believing by faith an essay in the epistemology and ethics of religious belief may 2007

[...]... possible, it seems an epistemically—even morally—irresponsible thing to do Believing by faith appears to be little more than wishful thinking, and to share the same loss of integrity Once evidential guidance is left behind (if, indeed, it can ² The perspective of Reformed epistemology is set out in essays by William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff... be justified even if it is indeed beset by evidential ambiguity Obviously enough, philosophers committed to theism who are inclined to ¹ For a useful survey of the Philosophy of Religion since the mid-20th century, see The Ethics of Religious Belief: a Recent History’, in Andrew Dole and Andrew Chignell (eds), God and the Ethics of Religious Belief: New Essays in Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge... he is able to detect flaws in each of the famous ‘proofs’ of God’s existence he has studied, and can see no way to improve on them He thus becomes concerned whether he could be justified in continuing to hold and act on his faith- beliefs in the absence of proof of their truth ⁴ The term ‘metaquestion’ is Plantinga’s: see Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 67 Although my own answer to it is quite different... to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the Universe’ (The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, rev 1993): 1) ⁷ A belief will be a faith- belief, then, in this stipulated sense, just in case it is held in, and has the right kind of relation to, some particular context in the same way that beliefs... acknowledge the service Plantinga has done by drawing attention to the importance of this metaquestion introduction: towards an acceptable fideism 5 • An eco feminist is convinced that people are morally in error in believing in God, since she thinks that such belief supports the evils of patriarchy and ‘man’s dominion over nature’ • A scholar spends a lifetime considering all the available evidence for and. .. forced and persistently and necessarily unable to be settled by rational assessment of external evidence One either does or does not ‘buy into’ a whole doxastic framework of theistic beliefs; and the notion of committing to the truth of the relevant framing principles with some intermediate degree of partial belief determined by their probability on the evidence can make no sense given that evidence is in. .. for and against the existence of the Christian God and comes to the conclusion that the balance of probability supports such belief and so feels vindicated in his continuing orthodox Christian faith • A Christian woman has fallen in love with a Muslim man and wonders whether it would be right (or indeed, even psychologically possible) for her to convert to Islam out of a desire to share his faith just... in holding and acting on their religious beliefs; or whether, in so doing, they are expressing or honouring salient virtues; or whether holding religious beliefs is intellectually or morally respectable; or whether, in acting upon those beliefs believers are doing what they ought to do, or what it is permissible for them to do Notice that sometimes the focus of these questions is on the status of people’s... ‘know’ it Theistic religious belief, furthermore, is centrally a matter of believing in God (in the sense of placing one’s trust in God) and, in this sense, to believe is obviously more than just to have a certain kind of attitude to a proposition ⁶ There is room for variation, of course, in formulated definitions of the classical theist’s God Compare, for example, Richard Swinburne’s definition of God... the epistemology of religious belief: I seek to defend a version of fideism The core issue in the epistemology of religious belief is generally taken to be the question of whether religious beliefs are epistemically justified, with religious beliefs’ typically specified as the beliefs of classical theism This issue provides the familiar territory for perennial philosophical debate between theists and atheists—the . for and against the existence of the Christian God and comes to the conclusion that the balance of probability supports such belief and so feels vindicated in his continuing orthodox Christian faith. •.