Mustafa Malekian says:

“All of us who are Twelver Shia—believe me, it is only because we were born in a Shia city. And this is not an epistemic reason. In Sanandaj, if a child is born in this house, he becomes Shia, and if in that house, he becomes Sunni. Just two meters of distance makes one child Shia and the other Sunni.”⁴

The problem of birth luck argues that even if a person’s religious beliefs (for example, Alvin Plantinga’s) are in fact true, and even if the holy book he adheres to is a valid source that contains truthful propositions, still, his religious beliefs cannot be considered knowledge or exclusively salvific truth. Why? Because it is simply Plantinga’s good fortune that he was born in Michigan into a Christian family, and not in Qom into a Shia family.

Thus, the following counterfactual conditional seems to be true:

(A) “If Plantinga had been born in Qom, he would now be a Twelver Shia.”

Perhaps had he been born in Qom, he would today be a skilled Shia theologian, teaching alongside his compatriot Mohammad Legenhausen at the Imam Khomeini Institute in Qom, guiding the faithful!

Loosely following the common terminology, this essay has used the phrase “birth luck” and also began conditional (A) with “If Plantinga had been born in Qom…” However, at least according to Saul Kripke, this formulation is metaphysically incorrect. Kripke argues that the material components constituting individual entities, such as Plantinga, are essential to their identity and inseparable in any possible world.

In Plantinga’s case, his identity is tied to the specific sperm and egg from which he was conceived. Therefore, there is no possible world in which Plantinga is born from different parents, say, from a Shia couple in Qom. If the parents are different, then the resulting person is simply not Plantinga—it is someone else entirely. Even more, one cannot even say: “Suppose Plantinga was conceived by different sperm and egg but from the same parents.” In that case, the resulting person would be Plantinga’s sibling, not Plantinga himself.⁵.

So, to say, “If Plantinga had been born in Qom…” is logically equivalent to saying: “If Plantinga were not Plantinga…”—which is a contradiction.

That said, this is not a serious obstacle. It merely reminds us that instead of the problematic term “birth luck,” we should use the more accurate term “developmental luck” and say:

(B) “If Plantinga had developed and been raised in Qom, he would now be a Twelver Shia.”

Now, following the usual style of analytical philosophers (including Plantinga himself), consider the following thought experiment or scenario, where it would have been easy for Plantinga to grow up not in a Christian household in Michigan but in a Shia household in Qom. In other words, we can imagine a “nearby possible world” in which Plantinga grows up in a Shia family in Qom.

Scenario (C):

In 1935, a three-year-old child named Alvin is placed in an orphanage in the state of Michigan. He shares a room with another child. A few months later, two families, one an Iranian Shia couple, the other an American Christian couple, apply to adopt a child from the orphanage. As it happens, both want to adopt Alvin.

To resolve the dispute, they flip a coin, following the old rule: al-qur‘ah li-kulli amrin mushkil (the lot settles all difficult matters). The coin lands in favor of the Christian couple, and so Alvin, whether by good luck or bad luck, is adopted by the Christian family.

In this scenario, Plantinga’s upbringing in an American Christian household is entirely a matter of chance. One flip of a coin determined the outcome. Had it landed the other way, Plantinga would have been raised by the Iranian family, moved to Qom after the legal formalities, grown up in a Shia environment, and likely become a devout Twelver Shia.

The merit of this scenario lies in two points:

1. It emphasizes development rather than birth, thus avoiding the metaphysical objections raised by Kripke.

2. It constructs a nearby possible world in which Plantinga is raised in Qom—one that easily could have happened.

Therefore, at first glance, it seems that due to “developmental luck,” Plantinga’s Christian beliefs are neither an instance of knowledge nor of exclusive salvific truth.

In what follows, the author first outlines the distinction between motivated religiosity (dīn-dārī-ye mu‘allal) and reasoned religiosity (dīn-dārī-ye mudallal), and then, by distinguishing between knowledge and exclusive salvific truth, examines the responses given by Plantinga and his like-minded peers to the “developmental luck” argument, offering critical reflections on their positions.

Distinction Between “Motivated Religiosity” and “Reasoned Religiosity”

It is important to note that motivated religiosity does not necessarily equate to imitative religiosity or devotional religiosity. By motivated religiosity (dīn-dārī-ye mu‘allal), we refer to a form of religious adherence grounded in non-epistemic factors and devoid of reasoned justification, such as fear, the pursuit of comfort, wishful thinking, conformity to the group, and so on. For example, a person might identify as Muslim simply because belief in God provides them with mental tranquility, or because they psychologically fear opposing the dominant social trend, or because assuming a Muslim identity grants them greater social status, or because this belief was instilled in them through indoctrination, and similar reasons.

In this sense, devotional religiosity (ta‘abbudī) should not automatically be labeled as motivated religiosity. As detailed in the literature on testimonial epistemology, devotional religiosity can, under specific conditions, be considered a rational and epistemically valid stance. Contemporary epistemologists like Linda Zagzebski argue that even belief in fundamental doctrines, like belief in God, can be justified if it rests on trustworthy testimony and reliable authority.

In contrast, reasoned religiosity (dīn-dārī-ye mudallal) refers to a form of religious adherence where a person either directly bases their religious beliefs on evidence and reasons—through reflection and analysis—or, at the very least, follows valid epistemic criteria for trusting testimony. This includes grounding one’s beliefs in the testimony of religious sources such as sacred texts, theologians, and scholars of religion. Philosopher Tomas Bogardus refers to this distinction as one between reflective and unreflective religiosity.

The central question now becomes: Can the “developmental luck” argument show that a believer’s religious beliefs do not qualify as knowledge? As mentioned earlier, we must distinguish between motivated and reasoned religiosity in order to evaluate this question properly. Below, we assess both scenarios.

A) Motivated Religiosity and the Challenge to Knowledge

Some of John Hick’s remarks suggest that the “luck of development” argument targets motivated religiosity, in which religious beliefs are instilled in us by the surrounding culture. For example, when Alvin Plantinga argues that Hick himself, had he been born in a different time and place, would not believe in religious pluralism (thus accusing Hick of a self-defeating stance), Hick replies that “unlike how people are raised as Christians or Muslims from childhood, one is not raised a religious pluralist”. In essence, Hick’s response is: Religious beliefs are typically motivated, whereas his belief in pluralism is reasoned, and thus the comparison is invalid. Similarly, the statements by Mill and Kitcher imply that their target is motivated religiosity, since they mention the same causes, same methods, and same foundations that make one person a Muslim and another a Christian.

Let us suppose that, in Scenario C, Plantinga’s religiosity is of the motivated kind. If he had been adopted by the Shia family, he would have become a Shia due to non-epistemic factors. Since he was adopted by a Christian family, he is now Christian, again for non-epistemic reasons. To sharpen the argument, consider an extreme form of motivated religiosity, in which the person completely disregards epistemic responsibility and the factors that shaped their belief are neither truth-conducive nor aimed at truth. In this context, the “luck of development” argument states that even if, in the actual world, Plantinga’s belief happened to be true, there exists a nearby possible world in which the very same methods would have easily led to false beliefs. Hence, even his current true beliefs are accidentally true, a matter of luck, and therefore cannot count as knowledge.

Hick’s belief in religious pluralism, by contrast, is a product of rational reflection, which is unlikely to lead to false beliefs as easily as non-epistemic methods. While this defense strengthens Hick’s position against Plantinga’s counterexamples, it comes at the cost of limiting the destructive power of the “developmental luck” argument to only unreflective religiosity.

A more important point here seems to be this: If the religiosity in question is of the motivated kind, then the “developmental luck” argument — despite its initial intuitive appeal — does not play a decisive role in explaining why Plantinga fails to attain knowledge. In such a case, his beliefs are not epistemically justified, whether from an internalist or an externalist perspective. And thus, they do not qualify as knowledge, regardless of the developmental luck argument.

Suppose Christianity became a universal religion and all believers around the world were Christian, or imagine a miraculous process by which all humans turned Christian. In such a scenario, would it still be true that (B) “If Plantinga had grown up in Qom, he would now be a Twelver Shia”? The answer is no, because in that imagined world, even if he had grown up in Qom, he would still have become Christian. But we would still intuitively feel that his beliefs do not count as knowledge—because they lack epistemic justification.

So, in motivated religiosity, the belief does not constitute knowledge—not because of the luck of development, but because the belief is unjustified. Therefore, the developmental luck argument has no real bearing on whether motivated religiosity can amount to knowledge. The issue of epistemic luck, as famously raised by Gettier, pertains to cases where a person’s belief is both true and justified but still fails to be knowledge due to luck. If the belief is not justified at all, then it doesn’t even enter into the category of epistemic luck in the first place.

B) Reasoned Religiosity and the Challenge of Attaining “Knowledge”

Now suppose that Plantinga’s religiosity is reasoned. Can we then say that the “developmental luck” argument shows that his beliefs do not amount to knowledge? To advance this discussion, let us assume that Plantinga is a normal epistemic subject, a person adorned with intellectual virtues such as a commitment to reasoning, sensitivity to evidence, openness of mind, and lack of blind prejudice. As such, he forms his beliefs reflectively and based on evidence. And yet, the following counterfactual remains true:

(B) “If Plantinga had developed in Qom, he would now be a Shi’a.”

One might assume there is a contradiction here: if (1) Christianity is true, and all of Plantinga’s religious beliefs are true, and (2) Plantinga is a normal epistemic agent, then how can counterfactual (B) be true? The answer is that being an ideal epistemic agent, while placing one on the path to truth, does not guarantee reaching the truth in all times, places, and conditions. Otherwise, every intellectually virtuous and reasoning person would have arrived at the truth—which is clearly not the case. Intellectual disagreement among even the most rational thinkers across all fields disproves such a claim. For instance, both Hick and Plantinga employ rational reflection, yet one affirms religious pluralism and the other rejects it. Thus, even among thoughtful and reasoning believers, counterfactual (B) can still be true.

Now the question is: Does the truth of (B) indicate that Plantinga’s beliefs are not instances of knowledge? Plantinga’s answer is no. In his view, the truth of (B) poses no threat to the possibility that reflective believers may attain knowledge. That’s because claiming that “developmental luck” is incompatible with knowledge is, self-defeating, contrary to intuition and leads to epistemic skepticism.

For example:

• If Hick had been born in the Middle Ages, he would not have believed in heliocentrism.

• If Einstein had been born in the 18th century, he would not have believed in relativity.

• If I had been born among the Nazis, I would not have believed in the moral evil of racial discrimination.

Similarly, if a religious pluralist were born in Madagascar or medieval France, they likely wouldn’t have been a pluralist. But does this imply that they should not be a pluralist? Or that the processes that produced their pluralist beliefs are unreliable? No. It does not matter what religious or philosophical beliefs we accept or reject—there are always times and places where, had we been born there, we would have believed differently. As Plantinga puts it:

“There are places and times such that, if we had been born there, we would not hold the religious and philosophical beliefs we currently hold—or at least not in the same way.”

These counterfactuals merely show that had we been born under different conditions, we might not know what we now know. They do not show that our current beliefs are unjustified. What Plantinga argues here closely resembles the position of Myron A. Penner and Mylan Engel on epistemic luck. In his article “Is Epistemic Luck Incompatible with Knowledge?”, Engel proposes that, to avoid skepticism, we must distinguish between:

• Veritic luck – luck in the truth of the belief

• Evidential luck – luck in having access to evidence

Only the first, he argues, undermines knowledge.

• Veritic luck occurs when, given a person’s epistemic situation, it is purely by luck that their belief turns out to be true. Gettier-style counterexamples are typical cases of veritic luck.

• Evidential luck, on the other hand, occurs when someone is lucky to be in an epistemic position that gives them access to good evidence—but their belief is still justified and not true merely by luck.

To clarify Engel’s position, consider this example from Tomas Bogardus: Suppose you are a close elderly friend of Copernicus in Frombork in 1515. Although Copernicus has gathered sufficient data to support heliocentrism, he fears punishment from the Church and thus delays publicly publishing his theory until long after your death. However, he privately shares his theory with you. Trusting his expert testimony, you come to believe that:

(C) “The sun is at the center of the solar system.”

Your belief in (C) is intuitively a case of knowledge: it is both true and justified, as it is based on credible testimony. In this case, there is no veritic luck, because your belief is based on expert testimony. However, there is evidential luck, you were simply lucky to have been born in the right place and time to have this epistemic access to Copernicus. Had you been born elsewhere or later, you might have trusted other experts and wrongly believed that (C) is false.

In this light, Plantinga’s position becomes clearer:

“Birth luck,” he argues, falls under the category of evidential luck, which is not incompatible with knowledge. He was fortunate to be born into a Christian family, which gave him epistemic access to religious truths that he otherwise may not have encountered. But given that he has access to such evidence, the truth of his beliefs is not a matter of luck. His beliefs are true because, as a reflective and rational subject, he has derived them from reliable and valid evidence.

The Problem of “Birth Luck” as a Challenge to Attaining the “Exclusive Salvific Truth”

There is an implicit and unstated assumption in Plantinga and his followers’ approach to the issue of birth luck. They assume that the argument from birth luck challenges religious exclusivism only indirectly: by first showing that religious beliefs do not amount to knowledge, and then concluding that if such beliefs are not knowledge, they certainly cannot be instances of exclusive salvific truth. Hence, they focus all their efforts on defending that first step, trying to show that birth luck is not incompatible with knowledge.

Bogardus, after citing thinkers like Mill, Hick, and Kitcher, says he interprets the problem of birth luck as an argument against religious knowledge. Likewise, Baker-Hytch sees the goal of the birth luck argument as proving that religious beliefs are not knowledge or even rational beliefs⁶. As mentioned before, both Bogardus and Baker-Hytch attempt to reconstruct Plantinga’s response. Similarly, Dr. Arash Naraghi, who shares a Plantingan approach in philosophy of religion, echoes the same reply when defending investigated exclusivism in response to the birth luck argument.

However, when it comes to the issue of guidance and eternal salvation (i.e., exclusivism vs. pluralism), this reply seems unsatisfactory. From the fact that a belief counts as knowledge epistemologically, it does not follow that the belief qualifies as an instance of exclusive salvific truth. Thus, it could be argued that what Plantinga and his peers have presented in response to the problem of developmental luck is an example of a “true statement that is used to imply a false conclusion.” Plantinga’s argument shows that if we consider developmental luck to undermine knowledge among reflective believers, we are forced to accept three unacceptable consequences: self-refutation, counter-intuitiveness, and skepticism.

But the real question is: If we consider developmental luck incompatible with access to exclusive salvific truth, do we face the same three problems? The answer appears to be no. John Hick, for example, could respond:

“I do not regard your religious dogmas as instances of exclusive salvific truth, nor Einstein’s theory of relativity, nor even religious pluralism (to which I myself subscribe), nor any other propositional truth that so heavily depends on birth luck—especially when the vast majority of human beings, through no fault of their own, are deprived of believing in it merely due to birth circumstances.”

As a religious exclusivist, Plantinga must confront this profound and troubling question: How can an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God allow the vast majority of people to be deprived of access to exclusive salvific truth merely because of the accident of their birth?

And by salvation, we do not merely mean “not going to hell” but also being rightly guided and attaining eternal well-being.

In other words, in the realm of knowledge, one might say that veritic luck undermines knowledge while evidential luck does not. But when it comes to eternal salvation, not only is there no justification for such a distinction, there are strong reasons against making such a distinction. God’s attributes, especially His goodness and justice, demand that eternal salvation should never depend on luck, whether luck in truth or luck in access to evidence.

Even if evidential luck does not count as epistemic luck, it can still be regarded as salvific luck. How could God allow the majority of human beings to fall into eternal misguidance and deprivation of salvation just because of “luck in evidence”? This is a burning question for which Plantinga and his followers offer no convincing response.

It is precisely in facing such a troubling dilemma that Kant elevated universal moral reason (universal revelation) above particular historical revelation, arguing that universality is a necessary condition for something to be a salvific truth. For this reason, special or historical revelation cannot be considered a truth upon which human salvation necessarily depends.

An objection may be raised here: How can it be that exclusivist religious beliefs like:

(E) “Islam is the only path to salvation”

might count as knowledge but not as instances of exclusive salvific truth? The answer is: Based on the birth luck argument, beliefs like (E), which are framed with exclusivist restrictions, are to be regarded as false—and therefore not instances of knowledge. However, if these exclusivist restrictions are removed from religious beliefs—for instance, if someone believes:

(F) “Islam is a divinely revealed religion”

then this belief can be an instance of knowledge (i.e., justified true belief), yet not an instance of exclusive salvific truth.

In a forthcoming article, I am defend this position:

While Plantinga provides a strong response to the epistemological dimension of the birth luck problem, this answer does not succeed when confronted with a certain model of the divine hiddenness argument—particularly one based on religious diversity. A satisfactory response to this challenge, the author argues, requires accepting either religious pluralism or a form of inclusivism that is practically indistinguishable from pluralism.

Conclusion

The issue of birth luck, or more precisely, developmental luck, can be formulated in two distinct ways:

1. Epistemological: Here, the claim is that religious beliefs are subject to Gettier-style challenges, where the truth of the belief arises from luck and thus fails to qualify as knowledge. This version can be answered using Mylan Engel’s distinction between veritic luck (luck in truth) and evidential luck (luck in access to evidence). Plantinga and his followers offer precisely such a reply.

2. Theological: This formulation is an argument against religious exclusivism. It challenges the claim that a small minority has attained exclusive salvific truths, while the majority—through no fault of their own—has been deprived of them. This line of reasoning results in what could be called “salvific luck”, and gives rise to a version of the divine hiddenness argument that cannot be resolved by Engel’s distinction. It remains a serious and persistent challenge to religious exclusivism.