Divine Hiddenness and Evidence for God

The project of this book is to formulate the problem of divine hiddenness as an evidential argument. A central theme is that philosophers can make progress understanding the epistemic import of divine hiddenness by modelling the hiddenness argument using Bayesian methods. One advantage to using evidential tools to frame the topic is that theists can agree with some of the core ideas that motivate interest in the topic: such as that it is surprising that God’s existence is not more obvious than it is. This is a thought with which theists can agree—without being pressured into atheism. The approach allows individuals on both sides of the issue to find more common ground.

The book as a whole raises an important methodological question: Can there be evidence against God for theists? While some theists have taken a hard stance against claims that anything is evidence against God, this work suggest theists are better off conceding that some phenomena are evidence against God, and that theists should be open to the possibility that divine hiddenness is among such evidence.