John Schellenberg and Paul Moser on Divine Hiddenness

Mohammadpour, Sakineh; Alizamani, Amir Abbas

John Schellenberg and Paul Moser on Divine Hiddenness

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Sakineh Mohammadpour ¹

Amir Abbas Alizamani ²

¹ Islamic Azad UniversityPhD student in Theology, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan Branch

² Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran

Abstract

The existence of God is not obvious for some people at all. For them, the traditional arguments for God’s existence are not compelling. Worse still possibly, some people sincerely are seeking God, but don’t find Him. So feeling dissatisfaction and disappointment, they abandon the quest inevitably. ‘Divine Hiddenness’ is the name philosophers have given to this phenomenon.
John Schellenberg, contemporary philosopher, believes that divine hiddenness justifies atheism. Paul Moser, contemporary analytic philosopher, unlike Schellenberg not only does not believe that divine hiddenness justifies atheism but, in his view, hiddenness is the essential and positive attribute of Jewish-Christian God.
In this paper, based on the ideas of the two philosophers, we consider and compare their viewpoints and arguments about the problem of divine hiddenness, and investigate the validity of divine hiddenness argument in justification of atheism.
According to the results of the paper, unlike the Moser’s point of view the divine hiddenness requires a justification. And schellenberg’s argument from divine hiddenness is answerable by theists and could not justify atheism.

Keywords

Divine Hiddenness‚ Theism‚ Atheism‚ Belief‚ Reasonable disbelief

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