R. Douglas Geivett

R. Douglas Geivett is an American philosopher of religion and Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, working in the analytic tradition of Christian apologetics. He completed his doctoral work at the University of Southern California under Dallas Willard and writes principally on theistic arguments, the problem of evil, religious epistemology, and the evidential weight of miracles and the resurrection. His monograph Evil and the Evidence for God (1993) advances a cumulative-case approach in which the existence of God is established on independent grounds before the problem of evil is addressed, drawing on John Hick's soul-making theodicy while rejecting Hick's later pluralism. With Gary Habermas he co-edited In Defense of Miracles (1997), a widely cited response to Humean and post-Humean arguments against miracle reports, featuring contributions from William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, and Alvin Plantinga among others. With Brendan Sweetman he edited Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (1992), surveying evidentialism, reformed epistemology, and fideism. Geivett's work occupies the evidentialist wing of analytic philosophy of religion and is in standing dialogue—and disagreement—with reformed epistemologists such as Plantinga and Wolterstorff, as well as with religious pluralists. Critics from naturalist quarters, including Michael Martin and Keith Parsons, have contested his treatment of miracle evidence and his cumulative-case strategy.