Until recently, epistemology was largely caught in the grips of an epistemically unrealistic radical epistemological individualism on which the beliefs and testimony of others were of virtually no epistemic significance. Thankfully, epistemologists have bucked the individualist trend, acknowledging that one person's belief or testimony that P might offer another person prima facie epistemic reasons -or social evidence as I call it -to believe P. In this paper, I discuss the possibility and conditions under which beliefs and testimony act as social evidence, in particular, beliefs and testimony regarding the existence of God. The epistemic egoist maintains that one must possess positive reasons in favor of other people's reliability or trustworthiness before their beliefs and testimony offer prima facie social evidence. The epistemic universalist, on the other hand, argues that the beliefs of all others are prima facie credible and should be treated accordingly. All this will set up subsequent discussion of the epistemic significance of common consent or widespread belief in God. I show how common consent arguments assume the epistemic universalist's account of the conditions under which the beliefs and testimony of others acquire reason-giving force as social evidence.Philosophers often make the intuitive distinction between epistemic and practical reasons for believing propositions. Epistemic reasons for believing P are reasons that count in favor of (or indicate) the truth of P. They are considerations on the basis of which one believes a proposition insofar as one's goal is truth. 1 Evidence offers epistemic reasons to believe propositions. By 'evidence', I mean (roughly) signs or signals indicating the truth of propositions. 2 That Guilty's fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, for example, signals as evidence that Guilty committed the crime, and is thus an epistemic reason to believe that Guilty did it. Practical reasons for believing P, on the other hand, do not (necessarily) count in favor of P's truth. Rather, they are reasons why it would be good or (practically) beneficial to hold the belief. The possibility of expulsion from one's community or punishment for not believing that God exists -perhaps by God himself -would offer one practical reason to believe that God exists. 3 It's easy to imagine how other people believing P (e.g., that God exists) might give one practical reasons to believe P as well, for instance, if one's goal is simply to 'fit in' with the crowd. But do other people's beliefs, including their testimony, ever offer one reasons insofar as one's goal is truth? It seems so, yet disagreement abounds concerning the conditions under which other people's beliefs and testimony count as epistemic reasons.The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) to discuss two types of social epistemic reasons -what I call 'social evidence' -namely, the beliefs and testimony of others, and (ii) to discuss (consensus gentium) common consent arguments, which presuppose the existence and reason-giving forc...

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