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How to be an atheist and a sceptic too: response to McCreary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2010

J. L. SCHELLENBERG
J. L. SCHELLENBERG*
Affiliation:
Dept of Philosophy & Religious Studies, Mount St Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3M 2J6
*
e-mail: John.Schellenberg@msvu.ca
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Abstract

Mark McCreary has argued that I cannot consistently advance both the hiddenness argument and certain arguments for religious scepticism found in my book The Wisdom to Doubt (WD). This reaction was expected, and in WD I explained its shortsightedness in that context. First, I noted how in Part III of WD, where theism is addressed, my principal aim is not to prove atheism but to show theists that they are not immune from the scepticism defended in Parts I and II. To the success of this aim, McCreary's arguments are not so much as relevant, for a thoroughgoing scepticism embracing even the hiddenness argument is quite compatible with its success. But I also explained how someone convinced that the hiddenness argument does prove atheism escapes the grip of religious scepticism because of that argument's reliance on apparent conceptual truths. McCreary's critique obscures this point but does not defuse it.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 227 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1 Mark L. McCreary ‘Schellenberg on divine hiddenness and religious scepticism’, Religious Studies, 46 (2010), 207–225. All references herein are to this paper.

2 J. L. Schellenberg The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). McCreary also refers to my earlier book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (DH). But since any inconsistency argument addressed to Schellenberg in 2010 should be based on what Schellenberg is thinking in 2010, and since this thinking, including some deviations from the reasoning of DH, is best indicated by WD, I will here ignore what McCreary says about the distinctive content of DH.

3 This proposition is the one designated (3) in McCreary's text. There is also a (4) which I shall ignore because it faces its own problems and because by defending the argument (3) has in mind, we already secure at least one hiddenness argument against McCreary's inconsistency charge.