Abstract
In articles that became well known almost as soon as they were published, Alvin Plantinga has avowedly been trying to establish the rationality of believing without evidence that God exists.1 Others are also engaged in this project, which they sometimes call “Reformed epistemology”.2 The following quotation from Plantinga can serve as a statement of the thesis of Reformed epistemology: “it is entirely right, rational, reasonable, and proper to believe in God without any evidence or argument at all” (RBG 17).3
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Notes
Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Translated with notes), Clarendon Aristotle Series, ed. J. L. Ackrill; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975; Introduction, pp. x-xi.
Prominent among these articles are “Reason and Belief in God” (RBG), in Faith and Rationality, edited by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 16–93; “The Foundations of Theism: A Reply” (FOT), Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986): 298-313 (a reply to Philip L. Quinn, “In Search of the Foundations of Theism”, Faith and Philosophy 2 (1985): 469-486); “Coherentism and the Evidentialist Objection to Belief in God” (CEO), in Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment, edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 109-138; and “Justification and Theism” (JAT), Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987): 403-426. My discussion of Plantinga is based on these sources, especially on RBG.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, the co-founder of Reformed epistemology, is, of course, an important (and eloquent) representative of the position; his books (e.g., Reason within the Bounds of Religion, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1976) and articles (e.g., “Once More Evidentialism-This Time, Social”, Philosophical Topics 16 (1988): 53-74) should be consulted by anyone who wants a full picture of Reformed epistemology.
The continuation of the sentence in which the thesis is expressed is important: “in this respect belief in God resembles belief in the past, in the existence of other persons, and in the existence of material objects”. (He makes similar claims at RBG 65 and elsewhere.) Plantinga developed this sort of analogy in God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967). I think it is true that theism, or realism regarding God, is in many respects like realism regarding material objects, and that a careful, rational choice between theism and atheism must finally be made along lines very much like those along which one might choose carefully and rationally between realism regarding material objects and Berkeleyan immaterialism. Furthermore, I think there is a sense, Evidence Against Anti-Evidentialism acceptable to the evidentialist, in which belief that material objects exist is properly basic (see p. 30 below) even though it is neither self-evident, incorrigible, nor evident to the senses, and that the belief that God exists might well be considered properly basic in that same sense. These suggestions are, I believe, worth pursuing, perhaps even further than Plantinga pursued them in God and Other Minds. (Any further development would, however, have to take account of the fact that there aren’t lots of intelligent, educated people who reject realism regarding the past, other persons, or material objects.) But it is not in this sense that he is out to establish the rationality of theism without evidence in the articles I’m concerned with now. (In that respect the continuation of the thesis sentence is misleading.) And so this is not the occasion on which to pursue those suggestions. It is important to note, in this connection, that near the end of RBG Plantinga suggests that in accordance with the notion of proper basicality developed in RBG “It is not the relatively high-level and general proposition God exists that is properly basic, but instead propositions detailing some of his attributes or actions”, among his examples of which are’ God is speaking to me’ or’ God forgives me’ (RBG 81). But I believe (contrary to the position Plantinga takes at RBG 81-82) it is only’ God exists’ for which anyone could hope to claim the sort of system-founding proper basicality a theistic proposition might reasonably be said to share with’ Material objects exist.’
In commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, Ed Wierenga made the plausible suggestion that evidentialism as I present it here is too vague to be evaluated, that detailed considerations of what counts as evidence and as sufficient were required. Of course evidential ism is vague; but it doesn’t need to be made more precise in order to be correctly evaluated as truistic. Evidentialism is relevantly like “Too much drinking is bad for you”: its obvious truth is partially dependent on its vagueness, and yet it is obviously true.
As I’ve already indicated, Plantinga is not the only Reformed epistemologist, and there are, besides, other formidable proponents of theistic anti-evidentialism who are not so clearly associated with Reformed epistemology-e.g., William P. Alston in, e.g., “Christian Experience and Christian Belief’, in Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality (n. I above), pp. 103–134.
Especially noteworthy are George I. Mavrodes, “Jerusalem and Athens Revisited”, in Faith and Rationality (n. 1 above), pp. 192–218; William P. Alston, ”Plantinga’s Epistemology of Religious Belief’, in Alvin Plantinga, James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen, eds. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985), pp. 289–311; Philip L. Quinn, “In Search of the Foundations of Theism” (n. I above); and Robert Audi, “Direct Justification, Evidential Dependence, and Theistic Belief”, in Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment (n. I above), pp. 139-166. I had already written this paper when Stephen J. Wykstra sent me a copy of his article “Toward a Sensible Evidentialism: On the Notion of ‘Needing Evidence’” (in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, W. L. Rowe and W. J. Wainwright, eds., Second edition; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1989; pp. 426—437). It contains some very helpful critical clarification of both evidentialism and anti-evidentialism.
Despite Plantinga’s more precise delineation of theistic beliefs more likely to be properly basic in the relevant sense (RBG 81; n. 3 above), I will follow his practice throughout most of RBG and take the belief at issue to be the belief that God exists. Proceeding in this way provides no special advantage for my project.
I give a critical account of the origin of this tradition of philosophical theology in “Faith Seeks, Understanding Finds: Augustine’s Charter for Christian Philosophy”, in Christian Philosophy, Thomas Flint, ed., (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 1–36; and I examine some features of its medieval development in “Trinity and Transcendentals”, in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., eds. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 79-109, and in “Reason in Mystery”, in The Philosophy in Christianity, Godfrey Vesey, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 15–39. The references to Aquinas and scholastic “natural theology” in Faith and Rationality (n. 1 above) prompted the publication of Thomistic Papers N (Leonard A. Kennedy, C.S.B., ed.; Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1988), containing articles critical of Plantinga’s, Wolterstorffs, and Alston’s contributions to Faith and Rationality. The tone of much of the volume is set in Henry B. Veatch’s opening essay-e.g., “Is it any wonder, then, that, to Thomist readers, the volume Faith and Rationality should come off as being like nothing quite so much as a throwing down of the gauntlet!” (p. 7).
Since it is Plantinga’s understanding of these evidentialist objectors that interests me here, I am, for present purposes, relying entirely on his presentation of them. Explicit evidentialists, like everyone else, recognize that our evidence and our beliefs (or our commitment to our beliefs) vary in strength, and they all seem to agree that only some particular degree of strength of evidence is sufficient to warrant having a belief at all. But, as Plantinga presents them, some seem to care only whether we have evidence sufficient for belief-e.g., Clifford (RBG 24-25), Flew (25-26), and Scriven (27-28; 30)-all-or-nothing evidentialists we might call them. Others recognize and utilize a finely graduated proportionality linking degrees of belief and degrees of strength of evidence-e.g., Locke and Hume (RBG 24), Russell (25), and Blanshard (30). Plantinga almost always writes as if all-or-nothing evidentialism is the only sort that interests him, as is only natural in someone who claims to be out to defend the rationality of theism without evidence. (Mavrodes offers an interesting, further explanation for the Reformed epistemologists’ neglect of this sort of proportionality in “Jerusalem and Athens“ [no 6 above], pp. 214–216.) So I will follow Plantinga here in concentrating on all-or-nothing evidentialist objectors.
Scriven might appear to be an exception when he says “Atheism is obligatory in the absence of any evidence for God’s existence... The proper alternative, where there is no evidence, is not mere suspension of belief,... it is disbelief’ (RBG 27, first and second emphases added). That this exception is only apparent is clear in Scriven’s general description of ”belief in something for which there is no evidence, i.e., a belief which goes beyond the evidence” (RBG 30, emphasis added).
E.g., “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork”, Psalms 19: 1; “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead... ”, Romans 1:20.
See, e.g., RBG 26, 27, 29, 33, 34; CEO 110, 111, 112; JAT 404; FOT 306.
Plantinga is within his logical rights to transform the evidentialist objection in this way as far as the form of words is concerned. Evidentialist objectors themselves could easily come to express charges of evidential inSUfficiency in the rhetorically effective form “You have no evidence for your belief that p.” This form of the charge seems better suited to a case of qualitative insufficiency-a case in which you have what you believe to be evidence for p, but what you have isn’t evidence for p at all (because it is irrelevant, false, invalid, or in some other way evidentially worthless). But the noevidence form of the objection isn’t entirely unsuitable to convey a charge of quantitative insufficiency, either-against a case in which you correctly believe that you have some evidence for p, but your belief that p goes beyond the evidence you have (which would support only such a belief as, say, that there is some reason to think that perhaps p). (Scriven, at least, uses “no evidence” in just this way; see n. 10 above.)
RBG 24-39 and CEO 110-112. I treat RBG as the main source (as Plantinga himself does in CEO) and use the CEO material as supplementary.
RBG 29. The version of (9) at RBG 27 is slightly different: “We have no evidence... ”. In one respect that version might seem preferable, since it is typically the evidence the believer has that counts for or against the rationality of his belief. But in this case, as in many others involving beliefs for which the best evidence may belong to a field in which the believer is not expert, or may be otherwise not conveniently available to the believer, the rationality of the belief may depend on the sufficiency of the evidence the believer has that there is evidence for his belief, evidence the experts have, even though the believer does not actually have it. The evidentialist canon must be interpreted as having some proviso of this sort implicit within it. (Plantinga tacitly acknowledges this at RBG 30 [quoted on p. 27 below], where he describes the objector as thinking that “a theist must have evidence, or reason to think there is evidence” [emphasis added].) So the version of (9) at RBG 29 seems more generally applicable. It is in that respect that I take my belief in the existence of electrons (or in the airworthiness of this DC-1O [see RBG 31]) to be rational. It’s in that respect that some of Anselm’s fellow-monks may have taken their belief in the necessity of God’s existence to be rational.
David Widerker has suggested to me that I am requiring too much here. The argument need not be refuted in order to be evaded; one might claim merely that we have no good reason to accept one of its premisses. And, Widerker remarks, Plantinga takes just such an approach to (8). He is certainly right about what Plantinga does (see pp. 26–27 below), but that approach seems blocked in this case. The mere fact that (8) represents a familiar position that is widely accepted among sophisticated, educated people gives us some good, prima facie reason to accept it, some good reason to think that a successful anti-evidentialism would have to include a denial of (8).
He takes up two subsidiary issues on the way. The first is Flew’s and Scriven’s presumption of atheism in the absence of evidence, which he rejects. Scott A. Shalkowski has very recently developed a thorough and more convincing rejection of the presumption of atheism in his article “Atheological Apologetics” (American Philosophical Quarterly 26 [1989]: 1-17). The other subsidiary issue is the question whether “the evidentialist objection is to be understood... as the claim that the theist without evidence has failed to meet some obligation,... [or as the claim] that he suffers from a certain sort of intellectual deficiency” (RBG 39). Plantinga’s careful examination of these “deontological” and “axiological” alternatives reveals that either interpretation may apply in various circumstances. (The designations for the interpretations are introduced at CEO 111.)
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974; Ch. 10.
Since theism without evidence is the limiting case of theism with insufficient evidence (see p. 21 above), (9) is equivalent to (9’), strictly speaking. But because Plantinga’s concern here is with the possibility that there is, literally, no evidence, there is some point in distinguishing these two versions.
Op. cit., pp. 216–217. Mavrodes makes an interesting, different use of this passage in “Jerusalem and Athens” (n. 6 above), pp. 206-207. For further evidence that Plantinga would reject (9’), see his remarks on the ontological argument in his “Self-Profile” in Alvin Plantinga, James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen, eds. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), pp. 70-71.
It should be remembered that both these premisses were worded by Plantinga himself.
But I think it’s not hard to see how the direct attack might have been pressed home, by Plantinga’s own lights. From the way his investigation of (8) proceeds into Reformed epistemology, it seems clear that he could have taken the original (8), with’ sufficient’, and simply expanded it into (8’),’ It is irrational or unreasonable to accept theistic belief in the absence of sufficient evidence or reasons in case theistic belief is the sort that requires evidence or reasons at all’. He could then cheerfully accept (8’) as obviously true, and (9’) as true (as he seems inclined to do anyway), and reject the argument as invalid because it requires the further premiss that theism does require evidence, which is just what he is working towards denying. We’ve seen that he doesn’t actually do these things to the argument, but he can’t leave it merely questioned (as he may appear to do), and such things as these are what I think the rest of his position might well have led him to do.
See also p. 30 below, however.
It is made at least partially explicit in one remark that occurs in RBG before the consideration of foundationalism: “without sufficient evidence-evidence in the sense of other propositions that prove or make probable or support... ” (RBG 38-39). And there is a more important preliminary indication of it in a passage considered on pp. 32 ff. below.
Although the phrase “evidence-proof or argument-” could be read as evincing the drastically narrowing assumption that all evidence is or involves proof or argument, almost everything else he has to say about evidence suggests that this expression is just inadvertently misleading.
Plantinga’s treatment of self-evident propositions is confused in a way that is epitomized in the following passage: “A self-evident proposition-2 + 1 = 3, for example-is not one for which we have good evidence, but for which the evidence is itself, it is, instead, a proposition that is evident, or known, in itself, without evidence. That means that one does not believe it on the basis of other propositions. 2 + 1 = 3 is self-evident; this is not to say that it is its own evidence, but that no evidence is needed for it” (RBG 52-53). On the contrary, a self-evident proposition is “one for which we have good evidence, but for which the evidence is itself’-as should be clear from the fact that we accept’ 2 + 1 = 3’ as self-evidently true and reject’ 2 + 1 = 4’ as selfevidently false. And to say that a proposition is self-evident does not mean “that one does not believe it on the basis of other propositions”. Propositions that are self-evident quoad nos are known to us on the basis of nothing other than themselves; propositions that are self-evident in themselves (secundum se) but not quoad nos may need to have their self-evidence clarified on the basis of simpler propositions that are self-evident quoad nos. The medieval expression corresponding to’ self-evident’-’ known through itself (per se nota)-brings out even more clearly, perhaps, what’ self-evident’ ought to convey. And it is contrasted not merely with what is known through some other proposition, but with what is known through anything else (per aliud nota). (Cf. Plantinga’s discussion of Aquinas on self-evident propositions, RBG 40–43.)
See p. 21 above.
Audi tacitly accepts Plantinga’s narrow notion and tries to help out the exposition of Plantinga’s anti-evidentialism by introducing the following distinction: “evidential ism... [is] the view that one’s belief that God exists is justified only if one has adequate evidence for it”; “A third major view, which I shall call experientialism, is like evidentialism in afflrming that theistic beliefs are rational only if they are justified, and like fideism in denying that their justification requires evidence. On this third view, human experience, including nonmystical experiences, can directly justify belief that God exists” (“Direct Justification” [no 7 above], pp. 139–140). This distinction between evidentialism and experientialism might be acceptable to Plantinga, who certainly makes tacit use of something like it, but from the standpoint of old-fashioned, evident evidential ism, I am suggesting, it is spurious. Experience, too, is evidence.
For the deontological/axiological distinction, see n. 18 above.
I share Quinn’s well-argued position that ”many, perhaps most, intellectually sophisticated adult theists in our culture must, if their belief in God is to be rational, have a total case for the rationality of theistic belief which includes defenses against defeaters which have very substantial support” (op. cit., n. 1 above, p. 484).
Part of the reason why the acquisition of belief ought not to be subjected to the evidentialist’s criterion is the fact that typically beliefs come to us, rather than the other way around.
See, e.g., JAT 406-407; FOT 304.
Quinn, op. cit. (n. 1 above), p. 484.
Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Translated with notes), Clarendon Aristotle Series, ed. J. L. Ackrill; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975; Introduction, pp. x-xi.
In commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, Ed Wierenga thought I might be trading on some looseness in Plantinga’s sufficient condition. He noted that S’s believing A might be caused or sustained by factors of which S is unaware. But it seems to me that Plantinga’s sufficient condition is indeed sufficient, since Wierenga’s amendment appears to ignore the intentionality of S’s believing A on the basis of B. The actual etiology of S’ s belief is logically independent of S’ S basis for believing A.
Wierenga suggested, further, that Ted may believe other propositions, propositions that he believes to be good evidence for theism, without also believing that he bases his belief in God on those propositions, in which case he would still count as someone who believes in God without evidence. I don’t agree that he would then count as a theist without evidence, but I think Wierenga’s special case suggests that the distinction between evidence merely sufficient for a given belief and evidence both necessary and sufficient for it may be useful here. The Ted of Wierenga’s special case is obviously not without evidence sufficient for theism, and it seems right to say of him that he believes in God on the basis of that evidence. But since he would not give up theism if he had to give up believing any of those propositions-since they are not necessary as well as sufficient for his belief in God-it also seems right to say of him that he does not base his belief in God on them.
His occurrentism may be even clearer in his later treatment of the same sort of case: “For example, suppose I seem to see a tree: I have that characteristic sort of experience that as a matter of fact goes with seeing a tree. I may then form the belief that I see a tree. In the typical case, that belief will be basic for me; in the typical case I will not believe the proposition that I see a tree on the basis of other beliefs I hold. In particular, I will not ordinarily accept this proposition on the basis of the proposition that I have that special seeming-to-see-a-tree experience, for I will not ordinarily believe this latter proposition at all. In the typical case I will not be paying any attention to my experience; I will be concentrating on the tree. I will, indeed, have the experience in question, but I will not believe that I have it.... Of course I could tum my attention to my experience, notice how things look to me, and acquire the belief that I seem to see something that looks like that; and if you challenge my claim to see a tree, perhaps I will thus tum my attention to my experience. But ordinarily when I perceive a tree I do not believe (or entertain) any proposition about my experience” (CEO 114; some emphasis added). Cf. RBG 49.
It might be thought that a sufficient condition for reasonably ascribing a dispositional belief to someone is that he or she would immediately respond to the question’ Do you believe that p?’ with an unhesitating affirmation, usually emphatic-e.g.,’ Of course!’. Thus while Bush no doubt does now believe that Washington D.C. is north of Florida, he probably does not now believe that’ Adirolf’ is’ Florida’ spelled backwards. But an outlandish example of this latter sort may involve so simple an inference that it, too, would elicit unhesitating, emphatic affirmation-“Do you believe that’ tam’ is’ mat’ spelled backwards?”-although the thought that that is so had never previously crossed the subject’s mind; and in such a case it seems clearly wrong to say that the question and response has disclosed one of the beliefs the subject had. Perhaps a distinction between dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe is needed here; perhaps the proposition’s having previously occurred to the subject is a necessary condition of its being the object of a dispositional belief on the subject’s part. Issues of this sort deserve consideration, but I need not sort them out now in order to make my point, which requires only the recognition that almost all of a person’s current beliefs are dispositional rather than occurrent. (lowe examples of this sort and their attendant worries to Steve Maitzen.) Robert Audi’s forthcoming paper “Dispositional Beliefs and Dispositions to Believe” provides important clarification of these topics.
Cf. CEO 120, where his discussion of warrant involves simultaneously believing several propositions in a way that seems perfectly natural but also incompatible with his occurrentism.
Cf. RBG 81; CEO 122-123; FOT 304.
Cf. CEO 124–126; FOT 304, 312.
Cf. RBG 82; FOT 304.
Cf. CEO 122, where “the sensus divinitatis takes its place along with perception, reasons, memory, and introspection as a source of properly basic belief” (emphasis added). (I think’ reasons’ must be a mistake for’ reason’.)
In commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, Ed Wierenga observed that I consider even sub-propositional experiences and circumstances to be evidence, while Plantinga takes evidence to be exclusively propositional, relegating experiences and circumstances to his categories of warrant and grounds; and Wierenga made the natural suggestion that this dispute seems merely terminological. So it would be, if it weren’t for the fact that Plantinga’s narrow notion of evidence makes his anti-evidentialism look less implausible than it is. Still, any evidentialist faced with Plantinga’s additional categories of bases for belief could accommodate them by simply extending the evidentialist canon to read “It is irrational to believe anything on insufficient evidence, or warrant, or grounds”.
Cf. CEO 123.
Carl Ginet’s suggestions led me to write this paragraph and the immediately preceding one, but he is not responsible for the use I make of his suggestions.
In his Introduction to Faith and Rationality (n. 1 above), p. 7.
For written comments on earlier drafts I am grateful to William Alston, Richard Creel, Carl Ginet, Steve Maitzen, David Widerker, and Edward Wierenga, and especially to Eleonore Stump, who tirelessly offered criticisms of every draft she saw. Finally, I’m particularly grateful to Alvin Plantinga, who gave me written comments and discussed the issues with me. I’ve come to believe that his own position differs from the one I oppose in this paper, and I’m glad of that. The anti-evidentialism presented here is, nevertheless, a position that readily can be and, I think, frequently has been inferred from his Reformed epistemology by others.
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Kretzmann, N. (1992). Evidence Against Anti-Evidentialism. In: Clark, K.J. (eds) Our Knowledge of God. Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2576-5_2
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