“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” —Hamlet There are lots of ways we could be in sceptical scenarios. Fortunately, we’re not in a sceptical scenario. Alexander Pruss uses this
1) Given what God already tolerates (on non-skeptical scenarios), and given plausible theodicies about why She does so, is the harm of being in a skeptical scenario something we have high prior probability She would protect us from? If anything theodicy (by your account the strongest line against theism) looks much *easier* within a skeptical scenario.
2) This might be tussling with the premise that skepticism is false, but I feel like there is a case to be made that eg “perhaps I am most likely a Boltzmann brain, but my actions only matter if I am not, therefore I will act on the premise that my actions have consequences.” One can regard this as a Kantian rather than dogmatic (neutral valence of dogmatic) solution.
What do you make of the Hindu notion of maya, isn't that a theistic skeptical scenario (there is a supreme God in Hinduism, even if there are lesser ones as well)? You may even have called it out when you posited reality as collective dream in a skeptical scenario. There doesn't seem to be anything bad about being in a collective dream, it just is what it is.
I reckon that there’s an 85% chance we wouldn’t be in a skeptical scenario under atheism, and a roughly 90% chance that we aren’t under Theism, since there are some whacky theodical reasons why God might do something like that
I think my hesitations here are:
1) Given what God already tolerates (on non-skeptical scenarios), and given plausible theodicies about why She does so, is the harm of being in a skeptical scenario something we have high prior probability She would protect us from? If anything theodicy (by your account the strongest line against theism) looks much *easier* within a skeptical scenario.
2) This might be tussling with the premise that skepticism is false, but I feel like there is a case to be made that eg “perhaps I am most likely a Boltzmann brain, but my actions only matter if I am not, therefore I will act on the premise that my actions have consequences.” One can regard this as a Kantian rather than dogmatic (neutral valence of dogmatic) solution.
What do you make of the Hindu notion of maya, isn't that a theistic skeptical scenario (there is a supreme God in Hinduism, even if there are lesser ones as well)? You may even have called it out when you posited reality as collective dream in a skeptical scenario. There doesn't seem to be anything bad about being in a collective dream, it just is what it is.
Related: https://philpapers.org/rec/PITDWS
I reckon that there’s an 85% chance we wouldn’t be in a skeptical scenario under atheism, and a roughly 90% chance that we aren’t under Theism, since there are some whacky theodical reasons why God might do something like that