The logical problem of evil can be dealt with, and so the skeptic might decide to retreat to the probabilistic problem of evil – that is, given some of the instances of gratuitous evil in the world, we would expect an all-powerful and all-loving God to render such evil impossible.  Given that such instances of (seemingly) unnecessary evil do happen, we can be reasonably confident that God does not exist.

For example, three women escaped this year after a decade of captivity.  Their abductor allegedly* raped them repeatedly and deliberately caused the death of one of their unborn children (another child made it to full term and was six-years-old at the time of the report).  The three women later gave statements for a publicly released video.

I don’t know what this does to you.  It evokes in me the first stages of a murderous rage.

I once heard a story from a priest who presided over the funeral of an infant.  The child’s parents were in jail.  The infant had essentially been abused to death:  There were burn marks from cigarettes all over his body, scalds from being immersed in hot water.  I don’t know what else the child suffered.  I think my ears refused to hear it.

What does this do to you, you of limited potency?  If you knew exactly where such things were happening, and that they were happening right now, what would prevent you from rescuing that child?  What would keep you from breathing compassion on him, even if he was breathing his last?  What would you do with the parents?

What does it mean, then, that God permits this?

I confess that I have bled over into the “emotional” problem of evil, but I think this is all the power that the probabilistic problem of evil has.  By itself – academically, if you can stomach the term here – the probabilistic problem of evil can be dealt with.  How shall we proceed?

Let’s be academic first, because then it will be out of the way.

The failing of the probabilistic problem of evil is that we must presume to know…well, much, much more than we do.  Consider:  In order to say that the kidnapping and rape of those women in Cleveland was “gratuitous,” we would have to say that there was no possible purpose for it, no possible good which could at least balance the scales of justice (let alone, produce more good than evil).  What great good could come about such that God would be justified in permitting the kidnapping and rape of these women?

We just don’t know.^  This is why the probabilistic argument fails – the skeptic cannot say with certainty that any instance of evil is gratuitous.  How would he know?  It might seem gratuitous, he might see no purpose in it at all – well and good, and ultimately we can all identify with this stance.

But to say that, in all probability, God does not have a purpose behind a given instance of suffering?  This requires some kind of reasonable certainty.  We just don’t have that.

This, no doubt, is unsatisfying to the skeptic.  No doubt, even among believers, it does not do much to allay the emotional power of the problem of evil.  It is an academic answer, which, as far as I can see, does address the argument and shows how it fails (at least among we mere mortals).**

Can we attempt an answer, though?  Can we attempt to peer into the mind of God?  I leave this to another post.

Rather, as long as we’re being academic, let’s bring in the analogy of the author.

Our author is writing, and the conflict in act two is that her main character is imprisoned, and being tortured.  The torture scene goes on, and the suffering of the hero is profound.  The torture is so ruthless that we, the readers, begin to wonder how the hero can survive.  But survive he does, and he escapes, and we’re on to act three.

Now, especially in the moment of the suffering, we might wonder whether all of this torture is really too much, in the context of that world (not to say, according to our tastes, but according to whatever possible purpose it might have in the story).  We might think the hero has been needlessly impaired, or the suffering has been so profound and humiliating, and has offended the dignity of the character so completely, that we cannot imagine what purpose it might serve for the author.  These, at least, are among the things we see when we encounter seemingly gratuitous suffering in our world.

Now, I have been just short of superlative here, in describing the suffering of our hero.  The question is, is there any possible purpose for this suffering, any possible good which could justify this great evil?

The hero, obviously, might have no idea how to answer these questions.  Other characters, like friends of Job, might speculate and provide entirely unsatisfying answers – or admit that they can’t see what the purpose is.  Does this fact alone render the author non-existent?

Of course not.  Still further, does it mean the author actually has no possible purpose for the suffering?  Again, no.  Moreover, because we are speaking of a fictional character, I dare to suggest that you might already have conceived of some reasons for the suffering.  When emotions aren’t involved, it becomes something like solving a riddle.  There’s no need for me to speculate here – I invite you to propose answers to the riddle.

*I don’t know if anyone expects such thoroughness of investigation from me, but can a dead man be tried and convicted?  Anyway, the “allegedly” appears a formality, but I am in no position at all to be sure either way.

^Far from being a cop-out, this is also the failing of utilitarianism.

**This raises the question – on naturalism, does it make sense to consider anything “gratuitous”?  Doesn’t gratuitousness depend on a purpose, and the means for accomplishing that purpose being over-indulged?  On naturalism, whom would we charge with the crime of being gratuitously evil?  If it’s the fault of humans (as in genocide, perhaps, or sadism in torture), isn’t that always the fault of humans?  How can we even blame God for that on theism?  So must we only speak of natural events being gratuitous on naturalism?  But the charge here seems especially weak, since we can (now more than ever) see how any given instance of natural evil actually plays a role in the grand purposes of our world (e.g. – an earthquake, no matter how devastating, is only the cause of tectonic activity, which plays a role in recycling nutrients and therefore making life possible.  Isn’t it better that life on earth exists, rather than not at all?  Isn’t this better, even at the cost of occasional disasters?)

Last time, in brief, we considered the logical problem of evil as a defeater for Christianity, and found that it cannot be sustained.  Now, what about the probabilistic problem of evil?

This version of the problem of evil says, in so many words, that while it is not *impossible* for God and evil to exist simultaneously, it is at least highly improbable.  That is, we see terrible manifestations of evil – rape, genocide, abuse of children – that we must come to see that an all-powerful God would (almost certainly) intervene to prevent these things.  Since we see such things happening, it is highly probable that God does not exist.

For the sake of contrast, which has the quality of making things clearer, let’s note that this is simply a modest version of the logical problem of evil.  The atheist (or skeptic, even if he is a Christian engaged in a thought experiment) sees that, logically, free will necessitates the ability to choose evil.  Very well – but why so much evil?  Why such extreme evil?

The preface to the next question is far too long to include here, but suffice to say:  I am not being flippant about this.

The question:  Who says we’ve seen extreme evil?

Let’s step back for just a moment.  What, of the things humans have seen or imagined, is the worst fate that can befall a person?  It seems safe – at least conventional, but I have to insist that it is also the best possible answer, by definition – to say that eternal damnation is the worst thing that can befall a human being.

We make heavy and light of this in the modern day –  some are bent on the idea that everyone else is fated for Hell, while others simply dismiss Hell as a possibility (see my collegiate folly in the last post).  For the sake of argument, let’s assume Hell is a real possibility for someone, if not everyone.  Is Hell not the worst possible fate we can suffer?

If it is, then it stands to reason that anyone who can actually banish another person to Hell is capable of the greatest evil – that is, the banisher is capable of banishing someone to Hell who ought not to be banished to Hell.  If Hell is real, and the summation of every terrible thing, then this is the most terrible evil that can be done.  It is complete, and final, and real.

“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

But it turns out (among people who take Hell seriously) that not just anyone can banish souls to Hell.  Even God Himself does not claim to do this, but it is by a decision of each soul whether he or she will suffer Hell.  But if anyone could, by sheer force, banish souls to Hell, of course it is God alone who can do this.  (Matthew 10:28)

Whatever Hell actually is is not important, here.  (It is, naturally and supernaturally, very important in almost every other context).  My point is only that there are many* imaginable instances of evil which are not even possible in our world.  It is clear that God has, in fact, restrained evil to some extent.  And if He has restrained it at all, there must be some purpose in restraining it exactly where He did (wherever that is).

So, we begin to answer the probabilistic problem of evil by saying, at minimum, that no one doles out the most terrible form of evil.  Even God, in a real sense, leaves that to our own free decision.

If we grant that much – that the most terrible evil is not even possible – then we begin to shake the earth upon which the probabilistic problem of evil is built.  And how will we see it shaken to the ground?  And how does the analogy of the author play into this?

Next post.

*I take some license here by anticipating there are “many” but not endeavoring to name them.  In fact, what seems to be license is more of a censure, for my part.

We have been following a simple overview of Alvin Plantinga’s project:  To articulate a model which demonstrates that Christian (or simply theistic, if you like) belief can be warranted.  He starts with the objection that Christian belief, whether or not it is true, is certainly irrational.

This he shows to be untenable, but then he asks, How could we show that Christian belief is not warranted?  What would be a “defeater” for this belief?  The answer is that Christianity itself (or, again, the existence of God) must be shown to be false.  If it cannot or is not, then the Christian can have warrant for her beliefs.

We’ve already seen that the challenge which seems to be posed by historical biblical criticism is something like an arbitrary handicap in sports.  Let’s say you are telling me about some heroics from your adult softball league.  You hit a home run to win the game last night.

“Impossible,” I say.

You say, “Why do you say that?”

Me:  You don’t own a bat.

You:  I don’t need to own a bat.  I borrowed one.

Me:  You don’t own a bat, and everyone knows it.  Moreover, I’ve never seen you swing a bat.  There’s no way you hit a home run.

You:  Unless I did have a bat, and did take a swing, and did hit a home run…

Enough of this one.  Sometimes one wants a fun analogy, but the parallels are not as dynamic as one would like.  Anyway, I promised evil.

Now, the first iteration of the problem of evil is that it is impossible that an all-powerful and all-good God could possibly allow evil.  This is known as the “logical” problem of evil – somehow, there is a logical contradiction when one says that both God (being all-good and all-powerful) and evil can exist simultaneously.

This one does not require the analogy to make it clear.  In fact, Plantinga has modestly alluded to it, but I understand he is actually to credit for demonstrating that the logical problem of evil is untenable.  Less modestly, perhaps, I have to wonder why it took someone as smart as Plantinga to make this point:

In order for free will to be real – that is, in order for our choices to be genuine choices – evil must be a possibility.  We must be free to choose evil.*

And, in fact, the author analogy could find some resonance here.  Consider:

In the context of her story, who establishes what is good?  Is it anyone other than the author?  Sure, you might read a book and find it terribly objectionable – but in the context of the story, does your objection mean anything?  Isn’t the author the god of that world, all-powerful and all-good?  If not all-good, how would you argue that she isn’t?

In truth, there’s no arguing, except to persuade the author to write differently.  In that case, you have not changed her relationship to her story – she is still the god of that world.  But you have caused her to exercise her power, and to define “good”, in a new way.

But there’s a more down-to-earth point to be made, and that point is made by the modified version of the problem of evil – the probabilistic problem of evil.

*In fact, for a time in college, I believed that Hell could not exist given an all-loving God.  (Strangely, I did not see the parallel to the problem of evil).  It wasn’t until I realized that one must take free will seriously that I realized Hell must seriously be real.

In the last couple of posts, we had a look at Alvin Plantinga’s presentation of the A/C model.  This model proposes that the sensus divinitatis is one of our cognitive faculties, and by this we can have a “properly basic” belief in God.

Now one of the common objections to religious belief is that it is irrational (whether or not it is true); I noted that this stance assumes atheism.  Likewise, Plantinga’s model assumes theism – it assumes there is a God, and if so, the model is an explanation of one way we come to know God exists.

Strictly speaking, he says, there is no significant objection against his model.  You might now contest that, and if so, the comment section is a perfectly good place to do so.  Plantinga only makes the declaration after considering a number of possible objections, and showing how they fail, and so he may already have handled your objection.

My interest, however, is in the second part.  Assuming Plantinga is correct about the robustness of his model, the only way out is to prove that God does not exist (or more broadly, in Plantinga’s project, to prove Christianity is false).

In the first case, he considers Historical Biblical Criticism (HBC).  He divides this into three parts, and distinguishes the parts by the criteria each use in their efforts to shake out historical truth from the biblical texts.  He has obviously had a lot of exposure to HBC, while I have had minimal.  Nevertheless, I want to reproduce one of his points here, which is the point which always rushes to my mind when I hear about HBC.

The goal of HBC is to apply modern historical criticism – which has been applied to other historical texts in an attempt to shake out the truth – to the Bible, and to see, for example, what we can make out about the “real” Jesus.  This stands in contrast to traditional Christian belief, which states, among other things, that Jesus was God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, and that he died and rose again three days later.

HBC cannot assume those things.  In fact, Plantinga says, HBC explicitly rules them out.  There is no historical test or method by which we can see that Jesus is the Son of God the Father.  And since we do not regularly observe miracles  – since the zeitgeist insists that they simply don’t happen – we cannot take the miracle accounts seriously, either.

And so, Plantinga says, we can’t say a whole lot about Jesus – some are ready to deny he ever existed, although this seems to be a fringe position.  In any case, we get such conclusions as that he existed around the time we think he did, that he taught his disciples and was credited with miracles (we’re careful to avoid saying he performed miracles), that he was executed by the Roman authorities, and that his disciples believed they had subsequently seen him alive, risen from the dead.

These kinds of things, they say, are all we can really know about Jesus.  If you want to have “faith” in him, you’ll have to venture outside of the things we know to be true (at least with a high degree of probability).  That is, if you want to take the man, Jesus, and attribute divinity to him, that’s your prerogative; HBC can’t help you there.  More to the point:  If you want to insist that Jesus performed miracles, you are entirely on your own; HBC does not admit miracles.

But this, again, is like the “catch” in Freud’s and Marx’s ideas about religious belief, isn’t it?  Doesn’t it assume miracles can’t happen?  On what basis do we assume this?

On the other hand, if there is a God – why should we think miracles can’t happen?  If God really is the Father, and Jesus the Son, why should we think it impossible that God would raise him from the dead?  I can’t see any reason.

As for believing these things in the first place, HBC can’t help us here.  It doesn’t want to – it wants to look at history and shake out the truth…which falls under certain criteria.  It is obviously not the whole truth, but a very particular slice of the truth (reality without any possibility of miracles, for instance).  It undoubtedly has its purposes, but conferring – or even confirming – faith is not one of them.

The author analogy may have something to say about this, but I will be brief.  The second objection has to do with the problem of evil, and that is the more interesting objection – and the one which I believe the analogy will better be applied to.

For now, imagine that Tolkein allowed his story of middle earth to continue for another thousand years.  Let’s look at some characters at the end of that age – they are attempting to shake out the truth of their history, namely, the story of Frodo and the Ring.  Now some of our characters believe the story exactly as you and I have experienced it:  Sauron made or commissioned the making of 20 rings, one of those which he would keep.  This “One Ring” was forged in a way that would allow him to dominate the others, ultimately giving him power over the whole world.  The story is that of Frodo traveling to Mount Doom and destroying the Ring.

At present, we don’t know for sure if any of the rings have survived.  The story says that some of them were destroyed, and others have simply escaped our attention, effectively disappeared from history.

Now, a couple of our latter-day characters sit down to consider the story, and the first one says what a lovely tale it is, and how heroic Frodo was, and how terrible Sauron was, and he speaks as though these were real people and real rings.  He talks about Frodo experiencing terrible visions, including encounters with Sauron, whenever he slipped the ring on.  Witnesses said that Frodo would simply disappear when he wore the ring, as would anyone else who wore it.

The second character looks at our whimsical friend and says that the story is nice, as far as fables go – but there is simply no truth in the notion that one person could rule another by getting him to wear a certain ring.  Moreover, no one has ever slipped on a ring, and simply disappeared!  Have you?  Anyone you know?  Of course not.  So while we might like to tell the story, and enjoy its entertainment value, and take in the rich moral truths we find in it, let’s not have any nonsense about magical rings!

And yet – in that world – those things did happen.  Is our cynical friend any more correct in his thesis because he is cynical, or because he limits what may be considered as “historically true”?  Or – as Plantinga’s point goes – has our whimsical friend, by admitting the full truth of the story, also admitted its full import?  Doesn’t he possess truths that his cynical friend refuses?

Indeed, it is altogether simple to see how an author could instill in her characters a sense of her, the author.  They might, someway, be cognizant (operating under some cognitive faculty) of her existence, and her influence on their world.

The friendly skeptic might say, “Very well.  An author can obviously do anything she likes, and if we are to think of the Universe as God’s story, we can infer that God might do anything he likes.  But this does not prove there is a God.”

And I would say, presumably with Plantinga, “Agreed.  But we have at least advanced beyond the Freud/Marx objection, that there is necessarily something wrong with a person’s cognitive faculties if she believes in God.  The real question is, does God actually exist, or not?  If that can be shown, then our theories about the nature and origin of religion will have greater import.”

Full disclosure:  If I came to believe, even to know, that God does not exist, I would speculate profusely as to the causes for religious belief.  I doubt anything could be more fascinating, and I would want to know, first of all, exactly what had happened in my own case.

As it stands, we can see that Plantinga’s idea (really, the long-standing idea of Judaism and then Christianity), depends on whether God actually exists.  If God does exist, then we can have warrant for our beliefs (hence the title of his book, Warranted Christian Belief).  If it were shown that he does not exist, then this sense of his existence which theists experience must have some other explanation than the “sense of the divine.”

But this is, as precisely as I have ever heard it said, how I came to believe in God.  I was not even aware, strictly speaking, that there were carefully constructed arguments for (and against) God’s existence until I was in college.  At that time, I am embarrassed to say, an atheist acquaintance was able to make me feel silly for lacking such arguments.

Warrant, though, has much to do with one’s circumstances, and those were mine.  I did not think God needed a sound argument for his existence; I thought it enough that I simply believed it and, moreover, that I felt confident I had experienced his presence in certain ways.

With that, let’s push the point one step further, which is in fact a confusion I had about Plantinga’s idea at first.  That is, belief in God as properly basic does not imply a direct experience of God, what one might almost think was a physical experience of God.  Here is an example of that:  John C. Wright conversion experience.

Wright’s experience I would consider to be “mystical,” like those St. Teresa of Avila or St. John of the Cross were said to experience.  Was it, strictly speaking, a physical experience?  When he says, “I felt the Holy Spirit enter my body” or even “I entered the mind of God,” are we to think these were the “deliverances” of his physical senses?  Or did he have some experience which is most readily described in terms of the physical senses, but is actually better attributed to an independent “sense” of the soul?

Now, it’s not perfectly clear to me what Plantinga would say about Wright’s experience, but the best I could surmise is that he might be willing to agree on this classification of the experience as “mystical” (“whatever that means”); yet this experience and the deliverances of such experiences are not his subjects.

Rather, it seems to me, he is driving at this:  If I say to a friend, “There is a being who exists, who knows all, understands all, is all-powerful, all-good, and who made you,” that person might simply agree.  I might similarly say, “That truck across the street is red,” or “It’s been hot the last few days, hasn’t it?” and that person might similarly agree.

It’s not that that person has necessarily had a direct experience of God, some kind of mystical experience; it is rather that my friend might simply believe that what I say is true.  Not because I say it, but because he possesses a sense of the divine, which tells him my statement was true (just as he possesses a sense of sight which tells him the truck is red, or a functional memory which tells him that the past few days really have been hot).

Here again, I am not aware of having had any mystical experiences (or anything remotely like that) until I was in high school; but I believed in God from earliest memory.  And the objection which might first arise turns out to be helpful to my point:  Can’t the skeptic say, after all, that I was simply believing what my parents told me?

Well, maybe so; but they also told me about Santa Claus, and I can’t remember a time when I believed in him.

Alright, then maybe it’s my larger environment.  We live in a religious culture, and I absorbed that belief as a member of that culture.

Ok; but how will you explain the way I came to value celibacy and chastity (even while failing to be chaste), or how I was unwilling to shed my sincere belief in God even as many of my friends did so, or how I became convinced of orthodoxy in our intensely polarized culture?  (How is it, for example, that I am against abortion AND against the death penalty?  Holding both disqualifies me either as democrat or republican).

Again, it must be said with an even-keel:  These points do not prove anything about the existence of God.  And you might be ready to propose some theories about the peripheral points I’ve made (one might simply choose to be counter-cultural as a way of seeking significance, you could say – thus I have taken the “unpopular” stance of being orthodox in order that I might stand out).  I would argue that they have been informed by that same sense of the divine which tells me that the proposition “God exists” is true.

The point is this:  At some time, someone told me about God.  And I believed it.

However, you can simply demonstrate that God does not exist, and then we shall have to consider the alternative theories about my convictions.  Such a demonstration is what Plantinga calls a “defeater,” and we’ll take a gander at that next post.

Last time we looked at a few examples of properly basic beliefs, including beliefs that come to us through the senses and through the memory.  Surely you believe you read the last post in the not-too-distant past?

And so, Plantinga’s point, narrowed a bit for our purposes:  Belief in God, like belief in yesterday and belief in an external world – and belief in other minds, the one composing this post and the one or two reading it – is properly basic.

Well, if Plantinga wants to say that belief in God is properly basic, he must supply a cognitive faculty which produces it.  After all, the senses tell us there is an external world, and our memories tell us we have experienced a real past.  For that, Plantinga points to a term used by John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas – the sensus divinitatis.

Now, the impetus for Plantinga’s project was the common objection that might be phrased like this:  Whether or not Christianity is true, it is surely irrational to believe it.  When Marx says that our minds are failing us, or when Freud blames “wish fulfillment” for religious belief, they point to this idea that our cognitive faculties are somehow failing or misguided in believing Christianity.

Plantinga makes the point that is almost painfully obvious:  Doesn’t this assume atheism?  And indeed it does – it does not address whether Christianity might really be true; it assumes Christianity is false.  Given that, how can we explain religious belief?

But Plantinga – and I, in my more ordinary way – would like to know, why assume this?  Has there been some great argument for atheism which only fools and religious devotees will ignore?  Has Christianity suffered some powerful defeater which renders it impotent?

I have not seen these things, and I admit that I take Plantinga at his word that he has seen no such arguments either.  He is, after all, in a much better position to say whether any really good arguments along those lines exist.

Rather, if we start and say, “Assuming there is a God, how would we explain this?” we might come upon what Plantinga calls the A/C Model (Aquinas/Calvin – though I’ve had to resist the urge to read it as the “Air Conditioning Model”).

Under the A/C model, Plantinga credits the sensus divinitatis with our properly basic belief in God.  That is, in the same way that our memory produces memory beliefs, and our physical senses produce sense perceptions, our “sense of the divine” produces the belief that there is such a person as God.  (He notes that the sensus divinitatis might apply to all theists in this basic way, though his aim is to serve Christianity in particular, and the “great truths of the gospel”).

Let’s take a quick step back – what does this mean for our analogy of God as author?

It would mean, I suppose, that in the course of telling a story, an author might give her characters a sense of the world which exists outside of that story.  She, the author, might give them the ability to recognize her, in her movements and purposes in telling the story.  No doubt this could lead to some bad literature, but it has actually populated great literature, too.

In the story of Oedipus, for example, what is that dark, foreboding presence Oedipus’ parents feel when they are told his fate (he will kill his father and marry his mother)?  I’m not speaking of just the fear – I’m speaking of what the fear is a reaction to.  Is it just to the words they heard from the oracle?  That hardly makes sense – anybody might say anything, and one need not be afraid.  (It is especially obvious that the oracle, herself, won’t be causing these events to occur).

So why this?  They sense, beyond their physical senses, that some power has control over their world, and it is this power (whatever it might be) that will see to it that Oedipus’ tragic fate does, in fact, come about.

Sophocles (the author of Oedipus Rex) decided, as a matter of dramatic interest, that his characters should have this sense.  Otherwise, if Oedipus’s parents thought they were only hearing words which had no force behind them, why would they have taken the actions they did?  More importantly – how could the story possibly be interesting without that sense – that cognitive faculty – which produced beliefs that did not come from their physical senses (or memory, or a priori beliefs)?

But we need not have any familiarity with Oedipus in order to understand Plantinga’s point.

Last time I introduced the notion that belief in God is properly basic, an idea developed by philosopher Alvin Plantinga.  Let’s have a cursory look at what it means for a belief to be “properly basic.”

As I mentioned, Plantinga is an epistemologist.  Most of us take for granted that we know certain things, but epistemologists want to explore this knowing business further.

For example, have a look outside; is it night, or day?  (I pause while you answer).  Very good sir/madame.  But now the epistemologist wants to ask, “How do you know that?”  And you might answer that the moon is shining brightly, or that the stars are out in glory, and the sun is nowhere to be seen.  This is how you know it is night.

In this case, you know through your senses, principally your vision.

Now, this can go much further, and become quite twisted (and convoluted?) quickly.  I might ask, for example, whether there are any such things as stars (and how do you know?), and whether your eyes are deceiving you (and how do you know they are not?) and whether you are just a body plugged into the Matrix (and how do you know you are not?).  And if you are a body plugged into the Matrix, is it really night after all?  Is there any such thing as a sun, anywhere?

Let’s not wander down any rabbit holes, at least for the moment.  Rather, let’s assume your eyes do not deceive you, and that the things you perceive are real.  Science, after all, believes such things.  Under this assumption, we can say that your sense perceptions (what your physical senses tell you) are reliable.  Sometimes they can be mistaken, but almost all of the time, they are essentially correct (or correctable).

Now, it’s not just that your senses are reliable, it’s that you believe what they are telling you.  In other words, you believe that the “deliverances” of your senses constitute real knowledge.

An example:  I walk cross the street.  As I go, I hear a horn blaring, and I look and see a truck barreling down on me.  Immediately, I jump out of the way.  Take note – it’s not the immediacy of the reflex which I want to highlight, but the immediacy of the knowledge.  How did I know there was a truck barreling down on me?

Allow me to state how I did NOT come to this knowledge.  I did not first think:  1)  I am appeared to “truckly.”  2) Usually, when I am appeared to “truckly,” this is because there really is a truck in the vicinity of my person.  3) I am walking on a street, which is where one might readily expect to be appeared to “truckly” because there really are trucks there.  4) A bystander yelled, “Truck!  Look out!”  This gives me further evidence that my perception is accurate, since there is another person who is appeared to “truckly.”  5)  Therefore, I can be reasonably confident that there is a truck in the vicinity, and I should retreat to safety.

That is, I did NOT come to my conclusion about the truck by way of reasoning, by a successful argument.  Rather, the very fact that I perceive the truck – and that alone – convinces me that there is a truck in the vicinity.  There is no intermediate step between the perception (seeing the truck) and the belief (knowing there is a truck in the vicinity).  And that is why Plantinga considers sense perceptions to be “properly basic” beliefs.^

So if our senses are reliable, we can obtain knowledge through them.  Is this the only way we obtain knowledge?

Indeed, there are other cognitive faculties, says Plantinga.  There is memory, for instance, which everyone takes for granted.  I (the author now, and not Plantinga) might offer – I don’t think most people consider that there’s no scientific evidence that our memories are reliable.

Shall we explore this assertion?

How would you prove, for instance, that the world did not come into existence five minutes ago?°  After the initial, “Of course the world began more than five minutes ago!” (after which I would say, “Prove it.”), you might begin to reflect and ask, “Well, how did we get here?”

And I will say that you were made by God five minutes ago, at your current age minus five minutes.  If there is a God, this surely can’t be too tall an order.

You might reply, “But there is food in my stomach!”

And I will say that God has also created half-digested food in your stomach.

You might reply – and most objections you could raise will go the same way – that there are mountains that are crumbling, there are stars that are dying, you have a note written by your mother from 20 years ago, and that you are just so darned sure that you were real and alive “yesterday.”

And I will say – and my replies will follow the same pattern – that God created the world five minutes ago to appear as though it were millions, or billions, of years old.  He even included details of your “past” which would give you the impression you’ve been alive for more than five minutes.  (Young earth creationists propose a thing like this – and I don’t mean that to disparage them).

As for your certainty, I will only say, there is no scientific process – read, “inference from empirical data” – that proves this.

In fact, because memory stands on its own – Plantinga says, I know what I had for breakfast this morning, and I believe that I really did eat that breakfast – we can give the scientific method its full breadth.  After all, if we were skeptical about our memories, why would we explore our origins?  Why should I worry about the lifetime before mine (or the one 100, or 1,000, lifetimes before mine) if I disbelieve my memory?  (Let alone more practical considerations – why trust the experiment I did yesterday?  I’ll surely have to redo it, to be sure, “now,” that the results are true.  I certainly couldn’t know, a priori, that an experiment’s results would be true).

More crucially, because memory beliefs are properly basic, we are not limited to scientism.  (If that view could be more impoverished than it already is).

There are other cognitive faculties –  things we know a priori, for example – which furnish us with properly basic beliefs.  What Plantinga wants to propose in Warranted Christian Belief is that the sensus divinitatis is one of these faculties, and that belief in God and the “great truths of the Gospel” is properly basic.  While Plantinga deals with both, and perhaps more particularly with Christian faith, we will only see (for now) how belief in the existence of God might be properly basic, then have a look at some objections and see how the analogy may help us through them.

^And if someone does not consider them properly basic, we begin to wonder about that person’s psychological integrity.

°I have seen quotations of Bertrand Russell pointing this out, saying, “there is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into existence five minutes ago…”  Plantinga makes extensive use of this device, and as he refers to Russell in other places, I’m confident he is aware of the proper attribution of the device.

In the last few posts I drew from the thought of philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who has worked in epistemology (study of knowledge) and metaphysics (study of the things that undergird reality, or ultimate reality), among other areas.

In other words, he thinks and writes about what we know, or at least what we think we know.  In fact, it’s that latter clause which is, in a sense, the whole reason that “epistemology” exists.  We might say that Plantinga has tried to figure out what we know, or can know, about the ultimate reality.

And what do you do for a living?

Plantinga began his work when western philosophy was not very friendly to theists – he says that any philosopher who was also a Christian was careful to conceal the fact, and kept his nose buried in his work.  It seems to me that such an environment must have been a kind of crucible for a Christian philosopher, who would have to make his beliefs stand up in a rigorous and hostile world.

He did ultimately reveal his Christian faith, whether or not he ever hesitated in doing so – God and Other Minds, Warranted Christian Belief, Faith and Rationality, among others, comprise his philosophical output.

So what do I want with the man?  A private audience, for a start.

In the meantime, I want to borrow his notion of belief in God as “properly basic.”  Whereas I have borrowed the Kalam Cosmological Argument from William Lane Craig in preceding posts, and dwelt on the implications of the argument, Plantinga offers that we can know God exists without ever having to “prove” it by argument.  He argues that no argument is needed to rationally believe in God.

Indeed, he notes that most people who believe in God seem not to arrive at that belief by argument, by carefully constructed syllogisms.  Rather, it is as if they have another sense, another cognitive faculty which responds to the proposition, “God exists”, as though it were evident without any other support.

You can read Warranted Christian Belief to really dive into Plantinga’s thought; else, stay tuned, and I’ll give you the backwash version.