Nonbelief as Support for Atheism Essay -- Religion Atheist God Papers

Nonbelief as Support for Atheism The Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has recently institutionalize forward an course for atheism based on the idea that perfection is supposed to be abruptly loving and so would not stomach people to be deprived of aw arness of his existence. If such a divinity were to exist, then, he would do something to reveal his existence clearly to people, thereby cause them to become theists. Thus, the fact that there are so many non-theists in the world becomes good reason to deny the existence of God conceived of in the given way. I first raise objections to Schellenbergs formulation of the pipeline and then suggest some improvements. My main improvement is to include among the reverent attributes the property of fondly desiring humanitys love. Since to love God requires at least believing that he exists, if God were to exist, he must hope widespread theistic belief. The fact that so many people drop such belief becomes a good argument for a theism with admiration to God conceived of in the given way. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered, in particular the claim that God refrains from revealing himself to people in order to nullify interfering with their free will or to avoid eliciting inappropriate responses from them or some other (unknown) purpose. An attempt is made to repel each of these objections. Atheism of a authentic sort can be supported by appeal to the existence of widespread nonbelief in God. This is shown by a Canadian philosopher, J. L. Schellenberg, in his book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. His argument is as follows(1) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.(2) If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.(3) But reasonable nonbelief... ...tween weak and strong arguments, I would give it a score of seventy-five. (Of course, that figure would be reduced for theists who answer only one of the questions affirmatively, and it would be zero for the ists in general, apart from the survey questions.) ANB may not prove conclusively that God does not exist, but it does render that result likely. It presents good support for a certain form of atheism and a serious challenge for theists which they have to date to overcome.Notes(1) J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 83.(2) Ibid., pp. 47-57.(3) Daniel Howard-Snyder, The Argument from Divine Hiddenness, Canadian ledger of Philosophy 26 (1996), pp. 433-453, followed by J. L. Schellenberg, Response to Howard-Snyder, pp. 455-462.(4) Ibid., p. 460.(5) Divine Hiddenness, p. 211.