Download Reformed Epistemology

Western Worldview #3
Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, others, all
share a belief in God, or something very much like
God, the grounding of all existence.
Reformed Epistemology is a recent invention that
tries to explain how such belief can be rational or
reasonable.
At the same time, it offers a general account of human
knowledge and how beliefs are justified or
“warranted.”
Since this ‘Reformed’ tradition is the work of
Christian philosophers, beginning in the 1960’s,
references to the particulars of religious belief are
most often to Christian religious belief.
France
Scotland
Calvin (1509-1564)
1500
Reid (1710-1796)
2000
1700
America
Reformed
Epistemology
Plantinga (1932 –)
While Calvin is a famous figure in the history of theology, he was
no slouch as a philosopher.
In Institutes of the Christian Religion,* Calvin introduces the
notion of the sensus divinitatis, or ‘sense of divinity’.
This is important because the way Calvin defends the notion
involves asserting a form or reliabilism.
The sensus divinitatis is an “innate disposition to form belief in
God,” according to Calvin, under certain conditions (example
in the linked article: observing the starry sky).
People have this sort of knowledge of God (among other sorts),
Calvin thinks, only when this faculty of belief formation about
God is working properly.
*See Faith and Philosophy Article
Thomas Reid also endorses a form of Reliabilism:
Reid's answer to Hume's skeptical and naturalist
arguments was to enumerate a set of principles of
common sense (sensus communis) which constitute
the foundations of rational thought.
Anyone who undertakes a philosophical argument, for
example, must implicitly presuppose certain beliefs
like, "I am talking to a real person," and "There is an
external world whose laws do not change," among
many other positive, substantive claims.
For Reid, the belief in the truth of these principles is not
rational; rather, reason itself demands these
principles as prerequisites, as does the innate
"constitution" of the human mind.” –Wikipedia
Read about Reid
In God and Other Minds (1967), Alvin Plantinga argues that
belief in




God
other minds
our selves, and
the external world
are all properly basic.
Like Calvin and Reid, Plantinga believes such beliefs are
properly believed without evidence. They are beliefs that
result from the proper functioning of intellectual faculties.
We don’t require argument or evidence from someone who
believes, say, ‘My mother loves me’ (which entails the belief
‘Mother has a mind’).
Belief in other minds, then, is proper without evidence.
Such belief is:
 Universal
 Spontaneous
The same goes for belief in the external world, belief in oneself, and
belief in God, says Plantinga.
WK Clifford had argued:
To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to
believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
This principle, Plantinga believes, is false. Some beliefs
(those universal and spontaneous beliefs mentioned above,
if not others), enjoy freedom from this requirement. Why?
Skepticism is the story of this principle’s failure.
Read Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief
What if we all believe in the Great Pumpkin, like Linus, in Charlie Brown’s
Halloween Special?
Reply: we don’t, but if we did, we would need to defend the belief. Just
because we don’t need evidence doesn’t mean we can believe anything.
Beliefs must always be defensible.
Belief in God is not universal.
Reply: Well, it’s nearly so … and, for that particular belief, there is reason
to think people may lie or be subject to self-deception. Also, there’s
reason to think they may be operating with defective mental
equipment.
The last point raises the question of Reliabilism again….
Karl Marx had said:
Religion . . . is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the
man who has either not yet found himself, or else (having
found himself) has lost himself once more. But man is not
an abstract being . . . Man is the world of men, the State,
society. This State, this society, produce religion, produce a
perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted
world . . . Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the
feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of
unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.
From here
In contrast, Calvin had urged:
Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle
furiously are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of
God, is abundant testimony that his conviction, namely, that
there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep
within, as it were in the very marrow. . . . From this we
conclude that it is not a doctrine that must first be learned in
school, but one of which each of us is master from his
mother's womb and which nature itself permits no man to
forget.
From here
So, who is right, Marx (slide 10) or Calvin (slide 11)?
 According to Marx, religious belief is perverse.
 According to Calvin, irreligious belief is perverse.
Whose intellectual faculties are functioning properly?
Whose belief forming mechanisms are reliable?
Plantinga argues that we cannot reasonably trust our
belief forming mechanisms if we accept the conjunction
of evolution and naturalism (atheism).
Unguided evolution cares nothing for true belief. It cares
only about survival value. Therefore, unguided
evolution undercuts trust in our belief forming
mechanisms.
He calls this argument An Evolutionary Argument Against
Naturalism.
In other words, Marx’s position is self-referentially
incoherent. Calvin wins!
(Which you’d expect from a guy who went to Calvin
College).
All philosopher photos (including God) from Google
Images. Search on philosopher’s name.
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