Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-lqqdg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-30T06:32:55.268Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Undermining the case for evidential atheism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2011

PAUL K. MOSER
PAUL K. MOSER*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, 1032 W. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660
*
e-mail: pmoser@luc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Evidential atheism, as espoused by various philosophical atheists, recommends belief that God does not exist on the basis of not just the evidence of which we are aware, but also our overall available evidence. This article identifies a widely neglected problem from potential surprise evidence that undermines an attempt to give a cogent justification of such evidential atheism. In addition, it contends that evidential agnosticism fares better than evidential atheism relative to this neglected problem, and that traditional monotheism has evidential resources, unavailable to evidential atheism, which promise to save it from the fate of evidential atheism.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 83 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Buckley, Michael J. (1987) At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Hyman, Gavin (2007) ‘Atheism in modern history’, in Martin, Michael (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 27–46.Google Scholar
Martin, Michael (1990) Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).Google Scholar
Moser, Paul K. (1989) Knowledge and Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Moser, Paul K. (2008) The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Moser, Paul K. (2010) The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas (1997) The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham (1995) Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1977) God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row).Google Scholar
Pollock, John, and Cruz, Joseph (1999) Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd edn (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield).Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand (1999) ‘What is an agnostic?’, in Greenspan, Louis & Andersson, Stefan (eds.) Russell on Religion (London: Routledge), 41–49.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Phillip H. (2004) God and Other Spirits (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar