The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint Book

Foreword   William J. Abraham     xi
Acknowledgments     xv
Introducing a Preferable Philosophical Approach to the Question of Whether a Good God Has Revealed
The Need for an Alternative Philosophical Approach to a Perduring Question: Has a Good God Revealed Anything to Us?     3
The Search for a Reasoned Case: Starting Points     3
The Great Question: Inquiry and Meta-Inquiry     3
An Agnostic's Need for a Reasoned Case     7
Jumping to Conclusions and Freezing in Place     16
Objections to Embarking     22
Kantian Arguments Purporting to Undercut Natural Theology     22
Wittgensteinian Contentions: Separate Spheres, Separate Magisteria     30
The Scientific Demystifiers' Promises     34
The Difficulty of Building a Reasoned Case Solely Through Standard Natural Theology     45
The General Problem     45
A Specific Example: Limited Resources for Handling the Problem of Evil     46
The Hope for an Alternative Approach to Building a Reasoned Case     51
A Tacit Presupposition of Standard Natural Theology     51
The Falsity of the Presupposition Underlying Standard Natural Theology     58
A Preferable Philosophical Approach to the Great Question     62
Overview of the KeyArgument     62
A Basic Case for the Key Conditional     65
Homer and God     65
The Concept of a Revelatory Claim     69
Listening to the Voice of the Accused     72
Knowing What a Good World-Creator Would Reveal     75
Countenancing Errors in the Content of Revelatory Claims     81
Doing Without Evident Miracles     87
Defense of the Key Conditional's Antecedent     94
A Simple Argument for a Minimalist Conclusion     94
Objection: There Well Could Be Exceptions to the Universal Causal Principle - The World May Just Have Popped into Existence     96
Objection: The World Might Have Caused Itself     104
Objection: An Immaterial Mind Cannot Interact with the Physical Order     108
The Quiet Concessions of Atheists     116
Extended Defense of the Key Conditional (Building Background Considerations for Evaluating Revelatory and Theistic Claims)
Objection: Inquiry into Revelatory Claims Is Pointless Due to Problems about Evil     123
The Objection     123
Exploring the First Option: The World-Creator Is Amoral     126
The Difficulty of Arguing That a World-Creator Would Be Amoral     126
Good Reason for Thinking Moral Categories Apply to a World-Creator     129
Exploring the Second Option: The World-Creator Is in Some Measure Wicked     133
The Difficulty of Arguing That a World-Creator Would Be Wicked     133
Good Reason for Thinking a World-Creator Likely Would Not Be Wicked     136
Exploring the Third Option: The World-Creator Is Wholly Good     141
Two Pertinent Problems: "Pie-in-the-Sky" Theodicy and Substandard Worlds     141
Handling Objections Concerning "Pie-in-the-Sky" Theodicy     144
Intending Evil     144
Undercutting the Moral Order by Promising Other-Worldly Compensations     147
Handling Objections Concerning Substandard Worlds     153
The Difficulty of Finding a Non-Theistic Standard for World-Grading     153
The Difficulty of Doing Without a Standard for World-Grading     160
Glimpses of Revelatory Accounts of Evil     164
Objection: No Acceptable Method Exists for Assessing the Content of Revelatory Claims     171
The Objection     171
Choosing a Method - Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)     173
Hesitancy about Bayesian Reasoning     173
Specifying a Pattern for IBE     179
Ideal Explanation and Pretheoretical Beliefs     184
Putting Problems with IBE in Perspective     192
What No Method Can Do: The Ineliminable Subject     196
Choosing a Hypothesis     200
Practical and Theoretical Problems     200
The Pool of Serious and Independent Revelatory Claims     202
Investigating Disjunctive Claims     204
Choosing the Data     208
CUE-Facts and Other Putative Facts     208
Organizing Frameworks     215
Objection: Revelatory Claims Lack Adequate Explanatory Power     223
The Objection     223
Prelude to the Illustrations: Knowing "That" Without Knowing "How"     225
Brief Illustrations of the Explanation of Putative Facts     232
The Role of the Brief Illustrations     232
Brief Illustrations Involving Putative Facts Other than CUE-Facts     234
Brief Illustrations Involving CUE-Facts     242
An Extended Illustration of the Explanation of Two CUE-Facts     251
Declarations of Equality and of Inalienable Rights: Two CUE-Facts     251
The Search for Secular Foundations for Equality     256
The Search for Secular Foundations for Inalienable Rights     258
Setting Up the Search     258
A Notable Kantian Account     261
New Natural-Law Theory     265
Revealed Foundations for Equality and Rights: Preliminary Considerations     271
The Explanatory Power of Revealed Foundations for Ethics     276
Objections to Divine Ordination Theory, and Replies     276
Advantages of a Revelatory Base     281
Objection: The Requirement of Faith Invalidates Mainline Revelatory Claims     288
The Objection     288
Is Faith a Vice?     290
Resolving the Problem of Resolute Belief     294
Solutions Unworkable for Agnostic Inquirers     294
Are There Concepts of Faith That Do Not Require Resolute Beliefs     294
Can an Agnostic Deny That Evidence Is Disproportionate to Belief?     296
The Core of a Solution for Agnostics     300
The First Stage: Scrutinizing the Proportionality Precept     300
The Second Stage: Seeing Sense in the Command to Believe Resolutely     302
Six Objections to the Solution     306
Socrates, the "Agnostic's Agnostic"     317
Index     324