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Faith and reasonIn Christianity, the importance of faith and its role in religious life stems from its significance in the New Testament. In that context, the term is most closely related to ‘trust’ – trusting God and God’s promises. In this sense, faith is more of an attitude than a state of belief or knowledge. It is described as a ‘virtue’ along with hope and charity. However, when you trust a person, you also believe what they say. And this connects faith to belief, which is a cognitive state. Those who emphasize faith as belief argue that God reveals truths that faith accepts. Religious belief is ‘belief-that p’ – where ‘p’ is those propositions one believes, e.g. ‘God exists’, ‘Jesus was the Son of God’, etc. (This connects to understanding revelation as propositional.) Those who emphasize faith as an attitude argue that God reveals God’s self, and that the question of truths arises at the level of human interpretation of that revelation. Religious belief is more ‘belief-in’ God, than believing a series of truth claims about God. (This connects to understanding revelation as non-propositional.)FAITH AS REASONThat faith is closely connected to reason is the traditional Catholic position. For example, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) said that rational knowledge and philosophical discourse are important for ‘the very possibility of belief in God’. Similarly, many philosophers of religion have carefully considered rational arguments for the existence and nature of God. For example, Richard Swinburne, in The Existence of God, argues that God’s existence is probable, considering all the evidence. John Locke, too, did not see an opposition between reason and faith – in fact, he agreed with Aquinas (see below) that this ability to find God using reason is a gift from God. Locke thinks that faith is a matter of being properly guided by reason and the reason shows that the existence of God can be proven. Faith is just rational belief in God.Thus, one position on faith – call this ‘rationalism’ (not to be confused with the rationalism of rationalism v. empiricism in epistemology)- is that it is simply religious belief, and like all belief, religious belief is (or should be) based on evidence and argument. However, for that reason, it would follow that if it were shown that it was impossible to establish the high probability of God’s existence, a rationalist about faith would conclude that religious faith is illegitimate.The 19th century philosopher W K Clifford argued that it is ‘wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence’ (‘The Ethics of Belief’). Belief, he argued, must be earned through patient investigation, not by stifling doubts. No real belief is insignificant, and this will be especially true for religious beliefs. A belief inclines us to believe other similar things, while it weakens beliefs that are contrary to it. Forming beliefs on insufficient evidence makes us credulous, it weakens our cognitive powers and it makes other people less concerned about telling us lies. Religious faith is either simply the normal operation of reason. Or if it amounts to belief without sufficient evidence, it is therefore always wrong. FAITH AND REVELATIONSetting aside Clifford’s claims about the ethics of belief for now, if faith is not simply religious belief formed on the basis of evidence, through the usual rational processes, what kind of cognitive state is it, and how does it relate to questions of evidence?Fideism (Latin fides, meaning ‘faith’) is an epistemological theory that questions the power of reason to reach truth in all things, and argues rather that (some) truth can be attained only through faith. Extreme forms of ‘fideism’ claim that sin has damaged our ability to reason, so wherever the claims of faith and reason conflict, we should set aside reason. For example, if the Bible teaches that God created the world in seven days, and evolutionary theory suggests otherwise, so much the worse for science. This has been a minority view in most forms of Christianity, and has been condemned by the Catholic Church which insists as a matter of doctrine that God can be known by the natural light of human reason. Moderate forms of ‘fideism’, however, claim that faith goes ‘beyond’ reason, but doesn’t oppose it. In going beyond reason, faith requires an emotional attitude of trust towards its object.St Thomas Aquinas argued that faith and reason must cohere together. As rational beings, our greatest happiness will be found in worthwhile rational activity. Therefore, our greatest happiness lies in rational contact with God. However, some truths about God are beyond our ability to grasp rationally. Our intellect is dependent on our senses, and from what we experience, we are not able, for instance, to infer God’s nature. We are, however, able to demonstrate that God exists and to know some of God’s attributes. Reason can support faith.Aquinas understands faith as believing what someone says because you trust them. Now, if you need someone’s testimony to believe something, that must be because you cannot work it out for yourself. Because our intellect is limited, we need faith to be in contact with God. Rationally understanding a truth is better, in a sense, than believing it on someone’s testimony. So it is good to seek understanding of God. But one cannot hope to achieve this understanding without the presence of faith first.Because what we believe by faith is beyond rational understanding, then our belief isn’t rationally compelled by evidence or argument. So faith is voluntary, it involves, to some degree, choosing to believe. Anyone who doesn’t believe what God has revealed (which he took to be Christian doctrine) lacks faith.We can object that there is a tension between saying faith involves believing a set of truths and saying that it is voluntary. Can we choose what to believe? Aquinas replies that the disposition to believe is given to us by God.WILLIAM JAMESLet’s consider further this line of thought about faith, trust and choice. The attitude most associated with faith is trust in God. But just to say this is not enough. For instance, surely we can only trust someone we believe exists. So faith would rest on the belief that God exists. But what if this belief is a commitment that does not rest on the evidence? How does someone acquire this commitment? Is it rational to do so?William James argues that Clifford is wrong (‘The Will to Believe’); it can sometimes be right, and in fact, reasonable, to believe something without sufficient evidence for its truth, viz. when we face a ‘genuine option’ that cannot be decided on the basis of evidence. A ‘genuine option’ involves three conditions:the alternatives for what to believe, e.g. ‘God exists’ and ‘God does not exist’, are ‘live’ – the person feels they really could believe either. Some people may not feel this way, in which case on or other alternative is ‘dead’;the alternatives exclude each other (not more than one of them can be true) and there are no other alternatives – the choice between them is ‘forced’;the alternatives are ‘momentous’ rather than trivial, e.g. this is your only opportunity to get it right or the stakes are high.If these three conditions apply, and we cannot decide on the basis on evidence, then it is not unreasonable for us to incline towards one belief or another on other grounds. In belief, we have two goals – to avoid error, as Clifford argues; but also to secure the truth. Although avoiding error is important in science, in other areas of life, we often need to form beliefs with some risk of error. For example, in forming a friendship with someone, you need to trust them, which will involve the belief that they are trustworthy before you really have good evidence of this. And it is reasonable to do this, given that we want to form the friendship. It is not always wrong, then, for our wills to influence our beliefs. In the case of genuine options, if our intellect can’t decide, then our emotions and will can and must. To not form a belief, e.g. for fear of getting it wrong, is itself a decision made on the basis of an emotion. But given what is at stake in a genuine option, getting it wrong might be less bad than losing out on truth: ‘worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world’. Clifford opposes reason and emotion in forming beliefs, arguing that we must only form beliefs on the basis of reason. But his argument is itself supported by emotion and moral values. Emotions come into what we believe, or don’t, whichever way we argue.Religious faith, for many, involves a genuine option. The ‘religious hypothesis’ is that the best things are eternal, and we are better off now if we believe. James says it clearly presents an option that is forced and momentous; if it is live for the individual as well, then it is reasonable for them to believe. However, while religious faith clearly deals with things that are important, it is not obvious that the choice between having religious faith and not is either forced or momentous. There are many religions, so the question arises as to which religious faith to adopt. And some of these faiths, e.g. Buddhism, do not say that God exists. So the options are not forced. Second, is believing in God is not necessary for God to reward one with eternal life, then the choice is not momentous.James is not arguing that faith is more rational than agnosticism or atheism. He is only arguing that it is not less rational. He is arguing that there is a place for faith that reason can respect. Reason can recognise its limitations, and can recognise that faith may rightly act when reason is limited. Having faith on the basis of the will does not fly in the face of reason; it simply goes where reason cannot.KIERKEGAARDS?ren Kierkegaard develops the idea of commitment, and its role in religious faith, to argue that we are wrong to think of religious beliefs in the same way as other beliefs. Religion is not a type of philosophical system, and we shouldn’t weigh up religious beliefs in a philosophical way. Instead, faith is characterized by passionate commitment; beliefs formed ‘objectively’ are not, they may have no impact on one’s life. To believe that God exists, but to treat this as just another fact, about which we feel nothing, is not to have faith. Faith isn’t (just) a matter of what, but of how, we believe. The commitment that characterizes faith requires a decision, a ‘leap’; it is not something that can be established intellectually. This leap actually requires objective uncertainty: ‘If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast to objective uncertainty’ (Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, p. 204).Some philosophers argue that reason can’t determine whether God exists because God wants us to have this type of committed, passionate relationship with him. If we felt we knew the answers, something would be lost. Kierkegaard emphasises the importance of this: objective certainty will not have the same impact on one’s life as faith in the face of uncertainty. But without reason to guide us, why we should ‘leap’ in the direction of religious belief rather than unbelief? And can we just believe whatever we choose to? Is the leap of faith possible?Philosophers disagree about what Kierkegaard thought about the relation of reason to religious belief. He remarks that we ‘cannot believe nonsense against the understanding, which one might fear, because the understanding will penetratingly perceive that it is nonsense and hinder [us] in believing it’ (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 568). Neither James nor Kierkegaard think belief is completely under the control of the will, but we can form beliefs without relying on reason in certain circumstances. For Kierkegaard, religious faith in its trust and commitment is ‘incomprehensible’ in that it lies outside the limits that reason can reach for itself. But, like James, he thinks reason can recognise that it has limits, and that faith might legitimately lie outside these limits. To achieve it, we must leap. By contrast, if faith were just nonsense, reason would inhibit our ability to leap.AN OBJECTIONIf faith goes beyond reason, then it must accept that we do not have any reason to believe in God. The arguments of James and Kierkegaard only show that faith is not unreasonable. They don’t show that we should leap in a particular way. But, objects Stephen Law, many religious believers think that they do have some reason to believe in God, appealing to some argument that says God is the best explanation, e.g. the cosmological argument, the argument from religious experience, or an argument from miracles. But they are willing to accept that the evidence for God’s existence is not very strong, so they say it is a matter of faith.This seems inconsistent, Law continues: it accepts belief in God is a matter of evidence and argument, but that we don’t need to justify our conclusion by the balance of evidence, because belief rests on faith. If we are getting into the question of evidence, shouldn’t we be consistent and only believe in God if the evidence suggests it is more likely that God exists than not, i.e. if belief in God is supported by reason?But there are other possibilities: belief in God is precisely as reasonable as not believing in God (the evidence is exactly balanced); we cannot tell what the balance of evidence is;for some reason, our belief needs to be more certain than the evidence (either way) allows, so we should consider not just the evidence, but other issues as well.Philosophers have not tended to argue for (1), but some of their arguments support (2) and (3). So we could argue that while reason cannot settle the question of belief in God, and so it must rest on faith, this does not mean we have no reason at all for such belief.PLANTINGA: RELIGIOUS BELIEF AS ‘BASIC’But what if religious faith isn’t a matter of evidence at all? Alvin Plantinga agrees with Aquinas that faith is a type of belief, but he defends a different relation between faith and reason (‘Reason and belief in God’).Evidence and basic beliefsThe view that all beliefs should be proportionate to the evidence is ‘evidentialism’: We should only believe things we have evidence for, and we should only believe them with the degree of certainty that the evidence supports. It is irrational to believe anything on insufficient evidence. So we should not believe that God exists unless we have good evidence that God exists.Plantinga argues that not all beliefs can be based on evidence, because then every belief would rest on other beliefs. So some beliefs, says Plantinga, must be acceptable without evidence. A belief is ‘basic’ if it is not accepted on the basis of other beliefs. Many philosophers have argued that two sorts of beliefs are rightly or ‘properly’ basic: ‘self-evident’ beliefs and beliefs that are based on ‘what is evident to the senses’. If I see a brown tree, I believe ‘the tree is brown’. I don’t, even subconsciously, infer this belief: I don’t think ‘I seem to see a brown tree’, ‘What I seem to see is often accurate’, ‘Therefore, I believe the tree is brown’. I form the belief immediately in the presence of sense perception. Plantinga says that a belief is ‘basic’ if it doesn’t rest on other beliefs, which he equates with not resting on evidence. A belief is only supported by evidence, according to him, if it is supported by other beliefs. But this is a narrow interpretation of ‘evidence’. After all, the two types of properly basic beliefs foundationalists talk about are what is self-evident and what is evident to the senses. The evidence in each of these cases is something about the belief itself or about the circumstances in which it is formed (e.g. believing ‘the tree is brown’ when looking at a brown tree). The evidence is not other beliefs, but that doesn’t mean there is no evidence for these beliefs. The evidence for believing the tree is brown is your experience, that you see a brown tree.The distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs, then, is not between beliefs that rest on evidence and ones that don’t. Instead, basic beliefs rest on a form of evidence that isn’t itself a belief (e.g. a sense experience).We can then argue that a belief is justified if and only if it is either properly basic or it is accepted on the basis of other beliefs, which eventually come to rest on properly basic beliefs. Any belief that is neither properly basic nor based on other beliefs is not rationally justified. Religious beliefPlantinga argues that religious belief is basic. But how so? The existence of God is neither self-evident nor evident to the senses, belief in God isn’t properly basic. Surely, then, we should only believe that God exists if we support this belief with other beliefs. Plantinga argues that this argument is self-defeating. How do we know that ‘only what is self-evident and what is evident to the senses is properly basic’? This claim is not itself self-evident nor evident to the senses, so it is not properly basic. It also is difficult to see how we can deduce it either from self-evident beliefs or from what is evident to the senses. So it may be that other forms of belief are also properly basic.Many theologians, particularly in the tradition of Reformed theology (theology that came out of the Reformation), argue that religious belief is not usually accepted or held on the basis of arguments. Some argue that arguments for the existence of God don’t work; but even if they did, religious faith in God is not dependent on them. So faith is not inferred from other beliefs, but this does not mean that it is without justification. Instead, religious beliefs are comparable to beliefs based on sense perception. We don’t believe in the existence of physical objects because we have good arguments for them; we don’t infer them from experience, they are simply given to us in experience. Likewise, the existence of God is simply apparent to the believer. How? John Calvin argues that God implanted a direct awareness of himself in every mind. We only lose touch with this awareness through sin. Other theologians argue that we see God in creation. We don’t infer God’s existence from nature; we see God in nature. Others argue that we have a direct awareness of God in religious experience. Again, this is distinct from saying that we infer God’s existence from religious experience.On any of these views, religious belief is basic. Faith is a distinct cognitive state, just as each of the senses provides a distinct way of knowing about the world.What is properly basic?Plantinga and other Reformed epistemologists reject the claim that only self-evident beliefs and beliefs based on what is evident to the senses can be properly basic. Religious beliefs are too.One way to support this belief is to develop the analogy with perception. Perceptual beliefs are properly basic, Plantinga suggests, because they are caused by the circumstances in which they are formed (e.g. the experience) and are a product of ‘proper functioning’. My belief that ‘the tree is brown’ when I’m looking at a tree is caused by my looking at the tree, and is a product of my senses and cognition working properly.So we can ask: Is the belief that God exists caused by the circumstances Reformed theologians appeal to or are people’s beliefs in the existence of God caused by something else entirely, e.g. upbringing? Second, is forming this belief is an example of proper functioning? Is it part of the proper functioning of the human mind to see God in nature? Is religious experience an example of proper functioning? Arguments from psychology and the social sciences that try to explain religious belief and experience could suggest that they are not.FAITH AND DIVINE GRACEProperly basic beliefs can be defeated. For example, if I know that I’m in a museum of optical illusions, I won’t believe what I see. Perceptual experience gives us prima facie justification; we treat perceptual experiences as veridical unless we have reason to doubt them. Plantinga argues the same is true for religious belief. Even if it is properly basic, that does not mean that it is immune to arguments against the existence of God. These may defeat our belief in the existence of God if they are not answered.However, if perception was always faulty, generally unreliable, then it would be unreasonable to form beliefs about the world on the basis of perception alone. Such beliefs, then, would not be properly basic. An objection of this kind can be made to religious faith. People do not generally agree in the beliefs they form about God (either God’s existence or God’s nature). So whose faith (or lack of it) is an example of proper functioning and whose is faulty? And why do so many people ‘malfunction’?Plantinga appeals to the idea that our cognitive abilities are damaged by ‘original sin’ (Warranted Christian Belief). For example, what we think to be reasonable or rational to believe might be a reflection of our pride or self-centredness. This is why so many people ‘malfunction’ in forming their basic beliefs about religious matters. Aquinas rejects the strong version of this, since he claims that our limited intellect can at least know that God exists using reason. Plantinga emphasises more strongly the idea that faith is a gift from God, a matter of divine grace. By God’s grace, Plantinga argues, we come to be able to function properly, and so form the right basic beliefs.The thought that faith is given by divine grace comes from the New Testament book of Romans, Ch. 4, in which St Paul asks how we can be ‘justified before God’. He answers that we could never earn this through good deeds; we can only be justified by faith. This entails that faith itself cannot be ‘worked at’ or ‘earned’ – so it must be a gift from God. That faith requires divine grace for proper functioning does not make it irrational. Just as perception is rational, in the sense of being part of normal cognition, Plantinga argues that the sorts of experiences that support belief in God are likewise part of reason (functioning properly). If he is right, then faith is a form of reason and trying to draw a contrast between the two is mistaken. ................
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