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God, Probability and John Hick

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

James J. Londis
James J. Londis
Affiliation:
Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, Takoma Park, Maryland
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Extract

Whether or not any notion of probability is meaningful in the philosophy of religion has been the subject of considerable discussion. Ranging from our common sense usage in which probability implies ‘possibly’ but not ‘certainly’ to its highly sophisticated usage in pure mathematics, the question of its philosophical foundations is one of the most controversial in logical theory. Some thinkers argue that statistical frequency is the only legitimate notion of probability, and, inasmuch as such frequency is tied to discrete observable phenomena, probability judgments have little, if any, application to religious explanations of the entire universe. Foremost, perhaps, among philosophers of religion in Anglo-American thought who support this concept is John Hick. In this article, I shall delineate Hick's attitude towards probability and evidence and how it relates to his concept of faith. Then I shall raise some critical questions about his analysis and try to show that his view is unnecessarily restrictive – even inconsistent – in places. To look at Hick and probability in focus, however, we must look through the lens of his general approach to epistemological issues.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 457 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

page 457 note 1 See especially The Existence of God, edited by Hick, (New York: Macmillan, 1964Google Scholar), chapter 1. Hereafter cited as EG.

page 457 note 2 Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 200–1Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as FK. 3FK, p. 203.Google Scholar

page 458 note 1 FK, p. 205.Google Scholar

page 458 note 2 FK, pp. 208–9.Google Scholar

page 458 note 3 EG, chapter 1.

page 458 note 4 Found in FK, pp. 113–14.Google Scholar

page 459 note 1 FK, p. 115.Google Scholar

page 459 note 2 FK, p. 136.Google Scholar

page 459 note 3 FK, p. 222.Google Scholar

page 460 note 1 Black, Max, ‘Probability’, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edwards, Paul, VI, 464Google Scholar. See also Probability and Evidence, by Ayer, A. J. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 460 note 2 See Mellor's, D. H. ‘God and Probability’, Religious Studies, v (December 1969Google Scholar) for an example of this position. See also Sturch's, R. L. reply by the same title in Religious Studies, VII (December 1972).Google Scholar

page 460 note 3 Black, p. 464.Google Scholar

page 460 note 4 Black, p. 476.Google Scholar

page 460 note 5 Black, p. 476.Google Scholar

page 461 note 1 Bertocci, Peter A., ‘A Rationale for a Cosmoteleological Argument for God’, The journal of Religion, LVI, 4 (October 1976), p. 324.Google Scholar

page 462 note 1 Bedau, Hugh, book review of Hick's Faith and Knowledge in Theology Today, xv, 1 (1958), 138–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 463 note 1 Bertocci, , p. 325.Google Scholar

page 463 note 2 Bertocci, , p. 329.Google Scholar