The Argument from Non-Belief Against the Existence of God

An Outline and a Video Response

This will be a small and concise blog about the nature of Arguments from Non-Belief Against the Existence of God, followed by a video response I made a while ago. These are a family of arguments that try to provide reason against the existence of God from the existence of rational non-belief. My philosophy professor, JL Schellenberg, put these arguments on the map in the discipline of philosophy of religion with his 1993 work Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. I will take up some blog space to detail his argument as best I can. While there are many ways of formulating it, he provides an argument from analogy in the anthology Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Religion.

Schellenberg provides three stories of hide and seek. The first story has a child abandoned by his mother while he is looking for her. The second story has a child who got amnesia and is unsure if he had a mother; he looks for her every day and she refuses to make herself known. The third story is a retelling of the second, except that the kid with amnesia is in terrible danger, crying out for his mom.

The first story is about those who lost their faith and after painful searching gave up (think of Charles Darwin). The second is about honest seekers who would love God to exist (John Stewart Mill). The third are people who die tragically before they can come to know God [1]

From this, Schellenberg would consider neither God nor the mother to be loving and hence the existence of them being loving with such scenarios inconsistent. God (if he were to exist) is not a loving being. Now, the two ways around this argument is that God’s love and a mother’s is not analogous, or that we do have knowledge of God and the people described by the above analogies do not exist.

Suffice to say, I consider this atheism’ most compelling argument. For more, please check out the full book. You can purchase it here.

For my own response, I would suggest watching my video on the matter.

End Notes

[1] Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness Does Justify Atheism, 30–42 in Michael L. Peterson and Raymond Vanarragon’s anthology Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion