Paul Draper

Background

Paul Draper (1957–) is an American philosopher of religion at Purdue University, generally identified as an agnostic rather than an atheist. His signature contribution is the comparative Bayesian turn in the problem of evil: rather than hunting for particular gratuitous evils, Draper asks which hypothesis better predicts the world's observed distribution of pleasure and pain. He is also a leading voice on methodological naturalism and the author of the Stanford Encyclopedia's own entry on atheism and agnosticism — which makes him, unusually, both a subject and a source of this wiki's reference corpus.

Positions held in this wiki

• The Evidential Problem of Evil — "inspired by Hume," Draper compares theism (T) with "the Hypothesis of Indifference": "neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by nonhuman persons" (Draper 1989, 13). Given that the observations O about biologically useful and useless pain and pleasure satisfy Pr(O | HI) > Pr(O | T), and Pr(HI) ≥ Pr(T), theism is more likely false than true (SEP PoE §3.3). Making no "noseeum" inference, the argument is standardly treated as the version most resistant to skeptical theism.
• Intelligent Design as a Scientific Program and Methodological Naturalism — Scope and Limits — methodological naturalism stated carefully as a defeasible thesis about scientific method, compatible with theism, whose track record itself carries evidential weight (Draper 2005; via SEP citation).
• In Religious Pluralism — his SEP entry argues the diversity of "legitimate concepts of God" makes global atheism "a very difficult position to justify"; the same entry documents the standard philosophical definition of atheism, e.g. noting how Oppy treats agnostic and atheist as exclusive categories (SEP 'Atheism and Agnosticism').

Key works in our corpus

• SEP 'Atheism and Agnosticism' — in corpus; Draper is its author.
• Corpus gap: "Pain and Pleasure" (1989) and "God, Science, and Naturalism" (2005) are copyright-locked; represented via SEP 'The Problem of Evil' §3.3 and the SEP entries cited in the two science-faith articles. Logged in meta/gap-report.md.

Principal critics

• Peter van Inwagen — argues the observed distribution of pain cannot reasonably be ruled improbable given theism (the "massively irregular worlds" reply).
• Alvin Plantinga — warrant-based and skeptical-theist replies; also the chief opponent of Draper's methodological naturalism in the theistic-science debate.
• Richard Swinburne — the total-evidence objection: other evidence (religious experience, design) may favor theism once O is conjoined with it.

See also

• William L. Rowe — the direct-inductive alternative Draper's comparative strategy is designed to improve upon.
• David Hume — the Dialogues originate the comparative strategy Draper formalizes.
• J. L. Mackie — the mid-century predecessor of both evidential programs.