Where are all the "bare theists"?

Credit to Travis A. Kirspel

I am always a little reticent to write about philosophy because it’s an area where I am, at best, a neophyte. Nevertheless, it is interesting to me to observe how few “bare theists” there are in philosophy of religion.

Off the top of my head: Ed Feser, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Alexander Pruss, JP Moreland, Eleonore Stump, William Lane Craig, Joshua Rasmussen, Robert Koons, Peter van Inwagen, John Lennox.

Now, I’m not saying anything about the work of any of these people, mostly because I haven’t read anything by half of them, and probably haven’t understood what I have read. But you will note they are all Christians. And of course these are just “big names.” How many scores of small fry for every notable?

There are a small handful of atheist philosophers of religion, like J.H Sobel, Graham Oppy, and J.L Mackie.

I’m sure there are at least some who are “bare” theists, but no one is coming to mind off the top of my head. In the west, it seems “philosophy of religion” is close to identical with “philosophy of Christianity.”

Oftentimes, “bare theism” seems like little more than a way station on the way to the cross. Ed Feser spent a brief time as a bare theist. Philip Goff is a recent convert.¹

Why might this be the case? No one except presups claims to be able to demonstrate the certain truth of Christianity without recourse to empirical evidence.

One possibility is that these philosophers are first convinced of the existence of God based on philosophical argument. And perhaps it’s the case that the evidence for Christianity is strong enough that, conditional on theism, Christianity is almost certain to be true.

Maybe you could say that Christianity is the most likely religion to be true.² But is the evidence for Christianity really so good that, granting the existence of God, the truth of Christianity follows almost like a logical consequent? So good that bare theists are like unicorns?

As someone who’s spent a lot of time thinking about the historical arguments for Christianity I am…highly skeptical to say the least. I call myself an atheist, though more properly I’m an agnostic. Still, when I evaluate arguments for Christianity I generally am happy to grant the existence of God, and to my mind, the evidence is still not nearly good enough to clear the bar. I think even if you grant a benevolent, interventionist God, the evidence for Christianity is still quite poor.³

Maybe I’m wrong about that. But I can’t shake the feeling that there should be more people who think the arguments for God are good enough to make his existence probable, and yet don’t think the evidence for Christianity is good enough to justify belief.

Shouldn’t there, moreover, be some people who think that if God exists then Christianity may be no more likely than it is if atheism is true? Say you are convinced by philosophical argument that Hell cannot possibly exist, might you not conclude then that Christianity, whose foundational scriptures and tradition teach eternal torment, must be ipso facto false, because God would never cause or permit such suffering? And yet, if someone is driven to reject Hell, it seems normally they recourse to Christian universalism rather than rejection of Christianity in toto. Or perhaps you are convinced God exists, but decide the picture of Yahweh in scripture is too crude, limited, and anthropomorphic to possibly a proper description of the Author of Creation.⁴ But again, there are precious few philosophers who take such a position.

Another much less charitable possibility is that many or most of these Christian philosophers believe or want to believe in Christianity first, and then formulate or adopt arguments to justify a belief held for fundamentally non-rational reasons. That still wouldn’t make them wrong necessarily. You can hold a true belief for bad reasons. And of course, at least some of these people (like Feser) were initially convinced only of bare theism, before accepting Christianity.

I don’t know how well-developed the study of philosophy of religion is in parts of the world (East Asia, the mid-east, south Asia) that are neither Christian nor post-Christian, but I would be interested to see what the scene looks like there.

1. Well, sort of.

2. I would have many qualms with such a claim, but I could say that it’s at least more likely than Islam or Mormonism (low bar)

3. I don’t even really think demonstrating the historicity of the Resurrection would prove Christianity, or even necessarily raise its probability above 50%

4. This would be my position if I was convinced of bare theism.