Argument

Argument from nonbelief

Overview

The argument from nonbelief is a philosophical argument for the nonexistence of God that asserts an inconsistency between God's existence and a world that fails to recognize such an entity. It is similar to the classic argument from evil in arguing that there is an inconsistency between the world that exists and God's existence. The argument is key in philosophical discussions about divine hiddenness.

There are three key varieties of the argument. The argument from reasonable nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) was first elaborated in J. L. Schellenberg's 1993 book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. According to this argument, if God existed (and was perfectly good and loving) every reasonable person would have been brought to believe in God, but since there are reasonable nonbelievers, it follows that God does not exist.

Theodore Drange subsequently developed the argument from nonbelief, based on the mere existence of nonbelief in God. Drange considers the distinction between reasonable (by which Schellenberg means inculpable) and unreasonable (culpable) nonbelief to be irrelevant and confusing. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of academic discussion is concerned with Schellenberg's formulation.

Schellenberg's formulation, however, has evolved since his 1993 book. Contemporary versions of the argument no longer trade on inculpable nonbelief or deal with God's goodness. Rather, the argument from nonresistant nonbelief (or the contemporary hiddenness argument) argues that if God exists, then no one would ever be in a state of nonresistant nonbelief (that is, a state in which they do not believe in God's existence despite not resisting him in any way), but since some people have been in such a state, God does not exist. The basic engine behind this argument is the idea that God, being unsurpassably loving, would always make it possible for any such capable persons as there may be to begin a relationship with him just by trying. To begin a relationship, according to Schellenberg, both parties must know about the other's existence. Therefore, God would never allow any capable person to be in a state of nonresistant nonbelief at any time.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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1. Another very important doctrine held by most, though not all, of the school we are examining is the doctrine that all reality is what is called "mental" or "spiritual," or that, at any rate, all reality is dependent for its existence upon what is mental. This view is often particularised into the form which states that the relation of knower and known is fundamental, and that nothing can exist unless it either knows…

   Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy

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2. Thus the scope and power of _a priori_ principles is strictly limited. All knowledge that something exists must be in part dependent on experience. When anything is known immediately, its existence is known by experience alone; when anything is proved to exist, without being known immediately, both experience and _a priori_ principles must be required in the proof. Knowledge is called _empirical_ when it rests…

   Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

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3. It is framed in the following manner: If something exists, an absolutely necessary being must likewise exist. Now I, at least, exist. Consequently, there exists an absolutely necessary being. The minor contains an experience, the major reasons from a general experience to the existence of a necessary being.[68] Thus this argument really begins at experience, and is not completely à priori, or ontological. The object…

   Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

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Philosophers who discussed Argument from nonbelief

• J. L. Schellenberg

Related ideas

• Animism
• John Hick
• Eudaimonia
• Personal god
• Stoicism
• Predestination
• Søren Kierkegaard
• Problem of evil
• The Monist
• Blaise Pascal
• Bertrand Russell
• God
• Jonathan Edwards (theologian)
• Conceptions of God
• Anthropology
• Reformed Christianity
• Existence of God
• Jain cosmology
• Alvin Plantinga
• Epistemology
• J. L. Schellenberg
• Paul Moser
• Theodore Drange
• Sensus divinitatis

Place in the tradition

Part of Atheism.

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