Friendly Atheism and Friendly Theism: A Defense

In this paper, I aim to defend an epistemic framework that extends William Rowe’s concept of “friendly atheism” to include both theists and atheists. Building on Rowe’s recognition that rational, well-informed people can disagree about the existence of God, I argue that appreciating such disagreements is not only a matter of intellectual tolerance, but can be seen as an epistemic “must”. My project begins by analyzing knowledge into its traditional constituents—truth, belief, and justification— and formalizing them as metalinguistic operators, highlighting justification’s subjective nature. In doing so, I don’t commit myself to any particular view regarding internalism or externalism. From this basis, I address the problem of other minds, noting that while we might affirm the existence of mental states in others, we cannot access the specific justificatory status behind their beliefs. Thus, epistemic evaluations across belief systems must rely on prior probabilities rather than empirical evidence. Using the Principle of Indifference, I argue that the probability that any given individual is justified in their belief about God is 50%. In the latter part of the paper, I construct a probabilistic argument showing that, given the existence of roughly three billion theists who engage in some rational evaluation of evidence, it is virtually certain—by complement probabilities and the Law of Large Numbers—that at least one of them holds a justified belief in God, rendering unfriendly approaches epistemically untenable. This model equally supports friendly theism toward atheists. As a result, I conclude that friendly atheism and friendly theism are not optional virtues but necessary epistemic positions when approaching fundamental religious disagreements.