Theism, Evidence, and Rationality: Contra Plantinga

[Air of Winter]

In his article , Alvin Plantinga says, "In arguing that belief in God is properly basic, I meant to rebut the claim made by the evidentialist objector: the claim that the theist who has no evidence for theism is in some way irrational."

I don't think the argument works.

Do Theists Wholly Want for Evidence?

Back in the Pliocene when I first got online, modems routinely dumped transmission errors into the visible data stream, so that all kinds of nonsense characters would appear in the text in bursts -- stuff like @#t&(^p*^n2#?% cropping up in the middle of sentences. One of my online acquaintances believed that such line noise was messages from the spirit world. The evidence for this position was not easy to discern.

I can't prove that line noise isn't messages from the spirit world, of course. But in the absence of a good reason to think that it is, I decline to believe it.

-- Some theists reading the above example are probably irked: they'll think I am mocking them by comparing their deeply held beliefs to a manifest absurdity, and that the comparison is inapt. Well, it is inapt. That's the point.

My old acquaintance's belief is preposterous because there is nothing whatsoever to support it. If theists really did believe in God the same way, their belief would be similarly absurd. But I am not sure that I have ever seen any otherwise-rational theist hold to theism with no evidence whatsoever. I know Christians who, in argument about the existence of God, will hold to a fideist or presuppositionalist position in theory. But in practice, the minute the argument is over and they're talking to other Christians, they'll turn up with a collection of stories as long as giraffe's neck about how God has worked in their lives. Whether I think any of these stories are good evidence is nugatory: what's important is that they do think so.

That's my first problem with Plantinga's argument: I don't know that the situation he's describing ever obtains. I know some theists whose apparent motive for adopting an epistemology that denies their need to defend is that they don't think that they can defend, and can't bear to be defenseless. But that they don't have any evidence at all seems to me to be questionable.

Available and Unavailable Evidence

Plainly, there are beliefs that I think irrational. But I don't call the average theist irrational, even if they can't meet me in argument with evidence likely to persuade me that their position is correct. I draw a distinction between available and unavailable evidence similar, but far from identical, to the familiar distinction between objective and subjective evidence. Available evidence is that which a remote outside observer can practically investigate. Unavailable evidence is that which she can't. Many theists say that they have had experiences of a sort which I can't practically investigate.

If sensory evidence is strong -- and I usually account it so -- then I hold beliefs for which I have strong evidence, but which, nevertheless, I cannot demonstrate. For instance, I have sensory evidence that across the room from me there is a lit torchiere. Since I can't show it to you, your justification for believing that it's there is much weaker: you have my testimony to the fact, which is (I imagine) weakly supported by three things:

1) You have no particular reason to think I'm hallucinating;
2) The sight of a lamp is not data of a sort readily misinterpreted; and
3) There's probably no reason why I should want to deceive you about it.

I consider it entirely possible for a belief to be rational without it being demonstrable, therefore. In this case, it's undemonstrable because, while the sensory evidence would be available to you if you were here, you're not. In other cases my evidence is introspective, and while I might be able to describe it to you, I can never show it to you. My evidence that I once dreamed about the moon breaking apart is memory and nothing more, for instance. If you had some reason for doubting my account, there would be nothing I could do to convince you.

The Sense of the Numinous

There is a collection of propositions I accept as first truths, as axioms, without inferring them from anything else. All of them involve what I'll describe as first principles of reason, or primary perceptions. I can't prove that deduction works, for obvious reasons; I can't prove that induction works; I can't prove that the external universe exists; I can't prove that my senses are generally reliable; I can't prove that good and evil are real; I can't prove that I have libertarian free will. But I cannot, in practice, consistently behave as if I disbelieve any of these things; and if in theory I accept their negations, I'll have said that at least one of my fundamental perceptions is such as to be systematically misleading. And there stands self-defeat.

I admit that there exists something that I will call the sense of the sacred, or the sense of the elusive Other. It is possible that it corresponds to something real -- I don't know. There's a reason I haven't included the sense of the numinous in the list of things I accept as axiomatically valid: it doesn't force itself into my daily existence the way conscience and the sense of free deliberation do. I can deny that it points to anything real without thereby engaging in implicit self-contradiction in the next hour through some moral judgment I make, or through some explanation I entertain for why I did one thing and not another. However, I can understand someone deciding that it does correspond to something real, and considering it prima facie evidence for the existence of some sort of mystical or spiritual reality.

What I don't see is how to go from this sense of the sacred and of the elusive Other to any particular concept of deity, in such a fashion that the theological concept itself also rates the status of a bedrock assumption. The sense of the sacred is ubiquitous; the interpretations that humans have given to it are myriad, and I don't know why I should privilege one over another. Or: deciding that that something spiritual or mystical exists on this basis doesn't impress me as intrinsically unreasonable, but deciding that the particular spiritual thing that exists is the Christian God looks like a leap. With no evidence at all, one choice of deity is as unfounded as the next. That is to say -- as far as I can tell, Plantinga just argued that I can have a properly basic belief in the

People decide what to believe and what to do based on some combination of these principles:

"This is true, so I should follow it."
"This works, so I should follow it."

Everyone uses both to some extent, but with different degrees of emphasis. A lot of people who can't defend the intellectual truth of their positions base their belief on the (frequently undemonstrable) ways in which they find their lives improved by the practice of their religion or philosophy. Since people with all sorts of conflicting religious and philosophical views say "This works," I think that attempts to show that a particular religion is true from the fact that its adherents believe it has a positive effect are likely to fail. But having said that, I don't see any reason to apply the label 'irrational' to someone who continues to do what works for them in practice.

[Karen]

[Air of Winter]

[tangent]

[HallaK9]

[tangent]

[Air of Winter]

[Air of Winter]

Oh, yeah, and here's an essential thing to have handy for needlessly obscure philosophical discussions:

[John Anthony]

AOW--

Could you clear up a few other points for me?

1. It's rational to believe in God, and in some points of Christian theology, without being able to offer any positive reason for thinking them true. Apparently all one needs is an absence of reasons for thinking them untrue.

What does Plantinga mean by "rational"? Does he mean simply "reasonable" as this word is commonly used? Or does he mean "logical": not violating some rules of logical thinking that he has in mind? Or does he mean something else?

2. Quinn says that there are enough reasons for disbelieving in the Christian concept of God to make it necessary to offer some positive reason for belief.
3. Plantinga says none of the reasons for disbelief are any good.

None of Quinn's reasons for disbelief or none that have ever been offered?

4. But even if some of the reasons for disbelief are good, a properly basic belief may be grounded strongly enough to overcome the reasons.

How can one judge whether a properly basic belief is or is not grounded strongly enough to do this? Grounded in what?

[tangent]

[Genie]

[Genie]

'Woe to me if I do not Thomistize'--Jacques Maritain.

Hi AOW:
Your post had made me do some research and I found the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain's argument quite interesting. I hope this would help with our discussion here.

Jacques Maritain's view on Natural Theology and Philosophy of Religion

'Like St Thomas Aquinas, Maritain held that there was no conflict between faith and true reason, that religious belief was open to rational discussion, and that the existence of God and certain fundamental religious beliefs could be philosophically demonstrated. Religious belief, then, was not an attitude or a matter of private opinion — an option that could be embraced or not according to one's private preferences; it was a matter of ‘truth’. For Maritain, one must choose between "the true God or radical irrationality" (Introduction to Philosophy, p. 259).
Maritain held that philosophy was an ancilla theologiae, and that philosophy, under the rubric of metaphysical knowledge, allows for the demonstration of a number of basic religious beliefs. And, like Aquinas, Maritain accepted the classical foundationalist position that these beliefs could be established by rational deduction from self-evident principles and constituted genuine knowledge. Specifically, he held that, by the use of natural reason, one can come to know certain truths about God, and that the ‘five ways’ of Thomas Aquinas provided sure knowledge of God's existence. But Maritain also argued that there could be other ‘proofs’ of the existence of the divine and, in Approches de Dieu, he developed what he called a "sixth way."

There is, Maritain writes, an intuition that is awakened in persons when they are engaged in thought — that is, that it seems impossible that they, as thinking beings, should at some time have not been. As a thinking being, one seems to be free from the vicissitudes of time and space; there is no coming to be or ceasing to be — I cannot think what it is not to be. Nevertheless, we all know very well that we were born — we came into existence. We are confronted, then, with a contradiction — not a logical contradiction, but a lived contradiction. The only solution to this is that one has always existed, but not through oneself, but within "a Being of transcendent personality" and from whom "the self which is thinking now proceeded into temporal existence" (Approches de Dieu, in Oeuvres complètes, p. 64). This being "must contain all things in itself in an eminent mode and be itself — in an absolutely transcendent way — being, thought and personality. This implies that the first existence is the infinite plenitude of being, separate by essence from all diversity of existents." (p. 66).

Maritain also acknowledges the possibility of a natural, pre-philosophical, but still rational knowledge of God (see Approches de Dieu, pp. 13-22). This is, Maritain claims, a ‘knowledge’ that is necessary to — and, in fact leads to — a philosophical demonstration of God's existence. (In this way, then, one can know that some religious beliefs are true, even without being able to demonstrate them.) Maritain's argument, which resembles the Thomistic argument from contingent being, is that, in one's intuition of being, one is aware, first, of a reality separate from oneself, second, of oneself as finite and limited, and, third, of the necessity that there is something "completely free from nothingness and death" (Approches de Dieu, p. 15). This is concurrent with a "spontaneous reasoning" that follows the same course to the conclusion that there is "another Whole […] another Being, transcendent and self-sufficient and unknown in itself and activating all beings […] that is, self-subsisting Being, Being existing through itself" (Approches de Dieu, p. 16). This ‘knowledge’ of God, Maritain admits, is not demonstrative but is, nevertheless, "rich in certitude" (Approches de Dieu, p. 19) and is both presupposed by, and is the underlying force for, philosophical demonstrations of God's existence.

The difference between the pre-philosophical and the philosophical ‘knowledge’ of God is that the latter is one which is based on a "scientific demonstration" (Approches de Dieu, p. 19) — on empirical facts — and involving analogy, from which we have terms that can be properly predicated of the divine. On the other hand, ‘pre-philosophical’ knowledge is "intuition" — an approach to knowledge, though not a "way," (Approches de Dieu, p. 20) a proof or a demonstration. This knowledge is based on a natural reasoning which cannot be expressed in words. Yet, it is important also to realize that while Maritain allows that certain ‘truths’ "are grasped by the common sense before being the object of philosophical concern" (Approches de Dieu, p. 24), philosophical proofs of the existence of God "are not only established and justified philosophically at the level of philosophy itself, but are already valid and efficacious at the level of this incohative and spontaneous philosophy," (Approches de Dieu, p. 24) and that what one arrives at by means of such an ‘approach’ is (as it is in philosophical demonstrations) knowledge of the truth of a proposition.

It has been argued, however, that there are some difficulties with Maritain's position here. For example, even if it is true that people may ‘naturally’ affirm the proposition that there is a God, it is not obvious how they can claim that they know it. In other words, even if the proposition is true, it is not clear how we can say that we know or believe it to be true. What Maritain seems to give us here is an explanation of how one arrives at a certain proposition and of one's certainty, but nothing more. But, since the state of certainty of an individual is not the same as the assertion that that person knows something to be true, it is not clear that the pre-philosophical approach provides one with an adequate basis to say that a religious belief is true, only that one is convinced of it. And, one might argue, parallel conclusions can be drawn if one examines the other ways that Maritain suggests will lead to a putative ‘knowledge’ of God.'

Here is my source:

Now I really need some rest from philosophizing faith. It seems easier just to empty myself and let the Voice speak for itself...
Time to go to church... :)

[John Anthony]

[Air of Winter]

[Leslie]