Religious Skepticism

Is belief in God intellectually viable? That is, is belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good supernatural being the kind of belief that has credible support that strongly suggests that it is true? There is a long tradition of religious skepticism according to which the answer to these questions is no. This is an interesting and important query for those who do believe in God, for there are (and should be) moments when reflective believers wonder how or why they should think some specific religious claim is true. In this article, I will present skepticism about religious claims as a species of a broader kind of epistemological skepticism. Then I’ll explore some reasons that are often cited in support of religious skepticism. In the final section, I’ll present some responses to skepticism about the intellectual viability of belief in God.