Rational reasonings
An interesting article I came across recently titled: ‘Is belief in God properly basic’ by Alvin Plantinga which questioned the importance of evidence in knowledge and related this to a belief in God.
Plantinga’s rejection of the evidentialist’s argument
Plantinga states that an individual can have a justified belief in God without requiring any evidence. He rejects the theistic evidentialists’ claim that a properly basic belief may only be held if:
‘For any proposition A and person S, A is properly basic for S if and only if A is incorrigible for S or self-evident to S.’
Plantinga argues that this proposition is self-defeating because the proposition itself is neither self-evident or obviously true - i.e. can you really insist that the statement mentioned above meets its own criteria of being ‘incorrigible’, or ‘self-evident’?. As such Plantinga views the evidentialist’s position as self defeating.
Justification conferring conditions
However, since Plantinga’s criteria of a basic belief depends solely on the believer he introduces three justifying conferring conditions to ground proper basicality. These are introduced as prima facie conditions - meaning conditions which are held at first impression by which the individual can use to justify their own belief. These instances of justification may include supporters of one's belief which help strengthen it, and defeaters who oppose your view.
In his book Warranted Christian belief, he outlines these as follows:
1. Training/teaching,
Plantinga claims that a child is in their epistemic rights to believe a teacher’s teaching.
2. Weak/Strong justification
A weak justification occurs when one is within their epistemic rights in believing x. A strong justification occurs when the belief itself satisfies the same conditions as previously mentioned, but is also true and known to be true.
3. ‘The conditions that confer prima facie justification do not inevitably include belief.’
The believer does not need to be aware of the conditions present in justifying their belief.
Sensus divinitatus serving as justification
In the case of a belief in God, Plantinga appeals to the idea of a ‘sensus divinitatus’ - meaning ‘a sense of the divine’ - to justify this belief without appealing to evidence. Such a sense is not simply a stagnant feeling one has but can be ‘triggered or occasioned by a wide variety of circumstances’ which includes the beauty and order of the universe. In this way, Plantinga puts forward an inductive argument for a justifiable belief in God.
Challenges to Plantinga
Plantinga’s argument put inductively above may be subject to some criticisms. First, his justification for God being a properly basic belief rests on this idea of the ‘sensus divinitatus’ grounding it. But some could question whether such an idea exists. For example Justin Barret in hi book ‘Why would anyone believe in God’ introduced the idea of hyperactive agency detection where he suggest that humans are inclined to attribute agency to things which may explain our inclination towards God.
A second challenge could be against whether Plantinga succeeds in removing the need for evidence or whether he seems to only succeed in pushing it back a step. He removes the need for evidence if the belief is properly basic, but in creating justifying conferring conditions one could question whether this then brings back evidence into the argument.
