A propos the discussion prompted by Helen de Cruz's wonderful post: let me grant that analytic philosophers of religion (APoR) have a special expertise (despite the fact that I tend to think they are dominated by apologetics for parochial views of god). APoR expertise is best summarized by a competence in evaluating arguments about the existence of god and offering distinctions that can make these arguments more fine-grained and illuminating. This is not nothing. However, I deny that APoR training and practices create any expertise in establishing God's existence (unless by 'God' something merely conceptual is meant, but that is generally not the God thought worth having). Despite the prominence of discussion of fine-tuning and various neo-Bayesian arguments in APoR, I see no evidence that competence in evaluating evidential practices of how to establish the existence of non-mid-sized objects is widespread in APoR (or anywhere else in philosophy--even much epistemology or philosophy of science is far removed from such expertise). And without competence in such evidential practices (which outstrip mere argument), I have no idea why APoR views on the existence of God have any privileged status over the views of, say, theologians, sociologists of religion, cosmologists, and other smart people with a reasonably thought-out belief.
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