The Hiddenness Argument and The Limits of Doxastic Positioning

Abstract

If God exists, how clear or obvious should we expect his existence to be? Particularly if such a God is interested in having a personal relationship with us? The Hiddenness Argument contends that it should be much clearer than it in fact is. If God exists and really wants us to know as much, we should expect to inhabit a very different epistemic situation than we in fact do – one that rules out the possibility of rational nonbelief. The evidence available for God’s existence should be so definitive that it would be impossible for us to fail to believe on good epistemic terms. My dissertation sets out to delegitimize this expectation. While available objections to it challenge its propriety – God may have overriding reasons for disclosing his existence in a way that allows for rational nonbelief – my account challenges its feasibility – whether it is in principle possible to meet. Expecting divine self-disclosure to rule out rational nonbelief assumes that it can rule out rational nonbelief – but can it? By homing in on the nature, mechanics, and limitations of disclosure itself, I show it cannot. Divine self-disclosure is an instance of what I call doxastic positioning: the process of positioning someone to rationally form some belief – in this case, theistic belief. To rule out rational nonbelief, God’s disclosure would need to make theistic belief a universal rational requirement. Given the success conditions of doxastic positioning, this would involve the provision of sufficient evidence as well as the universal possession and appreciability of said evidence. But no matter what evidence God provides, God cannot guarantee on pain of irrationality that humans will possess or be in a position to appreciate the available evidence, leaving rational nonbelief an ever live possibility. —Which is just to say that divine self-disclosure cannot rule out rational nonbelief. The expectation that it would do so is, then, illegitimate and the hiddenness argument depending on it fails.