virtually every culture throughout human history. The issue of the
reasonableness or rationality of belief in God or particular beliefs
about God typically arises when a religion is confronted with
religious competitors or the rise of atheism or agnosticism. In the
West, belief in God was assumed in the dominant Jewish, Christian and
Islamic religions. God, in this tradition, is the omnipotent,
omniscient, perfectly good and all-loving Creator of the universe
(such a doctrine is sometimes called 'bare theism'). This article
considers the following epistemological issues: reasonableness of
belief in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God ("God," for short), the
nature of reason, the claim that belief in God is not rational,
defenses that it is rational, and approaches that recommend groundless
belief in God or philosophical fideism.
1. Reason/Rationality
Reason is a fallible human tool for discovering truth or grasping
reality. Although reason aims at the truth, it may fall short. In
addition, rationality is more a matter of how one believes than what
one believes. For example, one might irrationally believe something
that is true: suppose one believed that the center of the earth is
molten metal because one believes that he or she travels there every
night (while it's cool). And one might rationally believe what is
false: it was rational for most people twenty centuries ago to believe
that the earth is flat. And finally, rationality is person and
situation specific: what is rational for one person at a particular
socio-historical time and place might not be rational for another
person at a different time and place; or, for that matter, what is
rational for a person in the same time and place may be irrational for
another person in the same time and place. This has relevance for a
discussion of belief in God because "the rationality of religious
belief" is typically discussed abstractly, independent of any
particular believer and often believed to be settled once and for all
either positively or negatively (say, by Aquinas or Hume
respectively). The proper question should be, "Is belief in God
rational for this person in that time and place?"
Rationality is a normative property possessed by a belief or a
believer (although I've given reasons in the previous paragraph to
suggest that rationality applies more properly to believers than to
beliefs). Just precisely what this normative property is is a matter
of great dispute. Some believe that we have intellectual duties (for
example, to acquire true beliefs and avoid false beliefs, or to
believe only on the basis of evidence or argument). Some deny that we
have intellectual duties because, by and large, beliefs are not
something we freely choose (e.g., look outside at a tree, consider the
tree and try to choose not to believe that there's a tree there; or,
close your eyes and if you believe in God, decide not to believe or
vice versa and now decide to believe in God again). Since we only have
duties when we are free to fulfill or to not fulfill them ("Ought
implies can"), we cannot have intellectual duties if we aren't free to
directly choose our beliefs. So, the normative property espoused by
such thinkers might be intellectual permissibility rather than
intellectual duty.
Since the time of the Enlightenment, reason has assumed a huge role
for (valid or strong) inference: rationality is often a matter of
assembling available (often empirical, typically propositional)
evidence and assessing its deductive or inductive support for other
beliefs; although some beliefs may and must be accepted without
inference, the vast majority of beliefs or, more precisely, the vast
majority of philosophical, scientific, ethical, theological and even
common-sensical beliefs rationally require the support of evidence or
argument. This view of reason is often taken ahistorically:
rationality is simply a matter of timeless and non-person indexed
propositional evidence and its logical bearing on the conclusion. If
it can be shown that an argument is invalid or weak, belief in its
conclusion would be irrational for every person in every time and
place. This violates the viable intuition that rationality is person-
and situation- specific. Although one argument for belief in God might
be invalid, there might be other arguments that support belief in God.
Or, supposing all of the propositional evidence for God's existence is
deficient, a person may have religious experience as the grounds of
her belief in God.
Following Thomas Reid, we shall argue that 'rationality' in many of
the aforementioned important cases need not, indeed cannot, require
(valid or strong) inference. Our rational cognitive faculties include
a wide variety of belief-producing mechanisms, few of which could or
should pass the test of inference. We will let this view, and its
significance for belief in God, emerge as the discussion proceeds.
2. The Evidentialist Objection to Belief in God
Belief in God is considered irrational for two primary reasons: lack
of evidence and evidence to the contrary (usually the problem of evil,
which won't be discussed in this essay). Note that both of these
positions reject the rationality of belief in God on the basis of an
inference. Bertrand Russell was once asked, if he were to come before
God, what he would say to God. Russell replied, "Not enough evidence
God, not enough evidence." Following Alvin Plantinga, we will call the
claim that belief in God lacks evidence and is thus irrational–the
evidentialist objection to belief in God.
The roots of evidentialism may be found in the Enlightenment demand
that all beliefs be subjected to the searching criticism of reason; if
a belief cannot survive the scrutiny of reason, it is irrational.
Kant's charge is clear: "Dare to use your own reason." Given
increasing awareness of religious options, Hobbes would ask: "If one
prophet deceive another, what certainty is there of knowing the will
of God, by any other way than that of reason?" Although the
Enlightenment elevation of Reason would come to be associated with a
corresponding rejection of rational religious belief, many of the
great Enlightenment thinkers were themselves theists (including, for
example, Kant and Hobbes).
The evidentialist objection may be formalized as follows:
(1) Belief in God is rational only if there is sufficient evidence
for the existence of God.
(2) There is not sufficient evidence for the existence of God.
(3) Therefore, belief in God is irrational.
The evidentialist objection is not offered as a disproof of the
existence of God—that is, the conclusion is not "God does not exist."
Rather the conclusion is, even if God were to exist, it would not be
reasonable to believe in God. According to the evidentialist
objection, rational belief in God hinges on the success of theistic
arguments. Prominent evidentialist objectors include David Hume, W. K.
Clifford, J. L. Mackie, Bertrand Russell and Michael Scriven. This
view is probably held by a large majority of contemporary Western
philosophers. Ironically, in most areas of philosophy and life, most
philosophers are not (indeed could not be) evidentialists. We shall
treat this claim shortly.
The claim that there is not sufficient evidence for belief in God is
usually based on a negative assessment of the success of theistic
proofs or arguments. Following Hume and Kant, the standard arguments
for the existence of God—cosmological, teleological and
ontological—are judged to be defective in one respect or another.
The claim that rational belief in God requires the support of evidence
or argument is usually rooted in a view of the structure of knowledge
that has come to be known as 'classical foundationalism.' Classical
foundationalists take a pyramid or a house as metaphors for their
conceptions of knowledge or rationality. A secure house or pyramid
must have secure foundations sufficient to carry the weight of each
floor of the house and the roof. A solid, enduring house has a secure
foundation with each of the subsequent floors properly attached to
that foundation. Ultimately, the foundation carries the weight of the
house. In a classical foundationalist conception of knowledge, the
foundational beliefs must likewise be secure, enduring and adequate to
bear "the weight" of all of the non-foundational or higher-level
beliefs. These foundational beliefs are characterized in such a manner
to ensure that knowledge is built on a foundation of certitudes
(following Descartes). The candidates for these foundational
certitudes vary from thinker to thinker but, broadly speaking, reduce
to three: if a belief is self-evident, evident to the senses, or
incorrigible, it is a proper candidate for inclusion among the
foundations of rational belief.
What sorts of beliefs are self-evident, evident to the senses, or
incorrigible? A self-evident belief is one that, upon understanding
it, you see it to be true. While this definition is probably not
self-evident, let's proceed to understand it by way of example. Read
the following fairly quickly:
(4) When equals are added to equals you get equals.
Do you think (4) is true? False? Not sure? Let me explain it. When
equals (2 and 1+1) are added to equals (2 and 1+1) you get equals (4).
Or, to make this clear 2 + 2 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. Now that you understand
(4), you see it to be true. I didn't argue for (4), I simply helped
you to understand it, and upon understanding it, you saw it to be
true. That is, (4) is self-evident. Typical self-evident beliefs
include the laws of logic and arithmetic and some metaphysical
principles like "An object can't be red all over and blue all over at
the same time." A proposition is evident to the senses in case it is
properly acquired by the use of one's five senses. These sorts of
propositions include "The grass is green," "The sky is blue," "Honey
tastes sweet," and "I hear a mourning dove." Some epistemologists
exclude propositions that are evident to the senses from the
foundations of knowledge because of their lack of certainty [the sky
may be colorless as a piece of glass but simply refracts blue light
waves; we may be sampling artificial (and not real) honey; or someone
may be blowing a bird whistle; etc.]. In order to ensure certainty,
some have shifted to incorrigibility as the criterion of foundational
beliefs. Incorrigible beliefs are first-person psychological states
(seeming or appearance beliefs) about which I cannot be wrong. For
example, I might be mistaken about the color of the grass or sky but I
cannot be mistaken about the following: "The grass seems green to me"
or "The sky appears to me to be blue." I might be mistaken about the
color of grass, and so such a belief is not certain for me, but I
can't be wrong about what the color of grass seems to be to me.
Now let us return to belief in God. Why do evidentialists hold (1),
the claim that rational belief in God requires the support of evidence
or argument? This is typically because they subscribe to classical
foundationalism. A belief can be held without argument or evidence
only if it is self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible.
Belief in God is not self-evident—it is not such that upon
understanding the notion of God, you see that God exists. For example,
Bertrand Russell understands the proposition "God exists" but does not
see it to be true. So, belief in God is not a good candidate for
self-evidence. Belief in God is not evident to the senses because God,
by definition, transcends the sensory world. God cannot be seen,
heard, touched, tasted or smelled. When people make claims such as
"God spoke to me" or "I touched God," they are using "spoke" and
"touched" in a metaphorical sense, not a literal sense; literally, God
is beyond the senses. So God's existence is not evident to the senses.
And finally, a person might be wrong about God's existence and so
belief in God cannot be incorrigible. Of course, "it seems to me that
God exists" could be incorrigible but God's seeming existence is a
long way from God's existence!
So, belief in God is neither self-evident, evident to the senses, nor
incorrigible. Therefore, belief in God, according to classical
foundationalism, cannot properly be included among the foundations of
one's rational beliefs. And, if it is not part of the foundations, it
must be adequately supported by the foundational beliefs—that is,
belief in God must be held on the basis of other beliefs and so must
be argued to, not from. According to classical foundationalism, belief
in God is not rational unless it is supported by evidence or argument.
Classical foundationalism, as assumed in the Enlightenment, elevated
theistic arguments to a status never held before in the history of
Western thought. Although previous thinkers would develop theistic
arguments, they seldom assumed that they were necessary for rational
belief in God. After the period of the Enlightenment, thinkers in the
grips of classical foundationalism would now hold belief in God up to
the demand of rigorous proof.
3. The Reasonableness of Belief in God
There are two main strategies theists employ when responding to the
evidentialist objection to belief in God. The first strategy is to
argue against the second premise, the claim that there is insufficient
evidence for the existence of God. The second strategy is to argue
against the first premise, the claim that belief in God is rational
only if it is supported by sufficient evidence.
a. Theistic Evidentialism
Consider first the claim that there is not sufficient evidence for the
existence of God. This view has been historically rejected by
Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, John
Locke, William Paley and C. S. Peirce, to name but a few. But suppose
we all agreed that the arguments offered by Aristotle and others for
the existence of God were badly flawed. ("We know better now.") Does
that imply that earlier theists were irrational? Does the evidence
have to support, in some timeless way—irrespective of any particular
person—belief in God? Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, et al., were
brilliant people doing the best they could with the most sophisticated
belief-set available to them and judged, on the basis of their best
lights, that the evidence supported belief in God. Are they
nonetheless irrational? For example, suppose that, ignorant of the
principle of inertia, Aquinas believed that God must be actively
involved in the continual motion of the planets. That is, suppose
that, using the best physics of his day, Aquinas believed in the
scientific necessity of belief in God. According to his best lights,
Aquinas thought that the evidence clearly supported belief in God.
Would Aquinas be irrational? Evidentialist objectors might concede
that Aquinas was not irrational, in spite of his bad arguments and,
therefore, might not view rationality as being timeless. But, they
would argue, it is no longer reasonable for anyone to believe in God
because now we all see or should see that the evidence is clearly
insufficient to support the conclusion that God exists. (This 'we'
tends toward the princely philosophical.)
Some theists reject this conclusion, judging that there is adequate
evidence to support God's existence. Rejecting the idea that theistic
arguments died along with Kant and Hume, these thinkers offer new
evidence or refashion the old evidence for the existence of God.
William Lane Craig (Craig and Smith 1993), for example, has developed
a new version of the old Islamic Kalaam cosmological argument for the
existence of God. This argument attempts to demonstrate the
impossibility that time could have proceeded infinitely into the past
so the universe must have had a beginning in time. In addition, both
physicists and philosophers have argued that the apparent fine-tuning
of the cosmological constants to permit human life is best explained
by God's intelligent superintendence. And some argue that irreducibly
complex biological phenomena such as cells or kidneys could not have
arisen by chance. Robert Merrihew Adams (1987) has revived moral
arguments for the existence of God. Alvin Plantinga (1993b) has argued
that naturalism and evolution are self-refuting. William Alston (1991)
has defended religious experience as a source of justified belief in
the existence of God. In addition, theistic arguments have been
developed that are based on the existence of flavors, colors and
beauty. And some thinkers, such as Richard Swinburne (1979, 1984),
contend that the cumulative forces of these various kinds of evidence
mutually reinforce the likelihood of God's existence. Thus, there is
an ample lot defending the claim that belief in God is rational based
on the evidence (and an equal and opposite force opposing them). So
the project of securing belief in God on the basis of evidence or
argument is ongoing.
Many theists, then, concur with the evidentialist demand for evidence
and seek to meet that demand by offering arguments that support the
existence of God. Of course, these arguments have been widely
criticized by atheistic evidentialists. But for better or for worse,
many theistic philosophers have hitched the rationality of belief in
God to the wagon of evidence.
Now suppose, as is the case, that the majority of philosophers
believes that these attempts to prove God's existence are feeble
failures. Would that perforce make religious believers irrational? If
one, by the best of one's lights, judges that God exists given the
carefully considered evidence, is one nonetheless irrational if the
majority of the philosophical community happen to disagree? These
questions suggest that judgments of rationality and irrationality are
difficult to make. And, it suggests that rationality and irrationality
may be more complicated than classical foundationalism assumes.
b. Sociological Digression
Very few philosophical positions (and this is an understatement) enjoy
the kind of evidential support that classical foundationalism demands
of belief in God; yet most of these are treated as rational. No
philosophical position—belief in other minds, belief in the external
world, the correspondence theory of truth or Quine's indeterminacy of
translation thesis—is properly based on beliefs that are self-evident,
evident to the senses, or incorrigible. Indeed, we may question
whether there is a single philosophical position that has been so
amply justified (or could be). Why is belief in God held to a higher
evidential standard than other philosophical beliefs? Some suggest
that this demand is simply arbitrary at best or intellectually
imperialist at worst.
c. Moral Analogy
Consider your moral beliefs. None of these beliefs will be
self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible. Now suppose you
hold a moral belief that is not the philosophical fashion these days.
Would you be irrational if the majority of contemporary philosophers
disagreed with you? Perhaps you'd be irrational if moral beliefs
contrary to yours could be established on the basis of widely known
arguments from premises that are self-evident, evident to the senses,
or incorrigible. But there may be no such arguments in the history of
moral theory. Moral beliefs are not well-justified on the basis of
argument or evidence in the classical foundationalist sense (or
probably in any sense of "well-justified"). So, the fact that the
majority of contemporary philosophers reject your moral beliefs (or
belief in God for that matter) may have little or no bearing on the
rationality of your beliefs. The sociological digression and moral
analogy suggest that the philosophical emphasis on argument,
certainty, and consensus for rationality might be misguided.
d. Reformed Epistemology
Let us now turn to those who reject the first premise of the
evidentialist objection to belief in God, the claim that rational
belief in God requires the support of evidence or argument. Recent
thinkers such as Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff and William
Alston, in their so called Reformed Epistemology, have argued that
belief in God does not require the support of evidence or argument in
order for it to be rational (cf. Plantinga and Wolterstorff 1983). In
so doing, they reject the evidentialist objector's assumptions about
rationality.
Reformed epistemologists argue that the first problem with the
evidentialist objection is that the universal demand for evidence
simply cannot be met in a large number of cases with the cognitive
equipment that we have. No one has ever been able to offer proofs for
the existence of other persons, inductive beliefs (e.g., that the sun
will rise in the future), or the reality of the past (perhaps, as
Bertrand Russell cloyingly puzzled, we were created five minutes ago
with our memories intact) that satisfy classical foundationalist
requirements for proof. So, according to classical foundationalism,
belief in the past and inductive beliefs about the future are
irrational. This list could be extended indefinitely.
There is also a limit to the things that human beings can prove. If we
were required to prove everything, there would be an infinite regress
of provings. There must be some truths that we can just accept and
reason from. Thus, we can't help but trust our cognitive faculties.
Moreover, it seems that we will reach the limit of proof very quickly
if, as classical foundationalism insists, the basis for inference
includes only beliefs that are self-evident, evident to the senses, or
incorrigible. For these reasons, reformed epistemologists doubt that
classical foundationalists are correct in claiming that the proper
starting point of reason is self-evidence, evidence to the senses, and
incorrigibility.
A second criticism of classical foundationalism, first offered by
Plantinga, is that it is self-referentially inconsistent. That is,
classical foundationalism must be rejected by its own account. Recall
classical foundationalism (CF):
A proposition p is rational if and only if p is self-evident,
evident to the senses or incorrigible or if p can be inferred from a
set of propositions that are self-evident, evident to the senses, or
incorrigible.
Consider CF itself. Is it rational, given its own conditions, to
accept classical foundationalism? Classical foundationalism is not
self-evident: upon understanding it many people believe it false. If
one can understand a proposition and reject it, that proposition
cannot be self-evident. CF is also not a sensory proposition—one
doesn't see, taste, smell, touch or hear it. So, classical
foundationalism is not evident to the senses. And even if one should
accept classical foundationalism, one might be wrong; so classical
foundationalism is not incorrigible. Since classical foundationalism
is neither self-evident, evident to the senses nor incorrigible, it
can only be rationally maintained if it can be inferred from
propositions that (ultimately) are self-evident, evident to the senses
or incorrigible. Is that possible? Consider a representative set of
evidential propositions, E, that are self-evident, evident to the
senses or incorrigible:
Evidence (E):
* When equals are added to equals you get equals.
* 2 + 2 = 4
* Grass is green.
* The sky is blue.
* Grass seems green to me.
* The sky appears to me to be blue.
Limiting yourself to propositions that are self-evident, evident to
the senses or incorrigible, you can expand this list as exhaustively
as you like. We have enough in E to make our case. Given E as
evidence, can CF be inferred? Is E adequate evidence for CF? It's hard
to imagine how it could be. Indeed all of the propositions in E are
irrelevant to the truth of CF. E simply cannot logically support CF.
So, CF is not self-evident, evident to the senses or incorrigible, nor
can CF be inferred from a set of propositions that are self-evident,
evident to the senses or incorrigible. So, CF, by its own account, is
irrational. If CF were true, it would be irrational to accept it.
Better simply to reject it!
Thomas Reid (1710-1796), whom Plantinga and Wolterstorff follow, was
an early critic of classical foundationalism. Reid argued that we have
been outfitted with a host of cognitive faculties that produce beliefs
that we can reason from (the foundations of believings). Plantinga
calls these basic beliefs. The kinds of beliefs that we do and must
reason to is a small subset of the kinds of beliefs that we do and
must reason from. The latter must be accepted without the aid of
proof. In most cases we must rely on our intellectual equipment to
produce beliefs in the appropriate circumstances, without evidence or
argument. For example, we simply find ourselves believing in other
persons. A person is a center of self-conscious thoughts and feelings
and first-person experience. While we can see a human face or a body,
we can't see another's thoughts or feelings. Consider a person, Emily,
whose leg is poked with a needle. We can see Emily recoil and her face
screw up, and we can hear her yelp. So we can see Emily's
pain-behavior, but we cannot see her pain. The experience of pain is
just the sort of inner experience that is typical of persons. For all
we can know from Emily's pain-behavior, she might be a cleverly
constructed automaton (like Data of Star Trek fame or an exact human
replica all the way down to the neurons). Or, for all we know, Emily
might be a person just like us with the characteristic interior life
and experience of persons. The point is, you can't tell, just from
Emily's pain behavior, if she has any inner experience of pain. So you
can't tell by the things to which you have evidential access if Emily
is a person. No one has ever been able to develop a successful
argument to prove that there are other persons. So if classical
foundationalism were true, it would not be reasonable to believe in
the existence of other persons. But surely there are other persons
whose existence it is reasonable to accept. So much the worse for
classical foundationalism, Reidians say. Similar problems arise for
classical foundationalism concerning beliefs in the past, the future,
and the external world. No justification-conferring inference is or
could be involved. Yet, the Reidian claims, we are perfectly within
our epistemic rights in holding these basic beliefs. Thus, we should
conclude that these beliefs are properly basic (that is,
non-inferential but justified beliefs) and should reject classical
foundationalism's claim to the contrary.
Granting that a great many of our important beliefs are
non-inferential, could one reasonably find oneself believing in God
without evidence or argument? 'Evidence' is to be understood here as
most evidentialists understand it, namely as the kind of propositional
evidence one might find in a theistic argument and not the kind of
experiential evidence typically thought to ground religious belief.
Could belief in God be properly basic?
There are at least two reasons to believe that it might be rational
for a person to accept belief in God without the support of an
argument. The first is a parity argument. We must, by our nature,
accept the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, including those
that produce beliefs in the external world, other persons, that the
future will be like the past, the reality of the past, and what other
people tell us—just to name a few. For the sake of parity, we should
trust the deliverances of the faculty that produces in us belief in
the divine (what Plantinga (2000), following John Calvin, calls the
sensus divinitatus, the sense of the divine). Of course, some
philosophers deny that we have a sensus divinitatus and so reject the
parity argument. The second reason is that belief in God is more like
belief in a person than belief in a scientific hypothesis. Human
relations demand trust, commitment, and faith. If belief in God is
more like belief in other persons than belief in atoms, then the trust
that is appropriate to persons will be appropriate to God. William
James offers a similar argument in "The Will to Believe."
Reformed epistemologists hold that one can reasonably believe in
God—immediately and basically—without the support of an argument.
One's properly functioning cognitive faculties can produce belief in
God in the appropriate circumstances with or without argument or
evidence.
e. Religious Experience
Although Plantinga contends that belief in God does not require the
support of propositional evidence or argument (like a theistic proof)
in order to be rational, he does contend that belief in God is not
groundless. According to Plantinga, belief in God is grounded in
characteristic religious experiences such as beholding the divine
majesty on the top of a mountain or the divine creativity when
noticing the articulate beauty of the flower. Other sorts of alleged
religious experiences involve a sense of guilt (and forgiveness),
despair, the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, or direct contact
with the divine (mysticism). The experience of many believers is so
vivid that they describe it with sensory metaphors: they claim to see,
hear or be touched by God.
It is important to note that people who believe on the basis of
religious experience do not typically construe their belief in God as
based on an argument (any more than belief in other persons is based
on an argument). They believe they have seen or heard God directly and
find themselves overwhelmed by belief in God. Religious experience is
typically taken as self-authenticating. In good Reidian fashion, one
might simply take it that one has a cognitive faculty that can be
trusted when it produces belief in God when induced by the appropriate
experiences; that is, one is permitted to trust one's initial alleged
religious experience as veridical, just as one must trust that others
of one's cognitive faculties are veridical. (It should be noted that
Reid himself does not make this claim. He believes that God's
existence can and should be supported by argument.) Richard Swinburne
alleges that it is also reasonable to trust what others tell us unless
and until we have good reason to believe otherwise. So, it would be
reasonable for someone who did not have a religious experience to
trust the veridicality of someone who did claim to have a religious
experience. That is, it would be reasonable for everyone, not just the
subject of the alleged religious experience, to believe in God on the
basis of that alleged religious experience.
Some philosophers reject religious experience as a proper ground for
religious belief. While not denying that some people have had
powerful, so-called mystical experiences, they deny that one can
reliably infer from that experience that the source or cause of that
experience was God. Even the most enthusiastic mystics contend that
some mystical experiences are illusory. So, how does one sort out the
veridical from the illusory without begging the question? And if other
evidence must be brought in to assess the validity of religious
experience, is not then religious belief based more on that evidence
than on the immediate experience? William Alston (1991) responds to
these sorts of challenges by noting that perceptual experience, which
is seldom questioned, is afflicted with precisely the same problems.
Yet we do not take perceptual beliefs to be suspect. Alston argues
that if religious experiences and the beliefs they produce relevantly
resemble perceptual experiences and the beliefs they produce, then we
should not hold beliefs based upon religious experience to be suspect
either.
f. Internalism/Externalism
Some of the most important issues concerning the rationality of
religious belief are framed in terms of the distinction between
internalism and externalism in epistemology. Philosophers who are
internalists with respect to rationality argue that we can tell, from
the inside so to speak, if our beliefs are rationally justified. The
language used by the classical foundationalist to describe basic
beliefs is thoroughly internalist. 'Self-evident' and 'evident to the
senses' are suggestive of beliefs that have a certain inner,
compelling and unquestionable luminosity; one can simply inspect one's
beliefs and "see" if they are evident in the appropriate respects. And
since deductive inference transfers rational justification from lower
levels to higher levels, by carefully checking the inferential
relations among one's beliefs, one can see this luminosity passing
from basic to non-basic beliefs. So internalists believe that
rationality is something that can be discerned by the mental
inspection of one's own beliefs, items to which one has direct
cognitive access.
Plantinga, on the other hand, argues that modern foundationalism has
misunderstood the nature of rational justification. Plantinga calls
the special property that turns true belief into knowledge "warrant."
According to Plantinga, a belief has warrant for one if and only if
that belief is produced by one's properly functioning cognitive
faculties in circumstances to which those faculties are designed to
apply; in addition, those faculties must be designed for the purpose
of producing true beliefs. So, for instance, my belief that 'there is
a computer screen in front of me' is warranted only if it is produced
by my properly functioning perceptual faculties (and not by weariness
or dreaming), if no one is tricking me, say, by having removed my
computer and replaced it with an exact painting of my computer
(thereby messing up my cognitive environment), and if my perceptual
faculties have been designed (by God) for the purpose of producing
true beliefs. Only if all of these conditions are satisfied is my
belief that there is a computer screen in front of me warranted.
Note the portions of Plantinga's definition which are not within one's
internal or direct purview: whether or not one's faculties are
functioning properly, whether or not one's faculties are designed by
God, whether or not one's faculties are designed for the production of
true beliefs, whether or not one is using one's faculties in the
environment intended for their use (one might be seeing a mirage and
taking it for real). According to Plantinga's externalism we cannot
acquire warrant simply by attending to our beliefs. Warranted belief
(knowledge) depends on circumstances external to the believing agent
and so is not entirely up to us. Warrant depends crucially upon
whether or not conditions that are not under our direct rational
purview or conscious control are satisfied. If externalism is correct,
then classical foundationalism has completely misunderstood the nature
of epistemic warrant.
g. The Rational Stance
Because of the possibility of error, those who accept belief in God as
a basic belief should nonetheless be concerned with evidence for and
against belief in God. Following Reid, Reformed epistemologists
contend that belief begins with trust (not suspicion, as the
evidentialist apparently claims). Beliefs are, in their terms,
innocent until proven guilty rather than guilty until proven innocent.
In order to grasp reality, we must use and trust our cognitive
faculties or capacities. But we also know that we get things wrong.
The deliverances of our cognitive faculties are not infallible. Reid,
Plantinga and Wolterstorff are keenly aware of human fallibility and
recognize the need for a deliberative (reasoning) faculty that helps
us adjudicate apparent conflicts among beliefs delivered innocently by
our cognitive faculties. Reid's general approach to rational belief is
this: trust the beliefs produced by your cognitive faculties in the
appropriate circumstances, unless you have good reason to reject them.
Let's press the problem of error. As shown by widespread disagreement,
our cognitive faculties seem less reliable in matters of fundamental
human concern such as the nature of morality, the nature of persons,
social and political thought, and belief in God. Given that
rationality is truth-aimed, Reformed epistemologists should be willing
to do two things to make the attainment of that goal more likely.
First, they ought to seek, as best they can, supporting evidence for
immediately produced beliefs of fundamental human concern. Because
evidence is truth-conducive, it can lend credence to a basic belief.
It doesn't follow that basic beliefs about morality, God, etc. are
irrational until such evidence is adduced; but perhaps one's epistemic
status on these matters can be improved by obtaining confirming
evidence. This would make Reformed epistemology a paradigmatic example
of the Augustinian view of faith and reason: fides quaerens
intellectum (faith seeking understanding). Second, they ought to be
open to contrary evidence to root out false beliefs. Given the
likelihood that they could be wrong about these matters, they ought
not close themselves off to the possibility of epistemic correction.
If Reformed epistemologists are sincere truth-seekers, they should
take the following stance:
The Rational Stance: Trust the deliverances of reason, seek
supporting evidence, and be open to contrary evidence.
According to Reformed epistemology, evidence may not be required for
belief in God to be rational. But, given the problem of error, it
should nonetheless continue to play an important role in the life of
the believer. Fides quaerens intellectum.
h. Objections to Reformed Epistemology
Reformed epistemology has been rejected for three primary reasons.
First, some philosophers deny that we have a sensus divinitatus and so
reject the parity argument. Second, some philosophers argue that
Reformed epistemology is too latitudinarian, permitting the rational
acceptability of virtually any belief. Gary Gutting calls this 'the
Great Pumpkin Objection' because Charlie Brown could have written a
defense of the sensus pumpkinus that is parallel to Plantinga's
defense of the sensus divinitatus. Finally, Reformed epistemology has
been rejected because it has been perceived to be a form of fideism.
Fideism is the view that belief in God should be held in the absence
of or even in opposition to reason. According to this traditional
definition of fideism, Reformed epistemology does not count as a form
of fideism because it goes to great lengths to show that belief in God
is rational. However, if one defines fideism as the view that belief
in God may be rightly held in the absence of evidence or argument,
then Reformed epistemology will be a kind of fideism.
4. Groundless Believing
With their emphasis on reason, very few philosophers aspire to
fideism. Nonetheless, some major thinkers have denied that reason
plays any significant role in the life of the religious believer.
Tertullian's rhetorical question, "What has Jerusalem to do with
Athens?", is meant to elicit the view that faith (the Jerusalem of
Jesus) has little or nothing to do with reason (the Athens of
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle). Tertullian would go on to say, "I
believe because it's absurd." Pascal (1623-1662), Kierkegaard
(1813-1855) and followers of Wittgenstein (late 20th C.) have all been
accused of fideism (which is the philosophical equivalent of calling a
US citizen a "commie" in the 1950s). Let us consider their positions.
Pascal's wager brings costs and benefits into the analysis of the
rationality of religious belief. Given the possibility that God exists
and that the unbeliever will be punished with eternal damnation and
the believer rewarded with eternal bliss, Pascal argues that it is
rational to wager that God exists. Using a rational, prudential
decision procedure he asks us to consider placing a bet on God's
existence. If one bets on God, then either God exists and one enjoys
an eternity of bliss or God does not exist and one loses very little.
On the other hand, if one bets against God and wins, one gains very
little, but if one loses that bet, then the one will suffer in hell
forever. Prudence demands that one should believe in God's existence.
Pascal concludes: "Wager, then, that God exists."
Pascal's wager has been widely criticized, but we shall only consider
here the relevance of the wager to Pascal's view of faith and reason.
The wager is just one of his many tools for shocking people into
caring about their eternal destinies. After arguing that our desires
affect our abilities to discern the truth, he tries to get our desires
appropriately oriented toward the truth. The wager can stimulate the
desire to seek the truth about God and, after one's desires are
changed, the ability to judge the evidences for Christianity properly.
So, in spite of the prominence of the wager and its apparent disregard
for evidence, Pascal appears to be a kind of evidentialist after all
(but not a classical foundationalist).
Søren Kierkegaard's emphasis on the role of inwardness or subjective
appropriation has played a role in his being understood as a fideist.
His reaction against both rationalism and dogmatism led him to view
faith as a certain madness, a "leap" one makes beyond what is
reasonable (a leap into the absurd). Some philosophers argue that
Kierkegaard is simply emphasizing that faith is more than rational
assent to the truth of a proposition, involving more fundamentally the
passionate commitment of the heart.
Finally, followers of the enigmatic Ludwig Wittgenstein have defended
the groundlessness of belief in God, a view that has been called
"Wittgensteinian fideism." Wittgenstein's later works both noticed and
affirmed the tremendous variety of our beliefs that are not held
because of reasons—such beliefs are, according to Wittgenstein,
groundless. Many of Wittgenstein's most prominent students are
religious believers, some of whom took his general insights into the
structure of human belief and applied them to religious belief. Norman
Malcolm, for example, favorably compares belief in God to the belief
that things don't vanish into thin air. Both are part of the untested
and untestable framework of human belief. These frameworks form the
system of beliefs within which testing of other beliefs can take
place. While we can justify beliefs within the framework, we cannot
justify the framework itself. The giving of reasons must come to an
end. And then we believe, groundlessly.
5. Conclusion
Is belief in God rational? The evidentialist objector says "No" due to
the lack of evidence. Theists who say "Yes" fall into two main
categories: those who claim that there is sufficient evidence and
those who claim that evidence is not necessary. Theistic
evidentialists contend that there is enough evidence to ground
rational belief in God, while Reformed epistemologists contend that
evidence is not necessary to ground rational belief in God (but that
belief in God is grounded in various characteristic religious
experiences). Philosophical fideists deny that belief in God belongs
in the realm of the rational. And, of course, all of these theistic
claims are widely and enthusiastically disputed by philosophical
non-theists.
In Western European countries, religious belief has waned since the
time of the Enlightenment. Yet there are counter trends. Today over
90% of Americans profess belief in a higher power. In China, after
decades of institutionally enforced atheism, religious belief is
dramatically on the rise. And even though religious belief has waned
among professional Anglo-American philosophers since the
Enlightenment, many prominent Anglo-American philosophers are theists.
What conclusions can be drawn from these sociological observations?
That Reason will eventually triumph over superstition as all countries
eventually follow Western Europe's lead? That irrational religious
belief is so stubbornly tenacious that Reason is incapable of wiping
it out? That the natural tendency to believe in God is overlaid by
various forms of sin (such as greed in the West or wicked Communism in
the East)? That once the evidence is made clear to a deprived peoples,
rational belief in God will flourish? Of course, these sociological
facts are irrelevant to discussions of rational belief in God. Yet
they are relevant to this: the persistence of religious belief in
various contexts will continue to spur discussions of and developments
in the epistemology of the religious for succeeding generations.
6. References and Further Reading
* Adams, Robert Merrihew. The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
* Adams, Marilyn McCord and Robert Merrihew Adams, eds. The
Problem of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
* Alston, William. Perceiving God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
* Brockelman, Paul T. Cosmology and Creation: The Spiritual
Significance of Contemporary Cosmology. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
* Clark, Kelly James. Return to Reason: A Critique of
Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.
* Craig, William Lane, and Quentin Smith. Theism, Atheism, and Big
Bang Cosmology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
* Davis, Stephen. God, Reason and Theistic Proofs. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1997.
* Gutting, Gary. Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982.
* Helm, Paul. Faith and Understanding. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1997.
* Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. New York:
Routledge, 1779/1991.
* Huxley, T. H. Agnosticism and Christianity, and Other Essays.
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1931/1992.
* Jordan, Jeff, ed. Gambling on God, Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
* Le Poidevin, Robin. Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Religion. New York: Routledge, 1996.
* Murray, Michael, ed. Reason for the Hope Within. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1999.
* Plantinga, Alvin, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds. Faith and
Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1983.
* Plantinga, Alvin.. Warrant: The Current Debate. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
* Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
* Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
* Russell, Bertrand. Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on
Religion and Related Subjects. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957.
Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. New York: Clarendon Press,
1979.
* Swinburne, Richard. Faith and Reason. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984.
* Wainwright, William. Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a
Critique of Passional Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1995.Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Reason within the Bounds of Religion.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.
* Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Thomas Reid and the Story of
Epistemology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
* Zagzebski, Linda, ed. Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to
Reformed Epistemology. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1993.
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