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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The equiprobability-principle approach to the inductive step in the argument from evil is superior to alternative accounts.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Equiprobability principles (e.g., the Principle of Indifference) notoriously generate contradictions when applied to infinite or continuous possibility spaces.
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    • 2.The space of possible divine reasons for permitting evil is plausibly infinite and lacks a natural partition, making any equiprobability assignment arbitrary.
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    • 3.An approach that yields precise probability bounds via an arbitrary partition is epistemically worse than inference to the best explanation, which makes no such spurious precision claims.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Wykstra and other skeptical theists argue that human cognitive access to the full range of divine goods and reasons is systematically limited, undermining any probability assignment over that space.
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    • 2.If our epistemic position regarding divine motivations is analogous to a child's regarding a surgeon's reasons, then assigning equal priors to possible divine reasons commits a base-rate error rooted in anthropocentric bias.
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    • 3.Inference to the best explanation, by contrast, does not require exhaustive enumeration of alternatives and is therefore less vulnerable to the skeptical theist's scope objection.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.By bringing in an equiprobability principle, one approaches the issue at a more fundamental level than any approach that appeals either to instantial generalization or inference to the best explanation.
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    • 2.This approach generates a result that enables one not just to conclude that it is more likely than not that God does not exist, but also to assign an upper bound to the probability that God exists.
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