I got another question that's been bugging me, and it's a heavy one. I also extremely appreciate your knowledge on this subject.
Is the idea of faith in god, rational? By "rational" I don't mean whether or not it is acceptable to have a belief for the sake of the advantages it brings, psychologically or otherwise. I mean the idea in the belief in God itself; belief in something that cannot have any empirical evidence whatsoever, and doesn't have a deductive proof? If it isn't necessarily irrational, how can it differ? If it is rational, how? And if it isn't irrational, how is this a strawman? This may seem jarring, but it's something that I have been thinking about, and I'd love to get someone who knows more about the subject.
That's probably the biggest question in philosophy of religion right at the moment. Alvin Plantinga, who is probably the most prominent philosopher in the field, argues that it can be rational to believe in something even without any overwhelming evidence (or without any evidence at all). The reason is that if it seems to you that something is the case, then it would be irrational not to believe it. Of course that just raises the next problem: if something just seems the case to you, is
that rational?
Really the problem is a much wider philosophical one. We believe many things that we can't prove: we believe, for example, that other people have minds. We also believe that we did not miraculously spring into existence five minutes ago with our memories fully formed. Of course, if that had happened, we couldn't know it; we would think we were quite old. So how do we know it's not true? Of course we don't know either way, but no-one would believe that it were true. Well, why not? Is it rational to believe that we are more than five minutes old? If it is, then what makes that belief rational? If it is not, then can we criticise anyone for believing anything else irrationally?
According to the epistemological theory known as foundationalism, all beliefs are either (a) basic beliefs or (b) believed on the basis of basic beliefs. For example, my belief that I am sitting here now is based on the more basic belief that what my senses tell me is probably true. My belief that what my senses tell is probably true is not based on any other belief; I can't justify it on the basis of something more basic. So that's a basic belief. It's just like a building with many stories: each storey is built upon a lower one, until you get to the foundations, which are the most basic. Now according to this, we all have certain basic beliefs, and different people will have different basic beliefs, although no doubt there are some which are common to everyone, or almost everyone. The question now is which of these are
properly basic beliefs. That is, which beliefs can we rationally treat as basic? For example, most people would suppose that the belief that our senses are normally trustworthy is properly basic. It's a belief that, psychologically speaking, we cannot really shake off; moreover, if we were to stop believing it, life would be unliveable. So perhaps that is a properly basic belief.
Now the question is: can religious beliefs be properly basic? Plantinga says they can, although his argument is a bit thin: he argues that the criteria that are normally put forward for identifying basic beliefs are wrong, so no-one is entitled to say that religious beliefs are
not basic.
He also argues that we have a sort of natural tendency to believe in God, and in virtue of this, the belief is properly basic. But even if theism is quite common, its hardly as universal as belief in external bodies or other minds or the antiquity of the universe. In fact, if you're talking about classical theism of the Christian kind, then its a minority belief. Plantinga could respond that belief in the supernatural of one kind or another is a majority belief, but why would that do him any good? If we can only say that that is a properly basic belief then it doesn't go far to establishing the rationality of theism any more than the prevalence of belief in morality establishes the rationality of utilitarianism. Plantinga says that belief in God is properly basic only under certain circumstances, such as having lots of good reasons to believe in God. But perhaps only a deluded person could think they have such reasons. And if theism is properly basic only for a deluded person, what good is that?
So you can see there's lots of matter for consideration here. Plantinga also has a rather neat argument for the claim that, if God does actually exist, then people who believe in him do not simply have a true belief; they actually
know that God exists. There's a difference between true belief and knowledge, of course. I think that Plantinga's argument there is actually quite good provided one accepts his definition of knowledge as warranted true belief. But that itself is controversial (ever since Plato, philosophers have been unable to agree on a definition of knowledge).
I would disagree with your claim that the existence of God
cannot have any empirical evidence whatsoever. It seems to me that there could be good evidence for God's existence. If a big booming voice speaks out of the clouds to us to deliver edifying teaching, and there is no apparent naturalistic explanation, then I'd say that would be good empirical evidence for God's existence. Of course it wouldn't
prove God's existence, but that's not the same thing.
As well, what do you think of the various arguments against the existence of god perpetuated by the layman/CFCer atheist, or atheists in general?
I don't know what arguments have been flung around in CFC recently. I think the argument from evil is good and I have not yet found any convincing response to it, other than "We don't know why God permits evil, but he does." That's perfectly possible - it could be the case that God exists and that evil exists as well - but I don't think it's likely.
As I mentioned, I also think that the concept of God itself is not very clear. Leibniz argued that Descarte's argument for God's existence would work if only Descartes could show that God is possible. Leibniz then proceeded to argue that in fact God is possible. However, it is notoriously difficult to prove the possibility of something and I don't think Leibniz succeeded in this case. Personally I'm not sure that it is really coherent to say that there is a thing which does not exist today, and did not exist yesterday, and will not exist tomorrow, which in fact has never existed and never will, and which does not exist in any place at all, but which nevertheless does exist. But that is what classical theism claims.
There are also bad arguments against theism too, of course. For example, Richard Dawkins would have us believe that the theory of evolution is an argument against God. I can't see any force whatsoever in that claim. But I loathe Dawkins with every fibre of my being, so perhaps I'm biased.
Are you aware of any alternative explanation/theories that could explain their convictions?
We don't know enough about what happened and indeed what their convictions were, precisely. The resurrection appearances in the Gospels are notoriously hard to reconcile with each other (they all disagree over who saw the risen Jesus and under what circumstances). It gets worse if we take into account Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 15, which talks about five hundred people seeing Jesus at once, an event which is not mentioned in any other source. According to the Gospels, the risen Jesus was a physical person who could touch and eat things, but he could walk into locked rooms and disguise his appearance. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul states that he met the risen Jesus; but according to Acts 9, he saw only a bright light. And Paul also insists that although the resurrection involves the body, it is no longer physical but spiritual. What on earth does that mean?
Basically, it seems that although the early Christians all agreed that Jesus had been raised, they weren't sure about precisely what that meant or who had seen him. So given the confusing nature of this evidence it is hard to know what sort of explanation is required. Of course people have believed all sorts of odd things that turned out not to be true. We need only think of some of the wierder cults of our own time, some of which have turned out to be tragically false. Now that doesn't mean that early Christianity was a cult, of course, simply that under certain circumstances the human mind is capable of believing things that most people wouldn't believe under most circumstances. We may never know really what caused the beliefs of the first Christians or even what those beliefs were; in the absence of any clearer evidence for what they believed and did in the early days, it would certainly be quite wrong to say that the only explanation for their beliefs would be that they were true.
I just don't, sorry. I find the Old Testament incredibly dull. I'm just not interested in the sort of things that it's about. The New Testament is more interesting since it actually contains discussions of doctrine and so on which are easier to analyse in a vaguely philosophical way. But I find Paul thoroughly aggravating as a person, which doesn't help, and most of the rest of the New Testament is inferior to his writing - at least he has creative genius. The Gospels are interesting once you examine how they relate to each other: for example, if you study Mark and Matthew really carefully, you gain a great appreciation for what a talented writer Matthew was, in the way that he takes material from Mark and re-works it in his own way (though why he has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on two donkeys at once, presumably with a foot on each one as if surfing, is beyond me). John's Gospel is theologically very interesting too, but I find those long speeches very tedious and repetitive.
When I used to go to church, some Christians would talk about how the Bible was the best book one could read and about how you should read it every day. I wondered if they were talking about the same Bible. I think I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out with pincers than have to read the Bible every day. Of course there are many good bits, but you really have to look for them...
