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Is Ancestral Testimony Foundational Evidence For God's Existence?1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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It is Alvin Plantinga's contention that a belief in the existence of God constitutes a rationally justified ‘basic belief’ for which evidence is neither required nor desired. This defiant proposal to jettison any evidential requirements for justifying one's theistic belief has led to a great deal of discussion, with some theists welcoming the possibility that evidence may no longer be necessary to justify one's convictions, and others finding themselves expressing a deep concern that such a move might border on a type of ‘noninitiates-be-damned’ withdrawal from academic discourse. Whatever the outcome of these initial reactions to his project, Plantinga has at least succeeded in ‘changing the subject’, to borrow a phrase from Richard Rorty, though it is most certainly not the sort of change of subject which Rorty himself would welcome - a renewed defence of religious rationality.
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References
2 See Clark, Kelly James, Return to Reason (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990);Google Scholarcf. Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976);Google ScholarWolterstorff, , ‘Can Belief in God Be Rational if it Has No Foundations?’, in Faith and Rationality, ed. by Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983);Google Scholar and Alston, William P., ‘Plantinga's Epistemology of Religious Belief,’ in Alvin Plantinga, ed. by Tomberlin, James E. and Van Inwagen, Peter (Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidel, 1985).Google Scholar
3 See, for example, Runzo, Joseph, ‘World-Views and the Epistemic Foundations of Theism’, Religious Studies XXV, pp. 31–51Google Scholar and Robbins, J. Wesley, ‘Christian World View Philosophy and Pragmatism’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LVII (3), 529 ff.Google Scholar
4 The phrase is from Rorty, RichardPhilosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 266–67.Google Scholar For a critical reading of this passage see Tracy, David, Plurality and Ambiguity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 85.Google Scholar
5 Plantinga, , ‘Reason and Belief in God’, in Faith and Rationality, ed. by Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 16–93.Google Scholar
6 Ibid. p. 19.
7 Ibid. p. 24.
8 Plantinga spends the better part of the essay (pp. 39–63) refuting what he takes to be the inherent foundationalism and evidentialism in the program of natural theology put forward by Thomas Aquinas. Plantinga accepts the fact that classical foundationalism ‘has been enormously popular in Western thought’ (p. 48) and thus what he calls the ‘Reformed objection’ to natural theology must convince a very evidence-oriented audience.Google Scholar
9 See Plantinga, Alvin, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
10 Plantinga, , ‘Reason and Belief in God’, p. 33.Google Scholar
11 Ibid. p. 57.
12 Ibid. p. 59.
13 There is a clear parallel between my concept of an ‘umbrella belief’ and Berger's, Peter version of a ‘sacred canopy’ as developed in The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967).Google ScholarThe difference is that my conception of an umbrella belief has primarily to do with the noetic structure of the individual, although the mechanisms which place an item of belief into the individual's noetic structure as an umbrella belief are essentially the same as those which would place an item into the ‘ sacred canopy’ of a given society. Both take ‘dancestral testimony’ mediated by a community as essential to the process of belief formulation.Google Scholar
14 Mitchell, Basil in his book The Justification of Religious Belief (New York: Seabury Press, 1973) suggests that a ‘principle of tenacity’ is involved in adherence to political beliefs which strongly parallels the tenacious adherence to religious beliefs by the religious believer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Plantinga, ‘Reason and Belief in God‘, p. 85.Google Scholar
16 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty, ed. by Anscombe, G. E. M. and Wright, G. H. von (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), p. 37e.Google Scholar At a later point, Wittgenstein states, ‘I really want to say that a language-game is only possible if one trusts something.’ Ibid. p. 66e.
17 The best inductive argument for the existence of God in recent years is trilogy, Richard Swinburne'sThe Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),Google ScholarThe Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979),Google Scholar and Faith and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), but it is clear that Swinburne's case falters in the third volume where he is forced to contend with the inductive problem of competing testimonies from the various world religions. While he can be certain that a visual item of evidence, say a fulfilment of a prophecy, might validate a religion, he is less certain how to understand the idea of testimony from various world religions in the absence of empirical evidence.Google Scholar
18 For example, Flew, Antony, God and Philosophy (London: Hutchinson, 1966);Google Scholar cf. Mackie, J. L. The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).Google Scholar For recent criticism of the tendency to employ traditional conceptions of God within the evidentialist debate, see Kaufman, Gordon, ‘Evidentialism: A Theologian's Response’, Faith and Philosophy vi, I, (1989), 35–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 See Hartshorne, Charles, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar and Reality as Social Process (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1953);Google Scholar cf. Cobb, John B. JrProcess Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976).Google Scholar
20 It is clear from the writings of a number of Enlightenment thinkers (especially Locke, Hume and Kant) that much of their effort expended toward establishing religious truths on a rational basis stems from a growing uneasiness over the question of the reliability of ancestral testimony. See Byrne, Peter, Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 41 ff.Google Scholar
21 Plantinga, ‘Reason and Belief in God’, p. 74.Google Scholar
22 Ibid. p. 78. Italics added.