Introduction i. Character of the Book The central thesis of this book is that experiential awareness of God, or as I shall be saying, the perception of God, ...

Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief is without questionone of the central texts of the Reformed epistemology movement. Critiques of Plantingas defence have been both multiple and varied. As varied as these responses are, however, it is my contention that many of them amount to the same thing. It is the purpose of this paper to offer an overview of the main lines of attack that have been directed as Plantingas project, and thereafter to show how many, if not most, of (...) these objections can be understood as versions or aspects of the same criticism, what I call the Inadequacy Thesis. (shrink)

Reformed epistemology and cognitive science have remarkably converged on belief in God. Reformed epistemology holds that belief in God is basic—that is, belief in God is a natural, non-inferential belief that is immediately produced by a cognitive faculty. Cognitive science of religion also holds that belief in gods is (often) non-reflectively and instinctively produced—that is, non-inferentially and automatically produced by a cognitive faculty or system. But there are differences. In this paper, we will show some remarkable points of convergence, and (...) a few points of divergence, between Reformed epistemology and the cognitive science of religion. (shrink)

The purpose of this discussion is to analyze comparatively the influential argument for religious pluralism offered by John Hick and the argument for religious exclusivism (sectarianism) which can be generated by proponents of what has come to be labeled ‘Reformed Epistemology.’ I argue that while Hick and the Reformed exclusivist appear to be giving us incompatible responses to the same question about the true nature of ‘religious’ reality, they are actually responding to related, but distinct questions, each of which must (...) be considered by those desiring to give a religious explanation for the phenomenon of religious diversity. Moreover, I conclude that the insights of neither ought to be emphasized at the expense of the other. (shrink)

Plantinga claims that, at least for some people, the belief that God exists is ‘properly basic,’ or rather that they have properly basic beliefs that entail the existence of God. I think the underlying idea here is that we all have a properly working sensus divinitatus. This guarantees the existence of God. But, of course, if God does not exist, then our sensus divinitatus is not working properly, i.e. is not, really a sensus divinitatus. The issue as to whether there (...) is or is not a God does not, or should not, come to an end with a claim of proper basicality. -/- . (shrink)

Like David Silver before them, Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune argue that the facts of religious pluralism present an insurmountable challenge to the rationality of basic exclusive religious belief as construed by Reformed Epistemology. I will show that their argument is unsuccessful. First, their claim that the facts of religious pluralism make it necessary for the religious exclusivist to support his exclusive beliefs with significant reasons is one that the reformed epistemologist has the resources to reject. Secondly, they fail to (...) demonstrate that it is impossible for basic exclusive religious beliefs to return to their properly basic state after defeaters against them have been defeated. Finally, I consider whether there is perhaps a similar but better argument in the neighbourhood and conclude in the negative. Reformed Epistemology’s defence of exclusivism thus remains undefeated. (shrink)

This is the text for a presentation I gave at the Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in Washington, D.C. on December 28, 1998. It was written very quickly, and I haven't had time to go back and fix it up, but I probably won't have time to fix it up any time soon, and several people have requested copies, so I don't see any harm in making it available. Please remember that it is a draft, and don't (...) quote it without permission. (shrink)

Literal-minded Christians are enjoying resurgent respectability in intellectual circles. Darwin isn’t the only target: also under attack is the application of modern historiography to Scripture According to Reformed epistemologists, ordinary Christians can directly know that, e.g., Jesus rose from the dead, and evidential concerns can be dismissed. This reversion to a sixteenth century hermeneutic deserves response.

After summarizing Plantinga’s critique of “classical foundationalism” and his substitute, Reformed epistemology, the paper argues that Reformed epistemology has so many problems that it is not an adequate substitute for classical foundationalism. Given Plantinga’s reformed epistemology, believers of any religion could have “knowledge of their God.” This is because Plantinga has not set forth the justifying conditions necessary to distinguish between “properly basic beliefs” as opposed to improperly basic beliefs. Given such problems, it is more reasonable to stick with classical (...) foundationalism rather than Plantinga’s substitute. (shrink)

In his recent two volumes on epistemology, Alvin Plantinga surveys contemporary theories of knowledge thoroughly, and carefully defends an externalist epistemology. He promises that in a third volume, Warranted Christian Belief, he will present John Calvin's sensus divinitatis as an epistemic module akin to sense perception, a priori knowledge, induction, testimony and other epistemic modules. Plantinga defines the sensus divinitatis as a ‘many sided disposition to accept belief in God (or propositions that immediately and obviously entail the existence of God) (...) in a variety of circumstances’. Like other epistemic modules, it produces beliefs in an appropriate cognitive environment, aims at the production of true beliefs, and generates beliefs which have a high statistical probability of being true. (shrink)

Reformed epistemologists hold that belief in God can be rational and warranted apart from being based on any other propositions. The facts of religiousdiversity, however, are seen by many to pose a challenge to this view. In the first part of this paper I suggest some developments of Plantinga’s account of environment, proper function, and the kinds of faculties involved in the production of warranted belief. In the second part I develop a reformed response to “the Epistemological Challenge of Diversity,” (...) with a particular focus on the “best explanation” aspect of the pluralistic challenge and the role of environment and character in a non-pluralist explanation of the facts of diversity. In the final section I address some objections. (shrink)

[ I ] Introduction: Paradigms, Theism, and the Parity Thesis Few claims are more controversial than that beliefs about God are rational. ...

Despite Marx’s claim that criticism against his views from a religious standpoint are not deserving of serious examination, I try to offer a critical examination of Marx’s epistemology of religion from the viewpoint of Reformed epistemology. Although Marx himself never set forth a systematic epistemology, let alone an epistemology of religion, his writings nonetheless provide an adequate resource to reconstruct his views on the matter. Given this, I set out what I take to be characteristic of Marx’s epistemology of religion (...) and provide the meta-context in which the epistemological issue is framed. In light of Reformed epistemology, I then provide a critique of Marx’s criticism by turning his own argument on its head to the effect that there is significant likelihood that his view is both false and irrational. Finally, I defend against a possible objection. (shrink)

This is the third volume in Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on the notion of warrant, which he defines as that which distinguishes knowledge from true belief.

The question is: how should a theist think of justification or positive epistemic status? The answer I suggest is: a belief B has positive epistemic status for S only if S’s faculties are functioning properly (i.e., functioning in the way God intended them to) in producing B, and only if S’s cognitive environment is sufficiently similar to the one for which her faculties are designed; and under those conditions the more firmly S is inclined to accept B, the more positive (...) epistemic status it has for her. I conclude by making some qualifications and applications and exmaining some objections. (shrink)

Philip Quinn’s “On Finding the Foundations of Theism” is both challenging and important. Quinn proposes at least the following four theses: (a) my argument against the criteria of proper basicality proposed by classical foundationalism is unsuccessful, (b) the quasi-inductive method I suggest for arriving at criteria of proper basicality is defective, (c) even if belief in God is properly basic, it could without loss of justification be accepted on the basis of other propositions, and (d) belief in God is probably (...) not nowadays properly basic for intellectually sophisticated adults, There is much to be said about each of these four theses; I shall say just a bit about them. I take the fourth claim to be the most important and devote the most space to it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Perhaps the most influential proposal in the recent literature on the epis- temology of religious belief has been Alvin Plantinga’s anti-evidentialist contention that we should treat certain religious beliefs as properly basic. In order to support this anti-skeptical maneuver, Plantinga (along with other “reformed” epistemologists such as William Alston) has looked to the kind of anti-evidentialist model that is standardly offered as regards the epistemology of perceptual belief and has claimed that there are sufficient analogies between perceptual experience and (...) religious experience to moti- vate the use of such a model in religious epistemology. It is argued here, however, that while Plantinga et al. are right to draw our attention to these analogies, in doing so they have failed to pay due attention to important disanalogies that exist between religious and perceptual experience. Moreover, I contend that these disanalogies have epistemo- logical ramifications that require subtle modifications to the reformed epistemology thesis. In particular, following a suggestion made by Keith DeRose, I argue that re- formed epistemology would be better modelled along explicitly virtue-theoretic lines. (shrink)

There are parallels between certain responses to local epistemological scepticism about religious belief and an influential reply to radical epistemological scepticism. What ties both accounts together is that they utilise, either implicitly or explicitly, a “hinge” proposition thesis which maintains that the pivotal beliefs in question are immune to sceptical attack even though they lack sufficient epistemic grounds. It is argued that just as this strategy lacks any anti-sceptical efficacy in the context of the radical sceptical debate, so it offers (...) no defence against a localised scepticism regarding religious belief either. What the defender of religious belief should do, it is claimed, is re-examine the manner in which a commitment to the doctrine of epistemological internalism underlies the sceptical attack. (shrink)

It is a widely held viewpoint in Christian apologetics that in addition to defending Christian theism against objections (negative apologetics), apologists should also present arguments in support of the truth of theism and Christianity (positive apologetics). In contemporary philosophy of religion, the Reformed epistemology movement has often been criticized on the grounds that it falls considerably short of satisfying the positive side of this two-tiered approach to Christian apologetics. Reformed epistemology is said to constitute or entail an inadequate apologetic methodology (...) since it rejects positive apologetics or at least favours negative over positive apologetics. In this paper I argue that this common objection fails on two grounds. First, while the arguments of Reformed epistemology are relevant and useful to apologetics, neither Reformed epistemology nor its epistemological project should be identified with a distinct school or method of apologetics. Secondly, while certain claims of Reformed epistemology seem to imply a rejection of positive apologetics, or at least a preference for negative or positive apologetics, I argue that no such conclusion follows. In fact, although unimpressed by particular versions of natural theology and positive apologetics, Reformed epistemologists have provided criticisms of each that can constructively shape future approaches to the apologetic employment of natural theology and Christian evidences. (shrink)