Dr Max Baker-Hytch

Max Baker-Hitch headshot
Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy

Email: max.baker-hytch@wycliffe.ox.ac.uk

BA, MA (University of Exeter), DPhil (Oxford)

 

Max joined Wycliffe Hall in 2016 having completed a D.Phil. in Philosophy at Oxford University in 2014 with a dissertation which examined the philosophical implications of recent accounts of the causal origins of religious belief. He subsequently went on to hold a postdoctoral research fellowship at Oxford as part of the Templeton-funded 'New Insights and Directions in Religious Epistemology' project. He then held a research fellowship at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Philosophy of Religion, before returning to Oxford. 

 

Max's research interests lie at the intersection of analytic philosophy of religion and epistemology, and he has published on such topics as divine hiddenness, religious diversity, etiological challenges to moral and religious beliefs, the nature of rationality and knowledge, and methodological issues concerning the emerging field of analytic theology.

Publications

  1. God and the Problem of Evidential Ambiguity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

  2. “Glimpses into the Great Beyond: On the Evidential Value of Near-Death Experiences.” Agatheos: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, forthcoming.

  3. “The Many Faces of Natural Theology: Distinct Roles, Diverse Projects, and the Pursuit of Clarity.” Scottish Journal of Theology, forthcoming.

  4. "On Sin-Based Responses to Divine Hiddenness." Religious Studies, forthcoming.

  5. "Natural Theology and Religious Belief." In The Cambridge Companion to Religious Epistemology. Edited by John Greco, Jonathan Fuqua, and Tyler Dalton McNabb, 13-28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

  6. "Debunking Arguments in Parallel: The Cases of Religious and Moral Belief." In Evolutionary Debunking Arguments: Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mathematics, and Epistemology. Edited by Diego Machuca, 105-128. London: Routledge, 2023.

  7. "Embodiment in the New Creation." In Death, Immortality, and Eternal Life. Edited by T. Ryan Byerly, 180-191. London: Routledge, 2021.

  8. "Meeting the Evil God Challenge." Co-authored with Ben Page. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101:3 (2020), 489–514.

  9. "Testimony amidst Diversity." In Knowledge, Belief, and God: New Insights in Religious Epistemology. Edited by Matthew Benton, John Hawthorne, and Dani Rabinowitz, 183-202. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

  10. "Complexly-Based Beliefs and the Generality Problem for Reliabilism." Quaestiones Disputatae 8:2 (2018), 19–35.

  11. "Mutual Epistemic Dependence and the Demographic Divine Hiddenness Problem." Religious Studies, 52:1 (2016), 375–394.

  12. "Analytic Theology and Analytic Philosophy of Religion: What’s the Difference?" Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016), 347–361.

  13. "Defeatism Defeated" (co-authored with Matthew Benton). Philosophical Perspectives 29:1 (2015), 40–66.

  14. "Religious Diversity and Epistemic Luck." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76 (2014), 171–191.

 

Open access versions of Max’s publications can be found at: https://philpeople.org/profiles/max-baker-hytch