Praying to stop being an atheist

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 2010, Volume 67, Issue 3, pp 173-186
Cover Date 2010-06-01
DOI 10.1007/s11153-010-9227-8

T. J. Mawson

St. Peter’s College, Oxford, OX1 2DL, UK

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that atheists who think that the issue of God’s existence or non-existence is an important one; assign a greater than negligible probability to God’s existence; and are not in possession of a plausible argument for scepticism about the truth-directedness of uttering such prayers in their own cases, are under a prima facie epistemic obligation to pray to God that he stop them being atheists.

Keywords

God, Prayer, Atheism, Theism, Agnosticism, Divine hiddenness, Epistemic obligation

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11153-010-9227-8