Lecture 4.1 - What is the hiddenness argument?

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Philosophy, Science and Religion: Philosophy and Religion

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The University of Edinburgh

Philosophy, Science and Religion: Philosophy and Religion

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Philosophy, Science and Religion mark three of the most fundamental modes of thinking about the world and our place in it. Are these modes incompatible? Put another way: is the intellectually responsible thing to do to ‘pick sides’ and identify with one of these approaches at the exclusion of others? Or, are they complementary or mutually supportive? As is typical of questions of such magnitude, the devil is in the details. For example, it is important to work out what is really distinctive about each of these ways of inquiring about the world. In order to gain some clarity here, we’ll be investigating what some of the current leading thinkers in philosophy, science and religion are actually doing. This course, entitled ‘Philosophy and Religion’, is the second of three related courses in our Philosophy, Science and Religion Online series, and in this course we will ask important questions about the age-old debate between science and religion, such as: • What kind of conflicts are there between religion and science? • Does current cognitive science of religion effectively explain away God? • If there is a God who has made us so that we can know him, why do some people not believe? • Is belief in science also a kind of fundamentalism? • What makes us good at getting, giving, or sharing, knowledge? Is this different when it is religious knowledge? The first course in the Philosophy, Science and Religion series, 'Science and Philosophy' was launched early in 2017 and you can sign up to it at any time. The third course —‘Religion and Science’—will be launched early in 2018. Completing all three courses will give you a broader understanding of this fascinating topic. Look for: • Philosophy, Science and Religion I: Science and Philosophy https://www.coursera.org/learn/philosophy-science-religion-1/ • Philosophy, Science and Religion III: Religion and Science Upon successful completion of all three courses, students will: (1) Understand the main parameters at stake in the current debate between science and religion. (2) Have some familiarity with the relevant areas of science that feature in the debate—including cosmology, evolution, and the neurosciences—and will have begun to engage with them conceptually. (3) Have encountered key philosophical approaches to the interface between science and religion, and will have had the opportunity to engage them in practice. (4) Have embarked constructively in cross-disciplinary conversations. (5) Have demonstrated an openness to personal growth through a commitment to dialogue across intellectual and spiritual boundaries. You can also follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/EdiPhilOnline and you can follow the hashtag #psrmooc

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The Hiddenness Argument and the Contribution of Philosophy

In this series of lectures, Professor John Schellenberg introduces and explains a new argument for atheism known as the hiddenness argument. He highlights the self-imposed limitations of this way of reasoning, which is aimed at ruling out just one candidate for the status of a divine reality, the notion of a personal divine. He then clarifies the relations between this approach to the question of God's existence and other features of the contemporary landscape in philosophy and science – including the philosophical problem of evil, certain results of the cognitive science of religion, and recent moral changes suggesting cultural evolution.

Lecture 4.1 - What is the hiddenness argument?6:20

Lecture 4.2 - Main objections to the argument6:40

Lecture 4.3 - Responses to the objections14:54

Conheça os instrutores

Dr Orestis Palermos
Research Explorer
School of Philosophy
Dr Mark Harris
Senior Lecturer in Science and Religion
School of Divinity
Professor Duncan Pritchard
Professor of Philosophy
University of Edinburgh
Dr J Adam Carter
Researcher
Epistemology - Philosphy
Dr Mog Stapleton

There are several versions of the hiddenness argument by now and,

no doubt, there will be more in the future.

But I'll focus on the original hiddenness argument,

one that I put together when I was at Oxford some 25 years ago.

It's probably more than 25 years ago now.

And to introduce this argument I think it would be good to think about three scenarios.

So here's the first scenario.

It's one in which God exists and there are no nonbelievers.

That is God exists and perhaps there are other people too, other persons,

God has created finite persons and if there are,

all of them believe that God exists.

So that's first scenario. In that scenario there's nothing like

the hiddenness that's relevant to the hiddenness argument that I want to talk about.

The second scenario is one in which God exists and not everybody is a believer.

There are some people who believe,

some people who don't believe,

but all of those who don't believe

fail to believe because they're resisting God in some way;

a relationship with God is not on the agenda for them,

and they have deceived themselves as to the existence of

God and now they're doubters or disbelievers because of that self-deception.

And so all of the nonbelief in the world in the second scenario is resistant non-belief.

In that scenario, too,

there's nothing like the hiddenness that's relevant to the hiddenness argument because,

even though God is, in a sense,

hidden from people, it's those people who have hidden God from themselves,

not as if God has done something intentionally to produce this situation of hiddenness.

And now the third scenario is one in which God exists and some people believe in God,

some people don't believe in God,

with the added wrinkle now that,

of those who don't believe in God,

some are resistant but some are not.

Some who fail to believe in God are in that condition because they've had a good,

hard look at the evidence and it's the evidence that causes their non-belief.

It's not any kind of resistance to

God or to a relationship with God that causes their non-belief.

So they, we would call them nonresistant nonbelievers.

So in that world they're both resistant nonbelievers and nonresistant nonbelievers.

Now you can take the central claim of the argument as saying something like this:

that the first two scenarios are possible if God exists and the third is impossible.

Okay? Could be that everybody believes or that if

some don't believe they're in that condition resistantly, that's okay.

But if God exists,

there will not be any nonresistant nonbelievers.

So you can take that as the first premise of the core argument,

the core of the hiddenness argument.

The hiddenness argument put most simply would have two premises and a conclusion,

that would be the first premise of that core argument.

So if God exists, there are no nonresistant nonbelievers.

The second premise, perhaps obviously, is going to be yeah, there are,

there are nonresistant nonbelievers,

from which the conclusion follows, there's no God.

Okay, so that's the core of hiddenness argument.

But now, of course, you're going to want to have

some extra premises to support that first premise: why should we

say that if God exists there won't be any nonresistant nonbelievers?

Well, there're are some other thoughts about the hiddenness,

"we're sorry about God," more generally,

the nature of God, that come into play at this stage.

The first subsidiary premise: if God exists,

God is perfectly loving.

We're talking about a personal ultimate,

the greatest possible personal being and this sort of a being we would expect,

among other things, to be perfectly loving.

So suppose we accept that: if God exists, God is perfectly loving.

Next premise and it's sort of going on a chain here.

If God exists, God is perfectly loving.

If God is perfectly loving,

then God is always open to personal relationship,

a conscious reciprocal relationship with finite persons.

And the third premise: if God is thus open,

is open to personal relationship with finite persons,

then if anybody fails to believe in God it's resistantly;

it's not going to be nonresistantly.

Why is that? Well, that's really the nub,

the heart of the matter - the connection between

openness and the absence of nonresistant nonbelief.

If God is open,

in the sense in which I intend,

it's very minimal sense,

all I mean is that God isn't closed to this sort of relationship.

It's never going to be the case that God does something to prevent people from

being able to enter into personal relationship with God,

participating in a relationship with God.

So they might still not participate in relationship with God, but

if so, it's going to be because what they've done not because of anything God's done.

So that's what's meant by openness.

Now think about what's required to be able

to participate in a relationship with God just by trying to.

Notice, when I say "just by trying to," it makes it

sound as though it might be easy to do this,

but it could very well be hard.

It could be that you can,

just by trying in the right way,

enter into a relationship with God,

but it might not be pleasant, it might not be easy.

But that's what I mean when I'm talking about being in

a position of the sort that if God is open to relationship,

God will put people in that position.

Now to be in that position,

you have to believe that God exists.

It's a very simple idea, really.

To be able to relate personally in this way,

to be in a conscious reciprocal relationship with somebody else,

it doesn't matter who it is, you have to believe that they exist.

And so God would,

if God is thus open,

make it possible for people to believe that God exists.

And, again, it could be that they fail to believe, but if so,

it's only going to be if they have

arrived at that state themselves through resisting a relationship with God in some way

and so that's why you get to that main premise of the core argument: if God exists,

there are no nonresistant nonbelievers.

All right so that's the core argument,

two premises and a conclusion.

Number of other premises can be brought into play,

which jointly entail that first premise.

So that's the hiddenness argument.

Those are some of the most important premises.

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