RA046: The Case for Nonresistant Nonbelief (Part 4 of the Divine Hiddenness Series)

Real Atheology

Welcome back to the Hiddenness Series. In the last episode, we looked at Schellenberg's concept of a nonresistant nonbeliever which plays a central role in his argument from Divine Hiddenness. To refresh, somebody is a nonresistant nonbeliever if they (1) fail to believe that God exists and (2) that failure is not the result of their resistance to God. We also looked at the concept of resistance at play here and we saw that it included a desire component in conjunction with actions or omissions driven by that desire. Certain desire/action/omission combinations, if expressed by a person could conceivably cause that person to fail to believe that God exists even though they did believe to begin with. Some form of Self-deception would have to be at play here. Schellenberg calls such persons resistant nonbelievers and, according to the Hiddenness argument, if a perfectly loving God exists, resisters are the only type of nonbeliever that could exist. However, Schellenberg claims resistant nonbelievers are not the only type of nonbelievers that exist. According to him, some nonbelievers are nonresistant. His argument requires this. But is he correct? Lets take a look.