Today I want to talk about a couple of problems that we see in religious epistemology, and I want to look at some resources in recent contemporary social epistemology that I think might be helpful for understanding these problems in the religious realm. So in part one of the lecture, I want to briefly consider two problems that we find in the epistemology of religion. The problem of evil, or as it's sometimes called, the problem of suffering, and the problem of divine hiddenness. In particular, I want to consider a familiar dialectic that occurs in this context in which both the theist and the atheist end up accusing each other of irrationality. Even worse, each party of the debate explains the irrationality that they find by positing some moral or intellectual flaw in the other person. So the basic idea is this, each thinks the evidence points to a clear conclusion, and so if you don't see things the way I do it must be that you are being irrational in some way. It must be that due to some intellectual flaw you are failing to respect the evidence, for example, or maybe it's that due to some moral flaw you see the evidence, but you're resisting it. So, for example, the theist or the believer is exercising bad faith, or the atheist, the non-believer, is being prideful. But in one way or another, either because of intellectual or moral failing, The other side is being seen as irrational. Now, in part two, I want to look at some resources in social epistemology that I think can help us to better understand what is going on here. The main idea is that in social epistemology we take seriously the thought that social location affects epistemic position. In other words, we take seriously the idea that social location matters epistemically speaking. This is a central lesson of contemporary social epistemology and I want to argue that it ought to be adopted in religious epistemology as well. That is we need a kind of social turn in religious epistemology, a social religious epistemology. So by doing so, we can explain how both the atheist and the theist can hold their positions without irrationality, without some intellectual flaw, and without some moral flaw. Part three of the lecture, the last part, I'll explore some further implications for religious belief and for religious epistemology, that is some further implications for adopting this social turn in religious epistemology. Okay, so part one. Let's begin with a thought by the atheist or the non-believer, in other words. So the thought is this, if a good and loving God exists, then why doesn't God clearly reveal himself to all his creation, to all his children? Why don't I have clear evidence of God in my life? So for example, why don't I experience God in my life the way some other people claim to do? So more exactly, we can think in terms of a kind of argument or a line of reasoning. The first premise is, that if God exists, then he is all-loving, and so he wills to be in a loving relationship with all his children. That's the first idea. The second idea is that if God exists, then he's all-powerful and so he does what he wills, and does what is necessary to do for what he wills, and so then we get the third idea, that to be in a loving relationship with another person, this is what God wills, one must reveal oneself to that person. One must allow that person to know him or her. But then putting those ideas together we get, therefore if God exists, he should reveal himself to all persons, but he doesn't. I don't experience God in my life, not everyone experience God in their lives, and so it seems that there must not be such a God at all. There is no God that's all loving, wants this relationship, and has the power to create that relationship and foster that relationship. So notice that there's a structural analogy here with this argument and with the problem of evil, the problem of suffering. So the way that the problem of evil usually starts off is with a premise to the effect that, well look, if God exists, and if he is all loving, and all powerful, then why does he allow evil and suffering to occur in the world? In effect, the ideas that we're demanding an explanation, how is it that God's existence is compatible with the suffering we find? And analogously, non-belief demands an explanation. How is it that God's existence is compatible with people not believing in God? So, there's a kind of structural analogy in the way that the two arguments proceed. The next thing I want to look at is a common thought and response to the problem of divine hiddenness. So, this is something that you see commonly in response to the problem of divine hiddenness, I'll call it the flawed atheist response. So, here it is. Basically, we're going to give an explanation for non-belief. The fact that some people do not know God, and do not even believe in God, can be traced to some flaw in them. That is, God does reveal himself to all, or at least God tries to reveal himself to all, but some people resist. So, more exactly non-belief is to be explained in terms of a moral and/or cognitive, intellectual flaw on the part of the non-believer. So we can look at some examples of this response that you see in the literature. Well, in fact we find one example of it in Romans 20-22. So we can look at that. “Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he made. So they are without excuse, for though they knew God they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened”. So the idea there is that throughout history people have the opportunity to know God, but they resist, and as a result of resisting their minds become senseless and darkened. Here's a more contemporary version of this flawed atheist response. It's by Alvin Plantinga, in warranted Christian belief. Plantinga writes, according to the Aquinas-Calvin model our natural knowledge of God has been compromised, weakened, reduced, smothered, overlaid or impeded by sin and its consequences. The unbeliever, Plantinga says, displays epistemic malfunction. Failing to believe in God is a result of some kind of dysfunction. Well, so you can't get a clearer example of the flawed Atheist response than that right there. Now consider two ways of thinking that are each familiar, both in the philosophical literature and maybe even in just contemporary public discourse. So here's a line of thinking that we get from the atheist. The atheist thinks, first the evidence against God, from suffering, for example, from the evil we see in the world, the evidence against God is ample, for anybody who cares to see it. The same evidence is available to everyone including the theist. Therefore the theist must be either ignoring or misevaluating the available evidence. On the other hand, the theist thinks, the evidence for God, from experience for example, is ample and anyone who cares to see it can see it. Second, the same evidence is available to everyone, including the atheist, and therefore, the atheist must be resisting the evidence. So in the next part of the lecture, I want to challenge the common premise that we see in these two lines of reasoning. In other words, that believers and atheists share the same evidence. That's the calmest premise too in both arguments. So again, a key point in the argument, in the next section, will be that the believer and the atheist inhabit different social locations, and social location affects epistemic position. This in turn, explains how both the atheist and the theist can hold their positions without rational flaw, without intellectual or moral flaw. So part two is devoted to establishing that key point, and again, we are here exploring a central lesson of contemporary social epistemology, and more than that, I think ought to be adopted by religious epistemology as well. In effect, we need a kind of social turn in religious epistemology, and so that's what I'll be arguing for. The way I'm arguing for that is to show how we can make progress on these problems that we've been thinking about in part one.
