Let it ride

Those of you who find religion interesting might find the following piece by Cal Thomas worth a look.

>The Atheist Wager

>I wonder about the question. Why is it “in vogue” to disbelieve in a Creator of the universe, who loves us and wants to have a relationship with us and not “in vogue” to believe?

>Anyway, of course I have conversations with atheists everyday, though I do not always know of their unbelief unless they tell me. We can talk about everything, or nothing. I know some atheists who are pro-life (though they have an inadequate base for being so). That’s because if God is not the Author of life, then we are evolutionary accidents who may treat each other as we please.

>In conversing with an atheist, it is important to understand that such a person will never be brought to faith by information alone, because the same information is available to everyone. If information were sufficient to make a believer out of an atheist, then all would believe.

>It takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in Him. It is also intellectually lazy. You have to believe the vastness of the universe “happened” without a Designer and that unique things like fingerprints and snowflakes occurred by pure chance.

>An atheist wagers his or her present and eternal future that he or she is right. If the atheist is right and there is no God, there are no consequences. But if the atheist is wrong and there is a God and a Heaven for those who come to Him on His terms, and a Hell for those who reject Him, then that has the most important consequences.

>I do not have the power to persuade anyone that God is, but I can demonstrate the difference He has made in my life and relationships – including with atheists – and pray that the One who brought me to belief will do so with them.

We’re not going to comment, as many have already on the original site.

Happy New to our readers.

30 thoughts on “Let it ride”

  1. i weary of the cost benefit christianity. God is not the NYSE and a relationship with God is niether transactional nor contractual. this brand of christianity, as many have noted on the original site, is just as “intellectually lazy” as the milquetoast, strawman atheist position thomas is lampooning.
    batting cleanup, the great infidel:
    ” let us now consider the moral arguments, chiefly those arguments derived from the justice of God, which is supposed to be further interested in the further punishment of the vicious and reward of the virtuous.
    But these arguments are grounded on the supposition, that God has attributes beyond what he exerted in this universe, with which alone we are acquainted. Whence do we infer the existence of these attributes?
    It is very safe to affirm, that, whatever we know the deity to have actually done, is best; it is very dangerous to affirm, that he must always do what to us seems best. In how many instances would this reasoning fail us with regard to the present world.
    But if any purpose of nature be clear, we may affirm, that the whole scope and intention of man’s creation, so far as we can judge by natural reason, is limited to the present life. With how eak a concern, from the original, inherent structure of the mind and passions, does he ever look further? What comparison either for steadiness or efficacy, between so floating an idea, and the most doubtful persuasion of any matter of fact, that occurs in common life?
    There arise, indeed, in some minds, some unaccountable terrors with regard to futurity: But these would quickly vanish, were they not artificially fostered by precept and education. And those, who foster them: what is their motive? Only to gain a liveliehood, and to acquire power and riches in this world. Their very zeal and industry, therefore, are an argument against them.”
    –David Hume

  2. Oh my. This guy got *paid* for writing that? I thought it was from some no-name blogger until I followed the link. There’s a factual error in at least five of the six paragraphs.

    “Argument from banana” was more convincing.

  3. ah, yes. argumentum pro banana. hilarious. might we call thomas’ flailings the “quid pro quo” argument for the existence of God?

  4. These arguments are hideously bad, except the exact replica of Pascal’s Wager in the second to last paragraph. I can easily defeat his argument on that point because Thomas wishes to show that there is a “Creator of the universe, who loves us and wants to have a relationship with us” and Pascal Wager does not show that. It is not even a reason to believe in that type of God. I could put forward the God of Islam with the same argument and achieve the same result.

    I hesitate to even touch the other arguments because of there sheer absurdity, but I will tackle some of them. The argument that it takes more faith to be an atheist than a believer is something I have heard many evangelical Christians use a lot. First, it undermines their own doctrines because the ultimate act of faith is supposed to be belief in Jesus as God made man who sacrificed His life for everyone. So if an atheist has more faith than a Christian, then this is bad news for a Christian. However, more to the point, an atheist does not necessarily need any faith. How about accepting the argument called the “Problem of Evil” as being correct and that all objections to it fail? This is belief in no God without having to rely on any type of faith.

    I recently failed a student on a paper in a Philosophy 101 class for making a very similar argument to the one Thomas provides in the second paragraph! Because we thoroughly covered the fact that ethics does not need to be based on religious faith or belief, and the fact that Evolution seems to have little to say about ethics. Also, the view about living things being evolutionary “accidents” is wrong and a complete misunderstanding of Evolution.

    Finally, what is even being argued for in this paragraph, “In conversing with an atheist, it is important to understand that such a person will never be brought to faith by information alone, because the same information is available to everyone. If information were sufficient to make a believer out of an atheist, then all would believe.” Does Thomas mean “reasons” when he uses “information?” If so, then he is completely wrong. I believe there are numerous logical arguments for the existence of God and some have been convincing to a number of former atheists. I personally know of a person who was a staunch atheist and determined that the newer versions of the Ontological Argument were both valid and sound. If Thomas means something else by information, then I have no idea how to evaluate what he is saying. It would seem that he may be conflating both reason and evidence.

    Thomas’ arguments are obviously based off of his profound ignorance of the subject matters he discusses. The biggest problem, however, is that he shares this ignorance with the vast majority of other Americans. Since, I will freely admit that I am an atheist, I will dispense with the commentary that I really wish to write, and simply recommend anyone who is interested to take a look at the just released “The Cambridge Companion to Atheism” edited by Michael Martin.

    Philip Mayo’s use of Hume is perfect. I would have included more of the Dialogues, since Thomas seems to hint that disbelief in the Design argument is so wrong it is not worth even arguing for.

  5. Sorry, there is at least one error in my comment above. The third sentence of the second paragraph should read this: “First, it undermines their own doctrines because the ultimate act of faith is supposed to be belief in Jesus as God made man who sacrificed His life for everyone and who rose from the dead to serve as their means of salvation.”

  6. Dear Matt,

    Thanks for the comment. I have a question for you.

    You write:

    >The argument that it takes more faith to be an atheist than a believer is something I have heard many evangelical Christians use a lot. First, it undermines their own doctrines because the ultimate act of faith is supposed to be belief in Jesus as God made man who sacrificed His life for everyone and who rose from the dead to serve as their means of salvation. So if an atheist has more faith than a Christian, then this is bad news for a Christian. However, more to the point, an atheist does not necessarily need any faith.

    I think I made the substitution correctly. But I’m interested in hearing from the public about the equivalence between Atheism and Theism. You hear it a lot. And so does everyone else. Mind commenting anyone?

  7. Anyone familiar with Cal Thomas’s physical appearance would know that he dyes his hair and has done so for years. Is this not a rather public demonstration of Mr. Thomas’s dissatisfaction with at least one of the ‘differences’ in his life that his god has been responsible for?

  8. i don’t think the equivalence between athiesm and theism is apt at all. they are anithetical notions. part of my problem with thomas’ piece is that he pretends these are commensurable modes of religious belief–and they just cannot be. theism proposes a central set of beliefs, based on a deity or deities. atheism doesn’t seem to require any such centralized core of convistions, save the propositions that either there is no God or gods, or that we have no adequate grounds to ever assert the existence of these beings in the face of insufficient evidence.

  9. I think that even atheism is based in some form of faith. Their denial of the existence of God/s, or abstinence of assertion to any existence of a deity/s, is based on faith in the facts that they believe disprove or prove their assertions. Even when atheist appeal to scientific facts, they must have some faith that the facts that they are appealing to are true, since one often cannot experience some of the scientific facts that end up being used as axioms by atheists and theists alike.

  10. Well, historically the term atheist was used to condemn those of opposing religious beliefs. For example, the Romans used the term (its Latin equivalent) to describe early Christians. Early Christians believed that the Greek and Roman gods did not exist. So, technically, all Christians are atheists because they believe that the gods or God of other religions do not exist.

    However, today the term is more strictly defined. There are both positive or strong atheists and negative or weak atheists. Positive atheists believe that deities do not exist. Negative atheists are defined by having an absence of belief in deities without also having a belief that deities do not exist. So agnostics are negative atheists in this sense, but the definition also includes those with no opinion on the matter of the existence of deities.

    If there is an absence of belief then I’m not sure where faith would fit into the picture. But, the central question would seem to be: does the positive atheist need to have faith to hold her belief that God does not exist? Do I need to have faith in every single belief I hold? If I believe that the Roman gods do not exist, do I also have faith that they do not exist? If I believe that I am typing on a keyboard, then do I need to have faith that I am typing on a keyboard? Perhaps, people have different intuitions on this matter, but it seems to me that the answer to all of these questions is no. I seem to be able to make assumptions about certain things without making any claim about having faith in them. So I can assume that the laws of logic are useful and true without making a claim that I have faith in them.

    I think there is some confusion over terms. While the definitions of belief and knowledge are contested in philosophy, there still seems to be a general agreement over what they are not. However, the definition of faith is very fuzzy. Is faith some kind of special form of belief? If faith is not a type of belief, then does it act in a similar way to belief? If there is no general agreement over what faith is then is there some kind of agreement over what faith is not? I was working under the general assumption that faith is not belief and is something wholly different than belief. What would be special about faith if it is nothing more than belief? I guess faith could be conceived as the ground of belief, but this also seems odd. What would give religious faith special status over other types of faith?

    Notwithstanding the above ambiguities about the definition of faith, I still don’t see how Thomas can claim that an atheist has more faith than a theist, unless Thomas is assuming the truth of the Design argument. But, assuming the truth of the Design argument seems to be highly problematic, since it remains the weakest of the traditional arguments for the existence of God.

  11. mr. grey–
    you said:
    “Their denial of the existence of God/s, or abstinence of assertion to any existence of a deity/s, is based on faith in the facts that they believe disprove or prove their assertions. ”

    is accepting what is demonstrably the case really faith? it’s not simply about experiencing, but being able to demonstrate, mathematically or visually, the truth of scientific fact that sets a belief in it apart from faith. moreover, by the definition placed on faith by most christians–“faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1 KJV)–trusting in scientific facts, things that derive their veracity from testable hypotheses and demonstrably consistent results, the “faith,” so-called, of atheism (as founded on the refusal to lend assent to any proposition in the face of insufficient evidence) is hardly commensurable with the faith demanded of the religious believer.

  12. Matt K–

    might we say that faith is the foundation of religious belief? in saying this, i agree with your stance that faith ia apart from belief, i suppose, but it seems that true religious belief is birthed from faith in the existence and power of the deity, so, while they are apart, they are not wholly independent for the religious believer.

  13. Maybe we should define what we are talking about first; are we talking about faith as the belief in truth or value of a thing, or a belief that is not based on logical proof or evidence? Although, either definition would work for theism, the second not so much for atheism, I think. I agree with you though, the faith required for a religious believer may be much greater, but one still requires faith when it comes to believing that the facts are tru if one does not have access to the source . I guess it is true that faith for religious believers and atheists is different; the former’s faith seems to be based on dogma and therefore unmovable, the later is based on scientific fact, but it is the nature of science that facts sometimes change, so I guess the atheistic faith is mutable. Either way we are still talking about faith, even if one is stronger based on a set of dogmatic principles, or the other has faith that the scientific facts are really facts.

  14. mr. grey–
    i think the distinction you struck, between mutable and immutable faith, is nicely formed. great way to approach these questions, so long as you understand that many religious believers will only recognize the latter as true faith.

  15. So if we take faith to be distinguished by Mr. Grey, then do we even have an argument for the existence of God, or a God? An Atheist and a religious person can say the same thing. From what I understand, most religions require one to accept, in faith, God’s existence, so then why can’t an Atheist say the same thing? There is no god, I accept it as faith. Where is the necessity for the an Atheist to provide an argument? There is no logic or evidence provided in the Atheists statement and it’s immutable.

    It’s apparent that the topic becomes philosophically uninteresting, but the topic becomes as bad as an argument with a skeptic like G.E. Moore points out.

  16. So it’s still interesting maybe, depending on how I answer.

    My statement wasn’t about having faith in nothing of course, but of having faith in an assertion about the ontological status usually attributed to the idea of God. Now therein contains a few other assertions which would never be agreed to by a theist. Regardless, ‘God’ is something that one has reference to when the name is used. For an atheist, ‘God’ refers to an idea which it depends on us for its existence; for a theist, ‘God’ refers to an infinite, all powerfull, etc, being that exists independent from us.

    Instead of saying “There is no god” I should have said “There is no god, if we mean ‘there is’ to be something existing as an object or existing independent of us.” Then I would say “God is an idea.” I have faith in something, namely that God is an idea. An idea still has ontological status but in a different way than something outside of ourselves.

    ‘God exists’ and ‘God exists as an idea’ are based on the same type of reasoning and can only be taken in faith. But each one has other base assumptions along with it that a theist and an atheist would not agree on. But either way, there is still faith in something.

    I don’t know, how’s that?

  17. Jason–
    You said:
    \”Instead of saying “There is no god” I should have said “There is no god, if we mean ‘there is’ to be something existing as an object or existing independent of us.” Then I would say “God is an idea.” I have faith in something, namely that God is an idea. An idea still has ontological status but in a different way than something outside of ourselves.\”

    I\’m not so sure this type of affirmative position is really consistent with most atheistic thought, but nonetheless, it\’s an interesting idea. i still don\’t know if it\’s as immutable as you suppose, for if we concieve of God as idea, two things arise: one, is this idea a deity, insofar as a deity is a fixed entity, i.e. Bhudda, God of the bible, Zeus, etc.? if not, what follows from or lends impetus to our calling this idea \”God?\” two, if God is pure idea, then is it always the same idea, or does the idea change, or is God not a pure idea, but pure ideality?

    if God as idea is not outside of ourselves, then i find it hard to arrive at a rational basis for respecting this God, for it bends, then, to the raciocinations of my own mind and the whimsy of my human will. it might even be produced by my mind. my mind, then, is greater than God. if that is God, then humanism is the right course and the atheist and the theist are just arguing about who is more in the wrong.

  18. Question for Jason–

    Does the atheist have faith in:

    1. THAT the idea of god is ONLY an idea?

    or

    2. the “idea-existence” of God?

    if it’s (1), then everyone who denies the existence of any non-existent object makes that denial on faith (or also on faith?)

    (2) seems only to claim that the atheist has faith that he has an idea, whereby you mean that the atheist believes he has an idea. Of course many atheists will simply deny the coherence and therefore the idea of God.

    But maybe this is what you’re pointing out and I’m confused (which is not unusual). If so, enlighten me.

  19. Jcasey –

    it would be (1), God is only an idea. This has to be taken on faith because there is no logical proof or evidence to show it, the same as a theist would take on faith that God exists.

    Philip Mayo –

    I wish I knew the standard ideas behind atheism, but as far as I found, an atheist’s tenet is that ‘there is no God’. But to say ‘God’ is to refer to something. Anyone can press an atheist to explain this ‘God’ he is referring to. If the atheist engages in the discussion, I believe he would have to say something along the lines that ‘God’ is an idea or a concept. So it has to be close, but I could be completely wrong. But as I have said before the logic, or lack thereof, in holding the atheist tenet is no different than a theist holding the tenet ‘God exists’: it’s on faith.

    I guess I didn’t have a clear idea of what is mutable or not. First I thought it was that faith itself was not mutable. Then by reading your comment it looked as though the thing that we have faith in was suppose to be mutable or not. Then I was reread Mr. Gray’s statement and it seemed like he was referring to how we come to have faith: dogma giving faith its immutability and scientific fact giving mutable faith.

    But It seems there is always some mutability in both atheism and theism anyway. I can lose and gain faith in God. Most people can speak of someone who has done such a thing. Also, people can convert to different religions who have different deities. But in addition, the process of teaching the dogma changes within the largest religions: catholicism has changed it’s process in baptising it’s young. They used to wait till the age of two to four with the idea that the children could personally devote themselves to God. Now they baptise infants without their consent and their explicit participation. Not to mention the breakaway from Judaism by the other religions: the God had then changed. And the further factioning within the religions themselves revealing different characteristics and desires of what is suppose to be the same God. Recently I heard a Christian argue that God is limited.

    If it is the WAY we come to have faith, one can say it’s harder to change the faith, but it’s not entirely immutable. It seems that the tenets themselves may be what is mutable or not. This is sort of how I was taking it. It will always be the case that a theist will have to believe ‘God exists’ to be a theist, as an atheist will always have to believe ‘There is no God’ (and whatever else has to be held) to be an atheist.

    Yikes, sorry for the length.

  20. Jason Rathsack—
    “For an atheist, ‘God’ refers to an idea which it depends on us for its existence”—Huh?!? I do not know any atheist who holds this position. An atheist would not deny that a person can hold a concept (idea) about a divine being. An atheist can even hold this idea, but how does holding this idea connect in anyway to faith. I hold many ideas without relying on faith. An atheist is concerned about the actual existence or non-existence of God, whether the idea of ‘God’ can exist in someone’s mind is something that either seems obvious to most or is something that is not even considered. Maybe I am not fully understanding what you’re trying to argue for.

    Addition, since you posted while I was composing this response: Ah, I understand what you are saying. I fully disagree though. Contemporary versions of the “Problem of Evil” offer compelling reasons to believe in the non-existence of God. The Problem of Evil is a logical argument and discovering that is both valid and sound would make belief in the non-existence of God a matter of reason and not faith. Again, the important matter for almost any atheist is the actually existence or non-existence of God. If God only exists as an idea, then the atheist wins. When an atheist refers to “God” she typically refers to the being that is envisioned by the standard monotheistic religions. Even though their views of God are incompatible, they do share some common elements, namely, that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. Of course, one could be an atheist toward any type of divine being. I would assume most of us are atheists when it comes to the existence of the Greek gods! Also, see my comment above where I define positive and negative atheism.

    Mr. Grey—
    “[A]re we talking about faith as the belief in truth or value of a thing, or a belief that is not based on logical proof or evidence?”
    Is there some type of difference between these types of belief? Are they formed by different processes? Faith itself is usually split into two types of categories. The first is the kind that is suppose to justify religious belief without evidence (of any kind); and the second is the kind that is used generally and can often be replaced with the word ‘trust.’ Perhaps this is what you were trying to say. I believe that the first conception is the one that I am mainly concerned with, though I do have an interest as to why people generally use the word ‘faith’ in both of these circumstances.

    “I agree with you though, the faith required for a religious believer may be much greater, but one still requires faith when it comes to believing that the facts are tru[e] if one does not have access to the source.”
    Your view is in stark contrast to most of contemporary epistemology. Foundationalism claims that we can know some things because there are a number of basic beliefs. These basic beliefs are justified on their own because they are basic. So no faith is required to have knowledge or even have a system of beliefs under this view. Reliablism claims that we can know some things because certain beliefs we have are formed by reliable processes. Beliefs formed by these reliable processes would not require any faith (or even other beliefs) in order for them to be justified, and thus lead to knowledge. Under these views we can actually know and not just believe that certain things are true. I believe that we can call things we know “facts” because one basic requirement for knowledge is that the thing you believe is true. We do not need to have direct awareness of the source of our beliefs. I believe you have some room to argue for your position against these views, but it does seem plausible that faith is not required for the actual holding beliefs in general.

    “[I]t is the nature of science that facts sometimes change, so I guess the atheistic faith is mutable.”
    I believe that it is the nature of science that alleged facts sometimes change. There is some dispute in the philosophy of science that facts can change, but it seems that things thought of as true is different then the things that are actually true. We may have mistakenly believed something was a fact, when it was not. Facts seem immutable, but what we view as facts is mutable.

    “[Religious believer’s] faith seems to be based on dogma and therefore unmovable, the later is based on scientific fact.”
    I’m not sure that I want to restrict religious faith to being solely based on dogma. Here I am thinking of the view of Immanuel Kant. He claims that religious faith is to be solely based on practical reasoning. Practical reasoning has a strictly moral primacy over theoretical reasoning for Kant. So, Kant refers to this as moral faith.

    Philip Mayo—
    I may agree with you that faith can serve as a foundation for religious belief, but I would only do so if it was understood that faith was the thing that was suppose to do the justifying for the religious beliefs. I would also want to make sure that faith was not conceived of as something that is necessarily radically opposed to reason. If it was, then I do not see how it could avoid the charge of irrationalism.

    As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I have a good idea of what belief is, what knowledge is, and even how justification works, but what I still don’t have a good grasp on is what exactly faith is supposed to be. Is faith supposed to be a type of belief? Is faith a process of some kind? Is faith some type of parallel to reason (because it justifies certain beliefs)? Or is really none of these things? I am going to write a comment in the post after this that I hope will offer a good sense of how “faith” is variously used in contemporary philosophy literature, and also provide an outline of an argument for my own view about faith. It may take me a while to finish it.

  21. Matt K–
    This may be a little obtuse. if so, all apologies. on the evangelical view, faith does, in a sense, provide justification for one’s belief. Especially in Paul’s letters we find this principle asserted, for instance. ““Without faith, it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is God, and a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). In fact, the whole 11th chapter of Hebrews chronicles the life of faith through Biblical exemplars. My belief, in other words my faith that God is God and that God is, is the evidence, the proof, the justfication for my belief in the teachings of the Bible. It is in a way a sort of fundamental presupposition. If I have no faith that God is God and assert that God is not, then I lack the rational basis for belief. As for your comment that one should guard against the assertion that faith should not appear divorced from reason, I wholly agree, but this is something I myself struggle with, that is, finding a rational basis for faith. It seems there are two pulls on my mind: one, the demands of reason and, two, the demands of faith. I’m interested to see what your research uncovers…

    Jason–
    I’m troubled by your contention that the atheist asserts that God is an idea. If the atheist asserts that God is an idea, and that that idea is an extant idea, then the atheist has implicitly asserted that God exists (even if God exists only as an idea), therefore the atheist is no longer an atheist, but a theist.

  22. Matt –

    I agree with you that there are arguements for an atheist to believe in the non-existence of God. But that’s not what I was saying entirely. I was trying to use faith as Mr. Grey and Philip were using it, but applying it to an atheist. They were saying that faith for an atheist and faith for a theist were different. I feel that an atheist CAN (I can’t figure out how to use italics) use faith in the same way as a theist with the same consequences. One of the consequences is that an atheist can just state her belief, ‘there is no god’, and that’s it. Nothing else has to be said and the topic becomes negligent, as far as an arguement goes.

    I do understand however that an atheist is concerned with the actual existence of God, but I don’t have the capacity to run through those arguements.

    It seems to me that when faith is used in this way above, it’s put into foundationalists terms. Faith is its own justification not relying on anything else: it’s self evident. Also, it seems that if the way we receive faith – if by dogmatism or not – determines what kind of faith we have, then faith is put into reliabilist terms. I’m not quite sure if faith can be put into coherentist terms.

    I’d also like to see what you come up with.

    Philip –

    I’m not sure that an extant idea of God has the same ontological status as a theist’s God. An extant idea exists, but it doesn’t exist like a tree does or the mountains. If that’s what you meant by extant.

  23. a thing either is or is not. there is no quasi-existence. if God is an idea and that idea exists, then God exists, necessarily and irregardless of the ontological status of the idea of God vs. the ontological status of an omni-omni God. There may indeed be different ways of being, but existence is existence. asserting that God only exists as an idea is nevertheless asserting that God exists.

    i also don’t follow what a non-foundationalist faith would look like, or what it’s function would be. if there is no ideological foundation for faith, then what would it be based on? if i have no foundations for my faith, then what is my faith in?

  24. if you are saying the idea of God exists, then the idea of God exists, that’s fine. That’s all I’m saying. But it doesn’t follow that God exists. No one would accept, as arguement, that my idea of three-headed sea monster leads to there actually being one. When I say “…it doesn’t exist like a tree does or mountains,” I’m referring to it’s being: a tree and an idea of a tree are two different things, but yes they both exist. God existing and the idea of God are two different things.

    I don’t know if the non-foundationalist question was directed at me, but I was saying that faith is foundational.

  25. I’m not sure if we have the same meaning when we are saying foundationalist. The view I am referring to is strictly epistemological. Alvin Plantinga gave a foundationalist argument for religious belief in 1983. He said that belief in God is properly basic. Therefore, belief in God is justified and warranted. The view is far more complex then I just made it out to be. However, foundationalism went out of style rather recently in analytic epistemology. The reason is because foundationalism requires an internalistic justification. A person needs to be aware of the thing that does the justifying. The problem is that any view that requires an internalist justification would seem to greatly restrict what we can actually come to know. Many of the things that we thought we knew, we end up not knowing at all. Basically, internalist theories have trouble handling skeptical problems. So there has been a general move toward externalist theories of justification, like reliabilism.

    Alvin Plantinga has recently altered his view in order to accommodate an externalist theory of justification. Here is a good summary of that view:
    “With respect to the belief that God exists, Plantinga holds that God has so constituted us that we naturally form this belief under certain circumstances; since the belief is thus formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties in an appropriate environment, it is warranted for us, and, insofar as our faculties are not disrupted by the noetic effects of sin, we hall believe the proposition deeply and firmly, so that we can be said, in virtue of the great warrant accruing in this belief for us, to know that God exists.” (William Lane Craig “Theistic Critiques of Atheism” endnote 4 in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism). Plantinga’s view is further articulated and criticized by Keith Parsons in a later chapter in the above volume. If Plantinga is right in his more recent view, then there is an example of a non-foundationalist conception of religious belief. However, it would seem to bid farewell to any notion of faith, unless faith is the properly functioning cognitive faculty.

  26. Thank you for the epistemology refresher. I was looking through my Pojman anthology, which is fairly decent, and had forgotten about the internalist and externalist version of foundationalism.

    I did find something else interesting in an article written by Timothy McGrew titled “A Defense of Classical Foundationalism” from 1997. Here’s a couple of quotes:

    “Epistemologists speak of the connection between premises and conclusions as the sort of thing that can be expressed by an (italics) epistemic principle (italics) with a conditional form; roughly, if anyone makes such and such an inference from justified beliefs, then the person is justified in believing this propostion.

    For basic beliefs, however, there are no such premises. In this case, the evidence will have to take the form of an epistemic principle regarding the way in which the belief is formed, a principle that states (roughly) that whenever anyone forms a belief in manner X, it is a justified belief. In neither case are we solely concerned with S’s evidence for the truth of P; these epistemic principles come in only when we are looking for evidence for the ruth of the claim that S (italics) is justified in believing that P (italics). The individual in question doesn’t neceearily have to know what the principle is; no one has to become a philosopher in order to know such mundane facts as “I have a headache.””

    So his “I have a headache” would be something he considers a foundational belief. Do we need to prove to someone, or can we, that we have a headache. I’m not sure that the belief “I have a headache” is comparable to the belief “God exists,” but it’s interesting none-the-less for foundationalism.

  27. Sounds like: It depends on what the meaning of is is.

    Faith, in the sense of what Cal Thomas is writing about, is “the body of dogma of a religion” and not simply “belief without proof or evidence.” (Sure, part of Christianity is said to be “belief without evidence,” but that is belief _in Jesus_ without evidence.)

    Atheism is the lack of such faith, or, the belief that such faith is wrong or misguided.

    Atheism is not dogma. How can it be? (I could be missing something though.)

    I, as an atheist, simply do not believe that only one of the myriad of religious systems developed by humans on this planet is true and that all the others are false. If one is false, they must all be false; ergo, they are all false.

    (If my last statement is wrong I hope somone here can show me why. I like people smarter than me. It means that I can learn from them.)

  28. Ga,

    Your last sentence is a conditional with a conclusion.

    1) If x, then y
    2) Therefore, y

    You are missing a premise. Of course, the missing premise is the most important part of your argument. For this to be a valid argument you need to claim that one religion is false. All that you said prior to the argument is that you “believe” that all religions are false, which is just your conclusion. This would be the valid form of your argument:

    1) If one religion is false, then all religions are false
    2) One religion is false
    3) Therefore, all religions are false.

    However, even if you made this argument it still is not sound. What makes premise (1) true? Why if one religion is false, are all the others also false? Most religions have at least some incompatible views with all other religions. So I do not see how if you even could prove that one religion was false that all others must also be false. The only way you could do this is to show that all religions shared some common doctrine that was central to their belief systems, and then definitively show that the shared doctrine is false. But, even proving that deities do not exist would not work because there are several religions that do not have a belief in a deity (e.g. Confucianism, Jainism, and some forms of Buddhism). I do not know what this shared doctrine could even be. This is the reason that defining religion has been so problematic.

    “Faith, in the sense of what Cal Thomas is writing about, is ‘the body of dogma of a religion’ and not simply ‘belief without proof or evidence.’” Some dictionaries list up to nine definitions of ‘faith.’ However, I do not believe that Cal Thomas is simply talking about ‘faith’ as ‘a faith,’ in other words a doctrine. Thomas says, “It takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in Him. It is also intellectually lazy.” If we replace the word ‘faith’ with the word ‘doctrine’ we get, “It takes more doctrine not to believe in God than to believe in Him.” This does not seem to make much sense. The question is: what definition is Thomas actually using. The most likely candidate is to use it as a synonym of ‘trust.’ The thing that I was hinting at in my prior comments to this topic is that the definitions of faith are vague, at least to be useful for philosophy. Some definitions say faith is just belief. But, if we use ‘belief’ for ‘faith’ in the above quote, something is clearly wrong. My claim is that faith seems to have some epistemic status. It is used to justify the beliefs the person holds. Trust seems to be a key component, but it cannot be the only component, if it is to justify the (religious) beliefs being held.

    Also, the claims being made above in some comments is that an atheist has some beliefs which are ungrounded (they are not based on other beliefs because they are basic). I agree with this view. But, some further claim that then the atheist must have faith in these seemingly foundational beliefs. I disagree with this view because some beliefs are self-evident or justified by other means (e.g. produced by reliable belief forming processes). In order to adequately argue for this view though, I need to have a clear conception of what faith is and then show how the atheist does not need to have any of it to hold their belief about the non-existence of God. I’m currently completing work on this project.

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