THE PHILOSOPHY OF FAITH
Index – Click to navigate
WHAT’S
WRONG WITH BLIND FAITH?
THE
ARGUMENTS FOR THE GOODNESS OF BLIND FAITH
ARGUMENTS
FOR THE RATIONALITY OF BLIND FAITH
INTRODUCTION
It is because religion and many
other dark ideologies warp reason, reason is thinking carefully and clearly and
avoiding contradictions, and thereby make a virtue out of woolly thinking that
this book has been written. It offers
you the chance to feel confident in your thinking and to learn how to think and
how to protect yourself against the disciples of reason who are anything but.
THE NATURE OF BELIEF
Belief is taking something to be likely to be true. You could be wrong but you believe what the evidence tells you.
Evidence is an indication that something is probably true. Everybody interprets evidence differently. When you believe something, it is because you think the evidence says it is probably true.
Belief is caused by your reason.
You think to see if you accept that what you perceive should be taken as evidence or correct for unless you do that you cannot see if it really is evidence. You have to think before you can accept anything as evidence.
Even irrational people reason in some form, they just do it badly but
they try to base themselves on reason all the same. You need to doubt things before you can
believe them. If you refuse to doubt it
is a sign you don’t really believe for if you did you wouldn’t be afraid to ask
questions and have doubts.
If you say you believe something without evidence, you really just mean
that you feel that it is true. But
feeling is not believing for you can feel that what
you know is not true is true. If you
believe something because you want to and not because of the evidence you have
for it that is no better for the evidence has nothing
to do with causing the belief.
There is no belief without evidence because you cannot take something to
be probably true without evidence or enough of it. For example, if you know that everybody in a
pub gossips and slanders and you believe a bad report about somebody that you
have heard there this is blind belief for it depends on inadequate evidence for
you know and believe that the testimony is unreliable. It is because you know what the customers are
like that you have to be tricking yourself into thinking that you do believe
what they are saying. This kind of
belief is called blind belief because it is blind to the reality.
Blind faith is trying to force yourself to
believe in something. You cannot just
decide to make yourself believe in something for it will be doomed to failure
(page 14, What Do Existentialists Believe?).
It is not belief to take something as true without evidence or sufficient
evidence – that is assuming. Assuming is
just a pretend belief.
Some may object that if blind faith is not faith then we believe in
nothing but won’t admit it because blind faith is the root of all our
beliefs. They say we believe we are not
dreaming now without evidence and that we believe in reason without
evidence. But what we sense tells us
what is real so there is evidence and evidence is the indicator of what is
likely to your mind and not necessarily likely in itself or the objective
sense. And we believe in reason for it
is its own undeniable testimony and not because reason says reason is
true. If I sense blue I sense blue and
even if what I sense is an illusion I have still sensed blue so there is a
sense that everything I sense is real and that is why if what I sense behaves
like a person then it probably is a person even if the person is just an
illusion. I don’t know if the outside
world is real but from the fact that I always experience truth it is probably
real. Reasonable belief can be wrong so
if I believe something reasonably and it is wrong then it does not follow that
I was into blind or irrational faith.
Few people are taught these truths and few experience them so the
sceptics are in the majority. You can’t
have beliefs without them.
How can I say I always experience truth?
I can experience that there is no car on the road I am walking on and be
wrong and end up in a hit-and-run incident.
What I sense is always the truth in content but I am just missing
something I always sense truth but when I go wrong it is because I have sensed
some of the truth. When I believe
something that is obviously untrue and should be even to me it is because my
perception of truth has changed and I see truth differently from what it really
is. It is still truth to me.
It is absurd to say I blindly believe I am not dreaming now for even when
I am dreaming I reasonably believe that I am not unless I have a lucid dream in
which I realise I am dreaming. What my
senses sense even in a dream is real in the sense that I sense something that is
real to me. It is true that in
mathematics the basic mathematical operations are self-evident but the others
are not for they are more complicated calculations. But although I cannot prove them I know that
they are probably right for they seem to be and I arrive at them by using the
self-evident basic calculations. I see
no reason why nature would fool me in that matter.
Most people do not realise that they have to see that reason and
experience are or are probably right and are always right in the subjective
sense though not necessarily in the objective in order to believe. Millions of
clergy don’t either. Many people don’t
even think about it. Truths are only
self-evident when you let yourself see them as such.
Some say that blind faith is necessary to start you off on the way of
knowledge and then as you use it, it sometimes verifies itself. For example, you blindly believe that cats
are warm and when you touch them you find out that they really are. But you could just guess and find the guess
verified. Blind faith is unreasonable
for it goes too far.
REAL AND UNREAL BELIEF
Belief is thinking that something is likely to be true. It is not knowing that it is true. And it is not merely feeling that it is true.
There is no belief without evidence because you cannot take something to
be probably true without evidence or enough of it. The kind of belief that depends on no evidence is called blind belief
because it is blind to the reality.
We all see evidence for things that we don't believe. Just because you have evidence for your belief doesn't mean that it is a belief. It is true that a belief needs evidence to exist but it is not true that everything based on evidence is necessarily a belief. It could still be an assumption. Many people mistake their assumptions for beliefs. Some even mistake their beliefs for assumptions. Assumptions are not worthy of respect. People assume beliefs are worthy of respect. But surely until somebody gives us evidence for a belief they claim to have we are entitled to assume the belief is an assumption or probably one? Surely they can't expect respect for their belief? Evidence is such a problem in religion that it is clear that all, if not nearly all, religious beliefs should be assumed to be assumptions.
It is not belief to take something as true without evidence or sufficient evidence – that is assuming. Assuming is just a pretend belief. You can believe in something on little evidence when you are sure the evidence is good and that there is no contradiction anywhere. Then you need to find the evidence against it unsatisfactory. The satisfactoriness or unsatisfactoriness of the evidence depends on how serious the consequences of the belief will be or should be or are meant to be. For example, you need an awful lot of evidence to believe in a religion that orders you to die for it like Catholicism does.
Insufficient evidence will be when there is more evidence against the
idea, when the evidence you use is incoherent, and when it is irrelevant (you
don’t prove the existence of bread from the existence of wheat) and when there
is not enough evidence to justify the sacrifice the belief requires. Examples of religion using insufficient
evidence include its request for us to do everything for the love of a God for
whom there is little evidence and tons of evidence against. It's request for us to
refrain from homosexuality or heresy because Jesus Christ says so is another
instance. I could go on forever. Another example of insufficient evidence is
taking the evidence of an unreliable source as true.
You have to be sure that there is no other interpretation of the evidence
before you can accept it. If you just
assume that design in the universe proves God and don’t try to see if there is
another explanation then it is not the evidence that causes your belief in God
but your laziness and the result is fake faith.
If you think the evidence backs God you still have to keep checking it. If you don’t you are manipulating your
perception of the evidence and that is not belief.
Anybody who has got blind faith has got to be aware of it. Try believing that you will go to Hell
forever tomorrow if you go out the door now.
You will find that you are aware that this is not likely most of the
time. The more you try to believe it the
more you are reminded that you do not believe it. At some level you know it is blind and faked
faith and nobody should feel sorry for people with blind faith. The person who has blind faith is just a
hypocrite and a liar. The person who
practices self-deception intends to deceive themselves so they must know deep
down what they are at.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH BLIND FAITH?
Faith is not knowing that something is true but holding that it probably
is true. Faith is not complete
certainty.
Religion urges people to believe in what there is no evidence for. It won’t admit it but it does. Many religions mean something like Gnosis by
faith. That is, instead of saying
something like God probably exists you have to say that God absolutely certainly
exists or that you know he exists though you do not. The Gnostics said they knew things magically
or miraculously which was how they got round the problem of how you can know
that you don’t know. This turns faith
into a lie you tell yourself and others that you are sure of what you can’t be
sure of. This is bad with faith and
worse with blind faith. Anybody who does
such a thing is doing harm.
They say that blind beliefs are right or should be believed. But if they ought to have beliefs that have
no foundation then everybody else should do the same and have different ones if
they want. Such faith is sheer arrogance
and bigotry. For one blind-believer to
say to another, “I command you in the name of God and on the authority of my
God to believe what I believe,” is to be a snob.
If I may blindly believe in a doctrine that creates suffering that would
not be without it then I have to encourage others to invent and believe
whatever evil doctrines they wish because I am doing it myself. If I do not then I am a bigot.
Blind faith is evil in itself so it is ridiculous to say that one can
have a good blind faith in a good God or whatever.
The love blind faith endorses is fake love and not the real thing.
It is ungodly for
it puts guesses before reality and even God.
It is a lie for it puts guesses before truth. And yet by claiming to be correct it is
taking a stance against lying. That is
hypocritical.
It is murderous like when it commands women to prefer death to using
artificial contraception or when it commands people to die to speak its
message. The Roman Catholic Church
officially teaches that you should die rather than deny her or seriously defy
her. If you have a choice between
spitting on the bread it says is the body of Christ and getting tortured to
death she tells you that you have to pick the latter. The Bible supports the preference of death to
apostasy or letting God down. It
commands martyrdom.
If you believe something then you have to act in accordance with it or at
least believe that you ought to. It will
affect the way you live your life. To
make a person think that something not sinful is sinful is unjust. When you propagate blind faith you are
propagating harm. There is no such thing
as a harmless blind belief. Error harms
truth and without truth we would not be so it insults love and peace which are
the daughters of truth.
Blind faith is purely a matter of the will and not of reason. If it is good it follows that the person who
will not harbour it is bad and sinful.
Those who advocate blind faith in religion teach that it is a sin to have a doubt in
relation anything that blind faith teaches. To teach that it is a sin, is
to slander the doubter.
If nobody doubted what they were told then the world would never
progress.
The Christian religion says that faith in it is a gift from God. God enables you to believe. But if you have free will then he does not
need to. And if you cannot believe
unless he does something to you then he has prevented you from believing before
that. He has forced you not to
believe. He has forced you to be wrong
and accordingly cannot be trusted.
Now how would God make a person who is free believe? If he shoves the will then he is forcing you
to be able to choose whether or not you will believe. But that means that you were not free to choose
to believe before that.
The notion of faith as a gift from God implies that we need God to give us faith. Christianity says faith needs to be a gift to be any good. Without God giving it, it means nothing.
So we don't have the free will to believe properly. God has to do the work for us and put the belief in us like it was a vitamin injection to the soul. Faith makes us more free. We must have had partial free will before. Or perhaps we could have believed but evilly didn’t want to.
God should be limiting the free will of men
like Hitler instead of trying to stop people from having the truth and its
benefits. If belief was resisted then
that idea can only fuel inter-religious strife.
For example, the Catholics will hate the Protestants if they think the
Protestants knowingly oppose Catholic truth for then it would follow that the
Catholics are being shot in Northern Ireland because of a system of religion that is not
even sincere and loves trouble. And vice
versa.
The doctrine that we need faith as a gift from God simply proves there is no God for it implies that human free will cannot be blamed for the evils in the world. The blame must be squarely placed at the feet of God.
The devotees of irrational and blind faith should be told about how sick
it is for they have a right to know and it may be ourselves that may have to
suffer over their bigotry or at least at the hands of those they pollute with
their bad example.
CLIFFORD, JAMES AND PASCAL
William Clifford was the philosopher who was famous for teaching that
believing anything without enough validated evidence was immoral.
William James agreed with him but made a few exceptions. The exceptions are as follows.
-
The first exception is a forced option.
That is when you cannot stop behaving as if a belief was true when you
are trying to doubt or deny it. For example, if
you cannot stop believing that your dead father is alive you may as well believe
it. The
reasoning is that when it affects your life you might as well believe in
it. But you can stop behaving that way
eventually. Also why not keep trying to
doubt or deny it and enjoy the benefits of the rejected belief and the benefits
of living as if it were true? To believe
in a forced option would be to believe something because habit and the heart
tell you to and you know you can’t listen to them so how could it be belief? It is pretend belief. It is mad to suggest that a young man who
cannot stop believing that his neighbour is his real father should believe it. That would not be belief but a sign of an emotional
disorder.
It may be objected that unsupported faith is reasonable when I have to
believe that I will be shot tonight when a stranger warns me but gives me no
reason to hold that he speaks the truth.
The reply is that
I don’t have to believe but I can still be careful and listen to him. I can do nothing about the fact that I can’t
believe without evidence and that is that.
-
The second option is a lively option.
A lively option is when the evidence tells you to believe in X and when
there is an equal amount of evidence telling you to deny X leaving you free to
pick whatever one you feel like.
But it is most reasonable to just admit that you don’t know which one is
right. That is all you can honestly
do. You need to believe what evidence
says but you don’t need to believe either of these when your mind can’t tell
you what is right? You can go along with
one but that is not the same as believing it.
-
The third option is a momentous option.
A momentous option is when something bad will happen if you don’t believe something you should believe it without evidence. James uses this argument to justify belief in religion for if we wait for evidence or more evidence or to get our intellectual problems with religion sorted out we will miss out on the good things it has to offer. He would say we should believe God will put us in Hell if we don't obey him for we cannot wait to after death when it may be too late and we might end up in Hell.
It is like a man
refusing to marry a woman in case she will not be an angel if he does marry her
though he has no reason to be suspicious of her. He misses out on the happiness he could have
with her for the sake of being sure.
James thinks it is and to yield to the fear of making a mistake instead
of yielding to the hope that it is not a mistake. If he represses his desire and while wanting
to be sure he isn’t going to be happy anyway.
First of all if God is good then we will have the benefits and joys of
religion without believing in it as long as we are sincere.
Secondly, an atheistic system of right conduct that makes one feel good
about oneself and that takes away fear of death is what the momentous option
would justify and not religion. Anything
else would be non-essential and therefore not a momentous option.
Thirdly, the man does not know if the woman is really what she pretends
to be and will not know until he marries her so James is asking for him and the
person who wants to join a religion to take a risk. How James can say that taking a risk means
that one believes in what one is doing is a mystery. It would not be a risk if one did.
Fourthly, we do not believe that everybody should give up on hoping that
things are true and that they should just wait and look for evidence all the
time. We do believe that you can accept
something as likely to be true with little evidence. But only as long as you can’t get
any more evidence. And as long as you have tried to look at the evidence against your position and
found it unsatisfactory. And as long as you have to really think the evidence is good.
And
as long as you are open to new evidences and understandings for close
mindedness is really opposition to faith and belief and evidence. The belief will be very weak but you have to
be true to what you think. In summary,
you can hope your weak belief is true and still look for evidence for it where
it is practical. There are lots of
important beliefs and we cannot verify them all more than we do. But if God is the most important thing then
God is different. The believer has a
duty to make sure he exists and to carry out this duty to the utmost.
Blaise Pascal supported something like James’ momentous option.
He said that it does no harm to believe in God and we will go to Hell and
lose his blessing in this life if we don’t.
So when we have nothing to lose and everything to gain we should believe
in God.
We can’t believe in God just because Christ wants us to curse us and
wants us to go to Hell for unceasing torments for disbelieving for we can’t
accept every religion or god just because it or he makes threats. Anybody who reveres the vice of blind faith
who tells you that something terrible will happen to you if you don’t believe
what they believe is just admitting that they would like to see the misfortune
visiting you. They wouldn’t be making a
dogma out of a guess otherwise. And how
could it be harmless to believe in and reverence a God who has no understanding
for people who don’t believe in him?
Where is his mercy for them?
Anybody could manipulate you if you have to believe in whoever says God
will do X, Y, Z if you don’t do this or that.
You can’t believe in every religion that makes threats and it is
sectarian and unfair to pick one religion out of many when you believe that you
should believe in a threatening religion just in case.
Clifford detested belief in God and in atheism for he felt there was no
evidence for either of them. James
argues that belief in God can be justified without evidence but his argument
can justify atheism as well. The atheist
can argue that atheism is a momentous option because it frees you from the
guilt and fear and extra rules that comes from belief in God. The atheist can argue that it is a higher
momentous option than theism for a good God will save you if you are a sincere
atheist making it immoral and irrational to believe in God.
Belief in atheism is actually simpler than belief in God so Clifford was
wrong. God leaves us with too many extra
questions to answer.
THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE GOODNESS OF BLIND FAITH
Some say faith without evidence is no big deal for it is harmless. There is no such thing as a harmless blind or
illogical belief. Even the most secret
one is a lie you tell yourself. It is
pretending to be sensible while being everything but that. When you lie to yourself like that, what business
have you looking for others to trust you?
It can only lead to you becoming a thief and a liar and a manipulative
wretch.
People will say that if you have a friend who you believe in despite the
overwhelming evidence that he did something terrible then it still makes sense
to believe in him. This is hailed as an
example of rational faith that is against the evidence. But if you don’t know the friend well it
would be irrational faith. Your
rejection of the overwhelming evidence is not based on a refusal to look at the
evidence but because you know him well enough to know that he did not do what
he was accused of. You are saying the
evidence is overridden by the evidence of his words and actions which you are
familiar with. You are saying that there
has been a mistake somewhere in the evidence against him. You are not preferring the lesser evidence to
the greater. It is never right to prefer
it.
Some say that blind faith is fine for if you wait until you verify
everything before you believe it you will believe nothing or not very
much. This is an argument that only
would appeal to people who were too sceptical of the existence of
evidence. We are not expecting everybody
to prove everything before they believe it.
We are asking them to get what evidence they can.
Some object that belief in reason is a blind belief and that since it is
good blind belief is not wrong. “Your
mind might not be programmed right so you are not sure of your reason”, they say. But if it is blind, then that does not mean
that other kinds of blind belief are good.
When to believe in reason and not to believe are both beliefs or reason
trying to work out probability what can we do but believe in reason? If I believe in God and say this has nothing
to do with reason I am lying. My belief in God is against reason for it is a
blind belief. That remains true even if my belief in reason itself is a blind belief for it is not
against reason to blindly believe in reason.
Others ask how you can believe in evidence and that what you see around
you is real when it could be a dream?
But I know it is not a dream for I know what dreams are like. They are not as real as what is around me and
they are frequently absurd.
Perhaps if blind belief makes religious people better people and makes
them happier they are doing right? But
in that case they should keep their blind beliefs to themselves. They should not give bad example with
supporting religion or a religious doctrine.
They should not let blind belief or blind faith influence their lives in an obviously religious
way like distributing Bibles but simply induce nice spiritual thrills. And since to offend truth is to scorn love
and compassion and life which cannot exist without truth it is never right to
espouse blind faith. And when they are
able to take comfort from faked faith they should be able to take comfort
without it.
ARGUMENTS FOR THE RATIONALITY OF BLIND FAITH
When you have no reason to doubt something that means that it is likely
to be true as far as your reason is concerned even if reality says different
for you don’t know what reality says. We
have no reason to doubt reason or what we sense. They are always right. If I make a mistake and think that 5+5=11 my
reason is right but I am using the wrong kind of reason.
So experience and reason are their own evidence. Anthony Kenny rejects this. According to him, a person cannot be his own
witness. “Nothing can provide evidence
for itself, any more than a witness can corroborate his own story. So evident propositions are believed without
evidence” (page 9, What is Faith?).
This is wrong. When a person
gives a testimony it is likely to be true unless something proves that it is
not. More people tell the truth than what lie. If Kenny is right then there is no
such thing as evidence and his belief in rational belief which he gets from
reason and experience has no evidence for it.
This error is the reason why he says that there is no evidence or
justification for the belief that only what has good evidence should be
believed. Thus he is accusing the
definition of faith as seeing what the evidence says to be probably true of
being self-refuting or contradictory.
Kenny, like Plantinga, says that a belief is
rational only if it is self-evident, can be shown to be true by the senses or
memory and by argument or experiment (page 20).
We agree with this but we reject his view that belief in this criteria
has no justification. And he does not
believe that a self-evident truth is certain but is only a guess. He thinks the guesses need to be made for or
without them we will know nothing anyway! It is irrational to have reason just because
you think you need it. Needing something
does not make it correct. Then you have
it only because you need it and not because it is rational so Kenny is not
rational at all. We can live without
believing anything and say that we live normal lives just because we do or are
programmed to and for no reason. Or you
can say that everything you experience may be trickery and illusion and your
memory may be continually being altered so you don’t know what is real but you
just go along with the illusion in case it is real. So, the notion of needing faith making faith
logical is totally wrong.
If we are just guessing that reason and experience are reliable then we
believe in nothing except that there is no evidence. If we say we believe in something then we are
kidding ourselves. We are just guessing
not reasoning.
The criteria says that evidence shows something to be likely to be true
but it can’t do that unless there is evidence for itself and it verifies
itself.
Kenny says it is clearly rational to believe things like reason is right
though there is no evidence for this belief or evidence for what is self-evident (page 9). But it is not rational for it does not come
from reason but from not thinking but guessing.
He is merely assuming this not thinking this. You can’t prove by reason that reason is
right if you think there is no evidence.
Plantinga and Anthony Kenny are in agreement that the
idea that rational belief is based on evidence and sees the evidence as it is,
is wrong (page 18, What is Faith?).
Kenny believes that it is not credulity but rationality to believe that
you are awake now and not dreaming, that people die and that
We do have evidence for
Even if all or most belief is blind and is still rational there will
still be beliefs that are more rational to blindly believe than others just
like some absurdities are sillier and more irrational than others. It will be more rational to believe in recent
memories than in ones further back. If
they are believed without reasons then it follows that it is irrational to
trust last week and before’s memories in serious matters
at all. So the doctor must prefer going
through the medical diary instead of letting memory dictate what to do in an
emergency. By the time the info is
obtained the person will be dead! Even
though memories are most probably right the doctor cannot take the risk of
killing the patient with the wrong treatment when he has no reason for trusting
in memory at all. Plantinga
and Kenny believe that evidence exists but how can it when all evidence is
perceived by the memory and the memory is you testifying to yourself that
something has happened when they reject testimony as evidence on its own? Plantinga and Kenny
need to accept the traditional views that there are self-evident truths that
are their own reason for believing in them and that rational belief is
apportioned to the evidence.
Plantinga and Kenny have developed their beliefs about
rational belief in the hope that what most people want to be rational belief is
made rational belief for they feel it is too strict to ask people to believe
whatever has the most evidence for it.
It is mad to say we should believe because we need beliefs. It is better to hold that if we need beliefs we will have them and they can't come out of nowhere we need to have reasons for our beliefs.
It is mad to say that it is reasonable to believe because we need beliefs for reasonable implies that there must be reasons that we have for holding these beliefs to be true that show they are true or probably true.
Needing to know anything does
not imply that we know it if we believe it.
I can rationally believe something that is in fact untrue therefore I
can think I need to know something and be wrong. And why should I listen to anybody telling me
I am wrong when they have no reasons for their own beliefs? What sense does it make for Kenny to tell me
it is rational to believe in
Anthony Kenny holds that circular reasoning or belief without evidence
(which is the same thing) is a rational basis for faith if it is about what is called
self-evident, something that the senses and memory say is fact or something
that can be defended by argument, investigation or experimentation. So, if I say that science is true because
nature does not change and perform an experiment that proves these, I can say
that nature does not change for science is true and my experiment is true for nature
does not change. This is a vicious
circle with an experiment or support in it so this would be the best and most
rational form of a vicious circle. Its
form is, “Science verifies X and X verifies science because science is true”.
So, according to Kenny everything then is believed without reasons when belief without
reason is the reason for believing in it.
This leads to the absurdity of saying this is a reason for believing
this and that is a reason for believing that but how can they be reasons when
there is no reason why they are reasons?
The sceptic thinks that nothing can be known. The sceptic doesn’t believe in reason or the senses or anything at all.
The sceptic is
supposed to believe that there is no possibility of believing or knowing
anything apart from this belief. The
sceptic has a reason for this belief and it is that nothing can prove itself to
him. Scepticism is actually better than Plantinga and Kenny’s system for at least it has a reason
for its foundational idea. Plantinga and Kenny can’t
think of any reason for verifying their foundational idea that reason and the
senses are valid conveyers of truth.
Some say that you need an infinity of arguments to prove anything. To prove a cat exists you need to prove that
it had a mother and you need to prove the mother exists and so on and on. But if you can prove reason and you don’t
need an infinite regress of arguments to do that then every belief you have
will rest on the foundation of reason.
Reason will be the centre and it proves itself and everything comes out
of it like spokes on a bicycle wheel.
If the criteria given by Kenny is right and there is no justification for it then it
follows that the more reasons that can be thought for the defence of the
criteria the
better. It is better than nothing. The more reasons the better. This would imply that an infinite trail of
arguments is necessary. But we cannot do this for we are only finite
creatures.
The criteria does not absolve anybody from the duty to provide evidence
and demolish the evidence against what is probably true except in regard to the
criteria itself.
IS GOD A BASIC BELIEF?
Plantinga and McGrath believe that the only way that
belief in God can be rational if there is no evidence for God is if God is a
basic belief. They agree that we can
give no reasons why reason and the senses and the memory and science can be
true so they are believed in without reasons and because we need to believe
them for if we don’t we will psychologically know and believe nothing. Plantinga thinks
that God is a basic belief because if there is a good God who has made us then
we can depend on reason and the senses and memory and on science for he is
honest and has made them reliable for he created them. But belief in a force that made things evolve
and which is as impersonal as electricity and which cannot mislead us would be
a better idea for it is simpler and there is no need for a good God. This power would not be God. One can simply believe that the senses are
real and have taught us reason. You know
that when you see blue you really see blue even if the blue object does not
exist and is an illusion so you know you should trust the senses. This is wiser than complicating things with a
God you cannot give evidence for.
Plantinga has no right to say that God is a basic
belief when he has not dealt with the evidence against God. It is one thing to say that it is okay to
believe in a God without reasons if it is a basic belief but it is another to
say it is okay to do this and not look at all the evidences against God first. He declared that attempts to prove God did not
provide evidence for God but warrant for God.
He defined warrant as the inclination to believe in God and argued that
this inclination was placed in us by God and it justifies belief in God for it
is like God telling us through our needs that he exists. So if you are inclined to believe in God then
you can rationally believe that God exists (page 70, What is Faith?). But most people have not believed in his kind
of all-good God. And the same could be
said to prove the existence of the tooth fairy.
What about those who have no such inclination? It is more proper to say we have an
inclination to believe in the possibility of a happy life after death. The more you doubt the existence of God the
less inclination you have to believe in God so Plantinga’s
theory does not help the case for God at all.
The conflict between the existence of evil and the existence of an
all-good God which religion says is a mystery and cannot be completely solved
means that God is beyond good and evil for he causes both not that it is a
mystery. Why? Because it is less of a mystery for God to be
beyond them. That gets rid of the
mystery. Kenny agrees (page 88, What
is Faith?). This thing is ignored by
Christians and Plantinga does just that.
BELIEF AND FREE AGENCY
Religion says it is a sin for a believer to disbelieve or doubt what it
teaches.
It contends that we freely choose what to believe.
Your belief is caused by your reason.
Therefore you cannot choose to believe something unless you already
believe it. You cannot help what you
think, because if you could then you would be able to believe what you thought
is unlikely. You can choose to think if
you have free will but you do not choose what you think. It just comes whether you want to think it or
not.
The idea that you can choose implies that faith is not rational but is a
gift from God. Yet religion wants to say
that it is based on reason and then it wants to say it is not.
McGrath observed that understanding is not an act for it makes no sense to say something like, “I was understanding algebra when the dinner burned”. He also observed that psychologically, you cannot decide to understand anything. You just look at the issues and a conclusion and insight happen automatically. The understanding and insight are not acts for you have to decide to act to act. But you don't decide to understand or gain insight - you just do.
I
do not agree with his view that understanding is not an act when it still
exists even when you are thinking of something different or are asleep (page
68-69). The understanding is in the
memory banks and not in the consciousness.
It is not present when you are not conscious of it and the understanding
is called up again to your consciousness
when necessary. But it is not re-understood. It is the same understanding all over
again. Faith or belief is caused by
understanding. Understanding forces it
to happen. Faith is understanding. When I believe X and Y and understand how
they are related then I get a new belief, Z, that ineluctably is forced on me
by X and Y. This belief is understanding
the relation.
CONCLUSION
Belief, agreeing
with what seems likely, is based on reason as you see reason. Real
belief does not stop investigating for it is not afraid of the truth. The only genuine and rational
belief there is, is belief that does its best to see the evidence and what it
says and is always open to correction.
Most of what passes for faith and belief around, is not that at all.
BOOKS
CONSULTED
A Catechism of
Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society,
A Common Faith, John Dewey,
A Primer of
Necessary Belief, Dawson Jackson ,Victor Gollancz
Ltd,
Apologetics and
Catholic Doctrine, M H Gill and Son Ltd,
Faith and Ambiguity,
Stewart R Sutherland, SCM Press,
God
and Philosophy,
In
Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
On Being a Christian, Hans Kung, Collins/Fount Paperbacks,
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard,
Reason and Religion, Anthony Kenny, Basil Blackwell Ltd,
The Balance of Truth, EI Watkin,
Hollis & Carter,
The Case Against
Christ, John Young, Falcon Books,
The Faith of a Subaltern, Alec de Candole,
Cambridge University Press, 1919
The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, A.C.
The Future of Belief Debate, Ed Gregory Baum, Herder and Herder,
The Student’s
Catholic Doctrine, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates,
Unblind Faith, Michael J Langford, SCM,
What Do Existentialists
Believe? Richard Appignanesi,
Granta Books,
What is Christianity? Very Rev W Moran DD, Catholic Truth Society
of
What is
Faith? Anthony Kenny,
THE WEB
THE PROBLEMS WITH BELIEFS www.nobeliefs.com/beliefs.htm