Wes Morriston's "Skeptical Demonism" Argument from Evil and Timothy Perrine's Response
Wes Morriston has argued that given the mixture of goods and evils found in the world, the probability of God's existence is much less than the probability of a creator who is indifferent to good and evil. One of my goals here is, first, to show how, by bringing in the concept of dispositions,...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Netherlands
2024
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| In: |
Sophia
Year: 2024, Volume: 63, Issue: 1, Pages: 57-83 |
| Further subjects: | B
Wes Morriston
B A deity indifferent to good and evil B Skeptical demonism B Wes Morriston's Humean argument from evil B Skeptical theism B Timothy Perrine B existence of God B The mixture of goods and evils in the world B The relation of surprise to probabilities B Timothy Perrine’s criticism of Morriston's argument from evil |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Wes Morriston has argued that given the mixture of goods and evils found in the world, the probability of God's existence is much less than the probability of a creator who is indifferent to good and evil. One of my goals here is, first, to show how, by bringing in the concept of dispositions, Morriston's argument can be expressed in a rigorous, step-by-step fashion, and then, second, to show how one can connect the extent to which different events are surprising to conclusions concerning the probabilities of those events. My second goal is to evaluate two important objections to Morriston’s argument advanced by Timothy Perrine in his article, "Skeptical Theism and Morriston"s Humean Argument from Evil." Perrine's first objection involves comparing how probable the evils in the world are if God exists with the probability if there is a deity who is indifferent to good and evil, and Perrine argues that given the version of skeptical theism that he and Stephen Wykstra have defended, the probability given theism is greater than the probability given an indifferent deity. Perrine’s second objection focuses instead on the probability of the mixture of goods and evils found in the world, and here he argues that there is no way of assigning a probability to that, either given the God-hypothesis or given the indifferent deity hypothesis, and therefore no way of comparing the probabilities of those two hypotheses. I then set out arguments that show that neither of Perrine's objections is sound. |
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| ISSN: | 1873-930X |
| Reference: | Kritik von "Skeptical Theism and Morriston's Humean Argument from Evil (2019)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sophia
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11841-023-00976-x |