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Inscrutable Evils, Skeptical Theism, and the Epistemology of Religious Trust University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2013 Inscrutable Evils, Skeptical Theism, and the Epistemology of Religious Trust John David McClellan [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Epistemology Commons Recommended Citation McClellan, John David, "Inscrutable Evils, Skeptical Theism, and the Epistemology of Religious Trust. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2013. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2459 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by John David McClellan entitled "Inscrutable Evils, Skeptical Theism, and the Epistemology of Religious Trust." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. E. J. Coffman, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Richard E. Aquila, John E. Nolt, Carl G. Wagner Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Inscrutable Evils, Skeptical Theism, and the Epistemology of Religious Trust A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville John David McClellan August 2013 Copyright © 2013 by John David McClellan All rights reserved. ii To Laura for all the joy you bring me, my parents for your unwavering ―epistemic partiality‖ towards me, & Hank; we saved each other‘s‘ lives. iii Acknowledgements Thanks first to E.J. Coffman for directing this dissertation. I am very fortunate that a Notre Dame grad joined the UT philosophy faculty in time for me to pursue my interest in philosophy of religion. Your enthusiasm for both philosophy and teaching is inspiring, and I very much appreciate the help you‘ve given me. (Your ability to reply to an email seemingly before I click ―Send‖ is truly impressive.) I would also like to thank my other committee members. To John Nolt, I very much appreciate the many hours beyond the call of duty you‘ve spent commenting on my work and dialoging with me about it. I was most fortunate to be assigned to you as a TA my first semester of graduate school and to later learn so much from you in graduate courses. To Richard Aquila, thanks so much for your all your help in effectively guiding me through the graduate program as Director of Graduate Studies. I can‘t say I learned as much in your classroom as I did in Dr. Nolt‘s, but that was much more Kant‘s fault than yours. Jokes aside, your retirement is a significant loss to the department; I hope you greatly enjoy it. To Carl Wagner, thanks so much for being willing to join a philosophy committee on the verge of your own retirement. I could not have completed this project without you all. I‘d also like to thank two individuals who have been important mentors to me. To Richard Gale, I am thankful for the many fond memories I have of sitting in your home talking about philosophy of religion and life in general. What a privilege it has been to dialogue so closely with such an accomplished and venerable figure in my area of interest. Thank you for taking me under your wing; I promise to keep your best—or should I say worst?—jokes alive. To John Hardwig, it is no wonder you get mentioned on this page in most every dissertation that comes out of our department. From my first step off the McClung Tower elevator, you have welcomed me into the world of professional philosophy and helped me feel like I have a place in it. I hope to one day live up to the potential you‘ve seen in me. Thank you so much for all you do. Thanks also to my best pal in philosophy, Matt Deaton, for many excellent philosophical conversations and for assistance in proofreading this dissertation. And thanks to Brian Austin, my colleague at Carson-Newman for much support along the way. Thanks finally to the many students I have been blessed to interact with on a daily basis whose smiling faces and inquiring minds helped keep me balanced in juggling my teaching and writing responsibilities. I‘m very much looking forward to the additional attention I can give you upon completing this project. iv Abstract I argue that the philosophical discussion over William Rowe‘s evidential argument from evil needs to take a closer look at the epistemology of religious trust—i.e., the rationality of the theist‘s resilient confidence in God‘s goodness in the face of inscrutable evils. This would constitute a significant change of emphasis in the current literature away from ―skeptical theism,‖ the in vogue response to Rowe‘s argument among theistic philosophers today. I argue that the skeptical theist approach is inadequate for two reasons. First, in trying to defeat even the atheist‘s grounds for accepting Rowe‘s argument, skeptical theists seem to seriously underestimate the degree of skepticism they must motivate all reasonable persons to take regarding the human competency to detect God-justifying reasons for allowing evils. Second, I show that even a successful skeptical theism would be inadequate to defend the theist‘s actual doxastic stance towards inscrutable evils—a stance that goes beyond mere skepticism of that human competency. In place of the skeptical theist approach, I offer theists the ―religious trust‖ approach—a way of defending theism against Rowe‘s argument that focuses solely on defending the rationality of the theist‘s committed trust in God. I then explore the nature and epistemology of committed interpersonal trust more generally before turning my attention to religious trust in particular. I argue in the end that there is enough promising (from the theist‘s point of view) underexplored territory in the epistemology of religious trust to render too hasty the view that the world‘s inscrutable evils make the theist‘s trust in God unjustifiable. I think my religious trust approach thus affords theists a viable alternative to skeptical theism in defending the rationality of theism against Rowe‘s evidential argument. Importantly, it is also an approach that is willing to uphold, in a way skeptical theists refuse to do, just how powerful a defense of atheism Rowe‘s argument truly is. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: The Recent Debate over Inscrutable Evils ......................................................... 1 Chapter Introduction .............................................................................................................. 2 Rowe‘s Evidential Argument from Evil ................................................................................ 3 Inscrutable Evils as Evidence of Gratuitous Evils ............................................................... 11 The Noseeum Inference ................................................................................................... 13 The Assumption of Sufficient Competence .................................................................... 20 Skeptical Theism: Some Preliminaries ................................................................................ 22 Wykstra‘s ―CORNEA‖ Skeptical Theism ........................................................................... 25 McBrayer‘s Attack on CORNEA .................................................................................... 31 Refocusing CORNEA ..................................................................................................... 34 The Challenge of Motivating Wykstra‘s Skepticism ...................................................... 46 Bergmann‘s ―Representative Sample‖ Skeptical Theism .................................................... 50 The Challenge of Motivating Bergmann‘s Skepticism ................................................... 57 Other Objections to Skeptical Theism ................................................................................. 61 Bleeding Skepticism Objections ..................................................................................... 62 The Unfalsifiability Objection ......................................................................................... 64 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................................ 68 Chapter 2: Reassessing the Theist’s Dialectical Goal: A Call for the Religious Trust Approach ................................................................................................................................ 70 Chapter Introduction ............................................................................................................ 71 Some Varieties of Atheism and Rowe‘s Dialectical Goal ................................................... 72 The Moorean Shift ........................................................................................................... 75 Some Varieties of Theism and the Skeptical Theist‘s Dialectical Goal .............................. 81 Why the Skeptical Theist‘s Dialectical Goal is Too Aggressive in Scope ...................... 82 Why the
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