Cognitive Science of Religion

This paper argues that elect believers in Christ who have died before the Parousia exist in a disembodied, incorporeal state sustained by divine grace and will receive resurrection bodies at the return of Christ. Drawing on Pauline anthropology, the paper first establishes that Scripture presents humanity as a dual being of body and soul, such that death constitutes an abnormal and temporary separation, not a final state. The argument then addresses the strongest objection-that a disembodied intermediate state imports Greek dualism into Hebrew anthropology-by distinguishing between Platonic substance dualism and the more modest biblical position that an incorporeal existence, though unnatural and unwanted, is divinely maintained. The paper proceeds to examine corporeal descriptions attributed to confirmed incorporeal beings (angels and God) alongside parallel descriptions of deceased persons, demonstrating through a comparative taxonomy that such descriptions function phenomenologically rather than as evidence of literal corporeal existence. Paul's expressed longing for the resurrection body in 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:10 is then shown to confirm rather than undermine the disembodied view: one does not groan for what one already possesses. A historical survey demonstrates that this position represents the dominant consensus of orthodox Christianity from the Patristic era through the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. The conclusion affirms that the Parousia entails the embodiment of incorporeally existing souls who are raised 2 from earthly remains, while the living are simultaneously transformed into identical spiritual bodies.

This panel presented eight papers examining the embodied religious experiences of girls and women across diverse ancient Greek cult contexts. Each paper investigated a different cult tradition while employing distinct but complimentary theoretical frameworks drawn from sensory archaeology, cognitive science of religion, phenomenological approaches, and gender studies. Together, these contributions illuminated how gendered bodies moved though, transformed, and were transformed by the sacred environments they encountered across the Mediterranean world.

Calling the Big Bang a "miracle" can be rhetorically powerful because the term carries both wonder and theological agency. This paper argues that the argument often depends on equivocation. If miracle means an astonishing or currently unexplained event, the Big Bang may be miracle-like only in a loose aesthetic sense. If miracle means an act of God that violates or transcends natural order, then the theological conclusion has been built into the premise. The paper distinguishes wonder, anomaly, boundary condition, divine act, and evidential sign. It then shows how apologetic rhetoric slides among these meanings to convert cosmological mystery into theistic confirmation. The result is not a denial that cosmology raises profound metaphysical questions. It is a refusal to let semantic inflation do the work of evidence.

The claim that "we have never seen something come from nothing" is often used to support a causal premise in cosmological apologetics. This paper argues that the move is an inductive cherry. It selects one ordinary-world induction while ignoring other ordinary-world inductions that cut against the desired conclusion: minds are embodied, agents act through mechanisms, causes operate within temporal orders, complex intentions arise from prior processes, and explanations that multiply unobserved powers lose predictive discipline. The paper does not argue that induction refutes every cosmological argument. It argues that selective induction cannot bear the burden placed on it. If ordinary experience is allowed into cosmic-origin reasoning, it must enter as a portfolio rather than a single convenient slogan. A more comprehensive inductive audit weakens the inference from "not from nothing" to a timeless, immaterial, personal creator.

This paper reconstructs the cave analogy as a rigorous critique of design reasoning. A person who has seen human-dug tunnels might infer that all complex caves are designed. The inference fails because it selects the wrong reference class, ignores known natural mechanisms, and treats a local association between complexity and agency as a universal rule. The same error appears in popular arguments that biological complexity, cosmic order, or functional organization must be products of intelligence because some complex artifacts are designed. The paper distinguishes artifact-recognition from design-inference. We recognize artifacts not by complexity alone, but by background knowledge about agents, tools, production histories, material discontinuities, and contrast classes. Natural caves, crystals, snowflakes, river deltas, immune systems, eyes, and ecosystems can exhibit intricate structure without being artifacts. Complexity is therefore not a reliable marker of design unless linked to a mechanism that discriminates agency from non-agency. I provide a formalization of the analogy. From "all observed caves in sample S are human-made" one may not infer "all caves are human-made" unless S is representative and alternative generative processes are excluded. From "some complex things are designed" one may not infer "all complex things are designed" unless complexity is shown to be a design-exclusive property. The conclusion is methodological: the design argument must compare causal pathways, not merely point at wonder.

Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, jak koncepcja kolektywnego wrzenia Émile’a Durkheima, kładąca nacisk na wzajemne relacje między ludzkim umysłem, ciałem i życiem społecznym, ułatwia dokonanie postulowanego przez Sebastiana Schülera zwrotu w kognitywnych badaniach nad religią. Koncepcja Durkheima została zastosowana w analizie procesów czarownic w XVII-wiecznym Salem. Artykuł kładzie szczególny nacisk na wymiar cielesny ludzkich zgromadzeń – aspekt interesujący dla współczesnych religioznawców kognitywnych nawiązujących do dorobku Durkheima i jego uczniów. Kolektywne wrzenie oraz jego elementy składowe – tj. tworzenie się zgromadzeń i zalążków spontanicznych rytuałów oraz reprezentacje zbiorowe – posłużyły do analizy fenomenu oraz udzielenia odpowiedzi na pytanie o możliwe przyczyny wydarzeń, które miały miejsce w Salem.

In a trans-cultural, comparative religion context, the concept of "sin" or moral transgression under Indic and Abrahamic belief systems may be contrasted along several philosophical angles: ontology of evil, relation between act and consequence, divine agency, intention, purification, and eschatology. A relevant semantic caveat is that the English word "sin" is only partially equivalent to Indic categories such as pāpa, adharma, akuśala karma, or aśubha. Abrahamic traditions often root sin in disobedience to the will or commandment of a personal God. Indic systems, on the other hand more frequently frame wrongdoing as ignorance-driven action producing existential, karmic, psychological, and societal consequences.

Framing religious experience as a balance between precision weighted priors and precision weighted sensory input in predictive processing (PP) is increasingly popular. Most work focuses on perceptual PP in ritual, charismatic, or psychedelic settings. In PP, however, efforts to minimize prediction error through the entire predictive system extend beyond any particular event or setting. In religious experience, this extended process likely depends on the level that religious priors operate in the hierarchical system. Our challenge as cognitive researchers may be to understand how religious beliefs move through a multilayered predictive system to shape religious experience. How far up in the predictive system do religious priors operate? Do religious priors at different levels support different kinds of religious experience? What determines whether religious experiences propagate through the hierarchical system?

This study examines the relationship between scientific inquiry, consciousness, and the Qurʾānic concept of āyāt (signs). It argues
that the perceived conflict between science and religion often
stems not from science itself but from scientism—the extension of
scientific methodology into a comprehensive metaphysical
worldview. The study first distinguishes methodological science
from scientism and explores the implications of this distinction for
the science–religion debate. It then analyzes the Qurʾānic concept
of āyāt, arguing that the Qurʾān presents the cosmos as ordered, intelligible, and open to rational investigation. Finally, the paper
engages contemporary debates on consciousness, mathematics, and the limits of reductionism. Drawing on analytic philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and classical Islamic
thought, it proposes that the Qurʾānic notion of āyāt provides a
framework in which cosmic intelligibility and conscious subjectivity
are philosophically interconnected rather than accidental. The study
neither treats scientific gaps as proof of theism nor claims that the
Qurʾān contains hidden scientific predictions, but argues that the
exclusion of metaphysical reflection remains philosophically
contested.

Christian arguments from reason often claim that naturalism undermines trust in human cognition, while theism secures it by locating mind in a rational creator. This paper argues that the claim collapses when compared with ordinary Christian practice. Christians do not ask the alleged designer of their minds whether those minds are functioning reliably. They test cognition through the same fallible, public, empirical methods everyone else uses: developmental screening, education, peer correction, medical diagnosis, memory tests, standardized assessment, and performance over time. Their lived epistemology therefore routes reliability through calibration rather than divine origin. The paper begins with C. S. Lewis's argument that naturalistic accounts of thought threaten rational inference, then extends the issue to Plantinga's proper-function epistemology and presuppositional claims about God as the ground of reason. I argue that these views confuse a metaphysical origin story with an operational test. Even if God created rational faculties, that would not tell us which human minds are working, when they are impaired, how much confidence they deserve, or how disagreement should be adjudicated. The central contribution is a performative rebuttal. Christian parents, physicians, teachers, employers, and aging believers behave as though cognitive reliability must be measured, compared, and revised. That behavior is not incidental. It reveals the actual norm: trust in cognition is earned by track record, coherence, predictive success, cross-checking, and correction. Theism may offer a story about why rational beings exist, but it does not provide a usable certificate of cognitive reliability.

O propósito deste artigo é explorar brevemente as pesquisas atualmente disponíveis sobre o papel dos correlatos neurobiológicos nas experiências e práticas espirituais geradas por Deus. Os crentes frequentemente assumem que Deus trabalha de forma independente de suas faculdades naturais, como a mente, o cérebro e o sistema nervoso, quando estão experimentando algo espiritual. A motivação aqui é desafiar isso e mostrar que não se pode abordar um estudo das experiências espirituais sem reconhecer que a mente, o cérebro e o sistema nervoso também são centrais para a sua manifestação; eles são interdependentes. Por exemplo, e embora tenham seus críticos, as pesquisas agora mostram como os correlatos neurobiológicos estão envolvidos em várias experiências e práticas espirituais, como oração, meditação, adoração, glossolalia [línguas extáticas] e profecia. Sobre isso, acadêmicos como Evans (2004), Jeeves e Brown (2009) e Clarke (2015) mostraram, por meio de seus vários estudos empíricos, como é importante entender que os mecanismos neurológicos são relevantes não apenas para causar o surgimento de pensamentos e sentimentos, mas também nas experiências espirituais. Ao estudar essas experiências, estudiosos como Newberg e Waldman (2010:69, 76), Verghese (2008:233, 237), Giovannoli (2001) e D'Aquili e Newberg (1999) empregaram dispositivos de neuroimagem, como ressonância magnética funcional (fMRI), tomografia por emissão de fóton único (SPECT) e tomografia por emissão de pósitrons (PET) para examinar o cérebro e registrar suas descobertas. Como afirmado por Pretorius (2016), {Note que algumas informações neste artigo foram usadas em três artigos anteriores publicados pelo autor: veja Pretorius (2016, 2017, 2018).} '[e]studos como esses têm ajudado a esclarecer os mecanismos neurobiológicos associados às práticas e experiências espirituais'. Atualmente também é aceito que as experiências espirituais podem encorajar a transformação espiritual (veja Ironson, Kemer & Ironson 2006:241, 260). Por meio de experiências espirituais, os circuitos de recompensa do cérebro são ativados, o que ajuda a reconfigurar o cérebro (neuroplasticidade) e causar a transformação espiritual.

A. J. Hamerster examines the origins of A. O. Hume’s septenary nature of man, tracing it back to the early Theosophical Movement and the teachings of the Masters, H.P. Blavatsky, and Subba Row. He highlights the influence of an article on “Yoga-Vidya” published in The Theosophist in 1879, which outlined a similar scheme of man’s constitution. Hamerster also discusses the challenges faced by early Theosophists in developing a precise vocabulary to describe these complex concepts.

The text emphasizes the need for a unified vocabulary in Theosophy to avoid misunderstandings and conflicts. It highlights Subba Row’s contribution to clarifying the seven principles of man, explaining their evolution from three primary entities: Brahman, Shakti, and Prakriti. Subba Row’s insights provide a philosophical foundation for understanding the seven principles, aligning them with the three primary entities and their underlying unity.

Subba Row’s theory of the seven principles of man’s constitution, derived from the three basic factors of Brahman, Shakti, and Prakriti, differs from Hume’s original scheme. While Hume grouped the principles loosely, Subba Row presented them as an organic whole, with the Jiva principle at the center, representing the combination of all three factors. This arrangement highlights the interconnectedness and interdependence of the principles, emphasizing their unified nature.

The septenary constitution of man, a fundamental tenet of Theosophy, was first systematically tabulated by A. O. Hume in 1881, not H. P. Blavatsky. This classification, refined by later Theosophists like Sinnett and Subba Row, remains a cornerstone of Theosophical teachings. The authorship of the “Fragments of Occult Truth,” which introduced this scheme, involved a collaborative effort between Hume, Blavatsky, Subba Row, and the Masters M. and K. H.

The first Fragment, a “consultation” article written by Hume, was a collaborative effort with H. P. Blavatsky, Subba Row, and A. P. Sinnett, with input from the Master K.H. Despite some errors and incomplete explanations, the Master praised the Fragments, particularly the first one. Hume’s septenary constitution scheme, while not derived from the Masters’ letters, was a commendable individual effort that was later adopted and expanded upon by the Masters and others.

Defenses of divine hiddenness often claim that clearer evidence of God would undermine human freedom. This paper argues that the defense depends on a coercion mistake. It conflates evidence that settles a question of existence with coercion that removes the freedom to trust, worship, obey, resist, resent, ignore, or reject. Clear evidence may reduce epistemic nonbelief, but it does not eliminate ideological or volitional refusal. A person can know that a ruler exists without accepting the ruler's legitimacy. The paper develops the source article's distinction between epistemic rejection, ideological rejection, and volitional rejection, then places it within debates over divine hiddenness, doxastic voluntarism, belief, acceptance, and coercion. If belief is largely evidence-responsive rather than directly chosen, hiding evidence does not protect freedom; it manufactures ignorance. If acceptance and allegiance remain voluntary even after belief, then revelation can enhance responsible agency by making the relevant choice clearer. The central gap addressed here is the hiddenness defense's failure to specify which freedom is allegedly threatened. Freedom to lack information is not the same as freedom to love. Freedom to deny a premise is not the same as freedom to refuse allegiance. Once those freedoms are separated, the argument that divine clarity would destroy free will loses much of its force. A perfectly loving God need not hide existence in order to avoid coercing relationship.

The paper proposes the Truth-Default Ingroup Hypothesis (TDIH), an evolutionary framework linking moral psychology, cumulative cultural learning, and online social polarization. Grounded in long-term empirical research on online public opinion and social data analysis, and drawing on evolutionary anthropology and theories of cumulative cultural learning, I examine how human moral emotions-originally evolved to promote cooperation and suppress deception-shape contemporary forms of online behavior such as flaming, outrage, misinformation, and social polarization. Building on this framework, I propose a novel theoretical model: the Truth-Default Ingroup Hypothesis (TDIH). This hypothesis argues that humans domesticated the deceptive potential of language by forming "truth-default ingroups" sustained by norms, reputation, and sanctions. These trust-based communities enabled cumulative learning but also fostered ingroup favoritism and parochial altruism. In digital society, the same evolved moral mechanisms-truth bias, conformity, and third-party punishment-are amplified by social media, producing moral outrage, polarization, and misinformation. Online flaming, hate speech, and "cancel culture" thus represent technologically intensified expressions of evolutionary cooperative instincts. Recognizing these evolutionary underpinnings allows sociology to reframe digital moral conflict not as a technological anomaly, but as an extension of humanity's deep moral architecture.

All dominant religions in the world today were conceptualized, structured, and explained during eras when humankind believed the Earth was flat and positioned at the absolute center of the universe. This historical reality forms the core of my research. As an artist who has pursued both science and art with immense passion for 55 years, questioning this structure is not just an intellectual choice-it is my fundamental responsibility to humanity.

A literal resurrection is not established merely by showing that certain early Christian claims would be explained if a resurrection occurred. Many hypotheses can explain testimonial, communal, and literary data. Because resurrection has an extremely low prior probability relative to ordinary historical mechanisms, it requires exceptionally discriminating evidence. The available evidence remains underdetermined by natural alternatives such as visionary experience, memory development, theological narration, grief, social reinforcement, and unknown ordinary causes.

How could non-material spiritual causation-affirmed by religious traditions as genuinely real-produce tangible effects in human experience? This paper develops a non-reductive philosophical framework that addresses this question without reducing the spiritual to the psychological or positing pseudo-physical mechanisms. Drawing on a minimal predictive cognition thesis, I argue that human experience is constitutively mediated by informational structures, and that this opens the conceptual space for non-physical informational influence. I develop a model of informational constraint-based causation grounded in a dual-aspect ontology of semantic content, wherein spiritual causation operates not as an efficient physical force but as a top-down modulation of the predictive architecture of the mind. The paper confronts reductive physicalism directly, arguing that its inability to account for the causal efficacy of semantic content renders non-reductive alternatives metaphysically viable. I then apply this framework to the case of sorcery (siḥr) within the Islamic theological tradition, treating it as an illustrative case study rather than an independent evidential ground. After clarifying epistemological boundaries, distinguishing between the possibility and the phenomenological mediation of affliction, and offering probabilistic discernment indicators rather than infallible criteria, the paper demonstrates that a non-reductive account of spiritual causation is both metaphysically coherent and empirically consonant with contemporary cognitive science. The broader implication is that cognitive mediation, far from undermining spiritual realism, is the very condition of its manifestability in human life.

This paper interprets Farid ud‑Din Attar’s Conference of the Birds as a comprehensive model of human transformation, integrating Sufi metaphysics, cognitive development, and the psychology of perseverance. Through an analysis of the seven valleys, the Hoopoe’s leadership, and the birds’ resistances, the study argues that Attar constructs an inner map of spiritual maturation that parallels major Abrahamic narratives of call, exile, trial, and return. The valleys represent progressive stages of ego‑dismantling, while the Hoopoe embodies the prophetic, mentoring, and intuitive dimensions of guidance. The birds’ failures illuminate universal psychological defenses against change, whereas the Simurgh’s final revelation reframes identity as relational, porous, and open to the Real. By connecting Attar’s medieval allegory to contemporary frameworks of transformational leadership and cognitive restructuring, the paper demonstrates the enduring relevance of Attar’s vision for understanding human growth, meaning‑making, and the perennial struggle toward wholeness.

Members of small-scale, pre-industrialized societies show a strong tendency to explain serious misfortune in terms of other humans’ occult activities. We refer to this tendency as “the agential view of misfortune”. From an evolutionary perspective, the view is puzzling for several reasons, chief among them being the view’s significant social and economic costs. This article criticizes existing treatments of the agential view of misfortune and offers a novel explanation in the form of a cultural evolutionary “erosion of mutualism” model. This type of model explains how beliefs and practices benefitting a powerful minority can establish at the expense of the wider social group, when and because that minority plays an especially influential role in intergenerational social learning. Applied here, shamans are cast as those who benefit from spreading belief in occult threats that only they can defend against. We develop our model in three stages: the first deals with the establishment of an animistic worldview; the second, with the emergence of shaman from out of this ideological backdrop; and the third, with the emergence of belief in sorcerers or “dark shaman”, as shaman make occult dangers salient to group members and emphasize their own importance as shields. We conclude by summarizing the credentials and commitments of our model.

This paper is about the structure, the function and the development of the individual mind 1 . Usually, the mind was considered within one of the two modes: explanatory-analytical and phenomenalistic-descriptive ones. Within the first, the mind tends to be reduced to concepts like culture, language, or neural networks. Within the second, the mind is viewed as a container consisting of psychological functions (like perception, thinking, memory). The attempt is made to show that the mind is not a container of psychological faculties, but has a structure and a function of its own. The "unit" of this structure is not a psychological faculty (like perception or thinking), but a domain of reality. Another view challenged in the paper is that in order for empirical studies of the mind to be possible, the mind has to be causally explained. The argument is presented that the mind, taken as a phenomenon, not only does not require a causal explanation, but such an explanation is theoretically impossible. One more line of argument is against the view that analytical-explanatory mode and phenomenalistic-descriptive mode in the analysis of the mind are incompatible. The attempt is made to show that they complement each other. Lastly, the popular view on the development of the individual mind as a progressive replacement of the immature mind of an infant by the rational mind of an adult is questioned. In contrast, it is argued that rational and irrational types of realities coexist in the individual mind at all times of development. The Mind of an Individual as a System of Realities

Faith Through the Prism of Psychology introduces readers to the structure and function of the inherent ability of our Self to invest objects with realityexistentialization (EXON). The author moves away from traditional ideas of existence and faith, arguing that it is an inherent ability of an individual mind to invest entities (both objective and subjective) with reality. The book treats faith as a psychological ability of the mind to upgrade the existential statuses of imaginary entities, such as ghosts or gods; the working of faith is operationalized and analyzed in empirical psychological studies. It presents a new model of investing objects with existence, with such structural elements as the belief in object permanence (BOP), magic/ordinary distinguisher (MOD), magic/trick distinguisher (MTD), imaginary/perceived distinguisher (IPD), BOP defense mechanism (BOP/DM) and realities distinguisher (RD).

Building on different types of evidence, and spanning from Archaic to Roman times, the contributors to this volume address the complex relationship of memory and space in a variety of instances and methodological approaches. As a whole, the volume emphasizes how the Greeks deployed a strong sense of place and locality, especially the epichoric element, in communion with the stuff of memory -stories, myths, and narratives -to shape communal identities. This is far more than a matter of inventing traditions and rather takes us to the heart of how the Greeks experienced their worlds. From Pindar to Actium, for the Greeks the world was experienced as a series of mnemotopes.

Theosophists are assumed to understand the laws of Karma and Reincarnation, but many lack a deep understanding of these fundamental teachings. Theosophy, with its focus on Science, Philosophy, and Ethics, provides a framework for understanding these laws and their ethical implications. The seven principles of man are often misunderstood, with a more accurate understanding being three principles (Atma, Buddhi, Manas) and four aspects (Lower Manas, Kama, Prana, and Sthûla).

The Higher Self, or Atma-Buddhi-Manas, is a conscious but not self-conscious being that overshadows a personality. This personality, composed of the lower mind and emotional body, incarnates into a physical body, where self-consciousness begins. Through the four states of consciousness—Jagrat, Swapna, Sushupti, and Turiya—man evolves inwardly, ultimately merging with the All-Presence.

Why do some people believe in God while others do not? Some authors suggest that this variation partly stems from differences in individuals’ tendencies to engage in reflective thinking. Previous experimental research has proposed that activating analytic thinking may undermine religious belief by inhibiting intuitive processes. However, evidence supporting this claim remains elusive, as replication attempts have yielded mixed findings. Objective: This study aimed to examine the effect of analytic priming on religious beliefs, using a tested effective technique to activate cognitive reflection in our target population. We also explored several variables that might moderate the effect of priming on religious belief. Methods: We conducted two studies. In Study 1, we assessed two analytic priming techniques—the Scrambled Sentence Task and the Debiasing Training Task—and found that only the latter effectively increased cognitive reflection as measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test. In a pre-registered well-powered Study 2 (N = 938), we employed the Debiasing Training Task to assess its effect on religious beliefs. Results: We found no evidence that the activation of cognitive reflection influenced participants’ self-reported religiosity relative to controls. Equivalence tests suggest that any potential effect was negligible. Moderation analyses also revealed no significant influence of individual differences in Need for Cognition, perceptions of reflection-religion compatibility, or metacognitive ambiguity of religious beliefs. Conclusion: These findings provide evidence against the hypothesis that analytic priming reduces religiosity. We discuss these findings in the context of the relationship between cognitive style (analytic vs. intuitive) and religious belief.

©American Psychological Association, 2026. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000617

Investigating an ancient doctrine is an inherently complex task, particularly when examining a principle that not only makes its earliest textual spans a vast array of cultures around the world. One such doctrine, deeply intertwined with our daily actions, is the Indian principle of karma. Delving into this doctrine is challenging due to its multifaceted nature, encompassing cultural, historical, religious, textual, and philosophical dimensions. This complexity presents several challenges to understanding and accepting the principle of understanding the doctrine within its textual and historical contexts, such as textual diversity, interpretative variability, and its development over time. The second type of challenge deals with moral issues surrounding the justice of karma, particularly its implications for suffering and destiny. Addressing these challenges is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of karma's role in both historical and contemporary contexts. In this essay, we will consider and respond to some Buddhist understanding of karma remains relevant and meaningful today. First, I will offer an explanation of what I mean by the principle of karma, setting the groundwork for subsequent discussions. Second, I will aspects of understanding the doctrine of karma and respond to them. Third, I will discuss the moral challenges related to the justice of karma, particularly how it pertains to suffering and destiny, and provide responses to these challenges. By examining these aspects, this essay aims to offer a nuanced understanding of karma that respects its complexity and acknowledges its relevance in both ancient and modern contexts.

In this paper, I argue that the intrinsic probability of theism is higher than atheism. I start by utilizing and defending the definition of theism as "the view that a God exists" and atheism as the denial of theism. Next, I summarize several models and approaches towards God from different traditions as well as alternative concepts of ultimate reality. I anticipate an objection to theism from alternative concepts of ultimate reality such as Brahman or the Dao. Two challenges will then be proposed to any alternative concept of ultimate reality which I call the Anselmian Theism Challenge and the Apophatic Theology Challenge. I end by examining the probability of theism and atheism under a system of ignorance to argue in favor of theism.