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Thesis Belief in God can be rational without arguments: Plantinga’s proper basicality deserves a fair hearing

Omar Ragab Fellow
· 5 replies
Faith & reasonAnalyticIslamicMedieval ChristianAlvin PlantingaW. K. CliffordWilliam Alston#evidentialism#great-pumpkin-objection#proper-basicality#reformed-epistemology
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Where it stands

I work at a hospital in Cairo, and in the evenings I read the arguments for God, usually in the order the kalam theologians would approve of. But I have come to think that the most interesting move in recent philosophy of religion is one that does not offer a new argument at all.

Clifford's famous principle says it is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Applied to God, that means belief is rational only if supported by good arguments.

Alvin Plantinga's reply: look at the beliefs we all hold rationally without arguments. That I had breakfast. That other people have minds. That the world did not begin five minutes ago. Nobody believes these on the basis of an argument, and most people could not produce one. They are properly basic: produced directly by faculties working properly in the right circumstances. Plantinga's proposal, developed most fully in Warranted Christian Belief (2000), is that belief in God can be like that, produced by a natural capacity to perceive the divine. Alston's Perceiving God (1991) makes a related case from religious experience.

The Islamic idea of fiṭra, an innate disposition towards recognising God, gives me a vocabulary for this that Plantinga's Calvinist sources also have in their own way.

My thesis is modest: this is a serious position, not a dodge. It shows at most that theistic belief can be rational without argument if it is true and produced in the right way. It does not show that it is true. But it removes the assumption that the believer without arguments is automatically irrational.

I know the standard objections. Please make them.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Aoife Kilbride

    For Fellow

    I'll defend Omar's modest thesis, with a Catholic complication. My Church teaches, at the First Vatican Council, that God can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason. So Catholics are committed to natural theology being possible. But "can be known by argument" does not mean "must be believed by argument". My grandmother never read Aquinas, and I would not call her faith irrational. Plantinga explains why that is not a scandal.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Eliana Halpern

    For Fellow

    Judah Halevi's Kuzari makes a related point from the Jewish side. The philosopher's God, reached by argument, is a conclusion; the God of Abraham is known through relationship and through the testimony of a community. Halevi was not anti-rational, but he thought argument was the wrong foundation for a living faith. Plantinga's view is a much more technical cousin of that intuition.

    Helpful · 2

Against the thesis 2

  1. Arvind Poojary

    Against Fellow

    The Great Pumpkin objection, in its updated form. If Christians may treat belief in God as properly basic, why can't any group treat its own central belief as properly basic, pumpkins included? Plantinga answered that not just anything counts: the belief must be produced by properly functioning faculties. But that only helps if we already know which faculties are functioning properly, and that is what is in dispute. The criterion cannot be applied without assuming the conclusion.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Omar Ragab

      Fellow

      Arvind, I accept that the objection has force. My reply is that it shows something different from what it is usually taken to show. It shows that proper basicality settles the question of whether belief could be rational, not whether it is, and that the real dispute moves to whether there is a faculty that reliably produces such beliefs. That is a dispute about truth, which is where I think it belongs. The religious person and the sceptic are then arguing about the world, not about the believer's competence.

  2. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    Against Fellow

    As a Thomist I am grateful to Plantinga and still uneasy. If the arguments of natural theology are not needed, they tend to atrophy, and then faith cannot answer the person who asks honestly for reasons. Aquinas wrote the Summa contra Gentiles for exactly that conversation. Proper basicality is a good defence against the charge of irrationality; it is a poor substitute for the work of showing what reason can reach.

    Helpful · 1