Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Hossein Khatibi ¹
• rasoul rasoulipour ²
• Amirabbas Alizamani ³

¹ منطقه چهارده، خیابان هفده شهریور، خیابان سعیدی، خیابان صفری، کوچه قربانی، پلاک بیست، واحد دو

² Assistant professor Philosophy Department Kharazmi University

³ Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran

Abstract

The Divine hiddenness argument, as presented by Canadian philosopher, John L. Schellenberg, is one of the atheistic arguments based on which, lack of sufficient evidence for theism is itself an evidence against theism. Since the argument was set forth, a lot of thinkers have made some efforts to rebut it, a lot of which have opted a super-structural attitude while others have gone for a sub-structural approach, one of whom is Michael C. Rea. He holds that through considering some misconstrued conceptions and presuppositions which are hidden behind the hiddenness argument, one can figure the confutation of this argument. After briefly articulating the hiddenness argument itself and Rea's responses to the argument, this article aims at inspecting and critically analyzing his rebuttal. The conclusion which will be eventually put forth is that although Rea has pointed us toward a betted direction in order to analyze and inspect the hiddenness argument, but if we use a reflexive approach and use his methodology on his own ideas, one will be able to discern that they can't reach to their desired target.

Keywords

• the divine hiddenness argument
• divine transcendence
• divine love
• analogy
• holy scriptures