
2. If some people have such experiences, then there is prima facie (initial) evidence for God's existence.
3. Therefore, there is prima facie evidence for God's existence.
4. If there is such evidence, we have some reason to think God exists.
5. Therefore, we have some reason to think God exists.

🔑 The Principle of Credulity

Principle of Credulity (Swinburne): If something appears to be present to a person, then (absent special considerations) it probably is present—or it is at least rational to believe it is present.

• We apply this principle constantly: if your keys appear locked in your car, you're justified believing they are.
• Extenuating circumstances can defeat this: frequent hallucinations, hypnosis, etc.
• Religious experience should be treated the same way: guilty until proven innocent is a double standard.
• Example: If some people hallucinate locked keys, that doesn't mean no one is ever justified in believing their keys are locked in the car.

🔍 Objections and responses

🔍 The natural-causes objection

• Objection: Drugs, stress, brain chemistry can produce religious experiences, casting doubt on all such experiences.
• Response: We don't reject all reports of ordinary objects because some involve illusion or hallucination. Applying this standard only to religious experience is an unfair double standard.

🔍 The public-vs-private objection

• Objection (C.B. Martin): Sensory experience is public and verifiable (can be photographed, touched by others), but religious experience is private and subjective.
• Response (Kai-Man Kwan): The only way to check sensory experience reliability is through verbal reports from others. Religious experiences are also reported verbally across ages, places, and cultures, and these reports "to a considerable extent, match." Religious experience is also public in this sense.

🔔 Don't confuse with...

• Religious experience as an argument is different from religious experience as direct, non-inferential grounds for belief (some philosophers take the latter approach).
• The argument doesn't claim religious experience proves God with certainty, only that it provides initial evidence.

💫 C.S. Lewis's Argument from Desire

💫 What the argument is NOT

• Not: "God exists because I want God to exist."
• Not: an argument from religious experience.
• Not: an argument that life's experiences don't make us happy.

🌟 The inconsolable longing

The inconsolable longing (Joy): a natural desire distinct from happiness and pleasure, desirable in itself, brought about by various objects/events that fail to satisfy it.

Lewis's descriptions:

• A feeling of nostalgic longing connected to absence or open-ended possibility.
• "Enormous bliss" that is "more desirable than any other satisfaction."
• Melancholic Joy or "dizzying exaltation" like "swallowing light itself."
• May accompany appreciation of beauty in music, art, nature—but is not identical to these.
• The object of this longing is not found in sensory experience.

Example: Lewis first experienced it at age eight beside a flowering currant bush, remembering his brother's toy garden—a sensation of desire, but "desire for what?"

🎯 The argument structure

1. We have good reason to think all natural desires have existing objects that satisfy them.
2. There exists a natural desire (the inconsolable longing) satisfied by neither sensory experience nor anything in the natural world.
3. Therefore, we have good reason to think something exists beyond sensory experience and the natural world that can satisfy this longing.
4. If we have reason to think something exists beyond nature, we have some reason to think God exists.
5. Therefore, we have some reason to think God exists.

🔑 Natural vs. artificial desires

Natural desires	Artificial desires
Produced spontaneously within us	Cultivated by culture/environment
Food, sleep, the inconsolable longing	Becoming invisible, becoming president, flying like a bird
Always have corresponding objects	Built from natural desires; may not have objects

• Key defense: The objection "people desire things that aren't real" applies only to artificial desires.
• Artificial desires (like wanting to be president) are based on natural desires (prestige, influence) that do have objects.
• Example: A baby feels hunger—there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim—there is such a thing as water. We feel inconsolable longing—there is such a thing as something beyond nature.

🔍 How it raises probability

• The argument raises the probability of any view holding something exists beyond nature.
• This includes theism but also other non-naturalistic views.
• Analogy: A shoe print at a crime scene raises the probability that Mr. Smith committed the crime, but also that Mr. Jones did—by lowering the probability of suspects with different shoe sizes.
• Similarly, evidence for something beyond nature lowers the probability of pure naturalism, thereby raising theism's probability.

🌐 Other Non-Standard Arguments

🌐 Overview of additional arguments

The excerpt mentions many other non-standard arguments developed in recent philosophy, including arguments from:

• Mathematics, intuition, intentionality, sets, meaning, counterfactual statements
• Morality, consciousness, induction
• Beauty, intelligibility of reality, laws of nature

⚖️ Moral arguments

Multiple philosophers have developed moral arguments with different emphases:

• Baggett & Walls: Moral freedom, obligations, and responsibility fit better with theism than naturalism.
• Zagzebski: Theism prevents morality from being futile and grounds moral knowledge.
• Lindville: Theism accounts for moral knowledge and personal dignity; naturalism cannot.
• Hare: Morality's demands are too stringent for humans without divine assistance; since we're obligated to meet them, God must exist to assist.
• Rogers: Only theism provides objectivity and normative power for robust objective morality.

Common pattern: Moral arguments highlight features of morality (objectivity, knowledge, rationality) and argue these are best explained by or entail God's existence.

🧠 Arguments from consciousness

• Swinburne: The correlation of brain events with mental intentions and experiences gives reason to think God exists.
• Adams: Qualia (subjective experiences like seeing red or feeling cold) have no naturalistic explanation, but theism can explain them since God is a mind.
• Moreland: Consciousness and its correlation with physical states provide evidence for God's existence.

Common pattern: Arguments appeal to consciousness itself or its features (qualia, intentionality) and argue these are best explained by God's existence.

🎨 Other notable arguments

🎨 Argument from beauty

• Developed by Wynn (building on Tennant from the 1930s).
• Does not require beauty to be objective—only that subjective experiences of beauty are produced by non-subjective features of the world.

🎨 Berkeley's idealism

• George Berkeley argued for the non-existence of matter, leading to God's existence.
• If matter doesn't exist, what we perceive must be ideas in minds—ultimately in God's mind.

🎨 Argument from intelligibility

• Meynell: The universe is intelligible (science works); this requires something analogous to the human mind (God) involved in the universe's constitution.
• Peirce: Advanced a similar argument in the early 1900s.

🎨 Argument from laws of nature

• Foster: Appeals to both laws of nature and induction (drawing conclusions about the future from past experience).
• Ratzsch: Focuses on the subjunctive feature of natural law statements in science.

📚 Significance and Scope

📚 The range of arguments

• The excerpt emphasizes this is only a "small sample" of non-standard arguments.
• Many more arguments exist beyond the standard ontological, design, and cosmological arguments.
• The variety demonstrates the breadth of philosophical approaches to defending theistic belief.

📚 How arguments work together

• Individual arguments may provide "some good evidence" for God's existence.
• When taken together, multiple arguments may make a stronger cumulative case.
• This is analogous to how multiple pieces of evidence in a legal case can be more compelling together than individually.

📚 The intellectual enterprise

• The attempt to demonstrate God's existence through reason has been called "the most ambitious intellectual enterprise ever undertaken."
• Non-standard arguments show this enterprise extends far beyond the few arguments typically taught in introductory courses.
• These arguments aim to show belief in God is either rational or well-evidenced, even if they don't constitute absolute proofs.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Several philosophical arguments challenge the coherence and plausibility of omniGod theism by identifying logical inconsistencies among divine attributes, tensions between God's nature and observable evil, and problems arising from God's apparent hiddenness from sincere seekers.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Scope of critique: Arguments target the "omniGod" of Abrahamic monotheism—a personal deity possessing omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.
• Internal incoherence: The omni-properties may be individually paradoxical (e.g., can God create a stone too heavy to lift?) or mutually inconsistent (e.g., omniscience may eliminate the free will needed for omnipotence).
• Problem of evil: The existence of moral and natural evils appears incompatible with an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who could and would prevent suffering.
• Divine hiddenness: A perfectly loving God would ensure belief is possible for all non-resistant seekers, yet many sincere people lack belief in God's existence.
• Common confusion: Classical theism (God as timeless, immutable, impassible) vs. personalist theism (God as responsive, emotional)—most contemporary arguments target the personalist conception.

🎯 The omniGod concept

🎯 What is being critiqued

OmniGod: A deity possessing omniscience (knowledge of everything), omnipotence (power to do anything), and omnibenevolence (perfect moral goodness).

• Most philosophical arguments against theism target this specific conception found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
• This chapter focuses on personalist theism: God as a person-like being with emotional responses and relational qualities.
• Don't confuse with: Classical theism (Augustine, Aquinas), where God is simple, immutable, impassible, and timeless—these arguments apply differently to that framework.

📋 Two main theistic frameworks

Framework	Key features	Relevance to arguments
Personalist theism	God is responsive, has emotions, acts in time	Primary target of these arguments
Classical theism	God is simple, timeless, immutable, impassible	Some arguments (e.g., foreknowledge problems) don't apply

🔀 Internal incoherence of divine attributes

🪨 The omnipotence paradox

The classic challenge: Can God create a stone too heavy for them to lift?

• If yes: Then God cannot lift it → not omnipotent
• If no: Then God cannot create it → not omnipotent
• Either way, omnipotence as "ability to do anything at all" seems self-contradictory.

Responses available to theists:

1. Cartesian solution (Descartes): God can suspend logic itself and perform contradictions.

   • Problem: If God transcends logic, we cannot reason about God at all—including claims about omnibenevolence.
   • "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater"—defending omnipotence by abandoning rational theology.

2. Aquinas's revision: Omnipotence means "able to do all things that are logically possible."

   • Avoids paradox by excluding logical impossibilities from the scope of divine power.
   • Risk: May fail to satisfy worship-worthiness if God is limited in any way.

⚔️ Conflicts between omni-properties

The properties may be individually coherent but mutually inconsistent.

Omniscience vs. Free Will:

1. If God infallibly knows they will do x at time t, God cannot do otherwise.
2. Without ability to do otherwise, God lacks free will.
3. Without free will, God lacks omnipotence (cannot choose alternatives).
4. Without free will, God lacks omnibenevolence (moral goodness requires freedom).

Omnibenevolence vs. Free Will:

1. If God is morally perfect, God necessarily does what is morally best.
2. If God must do the morally best action, God cannot do morally suboptimal actions.
3. Therefore God lacks omnipotence (cannot perform imperfect actions).

Key insight: Each omni-property can be brought into apparent conflict with the others—if any inconsistency holds, the omniGod cannot exist.

😈 Problems of evil

😈 Mackie's logical problem

J.L. Mackie argued that evil's existence logically contradicts God's omni-properties.

The argument:

1. If God is omnipotent, there are no limits to what God can do.
2. If God is omnibenevolent, God always eliminates evil as far as possible.
3. Therefore, if the omniGod exists, evil should not exist.
4. But evil clearly does exist.
5. Conclusion: The omniGod does not exist.

Hume's formulation: "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then impotent. Able but not willing? Then malevolent. Both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

🆓 The free will defence

A prominent theistic response (Plantinga and others):

• Core claim: Libertarian free will (ability to choose without external causation) is extremely valuable.
• God faces a forced choice:
  • Allow libertarian free will → risk that humans will cause evil
  • Prevent all evil by coercion → eliminate libertarian free will
• It could be better (or at least reasonable) for God to preserve free will despite the risk of moral evil.

Limitation: This defence only addresses moral evils (evils caused by free agents like murder, theft).

🌋 Natural evils

Natural evils: Evils for which no agent is morally responsible—volcanic eruptions, forest fires, tsunamis, animal suffering.

Example from the text: Lightning strikes a dead tree, causing a forest fire that traps a fawn, which suffers horribly for days before dying.

• The problem: No human free will is involved—how can the free will defence explain this?
• The free will defence provides only a partial solution; natural evils require different explanations.

🔥 The problem of hell

Hell raises an acute problem of evil:

• Hell is universally seen as an evil of the worst order.
• Aggravating factors:
  • Finality: Often conceived as eternal/infinite punishment
  • Divine administration: Directly permitted or administered by God
  • Disproportionality: Some are consigned to hell merely for non-belief, not special sins
• Many philosophers have embraced universalist eschatology (everyone eventually reaches heaven) to avoid this problem.

🙈 Divine hiddenness

🙈 Schellenberg's argument

John Schellenberg argues that God's hiddenness from sincere seekers contradicts omnibenevolence.

Key definitions:

Non-resistant non-belief: Non-belief in God where the person has not "shut the door"—they haven't intentionally avoided or rejected God through careless investigation, deliberate avoidance of evidence, or choosing to "do their own thing" without God.

The argument:

1. If a perfectly loving God exists, God is always open to a personal relationship with any capable person.
2. If God is open to relationship, no person would ever be in non-resistant non-belief (because belief in God's existence is a precondition for relationship).
3. But non-resistant non-believers do exist.
4. Therefore, the omniGod does not exist.

💭 Why hiddenness matters

• Openness to relationship: Means God is willing to have a relationship, not actively ruling it out.
• Belief as precondition: You cannot have a personal relationship with someone whose existence you don't believe in.
• God's responsibility: By not revealing existence, God makes relationship impossible even for those who would be open to it.

Example: Someone who has never encountered the concept of God, or whose trauma has prevented belief—not through resistance, but through circumstances.

🛡️ Possible theistic response

Daniel Howard-Snyder suggests God might remain hidden from some non-resistant non-believers if their motives are improper:

• Example: Someone who is non-resistant only to avoid damnation and gain eternal bliss (pure self-interest).
• Perhaps God waits for better reasons for openness before revealing himself.
• Question: Does this seem consistent with perfect love and omnibenevolence?

🔗 Connections to other problems

• Divine hiddenness may be a subspecies of the problem of evil.
• It potentially exacerbates the problem of hell: Is it consistent with omnibenevolence to both (a) punish people with hell for non-belief and (b) remain hidden, making belief difficult?

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Debunking arguments use findings from Cognitive Science of Religion to claim that theistic beliefs suffer from serious epistemic deficiencies because the belief-forming faculties that produce them are prone to error—either insensitive to reality or unreliable—though several responses challenge these conclusions.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What debunking arguments target: not whether God exists (metaphysical), but whether belief in God is rational or justified (epistemological).
• The shared pattern: all debunking arguments claim that science shows theistic beliefs are formed by error-prone faculties, and beliefs from error-prone faculties suffer epistemic deficiencies.
• Three varieties of error-proneness: evolutionary (insensitivity), false-belief (unreliability across religions), and misattribution (mistaking natural input for supernatural).
• Common confusion: sensitivity vs. reliability—a faculty is insensitive if it would produce the same belief whether true or false; it is unreliable if it produces more false than true beliefs on average.
• Four main responses: adding additional reasons, showing sensitivity to some reality, broadening the conception of belief-forming faculties to include culture, and challenging methodological naturalism.

🎯 What debunking arguments are

🎯 Epistemological not metaphysical

• Debunking arguments do not conclude that God does not exist.
• Instead, they conclude that belief in God is not rational or not justified.
• Even if God exists, it might still be irrational to believe in God if the arguments succeed.
• Example: a conspiracy theory might accidentally be true, but if it's based on bad evidence, believing it is still irrational.

🔑 Key terms

Term	Definition
Belief-forming faculty (BFF)	Any human mechanism or ability that gives rise to beliefs (e.g., vision, reasoning)
Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR)	The discipline explaining religious beliefs, experiences, and behaviors via cognitive or evolutionary processes
Debunking argument	An argument undermining the rationality of a class of beliefs by showing they rest on false evidence or are badly formed
Epistemic deficiency	Any quality indicating a belief suffers from a defect (not rational, unjustified, unsupported by evidence)
Theistic belief	Belief about the existence or nature of God or gods

🧩 The shared pattern

🧩 Three-step structure

All debunking arguments follow this pattern:

1. Science shows that theistic beliefs are formed by BFFs that are prone to error.
2. Beliefs formed by error-prone BFFs suffer from a serious epistemic deficiency.
3. Therefore theistic beliefs suffer from a serious epistemic deficiency.

🔍 Two types of error-proneness

Insensitive BFFs:

A subject's belief that p is sensitive if and only if, if p were false, the subject would not believe that p.

• A BFF is insensitive if it would produce the same belief whether that belief were true or false.
• Example: parents believing their child is the smartest in class—even if false, the belief probably won't change; it's not sensitive to reality.
• Don't confuse: sensitivity is about whether the belief tracks truth; it's not about how strongly someone holds the belief.

Unreliable BFFs:

A belief is unreliably formed if the process by which a subject forms the belief produces, on average, more false beliefs than true beliefs.

• A BFF that produces mostly false beliefs is a bad guide to truth.
• Example: a medical test with 90% false positives is unreliable.

📉 Severity of impact

Debunkers disagree on how bad the result is:

• Some say theistic beliefs are debunked (shown to be based on bad evidence).
• Others say they are unwarranted (just lucky guesses).
• Still others say believers should hold them with less confidence.
• All agree the impact is serious—believers cannot carelessly judge their beliefs as true.

🧬 The science: Cognitive Science of Religion

🧬 Two key claims

Most CSR theories used in debunking arguments accept:

(i) BFFs for theistic belief were selected by natural selection

• Either theistic beliefs themselves had adaptive value, or
• They evolved as a by-product of other adaptive traits.

(ii) BFFs actively shape theistic beliefs

• They are not mere transmitters of sensory input.
• They add information not present in the input itself.

🎯 Adaptation theories

• Broad Supernatural Punishment Theory: Believing in moralizing, punishing gods encouraged cooperation.
• Subjects who believe in a god who (a) cares about human social behavior and (b) punishes or rewards accordingly are more likely to cooperate.
• Cooperation is hugely important for survival, so theistic belief would be an evolutionary advantage.
• Example: a community where everyone believes a god watches and punishes cheaters will have less cheating and more cooperation.

🌿 By-product theories

Hypersensitive agency detection (Guthrie):

• Humans evolved to quickly detect agents (predators, other humans) based on minimal evidence.
• Better to jump at a curly branch resembling a snake than to miss an actual snake.
• This hypersensitivity spills over: people detect invisible agents where none exist, leading to belief in spirits and gods.
• The hypersensitivity is adaptive; the theistic beliefs are a side effect.

Mind-reading spillover (Bering):

• Humans build hypotheses about others' mental states from external behavior—this "mind-reading" is adaptive.
• It spills over: people apply mind-reading to non-human things and events.
• Meaningful events (natural disasters, births) are seen as evidence for a supernatural mind.
• Ordinary mind-reading is adaptive; applying it to inanimate things is not, but comes along for the ride.

⚠️ Three varieties of error-proneness

⚠️ Evolutionary debunking (insensitivity)

The argument:

• Natural selection selects for fitness, not truth.
• Having true beliefs is selected for only if it increases survival or reproduction.
• Common-sense beliefs (e.g., humans can't walk on water) are selected for truth because they help navigate the environment.
• Theistic beliefs were not selected for truth—they were selected for cooperation (adaptation theory) or arose as a by-product of another trait.
• Therefore, BFFs for theistic belief would produce the same beliefs whether true or false.
• This makes them insensitive to reality.

Why it applies to by-products too:

• If theistic beliefs are a by-product, natural selection selected for the main adaptive trait (e.g., agency detection) regardless of whether the by-product tracked truth.
• So by-product BFFs are also insensitive.

❌ False-belief debunking (unreliability)

Two versions:

Version 1: False from different perspectives

• BFFs for theistic belief produce both monotheistic and polytheistic beliefs.
• Monotheists judge polytheistic beliefs as false.
• Polytheists judge monotheistic beliefs as false.
• Naturalists judge both as false.
• Everyone should agree that BFFs for theistic belief produce many false beliefs.
• Therefore they are unreliable.

Version 2: Mutually incompatible beliefs

• BFFs produce monotheistic and polytheistic beliefs, which are mutually incompatible.
• At most one can be true; the rest must be false.
• A BFF producing many mutually incompatible beliefs produces many false beliefs.
• Therefore it is unreliable.
• Don't confuse: this version doesn't require taking any religious or naturalistic perspective—it's a logical point about incompatibility.

🎭 Misattribution debunking (unreliability)

The argument:

• BFFs for theistic belief actively shape how input is registered.
• The input is natural, but BFFs wrongly register it as supernatural.
• Example: Guthrie's theory—patterns and noises caused by wind or erosion are mistakenly identified as invisible agents.
• These are false positives (type 1 errors): the test indicates presence when nothing is actually there.
• A BFF that misidentifies input is unreliable—it produces inaccurate representations and false beliefs.
• If BFFs for theistic belief work this way, they produce nothing but false beliefs.

Example: A mammography test with a positive result means only 10% chance of actual cancer—9 out of 10 positives are false positives. If theistic belief works like this, it's vastly unreliable.

🛡️ Four main responses

🛡️ Additional reasons

The response:

• Debunking arguments conflate context of discovery (how a belief is formed) with context of justification (how it is justified).
• Epistemic status depends largely on justification—the reasons and evidence a subject has.
• CSR only explains formation by BFFs; it doesn't account for additional reasons.
• Example: arguments from natural theology (e.g., fine-tuning argument) can provide additional justification.

Weakness:

• Most believers don't know or haven't studied these additional reasons.
• For them, debunking arguments still apply.
• Most additional reasons (philosophical arguments, religious experience, authority) are controversial and disputed.

🎯 Sensitivity to some reality

The response:

• Theistic beliefs do change over a subject's lifetime in response to experiences.
• Believers report changes after religious festivals, prayer, meditation, etc.
• This suggests BFFs for theistic belief respond to some reality, unlike truly insensitive BFFs.

Contrast with insensitive BFFs:

• Example of insensitive BFF: self-serving bias (always attributes success to oneself, failure to others).
• It has a fixed outcome, doesn't change much.
• Theistic beliefs are not like this—they are shaped by experiences.

Further step:

• If BFFs for theistic belief respond to a supernatural reality (God), they could be selected because they are sensitive.
• Engaging with benevolent supernatural beings leads to better behavior, lower stress, more existential security.
• These benefits increase survival odds.
• Natural selection could have favored BFFs sensitive to supernatural reality.
• Don't confuse: the debunker could respond that the reality is not actually God, but this requires additional argument.

🌍 Broadening BFFs (culture matters)

The response:

• Debunking arguments have too narrow a conception of BFFs.
• They over-emphasize cognitive architecture and under-emphasize how culture adapts or mends it.
• BFFs never operate in a cultural vacuum.

How culture shapes BFFs:

• The same cognitive architecture produces monotheistic beliefs in monotheistic cultures and polytheistic beliefs in polytheistic cultures.
• Proper education and socialization alter BFF operations.
• Cultural setting is constitutive (an intrinsic part) of the BFF, not just background.

Implication:

• When assessing BFFs globally across cultures, debunkers are actually assessing multiple different BFFs.
• Example: BFFs in North America (producing monotheism) are different from BFFs in Polynesia (producing polytheism).
• Each should be assessed separately for reliability.

🔬 Methodological naturalism challenge

The response:

• Misattribution arguments are underdetermined because of scientific presuppositions.
• Methodological naturalism: the scientific method does not allow reference to anything supernatural.
• Scientists don't take the possibility of supernatural input seriously.

The problem:

• Guthrie and others give examples of natural input (patterns, noises) triggering agency detection.
• But they don't consider whether agency detection could also be triggered by actual invisible agents.
• The claim that BFFs misidentify natural input as supernatural is unsupported if scientists rule out supernatural input from the start.

What's needed:

• A stronger case that theistic belief is triggered only by natural input.
• Without this, the misattribution claim is weak.

📝 Summary

Debunking arguments are epistemological, not metaphysical—they target the rationality of theistic belief, not God's existence. All follow a shared pattern: science (CSR) shows theistic beliefs are formed by error-prone BFFs, so they suffer epistemic deficiencies. Three main varieties argue for error-proneness: evolutionary debunking (insensitivity), false-belief debunking (unreliability across religions), and misattribution debunking (mistaking natural for supernatural). Four responses challenge these arguments: adding additional reasons, showing sensitivity to reality, broadening BFFs to include culture, and questioning methodological naturalism. The debate remains unsettled, with significant implications for the rationality of religious belief.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Traditional philosophy of religion is not truly philosophy of all religions but rather philosophy of Christian (mono)theism, and must be reconstructed from the ground up to be globally appropriate.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What traditional philosophy of religion actually is: philosophy of (mono)theism—focused on Christian God's attributes, existence proofs, and the problem of evil—not philosophy of religions globally.
• Why it's limited: these (mono)theistic questions misfit or distort most religious traditions (South Asian, East Asian, African, Indigenous American), which have different ultimate realities and philosophical concerns.
• Common confusion: assuming that philosophical problems for monotheism (God's existence, attributes, evil) translate to non-monotheistic traditions—they don't, because most traditions lack a Christian-like God or don't prioritize those questions.
• Historical roots: this narrow focus emerged from the European Enlightenment context of "belief-ification" (reducing religion to provable beliefs) and "privatization" (separating religion from public life).
• Proposed solution: reconstruct philosophy of religion using ten "journey metaphor" questions about self and cosmos that can apply to all religious traditions without privileging one.

🏛️ European Enlightenment origins

🏛️ When and why "philosophy of religion" emerged

• The title "philosophy of religion" first appeared during the European Enlightenment (roughly Descartes 1596–1650 to Hegel 1770–1831).
• This period championed reason as the primary authority for knowledge, not church tradition or monarchy.
• Scientific revolution context: growing confidence that the scientific method was the only reliable way to produce knowledge.
• Constitutional democracies began replacing absolute monarchies and challenging Roman Catholic Church authority.

📖 "Belief-ification" of religion

"Belief-ification": the tendency to reduce religion to its supposedly core beliefs, which are then evaluated to discern which can be rationally proved.

• Religion became about which beliefs could be rationally proved and were compatible with science.
• Church theology was no longer the source and standard of knowledge—only what agreed with reason was considered true.
• Tradition-specific beliefs became "mere opinion or faith."
• Example: The arguments in earlier chapters (proofs for God's existence, problem of evil) exemplify this approach—testing beliefs against reason and science.

🏠 "Privatization" of religion

• Religion was removed from the public realm of the state (separation of church and state).
• Religion became what people did in their private lives—people were free to practice any religion as long as it didn't interfere with the state.
• First time we had a distinction between secular (public) and religious (private).

🎯 Method and content shaped by context

Method: Religious beliefs are interrogated from the standpoint of Western philosophy to determine which can be proved true or false.

• Western philosophical methods are paramount.
• Agreement with science is required.
• Appeals to church authority are ruled out.

Content: Lowest-common-denominator religion—beliefs Enlightenment thinkers took to be common to all "mature" religious traditions:

• Nature and existence of God
• Problem of evil (if God is all-powerful and all-loving, why is evil prevalent?)
• Nature of the self (immortality of the soul)
• Religio-philosophical morality

Later additions (but still secondary):

• Religious/mystical experience (claimed as common core of all traditions)
• Religious pluralism (whether all traditions can be "true")

Don't confuse: These topics remain dominant in contemporary Western philosophy of religion, even though they emerged from specific historical contexts and political-rhetorical ends, not from some "natural" or "essential" nature of religion itself.

🌏 Philosophy of religion "elsewhere"

🕉️ South Asia (India)

Partial fit but different priorities:

• Some (mono)theistic conceptions of God exist (e.g., Dvaita Vedānta's Brahman as person-like deity).
• But six "orthodox" Hindu schools show a gamut of views on ultimate reality:
  • Advaita Vedānta (Śaṅkara): everything just is Brahman, which is without attributes (nirguṇa); individuality is illusion (māyā).
  • Vishishtadvaita Vedānta (Rāmānuja): world and souls emerge from Brahman and exist separately before returning; Brahman is ultimately without attributes.
  • Dvaita Vedānta (Madhva): Brahman (person-like), Ātman, and world are entirely and eternally different substances.
• Other schools range from "there is no ultimate reality" to "it doesn't matter" to many deities or impersonal realities.

Key difference: No obsession with proving "God" exists or determining "God's" attributes—much more important is learning who you are to cut the ties of karma that bind you to the wheel of rebirth (saṃsāra).

"Unorthodox" schools (nāstika):

• Buddhism: neither ultimate reality (Brahman) nor eternal soul (Ātman).
• Jainism: eternal souls (jivas) but no God as first cause.
• Philosophical debating tradition (vāda) focuses on nature/means of enlightenment, causation, and expression of reality—not just ultimate reality and soul.

🏮 East Asia (China)

Near-complete misfit:

• None of the influential "three teachings" (san jiao, 三教) hold person-like views of ultimate reality:
  • Confucianism: Tian (天, heaven/nature) is generally impersonal.
  • Daoism: Dao (道) is an impersonal cosmic source and force balancing all things in continual change.
  • Buddhism: Buddha-nature (佛性) is the originally enlightened nature of humans and dynamic harmony of all things.

Chief philosophical questions: Not about the nature of ultimate realities but how society, nature, and the mind can be harmonized.

Historical context: Confucianism and Daoism originated during the "Warring States" period (403–221 BCE), a time of social chaos.

• Confucius (551–479 BCE): Bring harmony by expressing human-heartedness (ren, 仁) in social rituals (li, 禮) and ordering society by five relationships (father/son, elder/younger brother, husband/wife, elder/younger, ruler/subject).
• Daodejing (Daoist text): Act spontaneously, naturally, effortlessly—especially rulers.
• Zhuangzi (Daoist text): Unconcerned with or antagonistic toward political rule; focus on the sage rising above it all.

Don't confuse: The absence of a Christian-like God means (mono)theistic questions make no sense here.

🌍 West Africa (Yorùbá)

Widespread but different structure:

• Yorùbá religion originates in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana; spread to Central/South America via enslavement (present in Santeria, Vodou, Candomble).
• Not one God but many deities called Òrìṣà (400 primordial ones, plus newly created ones = 400+1).
• Òrìṣà are invoked through priests to remediate suffering and secure blessing.
• Locked in eternal combat with 200+1 "anti-gods" (ajogun).

"High god" Olódùmarè:

• One of four deities who carried out creation.
• Plays little role in Yorùbá practice.
• Although conceivable to ask about Olódùmarè's attributes and proofs, Yorùbá philosophers don't—it's not of concern to them.

Practice focus: Contracting a divinatory priest to learn the inner destiny given at birth, to navigate misfortune and illness.

Don't confuse: Even where a "high god" exists, it doesn't mean the philosophical questions of (mono)theism are relevant or important.

🦅 North America (Lakota)

Colonial appropriation concern:

• Lakota are one tribe of the Titonwan (along with Dakota and Nakota), originally granted western South Dakota by 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie (later reneged after gold discovered in sacred Black Hills).
• Now mostly live on reservations (none in Black Hills).

Spiritual world:

• "Holy man" or "medicine man" (wicasa wakan) receives revelations, performs miracles, communicates with spiritual world through dreams and visions.
• Wakan Tanka: creative force meaning "great incomprehensibility," "great mystery," or "great sacred."
• Originally referred to sum total of sixteen sacred mysterious forces—not one God.
• After colonization, Wakan Tanka begins to resemble Christian God.

Don't confuse: Conducting philosophical investigations about Wakan Tanka's attributes and proofs (especially as Christianized) would redouble colonial appropriation of Native American culture and thought.

🔄 Toward a philosophy of religions

🔄 The misfit problem

How well do (mono)theistic questions apply elsewhere?

• Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Confucian, Daoist, Yorùbá, Lakota philosophies aren't very concerned with attributes of God, proofs for God's existence, or the problem of evil for an omnipotent/omnibenevolent God.
• In most cases, there isn't the kind of God that exists in Christian (mono)theism, so these questions make no sense.
• In cases where there is something like a Christian God, philosophical questions about attributes and proofs have no importance (not even to philosophers from those traditions).

What happens when we force them to play by (mono)theistic rules?

• They appear deficient, strange, or wrong.
• This is a distortion, not a fair representation.

🗺️ The journey metaphor solution

Foundation: Draw on cognitive metaphor theory (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980, 1999).

• Human thinking is structured by metaphors, especially those drawn from concrete bodily experience.
• Primary metaphors map sensorimotor experiences to subjective experiences (e.g., "affection is warmth").

The journey metaphor: Life is a journey

• Uses the conceptual structure of a journey to understand the temporal dimension of people's lives.
• Core constituent parts: point of origin, destination, route, obstacles and sights encountered, traveler accompanied by/encountering other travelers.
• Allegedly fundamental to cognition, culturally widespread, and actually utilized in many religious traditions to structure religious growth and maturation.

🧭 Ten questions for global philosophy of religions

Five questions about the self (from journey parts):

1. Who am I?
2. Where do I come from?
3. Where am I going?
4. How do I get there?
5. What obstacles lie in my way?

Five questions about the cosmos (reduplicating for macrocosm): 6. What is the cosmos? 7. Where does the cosmos come from? 8. Where is the cosmos going? 9. How does the cosmos get there? 10. What obstacles lie in the cosmos' way?

✅ Qualifications and advantages

Each question is purposefully vague:

• Requires specification by the precise content of some religious philosophy.
• Example: "I" might be an individual, a group, humans in general, or nothing at all.

Religious philosophies can answer or reject these questions:

• Rejections are as important and significant as answers.
• Example: A philosophy might hold that thinking there is a self traveling a path to a destination is precisely what needs to be overcome.

Addresses the objection about leaving out Christian (mono)theism:

• Question 7 gives a place for discussing God's existence and attributes.
• Questions 8 and 9 for redemption and afterlife.
• Question 10 for sin and the Fall.
• Extending from just a (mono)theistic God to the cosmos allows all philosophies of religion to "get in the game."

Don't confuse: This is not merely expanding or enlarging traditional philosophy of religion—it's rethinking it from the ground up to be inclusive without unduly privileging any one tradition.

📊 Comparison table

Tradition	Ultimate Reality Concept	Person-like God?	Core Philosophical Questions	Fit with (Mono)theistic Questions
Christian (Mono)theism	God	Yes	Attributes of God, proofs for existence, problem of evil	Perfect fit (by design)
South Asian (Advaita Vedānta)	Brahman (without attributes)	No	Who am I? How to cut karma ties? Nature of enlightenment	Partial misfit—some God concepts exist but different priorities
East Asian (Confucianism)	Tian (heaven/nature)	No	How to harmonize society, nature, mind	Near-complete misfit—no such God
East Asian (Daoism)	Dao	No	How to act spontaneously, naturally, effortlessly	Near-complete misfit—no such God
West African (Yorùbá)	Many Òrìṣà; Olódùmarè as high god	Partially (high god exists but not central)	How to navigate destiny, remediate misfortune	Misfit—high god exists but not philosophically important
North American (Lakota)	Wakan Tanka (sum of forces)	No (originally); partially (after colonization)	Communication with spiritual world	Misfit—forcing questions would redouble colonial appropriation