The key question to assess is just: what credence should we give to Religious Catastrophe?
I think the right answer, as in Pascalās Mugging, is: vanishingly small. Do the arguments of the paper show that Iām wrong? I donāt think so. There is no philosophical argument that favors believing in Hell. There are philosophical arguments for the existence of God. But from there, the argument relies purely on sociological evidence: many of the apes on our planet happen to accept a religious creed according to which there is Hell.
Hereās a question to consider: is it conceivable that a bunch of apes might believe something that a rational being ought to give vanishingly low credence to?
I think itās very obvious that the answer to this question is yes. Ape beliefs arenāt evidence of anything much beyond ape psychology.
So to really show that itās unreasonable to give a vanishingly low credence to Religious Catastrophe, it isnāt enough to just point to some apes. One has to say more about the actual proposition in question to make it credible.
In what other context do philosophers think that philosophical arguments provide justified certainty (or near-certainty) that a widely believed philosophical thesis is false?
It probably depends who you ask, but fwiw, I think that many philosophical theses warrant extremely low credence. (And again, the mere fact of being āwidely heldā is not evidence of philosophical truth.)
Fun stuff!
The key question to assess is just: what credence should we give to Religious Catastrophe?
I think the right answer, as in Pascalās Mugging, is: vanishingly small. Do the arguments of the paper show that Iām wrong? I donāt think so. There is no philosophical argument that favors believing in Hell. There are philosophical arguments for the existence of God. But from there, the argument relies purely on sociological evidence: many of the apes on our planet happen to accept a religious creed according to which there is Hell.
Hereās a question to consider: is it conceivable that a bunch of apes might believe something that a rational being ought to give vanishingly low credence to?
I think itās very obvious that the answer to this question is yes. Ape beliefs arenāt evidence of anything much beyond ape psychology.
So to really show that itās unreasonable to give a vanishingly low credence to Religious Catastrophe, it isnāt enough to just point to some apes. One has to say more about the actual proposition in question to make it credible.
It probably depends who you ask, but fwiw, I think that many philosophical theses warrant extremely low credence. (And again, the mere fact of being āwidely heldā is not evidence of philosophical truth.)