God, Probability and John Hick

Extract

Whether or not any notion of probability is meaningful in the philosophy of religion has been the subject of considerable discussion. Ranging from our common sense usage in which probability implies ‘possibly’ but not ‘certainly’ to its highly sophisticated usage in pure mathematics, the question of its philosophical foundations is one of the most controversial in logical theory. Some thinkers argue that statistical frequency is the only legitimate notion of probability, and, inasmuch as such frequency is tied to discrete observable phenomena, probability judgments have little, if any, application to religious explanations of the entire universe. Foremost, perhaps, among philosophers of religion in Anglo-American thought who support this concept is John Hick. In this article, I shall delineate Hick's attitude towards probability and evidence and how it relates to his concept of faith. Then I shall raise some critical questions about his analysis and try to show that his view is unnecessarily restrictive – even inconsistent – in places. To look at Hick and probability in focus, however, we must look through the lens of his general approach to epistemological issues.