Knowledge and Christian Belief
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 0802872042
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Recognized worldwide as a leading Christian philosopher, Plantinga probes what exactly is meant by the claim that religious -- and specifically Christian -- belief is irrational and cannot sensibly be held. He argues that the criticisms of such well-known atheists as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are completely wrong. Finally, Plantinga addresses several potential “defeaters” to Christian belief -- pluralism, science, evil and suffering -- and shows how they fail to successfully defeat rational Christian belief.
else. Our idea, here, is that the inordinately ambitious man fails to recognize something he would otherwise recognize; the normal functioning of some aspect of his cognitive powers is inhibited or overridden or impeded by that excessive ambition. You may be blinded also by loyalty, continuing to believe in the honesty of your friend long after an objective look at the evidence would have dictated a reluctant change of mind. You can also be blinded by covetousness, love, fear, lust, anger, pride,
for example), but they aren’t accepted because they provide such an explanation. Nor are they accepted as the result of historical research. Nor are they accepted as the conclusion of an argument from religious experience. According to the model, experience of a certain sort is intimately associated with the formation of warranted Christian belief, but the belief doesn’t get its warrant by way of an argument from that experience. It isn’t that the believer notes that she or someone else has a
hatefulness of sin, its contrary” (p. 274); and he who sees the hatefulness of sin (in himself and others) will also (given proper function) hate it. Conversion, therefore, is fundamentally a turning of the will, a healing of the disorder of affection that afflicts us. It is a turning away from love of self, from thinking of oneself as the chief being of the universe, to love of God. But what is this love of God like, and how shall we understand it? William James, that cultured, sophisticated
intellectually arrogant and egoistic; I have certainly fallen into this vice in the past, will no doubt fall into it in the future, and am not free of it now. Still, suppose I think the matter over, consider the objections as carefully as I can, realize that I am finite and furthermore a sinner, certainly no better than those with whom I disagree, and indeed inferior both morally and intellectually to many who do not believe what I do. But suppose it still seems clear to me that the proposition
I can (and do) claim that three of the most plausible candidates for that post — historical biblical criticism, pluralism, and suffering and evil — do not in fact succeed. Afterword In this book I argued first (in Chapter One) that there really is such a thing as Christian belief and that we can, in fact, talk and think about God. In Chapter Two I distinguished de jure from de facto objections to Christian belief; the former are to the effect that such belief is intellectually or rationally