I wonder if any of what Moser is saying commits him to empirical claims about skeptics. As I read him, I keep getting the feeling that he is: I get the sense that he is saying that they are selfish, unwilling to submit to higher authorities (like God), unwilling to follow their consciences in certain areas, desire to be autonomous, and perhaps more. Of course, Moser hasn't directly said these things, I think. (Moser doesn't say believers don't have these tendencies, but I think he'd say that they have chosen to refrain from them, and so are able to come to know God.)
So what is Moser saying about skeptics? I am inclined to think that he is saying that some of them are not "genuinely willing to listen attentively for God's authoritative call, despite their skeptical tendencies" (p. 77). Furthermore, he is saying that a skeptic will fall into either that category or that that skeptic's days are "numbered" (p. 81), i.e., she will come to believe soon enough. (For historical skeptics who remained skeptics all their lives, therefore, the first disjunct must apply to them.)
But again, I'm not even sure he's saying this. So my questions:
(Question1) Is Moser making empirical claims about skeptics?
If the answer to Question1 is "yes", then,
(Question2) What empirical claims is he making about skeptics?
It would not be the first time for Christians to make empirical claims about skeptics (or atheists about believers). William Lane Craig has (in)famously defended the view that many of those who don't ever hear the gospel are transworld damned (are such that the relevant counterfactuals of freedom which are true of them are such that they wouldn't accept the gospel if it had been offered). Plantinga, I think, is forthright in saying that the cognitive faculties (specifically, the sensus divinitatuses) of nonbelievers are dysfunctioning because of sin and in need of cognitive repair by the Holy Spirit (and this is true of us all; but Christians have begun to receive that repair). Actually, I think any Christian thinker needs to tell some story of why some nonbelievers don't believe. Has Moser told us such a story for skeptics?
I think he is committed to making empirical claims for skeptics and for the vast majority of "believers." I put believers in quotation marks because I think Moser thinks that there are in fact very few people who count as genuine believers--i.e., who have an all-inclusive sense of love for everyone, including their enemies.
I don't know that any of the above accurately describes what Moser thinks, though. If it does, then that raises an interesting question about what people who think they are Christians, but are also hate-filled, are doing. Do they really believe in God, or are they believing in some cognitive idol? (This also intersects with Mullins's earlier post about what it takes to be a Christian.)
One of his weaker claims in this vein is that 'cognitive modesty seems rare among skeptics about God's reality' (p. 76). While we can all agree that Dawkins, Russell, et al are often lacking in cognitive modesty, the conclusion that such modesty is rare among skeptics (or, at least, rarer among them than among believers) is still unwarranted.
As Robert notes, Moser may be of the view that only those who meet certain strict requirements count as genuine believers, and so it would be easy to say that such understanding and considerate people would be more cognitively modest than skeptics in general. This however has the appearance of either stacking the deck against the skeptic or engaging in a type of 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.
David,
"While we can all agree that Dawkins, Russell, et al are often lacking in cognitive modesty, the conclusion that such modesty is rare among skeptics (or, at least, rarer among them than among believers) is still unwarranted."
Well, he does provide evidence for his claim, where he says in the next sentence "The latter is evidenced by the typically uncritical ways they wield their own skeptical cognitive standards and demands. Hume (1780) and Russell (1953) are familiar textbook examples of philosophers who wield an implausible empiricist spectator standard among philosophers" (76). Does this not move you? This sort of wielding of skeptical cognitive standards and demands might not be seen as much amongst believers either.
Also, could you clarify what you meant by your final sentence? And what's the "No true Scotsman' fallacy?
Andrew,
While the evidence that Moser presents in the second line supports the claim about the likes of Russell and Dawkins, I take it that David's point is that those individuals only represent a small subset of skeptics. So, ok there is some subset of vocal skeptics who wield their own cognitive standards in uncritical ways, but is there some reason to think that all or most skeptics are guilty of this.
Andrew,
Matthew has correctly interpreted my point. I realize that Hume, Russell, and others may at times be guilty of cognitive immodesty regarding their skepticism, but that's no reason to think that most philosophically-inclined skeptics are like that.
The point of my final sentence is that, if Moser defines believer strictly, he would be excluding from that category a number of people who are either philosopically unsophisticated or who have some mild limits in cognitive ability or moral perception. This would of course have the consequence of making the average 'believer' a far better example of a person than the average skeptic, but the meaning of 'believer' at this point has been significantly shifted from what it meant at the beginning of the discussion between the skeptic and believer.
The 'No True Scotsman' fallacy is an ad hoc attempt to retain the truth of a proposition. If I were to say that no Christians were racist, and you replied that James is both Christian and racist, I would be engaging in this fallacy if I replied, "Yes, but no true Christian is racist." (Racists, presumably, are a group Moser wants to exclude from being believers.) Moser however is not being ad hoc here, but the way that he is defining believer, in the end, may mean that who is a believer is either less defined by his or her beliefs, or else defined by a very large number of them.
David,
Thanks for the clarification on your last sentence. It's also nice to know what that fallacy is, since I've heard about it before.
To Matt and David, Moser says, "The latter is evidenced by the typically uncritical ways they wield their own skeptical cognitive standards and demands." While Moser uses Russell and Hume as illustrations of his claim, I think he was expecting his readers to just nod along and say, "Yeah, this is what we've seen in our observation."
So I guess it depends on what we've seen in our observation. To report my own observation, I've seen a great number of skeptics who dismiss God's existence in "uncritical ways" with their "skeptical cognitive standards and demands". I find that most who identify themselves as naturalists fall into this category. Actually, I might say that most professional philosophers I've met who have not taken the time to read philosophy of religion (and this is a good number) but who are atheists fall into this category. Matt and I were talking recently about philosophy departments where it is just accepted that belief in God is something to be made fun of; people who do this probably fall into this category.
Furthermore, Moser might've also been thinking historically. Before the Plantinga/Wolterstorff/Alston era, skeptics would sweep away belief in God with classical foundationalism or empiricism or something of that sort. Again, this is an example of more of those uncritical ways and skeptical demands. (I was reminded of this by reading Gordon Graham's review of Rea's Analytic Theology book, particularly, the discussion of Wolterstorff's article. For more support, one need only read all the citations Plantinga makes in his works where he defends properly basic belief in God.) Moser might've been taking his readers to be familiar with these historical facts.
So having thought a bit more about it, I take Moser to be appealing to our own observations. Other people probably have different observations than mine.
I agree with Andrew, but I think I would go farther; since he thinks that God exists, and since he thinks being open to God's purposively intended, perfectly authoritative evidence is pretty much the only way to get to belief in the living God (at least I think this is his view), it follows that the vast majority of skeptics, whether philosophers or not, don't believe in God because they uncritically keep certain cognitive standards, which they accept partly because it gives them the illusion of control.
Note that I don't think these remarks apply to, say, devout Buddhists, but I'm not ruling out their application either.
Andrew,
While I will readily concede that many skeptics in philosophy will mock those who are religious, or pre-emptively dismiss their rationality, it still doesn't follow that the majority of skeptics are like that. It may in fact be the case that the skeptics who are not like that are the ones least likely to put themselves out as public defenders of skepticism or as self-styled leaders of the vanguard against irrationality.
While it can be taken for granted that a number of professional, atheist philosophers who are uninformed about issues in the philosophy of religion are like this - or were particularly so in the era before Faith and Rationality - still isn't sufficient information to make a generalization about all skeptics. Many religious people - even some who are educated - who have not read much philosophy will often find the very concept of atheism incredible, and will respond to atheists with uncritical standards and unreasonable expectations or demands. It's possible that a skeptical philosopher might only encounter religious people of this kind, but would we be so comfortable with saying that the philosopher was reasonable in assuming that most religious people were like that?
Robert,
Yours is a better formulation of Moser's point, but a number of people also come to belief in God despite their uncritical cognitive standards. Moser's account would apply to those people as well as to skeptics, so what's needed is an explanation as to what makes Moser's skeptic different from the believer who does not fit Moser's definition of 'believer.'