Plantinga and the Balkanization of Reason

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-141
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Casey ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
To Come

In this paper, I argue that Plantinga maintains it is possible to come to know that Christianity is true, but only from the inside. Further, since Plantinga argues that one’s judgments about the epistemic status of Christian belief depend upon one’s prephilosophical metaphysical views, his position amounts to the claim that the Christian community has privileged access to truth and that non-Christians are ill-equipped to evaluate their beliefs. The upshot of Plantinga’s position is, I suggest, that people from different communities will disagree about the epistemic status of religious belief, and reason is simply incapable of adjudicating those disputes.

Alston's epistemology of religious belief and the problem of religious diversity

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIAN WILLARD
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Practice Approach ◽  
Fundamental Misunderstanding

In this paper I examine William Alston's work on the epistemology of religious belief, focusing on the threat to the epistemic status of Christian belief presented by awareness of religious diversity. I argue that Alston appears to misunderstand the epistemic significance of the ‘practical rationality’ of the Christian mystical practice. I suggest that this error is due to a more fundamental misunderstanding, regarding the significance of practical rationality, in Alston's ‘doxastic practice’ approach to epistemology; an error that leads to arbitrariness among the class of rational doxastic practices. I suggest how one might remedy this weakness, with an additional, epistemic, criterion that rational doxastic practices must satisfy.

Phronesis and Religious Belief

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-244
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Regulative Idea

This chapter outlines a theory of rationality integral to virtue theory suggested by a remark by Hilary Putnam that reason is both immanent and transcendent. It is immanent in that it is not to be found outside human language games, cultures, and institutions, but it is also a regulative idea that is used to criticize the conduct of all activities and institutions. The chapter proposes three corollaries of the immanence and transcendence of reason and some constraints that should be respected in defining a rational belief. These proposals are intended to help settle disputes about the rationality or epistemic praiseworthiness of culture-specific beliefs, including beliefs distinctive of a particular religion. The discussion in the chapter is at odds with the approach of Plantinga on the defense of the epistemic status of Christian belief.

Fine-tuning the Relationship between Religion and Intellectual Humility

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Everett L. Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
The Self ◽  
Content Area ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
The Core ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Meaning System ◽  
The Relationship

I examine religious humility, which is one content area of intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is the subtype of humility that involves taking a humble stance in sharing ideas, especially when one is challenged or when an idea is threatening. I position religious humility within the context of general humility, spiritual humility, and relational humility, and thus arrive at several propositions. People who are intensely spiritually humble can hold dogmatic beliefs and believe themselves to be religiously humble, yet be perceived by others of different persuasions as religiously dogmatic and even arrogant. For such people to be truly religiously humble, they must feel that the religious belief is core to their meaning system. This requires discernment of which of the person’s beliefs are truly at the core. But also the religiously humble person must fulfill the definition of general humility, accurately perceiving the strengths and limitations of the self, being teachable to correct weaknesses, presenting oneself modestly, and being positively other-oriented. Humility thus involves (1) beliefs, values, and attitudes and (2) an interpersonal presentational style. Therefore, intellectually humble people must track the positive epistemic status of their beliefs and also must present with convicted civility.

Kierkegaard on truth as subjectivity: Christianity, ethics and asceticism

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER HAMILTON
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition ◽  
True Relationship ◽  
The Way

This paper is an exploration and interpretation of Kierkegaard's account of Christian belief. I argue that Kierkegaard believed that the Christian metaphysical tradition was exhausted and hence that there could be no defence of belief in God in purely rational terms. I defend this interpretation against objections, going on to argue that Kierkegaard thought it possible to defend a post-metaphysical conception of religious belief. I argue that Kierkegaard thought that such a defence was available if we understand correctly what it is to speak with ethico-religious authority. I argue that, when interpreted in the way I outline, Kierkegaard's notion of ethico-religious authority shows his conception of religious belief to have great plausibility. However, Kierkegaard goes on to argue that an individual's true relationship with God is constituted through the cultivation of guilt and the sense of himself as a sinner, and I give reasons for rejecting this claim, arguing that such cultivation is a form of asceticism.

scholarly journals Transformative Experience and the Problem of Religious Disagreement

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-141
Author(s):  
Joshua Blanchard ◽  
L.A. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 6 considers how peer disagreement over religion presents an epistemological problem: How can confidence in any religious claims including their negations be epistemically justified? Here, it is shown that the transformative nature of religious experience poses a further problem: to transition between religious belief and skepticism is not just to adopt a different set of beliefs, but to transform into a different version of oneself. It is argued that this intensifies the problem of pluralism by adding a new dimension to religious disagreement, for we can lack epistemic and affective access to our potential religious, agnostic, or skeptical selves. Yet, access to these selves seems to be required for the purposes of decision-making that is to be both rational and authentic. Finally, the chapter reflects on the relationship between the transformative problem and what it shows about the epistemic status of religious conversion and deconversion, in which one disagrees with one’s own transformed self.

From Idealism to Personalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-93
Author(s):  
Adam Hood
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
John Macmurray ◽  
British Idealism

This chapter looks at the work of John Caird, John Oman, and John Macmurray as thinkers who tried to reformulate Christian belief in the light of the intellectual challenges that emerged to Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Caird’s apologetic aimed to reshape Christianity in the light of Hegel. Oman tried to relieve the tension between freedom—intellectual, moral, and aesthetic—and religious belief. Macmurray elucidated the importance of Christianity through its suggested connection to the sustenance of personal forms of existence and of community. The chapter offers brief evaluations of each writer and concludes that they shared a common allegiance to broad themes arising within British idealism, not least their view of God as immanent in experience.

‘A Double Face of False and True’

2019 ◽  
pp. 62-77
Author(s):  
Michael O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Language ◽  
Poetic Vision

Chapter 3 traces the movements of Shelley’s ideas and attitudes toward religion throughout his life and writings. It views Shelley as a far more nuanced religious thinker than is often implied by critics. It identifies the ambivalence with which Shelley, a self-styled atheist, approaches religious belief—especially Christian modes of belief—and the ways in which Shelley wrestles with and subverts the boundaries between the secular and the religious. The chapter examines how Shelley’s imagination adapts the language of religious belief in order to articulate poetic vision and experience. It traces many of Shelley’s allusions to the Bible and identifies the ways in which Shelley ‘incessantly reorchestrate[s]’ Biblical language in his works. It identifies the treatment of religion in other Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Blake, and shows how Shelley’s poetry departs from their approaches to religion. The chapter also probes a recurring idea in Shelley’s poetry and writings that there is some power or spirit that affects human souls, that originates within or, just possibly, beyond humanity, and has characteristics that influence and are influenced by poets. For Shelley, poetry is religion and poets are prophets and seekers of truth. The chapter also discusses Shelley’s religious prose and the ways in which his writings about God, belief, and religion ‘[reveal] a double rhythm’ in which Shelley ranges from scientific examination to ‘eruptions of latent feeling’. The chapter concludes with a study of Shelley’s final poem, the unfinished Triumph of Life, showing that throughout the poem there ghosts a ‘Christian belief-system that is never wholly abandoned or forgotten’.

Hypocrisy as a challenge to Christian belief

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
J. W. SCHULZ
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Or Practice

AbstractHypocrisy challenges religious belief in two ways.Arguments to Absurditycontend hypocrisy is defeasible evidence of the irrationality of a doctrine or practice.Arguments from Betrayalcontend that hypocrisy confronts institutionally loyal believers with a tragic dilemma: that because loyalty is justified by the goodness of its object, hypocrisy requires believers to sacrifice either their conscience (to remain loyal) or their character and identity (by abandoning their loyalty). This article presents philosophical and theological reasons that both arguments are unpersuasive.

Mathematics, Physics and Religion: A Need for Candor and Rigor

1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
Frederick W. Norris
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

In Western culture, religion and the sciences often have found themselves to be more and more at odds since the period of the Enlightenment. The change which that era brought to the Christian community could be illustrated as follows. The analogy is perhaps a bit overdrawn, but it does indicate how important the historical shifts were. During the earliest phase of Christian belief, Christianity had to compete with other religions as one fruit-bearing tree within a varied orchard. When the Christian religion became established and dominant in the Middle Ages it tended to cause other trees to wither and die because of its enormous and on occasion darkening size. During the Reformation a radical pruning took place which gave life not only to the Protestant branch but also a new vitality to the Roman Catholic branch. What the Enlightenment represented was the first pervasive suggestion that most fruit trees — perhaps even the orchard — were unnecessary. One could find individual precursors of such attempts as well as a number of people during the Enlightenment who found various religions satisfying. But at no time in the history of Christianity had a large segment of the intellectual culture been so fascinated with the idea that religion in most all of its forms might be useless.

scholarly journals Religious Belief is Not Natural. Why Cognitive Science of Religion Does Not Show That Religious Belief is Trustworthy

Studia Humana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Hans Van Eyghen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Afterlife Beliefs

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that the new emerging discipline cognitive science of religion has a bearing on how to think about the epistemic status of religious beliefs. Both defenders and opponents of the rationality of religious belief have used cognitive theories of religion to argue for their point. This paper will look at the defender-side of the debate. I will discuss an often used argument in favor of the trustworthiness of religious beliefs, stating that cognitive science of religion shows that religious beliefs are natural and natural beliefs ought to be trusted in the absence of counterevidence. This argument received its most influential defense from Justin Barrett in a number of papers, some in collaboration with Kelly James Clark. I will discuss their version of the argument and argue that it fails because the natural beliefs discovered by cognitive scientists of religion are not the religious beliefs of the major world religions. A survey of the evidence from cognitive science of religion will show that cognitive science does show that other beliefs come natural and that these can thus be deemed trustworthy in the absence of counterevidence. These beliefs are teleological beliefs, afterlife beliefs and animistic theistic beliefs.

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