Hi Mackensie, thanks for your argument. I am inclined to say, however, that I do not think that it works. Your argument, which you have kindly regimented, is the following:
1. In order to determine that miracles are highly improbable, then there must be a very large sample size or the entire miracle population must be surveyed.
2. It is very difficult to conduct a survey of an entire population or very large sample size, and there are most likely some miracle claims that we do not know about which makes the sample/population size unknown.
3. Therefore, miracles are more probable than Shapiro claims.
I think that premise two may actually prove particularly thorny for your argument. If indeed we are unable to survey those who have witnessed actual miracles, then how would we come to better know that miracles have actually occurred? Does this not threaten to keep miracles as nothing more than hearsay and humans attributing false causes to otherwise regular and natural causes? Doubting the powers of population statistics would not help make the case of miracles more probable. I think that it would just keep people believing whatever they believed about miracles. In my mind, if population statistics were able to survey those people who have experienced miracles and found that they were abundant in the population, then this would be of tremendous help for the miracle advocate. I think that the premise, more fundamentally, betrays an unwarranted sense of skepticism towards population statistics. While population surveys and samplings are not one hundred percent accurate and do have their deficiencies, at the very least, I wager that they do give us an accurate glimpse of what is in fact the case among groups of people. I think that when the Pew Research Center releases its finding concerning, say, religious affiliation in the United States, the findings do speak some truth as to what is the case.

Hi TheMadFool, I do not think that your argument really works. I think that you are arguing something to the following effect:
1. All creatures are equal to God.
2. If all creatures are equal to God, then God would give all creatures the opportunity to thrive.
3. If God would give all creatures the opportunity to thrive, then natural evils that cause death would give certain creatures, i.e. bacteria and parasites, the opportunity to thrive.
4. If natural evils that cause death would give certain creatures, i.e. bacteria and parasites, the opportunity to thrive, then God, in spite of the natural evils, is still good.
5. Therefore, God, in spite of natural evils, is still good.
If this is an accurate representation of your argument, I find fault with premise four. I agree with the antecedent of four, yet I think that the consequent is not likely to be true since God still does not look to be good. For instance, imagine that a tsunami hit a coastal town in Indonesia and killed ten thousand people. Sure, the bodies will turn into food for the bacteria in the water and other creatures. It is a fortunate outcome for them, yet this is not so for the ten thousand people who perished. I think you would agree at some level that a human person is worth more than bacteria. If so, then much evil was done by the tsunami and God does not appear to be good since God let precious lives be lost to, from an anthropocentric point of view, replaceable creatures. Even if you do not agree with the assumption that humans are worth more than other creatures on this planet, this still does not acquit God. In the tsunami scenario, many creatures underwent suffering and death. There is some party that had some, arguably, very evil thing done to them that does not seem warranted in any sense. Thus, it is questionable if God is indeed good.

Hi Gus, thanks for the chart you provided. I find fault with argument that its advancing. I think you are arguing something along these lines:
1. Beliefs or noetic attitudes need adequate epistemic justification.
2. If beliefs or noetic attitudes need adequate epistemic justification, then faith in the belief ‘God exists’ needs adequate epistemic justification.
3. If faith in the belief ‘God exists’ needs adequate epistemic justification, then the only means in which faith could be epistemically justified is if it appeals to the belief that God exists.
4. If the only means in which faith could be epistemically justified is if it appeals to the belief that God exists, then appeals to faith ultimately lead to circular arguments.
5. If appeals to faith ultimately lead to circular arguments, then appeals to faith should be rejected.
6. Therefore, appeals to faith should be rejected.
My contention with this argument is premise three. As a theist, I agree that faith should be buttressed by some justification and that blind faith is something to be avoided. However, why should one believe that the consequent is the case for faith? The mature theist, I would suppose, does have other means in which to justify her faith. She could appeal to the intuition that God exists, the arguments for God’s existence, testimony from other intelligent/reflective believers and the failure of naturalism to adequately explain the totality of existence as means of justification. The above items are far from simple appeals to some prior and seemingly unjustified belief as premise four suggests. However, even if one grants premise three, the argument still does not seem to succeed, for premise five is contentious as well. Perhaps appeals to faith are circular, yet this might not give one reason to reject them since could not one argue, as the coherentist would, that any justification is eventually circular? Of course, I would qualify this response by saying that a person who appeals to faith should at least lay down all their cards that give reason, aside from faith, for why he or she believes in God. Still, if justification is circular when all is said and done, then circular arguments are inevitable. So, from the coherentist perspective, appeals to faith should not really be rejected on the grounds of circularity since this is a pernicious effect that could happen in any instance where one has to give an account of justification for one’s beliefs. The above reasons motivate my doubt for the success of your argument.

Hi Emma, thanks for your response. You made a few points, but I want to focus on just one of them. You said in your second paragraph that it would not be God that would be dishonored by the wrongs of the world since one could shift the blame to the beings that actually commit the wrongs like Satan or humans. I think you are attempting to formulate the following argument:
(1) If intentional agent S is a sufficient cause for event x such that event x would not have obtained had S refrained from acting to cause event x, then S, and only S, was responsible for the actualization of x.
(2) Intentional agent S is a sufficient cause for event x such that event x would not have obtained had S refrained from acting to cause event x.
(3) Therefore, S, and only S, was responsible for the actualization of x.
The problem with your argument lies with premise two. It seems that premise two commits one to libertarian free will. If so, then you have to try to give an account of how to reconcile libertarian free will and God’s foreknowledge, a herculean task that remains controversial and unresolved in the relevant literature. However, even if you are able to give an adequate account for the above problem, this still does not seem to rebut my original point, namely, that the current world is such that it dishonors God. I can point to many instances of natural evils in the world, such as hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. that seem to lack any agent causation yet cause untold amounts of suffering. Such evils are not covered by your argument, and they seem to support my claim. Of course, you could possibly argue that those natural evils actually do have some agent causation history. Demons or malevolent spirits perhaps are the cause of them. While this is a possible route to take, I think you run the risk of multiplying your ontology beyond what may be necessary. In other words, simplicity may demand you to just say that natural evils are caused by natural causes, no evil spirits necessary.

Hi Naomi, thanks for your response. You made quite a few points, so I am going to restrict my response to just one of them. In your third paragraph, I think you are claiming that while indeed there are defects in this world, you think that their presence should actually incline one to believe in God. I think you’re trying to make this argument:
(1) If existentially threatening states of affairs obtain in the actual world, then these existentially threatening states of affairs make any non-theistic world undesirable since they may never be eradicated.
(2) If existentially threatening states of affairs make a non-theistic world undesirable since they may never be eradicated, then a theistic world is more desirable since God, who is benevolent, will eradicate these existentially threatening states of affairs.
(3) Therefore, if existentially threatening states of affairs obtain in the actual world, then a theistic world is more desirable since God will eradicate these existentially threatening states of affairs.
The problem with this argument lies with premise one. In both a theistic and non-theistic world, existentially threatening states of affair do obtain, so both the theist and the non-theist have to work with this data. However, perhaps it might be more desirable for the world to be non-theistic, even with the possibility of never having existentially threatening states of affairs eradicated, since in such a world it would seem to make the goods of the world all the more valuable. Good acts, for instance, become more valuable because one is not forced to do them in any ultimate sense. One is good in an absurd sense, like a doctor, who knows that she and her patient will be bombed to death in the next few minutes, trying with all her powers to save her patient. This sense of good seems to be a better kind of good than any alternative. Of course, one could argue that this sense of good seems to depend on some notion that there is some higher, transcendent and vague good that one seeks or tries to conform their life to; an absurdist might say that they do good because it is good, suggesting a kind of goodness expressed in the previous sentence. Still, the absurdist might object that it makes more sense to say that goodness originates from within themselves and the things of the world that do cause one to have a sense of goodness. No such speculation of a transcendent good is really necessary.

Hi TheMadFool. I do not think that your argument really works. I think that you are trying to say something like the following:
1. Evolution operates under a principle of trial and error, a primitive form of problem-solving.
2. God is the creator of the universe and fashioned it to his liking.
3. If God is the creator of the universe and fashioned it to his liking and evolution operates under a principle of trial and error, which is a primitive form of problem-solving, then it follows that God is not intelligent.
4. Therefore, God is not intelligent.
Assuming the above is an accurate recreation of your argument, premise three is very contentious. There are two objections that come to my mind. First, one could argue that creation may not necessarily wholly reflect what God is or what God is capable of. Reflecting on metaphysics is illuminating on this point. The ontology of this world is limited and does not contain all possible objects, states of affairs, etc. Even a quick survey of logical space reveals that this universe is lacking in so much or could have been quite different. If one tried to determine God’s capabilities through just this universe, then it would appear that God is limited. However, when one considers all that is possible, then it begins to look as if God’s capabilities are much greater than one would suspect from just looking at the actual world. Second, even if one assumes that this world is the only actual world, it could still reflect a God who is intelligent. See, if God is the creator of the universe, then everything in the universe, whether known or unknown, would have to have its origins in God. The sciences, logic, technological and everything else would be created by God. Given how complex the above items are, I doubt that one would object that such items are demonstrations are mindlessness or simplicity.