Skeptical Theism, Fideism, and Pyrrhonian Skepticism

DIEGO E. MACHUCA

Santiago de Chile

Workshop; Workshop "The (Non)Existence and Nature of God: Metaphysical, Logical, and Epistemological Debates"; 2022

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

My aim in this talk is to explore the comparative plausibility of skeptical theism, fideism, and Pyrrhonian skepticism given our acknowledged cognitive limitations. I will describe the three stances more fully later, but for now it will suffice to offer the following brief characterizations. Skeptical theism is the view that we should be skeptical of our capacity to know or understand God?s reasons for acting or refraining from acting in any given way. Fideism is the view that reason is, at least by itself, useless for the attainment of knowledge or justification about religious matters in general, faith being either the only or the primary means one has to acquire religious knowledge or justified religious beliefs. And Pyrrhonism is a form of skepticism that, applied to religious matters, consists in suspending judgment about, among other issues, whether God exists, whether he has certain attributes, and whether human cognitive powers are intrinsically useless for acquiring religious knowledge or justified religious beliefs.