Nature Of Belief Quotes

Question 1

Karl Popper’s Falsification Principle (adapted by Flew to criticise Wisdom’s Parable of the Invisible Gardener)

Answer 1

“science is more concerned with falsification of hypothesis than with the verification.” Antony Flew applied the Falsification Principle to religious language and concluded that religious statements are nothing more than non-sensical utterances of little significance.

Question 2

Richard Grigg’s Disanalogy Objection

Answer 2

“a basic belief [is] grounded immediately by memory. But one of the reasons that I take such memory beliefs as properly basic is that my memory is almost always subsequently confirmed by empirical evidence’

Question 3

Tertullian (lawyer from Carthage who converted to Christianity around 197 AD)

Answer 3

‘It is certain- because it is impossible’
‘quia est absurdum est’ (I believe because it is absurd) - he refers to the unlikelihood that any human mind could conceive of God’s plan much like when Aquinas said that ‘God is neither something nor nothing’
BUT
-Tertullian elsewhere writes that ‘reason is a property of God’s, since there is nothing which God, the creator of all things, has not foreseen, arranged and determined by reason; moreover, there is nothing He does not wish to be investigated and understood by reason’
-there are 340 passages in Tertullian where the word ‘ratio’ appears (so it its one of the most frequently used nouns in his work)
-Eric Osborne: ‘Not only did he never say ‘credo quia absurdum’, but he never meant anything like it and never abandoned the claims of Athens upon Jerusalem’ and that Tertullian was a ‘most improbable fideist’

Question 4

Vardy’s Great Pumpkin Objection

Answer 4

‘Unless the Reformed Epistemologists can provide rational grounds for choosing one revelation over another (Christianity, for example, over ISlam), there seems to be no basis for their claim’

Question 5

Fideist Proponents

Answer 5

• Kant: ‘we need to deny reason in order to make room for faith’
• Kierkegaard: ‘precisely because we cannot know Good objectively, we must believe’ (Lutheran ‘sola fides’; ‘Fear and Trembling’ is basically a homage to Abraham for his faithful actions in agreeing to sacrifice Isaac)
• Tertulian: ‘Credo Quia Absurdum Est’ (I believe because it is absurd)
• Pascal: ‘the heart has its reason that reason knows nothing about’. EVP.

Question 6

Hume on SR

Answer 6

‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence’

Question 7

Pascal

Answer 7

‘the heart has its reason that reason knows nothing about’

Question 8

Anselm on CR

Answer 8

‘Faith seeking understanding’

Question 9

W.K Clifford on SR

Answer 9

‘It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’

But Brian Davies says ‘evidence’ and ‘sufficient’ are too slippery terms!

Question 10

Peterson on Strong Rationalism

Answer 10

‘in order for a religious belief-system to be properly and rationally accepted, it must be possible to prove that the belief-system is true’

Question 11

Kierkegaard (Fideism)

Answer 11

‘Precisely because we cannot know Good objectively, we must believe’

Question 12

Richard Amesbury on Pascal’s Wager

Answer 12

‘In light of the EVP it can be rational to gamble on an improbable outcome given a sufficiently high potential pay off’

Question 13

Strong Rationalist Proponents

Answer 13

Peterson - ‘in order for a religious belief-system to be properly and rationally accepted, it must be possible to prove that the belief-system is true’

W.K Clifford - ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence

Locke - we aren’t entitled to hold any beliefs that aren’t grounded in reason.

Hume - ‘a wise man always proportions his belief to the evidence’

Question 14

indirect voluntarism

Answer 14

the choice is not under our immediate control but we can influence what we come to believe by choosing to perform intermediary actions

Pascal = an indirect voluntarist (faith isn’t the result of an intellectual decision but must be nurtured through developing a life of faith._

Question 15

direct voluntarism

Answer 15

the choice over what to believe is under our immediate control

Question 16

Plantinga’s definition of a Fideist

Answer 16

someone who ‘urged reliance on faith rather than reason, in matters philosophical and religious’ and who ‘may go on to disparage and denigrate reason’

Question 17

Augustine on CR

Answer 17

‘Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but understand that thou mayest understand’

Question 18

Voluntarism

Answer 18

Pascal’s reason to believe which might convince an atheist in his Pensées: ‘if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is… there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain… and what you stake is finite…he must renounce reason to preserve his life, rather than risk it for infinite gain’

BUT: Tillich ‘no command to believe and no will to believe can create faith’

Question 19

Critical Rationalism is the point between the two positions which blends faith and reason: e.g. Tennyson’s observation that ‘we have but faith, we cannot know’

Only through commitment to faith can we find reason. It is only with fideist commitment to God that rational theories like the teleological argument for God makes sense, but it is only through faith that God himself can be understand.

Answer 19

Proponents:

• Augustine: ‘understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but understand that thou mayest understand’
• Anselm: ‘faith seeking understanding’

BUT: The critical rationalist can’t ever make final decisions - certainty is a myth when the belief is being considered rationally

Question 20

Plantinga’s definition of Fideism

Answer 20

‘exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason and utilized especially in the pursuit of philosophical or religious truth’

Question 21

Plantinga

Answer 21

Faith is ‘a properly basic belief’
‘sensus divinitatis’ (Aquinas & Calvin)
‘The mature theist commits himself to belief in God, this means he accepts belief in God as basic and there is nothing contrary to reason or irrational in doing so’

Question 22

Non-Voluntarism

Answer 22

the prophets in the Bible (Moses chosen as leader, Amos ‘plucked’ from his work and sent to preach, Jonah chased across land and sea). Prophet Mohammed. Relationships with God are not the result of their own will, it is the will of God. People are made for faith or commanded to belief.

Question 23

William James

Answer 23

‘the fact that a belief works is evidence enough’

Question 24

Kant (Fideism)

Answer 24

‘we need to deny reason in order to make room for faith’

Question 25

D.Z Phillips and Kai Kielsen’s theses for Wittgensteinian Fideism

Answer 25

1. Religion is logically cut off from the rest of life
2. Religious statements are self-referential and don’t talk about reality.
3. Religious statements can be understood only by religious believers.
4. Religious statements cannot be meaningfully criticised.