The Wisdom to Doubt

The Wisdom to Doubt is a major contribution to the contemporary literature on the epistemology of religious belief. Continuing the inquiry begun in his previous book, Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, J. L. Schellenberg here argues that given our limitations and especially our immaturity as a species, there is no reasonable choice but to withhold judgment about the existence of an ultimate salvific reality.

Schellenberg defends this conclusion against arguments from religious experience and naturalistic arguments that might seem to make either religious belief or religious disbelief preferable to his skeptical stance. In so doing, he canvasses virtually all of the important recent work on the epistemology of religion. Of particular interest is his call for at least skepticism about theism, the most common religious claim among philosophers. The Wisdom to Doubt expands the author's well-known hiddenness argument against theism and situates it within a larger atheistic argument, itself made to serve the purposes of his broader skeptical case. That case need not, on Schellenberg's view, lead to a dead end but rather functions as a gateway to important new insights about intellectual tasks and religious possibilities.

J. L. Schellenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University. He is the author of Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason and Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, also from Cornell.

Schellenberg's book provides an interesting and thought provoking case for Categorical Religious Skepticism.... Like his other books, The Wisdom to Doubt is well written and clear. Helpful charts and figures facilitate a better understanding of the text. His arguments become clearer and easier to grasp, and more challenging, the more time one spends thinking through them. I encourage readers to carefully attend to his arguments or risk missing a good opportunity to be challenged.