Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion

Volume 24, December 2019

The Problem of Polytheisms Remains

Since publishing my argument for polytheisms over monotheism with Herman Philipse, I have encountered many monotheists who were perturbed, but who had not formulated a proper rebuttal. It is also hard not to notice that there is generally a dearth of publications arguing for monotheism's being more probable than polytheism, perhaps because it is generally taken for granted. As such, I am delighted that Mark Saward has taken up the challenge to address at least some of the original article's claims. Unfortunately, his critique fails to establish why polytheism is improbable, and why monotheism is to be privileged by philosophers of religion. I further reiterate that the threat of extreme agnosticism is a bizarre approach for the monotheistic evidentialist, posing no problems whatsoever for agnostic atheists, such as myself In fact, I assert that extreme agnosticism still allows discussants, even further encourages them, to declare monotheism (and also classical theism) to be epistemically improbable.