5.3 The Reasonableness of
Belief in God
There are typically two responses
theists take in responding to evidentialist objections to belief in God. The
first “strategy” is to argue against the claim that there is not sufficient
evidence to support the belief in the existence of God. The second “strategy”
is to argue against the claim that to be rational the theist must provide
sufficient evidence to support his belief.
5.4 Theistic Evidentialism
The claim that there is not
sufficient evidence “for the existence of God” has been rejected by major
thinkers; Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and others.
Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways were some of his arguments intended to prove the
existence of God. Aquinas tried to use evidence that was acceptable to all
rational people and using that evidence to prove the existence of God. This
attempt to prove the existence of God through the natural order detected by
reason is called natural theology. Clark contends that the “contention and
legacy of the Enlightenment is that classical theology is an abysmal failure.”[1]
Is this really true? If it is such a failure, why does it continue to be
practiced? Some theists today continue to argue that there is sufficient
evidence to support the existence of God. They dispute the idea that theistic
arguments were killed by Hume and Kant. So, these theists accept the
evidentialist demand for evidence “by offering arguments that support the
existence of God.”[2]
If these arguments fail, would it make belief in the existence of God
irrational? J. L. Mackie, an able defender of atheism, suggest that “theism
requires evidential support in order” to be considered rational:
If it is agreed that the central assertions
of theism are literally meaningful,
it must also be admitted that
they are not directly verifiable. It follows that
any rational consideration of
whether they are true or not will involve
Arguments. . . . it [whether or
not God exists] must be examined either by
Deductive reasoning or, if that
yields no decision, by arguments to the best
explanation; for in such a
context nothing else can have any coherent
“Thinkers
in the Enlightenment tradition” believes that every belief must be critiqued by
reason, “and by reason they mean supporting beliefs with propositional evidence
or arguments.” [4]Clark
states, “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.”[5] What
philosophical beliefs actually meet the test? Why is the belief in the
existence of God held to a higher standard than other beliefs? “Some suggest
that this demand is simply arbitrary at best or intellectually imperialist at
worst.”[6] Clark
contends that the “Enlightenment conception of rationality and its estimations
of the rationality of religious belief are as mistaken as they are
influential.”[7]
J. L. Mackie thinks that there is not “sufficient evidence to favor theism over
naturalism,”[8]
so it should be rejected.
What
about our moral beliefs? Are these beliefs self-evident, evident to the senses,
or incorrigible. No, they do not pass the evidentialist test. Some argue that
morals are mere projections of values held by individuals, but are grounded in
nothing but will. What if you hold a moral belief that is rejected by the
intelligentsia today? Would you be irrational? Clark states that 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, if a
majority of the educational elite “reject” your moral beliefs, this does not
make them irrational.
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