“One Need Not Hope in Order to Undertake One’s Work”: Pragmatic Warrant, Existential Arguments, and Accepting Theism

Suppose that, in most domains of belief, our basic commitments are warranted not evidentially but pragmatically. Is that good news for efforts to warrant theistic commitment? Not obviously, I argue by way of a critique of several recent existential arguments for theism. It’s unclear that theistic commitment is a necessary, or even viable, means of gaining supernatural goods like cosmic meaning or a happy afterlife. And it’s unclear that this-worldly (putative) goods it arguably underpins—in particular, a specific sort of optimism—are sufficiently valuable to generate pragmatic warrant. I suggest in conclusion that, while pragmatic moral arguments avoid some of these difficulties, it’s challenging to maintain both that an aim is morally required and that theistic faith is necessary for its realization. Prospects for a strong pragmatic warrant for theistic commitment thus remain uncertain at best.