Summary |
Reformed epistemology is a thesis
about the rationality of religious belief. A
central claim made by the reformed epistemologist is that religious belief can
be rational without any appeal to evidence or argument. One way reformed
epistemologists have defended this claim is by comparing belief
in God with other beliefs we take to be rational—if the latter set of beliefs
can be rational without appeal to evidence or argument, then belief
in God can also be rational without appeal to evidence or argument. A more detailed version of this parity argument, offered by
Alvin Plantinga, argues that belief in God (like perceptual beliefs) is
properly basic. Plantinga argues that humans are endowed with a special cognitive
faculty, the sensus divinitatis, which gives rise to belief in God
in an immediate and non-inferential fashion when occasioned by some event or
experience. In this way, then, belief in God is said to be properly basic and
can be warranted without inference from any evidence or argument. |