The nature of belief Flashcards
describe the supporters of fideism and their arguments, briefly
- Pascal’s wager - beneficial to believe
- Plantinga- faith is a properly basic belief
- Wittgenstein- the language of faith is separate from others
- R.M Hare: Bliks ‘set of profoundly unfalsifiable assumptions’ we have when viewing the world/
objections to plantinga?
atheists have no sense of divine,
Peter Vardy: all sorts of belief are basic, eg the great pumpkin objection
disanalogy objection - beliefs need affirmation by evidence (Richard Grigg - I saw a tree)
objections to pascal’s wager
- it is a selfish ethic - William James
- one cannot will to believe something eg clergy project
- Denis Diderot- reliance on Xn god/what if it’s a muslim god BUT could show atheism is irrational
- arguably you lose pleasure by believing in an unreal god
objections to wittgenstein
- xns would not believe that the bible is not in fact a historical narrative
- John Searle- thinking no god is listening to prayers would not work as seen in experimental xn societies
- Essentially only appeals to atheists
- Many believers make factual assertions like creationists, so more than just a ‘difference in attitude’ like Wisdom argues.
- Antony Flew - beliefs are unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless; Fideists shift the goal posts of God.
explain Wittgenstein’s argument
language and practice of faith is totally separate from those of science and reason
religion performs a different function in society
PHILLIPS AND KAI NELSEN: religion is logically cut off from other aspects of life
JOHN WISDOM’s parable of the invisible gardener shows that evidence can lead to different conclusions
R.M Hare’s ‘Bliks’ ‘profoundly unfalsifiable assumptions’
the four people who supported strong rationalism?
Clifford, Locke, Hume, Peterson
what are the 4 criticisms to Clifford’s rationalism
- WILLIAM JAMES: “the fact that a belief works is evidence enough”- pragmatic and beneficial; what if neither decision has sufficient evidence?
- BRYAN DAVIES: evidence and sufficient very slippery terms
- is clifford’s belief grounded in evidence? circular
- God is transcendent, omnipotent- how do we apply logic to immeasurable truths?
describe locke and hume’ positions
Locke: we have a duty to do our best in matters of belief
Hume: faith without reason is not sufficient grounds for a belief
4 points of discussions on nature of belief
- Neutrality - is reason really neutral
- ask a fideistic if he has reason for his faith ….
- Faith is a leap, which one to take? relates to pascal’s wager
- common sense dictates reason can’t be ignored
who supports critical rationalism and what is its objection
- Augustine - understanding is reward of faith - we don’t need it to believe, but might help others to understand
- Aquinas- some truths about god are beyond reason, some are not
- Pascal- submitting everything to reason leaves no mystery but blind faith is absurd
Objection: a critical rationalist will never reach a decisive conclusion.
clifford’s quote?
“in all cases, it is wrong to believe something on insufficient evidence”
quote from pascal that can be linked to neutrality of reason?
“the heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about”
Plantinga’s reformed epistemology
Faith is a properly basic belief - warranted because no successful defeat era, and self authenticating
Aquinas on propositional revelation?
Emphasised using reason to learn about god from the natural world
Strengths of propositional view
Viewing bible as sola scriptura makes bible infallible and inerrant
Helpful framework for living
Can be trusted and relied on
Weaknesses of propositional view
Circular argument (self-authenticating)
Weak conviction that truths about God can be coveted in ordinary language
The truth or falsity of religion turns on whether certain propositions are true.
Historically inaccurate eg moses texts written years after him & Contradictions in the bible - an eye for an eye vs turn the other cheek
Richard Hayes: “the interpretation of scripture can never occur in a vacuum” - psychologically we cannot receive knowledge passively
Karl Barth: literalism could give bible divine status that can only be given to god: this is bibliolatry - false worship of the bible
Impossible to use all the rules of the bible - too complex or obscure and too demanding
Schleirermacher on non propositional?
The bible is the result of writers reflecting on their RE
Religion is about ones subjective response to the infinite, not just obeying a set of truth
- revelation is the product of an active relationship of believer and god
Bultmann?
Believer has to work out for themselves what is revelatory in scripture and what isn’t, in light of the scientifically true
This demythologises the bible to get to its central truths and narratives
Barth?
Bible isn’t the word of god but contain is - everything must be understood through gods revelation in Christ
Salvation history
The view that the bible is a record of peoples experiences of the divine and so must be understood in different cultural contexts
Criticisms of non propositional
You can know little about god
Problem of eisegesis- can read meaning into a text
Result of human understanding and can’t reveal anything direct about god
Anthony Flew - Religion is Unfalsifiable so God dies a ‘death of a thousand qualifications’.
Karl Popper: “science is more concerned with falsification of hypothesis than with the verification.” Influenced by Karl Popper, Antony Flew applied the Falsification Principle to religious language and concluded that religious statements are nothing more than non-sensical utterances of little significance.
Objections to Fideism and RE
- they can’t distinguish between rational and trivial beliefs, since any attempt to justify some beliefs as acceptable and to reject others presupposes some form of rational judgment
- Common sense seems to suggest that our human capacity for reason must be used to test competing claims.
Hick’s definition of revelation
‘The disclosure from the divine of something previously hidden’
2 Timothy 3:16
‘All scripture is God-breathed’
Richard Hays
‘The interpretation of scripture can never occur in a vacuum’
W. Alston? (reformed epistemologist)
We are biased (in a good way) by the context inside of which we can actually understand / make intelligible a mystical experience.
E.g an apparition to a Hindu is more likely to be Krishna than Jesus.
Mystical experiences occur in a narrative matrix
Buddhist Scripture ( one of exams reports commented on no one talking about it !)
Tipitaka - Buddhist discourse not divinely inspired but read thoughtfully and respectfully. Offers guidance without being seen as inerrant.
Hermeneutics
To understand something new we need to interpret based on what we already know // circular
hermeneutics is about the ways you discover meaning in the Bible for your life and your era, faithfully taking its intents into today’s world
Errors in the bible?
- haplography (missing out letters)
- dittography (extra letters)
- historical mistakes
What does Inspired mean?
- comes from Greek ‘theopneustos’ meaning ‘God-breathed’ recalling genesis 2:7
What is the Prophetic Formulae?
‘Thus says the Lord..’
Why is the belief in the Great Pumpkin not properly basic?
Plantinga says: ‘God has implanted in us a natural tendency to see his hand in the world around us. The same can not be said for the Great Pumpkin.’
What does exegesis mean?
Exegesis is what comes out of the Bible, as against what gets read into it.
What does Eisegesis mean?
Eisegesis is what’s being done when someone interprets the Bible according to notions that were born outside of the Bible. In eisegesis, we read stuff into Scripture
What is the hermeneutic circle?
refers to the idea that one’s understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one’s understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole - circular
RM Hare on Bliks
‘A set of profoundly unfalsifiable assumptions’
Kierkegaard’s fideism
‘Precisely because we cannot know Good objectively, we must believe’
- Lutheran ideas of ‘sola fixes’
- fear & trembling (homage to Abraham’s intensely faithful actions)
Atkins?
The ‘why’ questions, so attractive to a religious life, are simply invented.
What does Anthony Flew argue in ‘The Presumption of Atheism’?
we assume something doesn’t exist (e.g the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn’t exist) unless we have warrant to do otherwise.
What does Steven Cahn argue?
Believers have no need for proof of god’s existence. Believers have to have ‘self-validating experiences’ to accept god.
Tertullian quotation?
Credo Quia absurdum
Faith in propositional revelation is…
An act of rational / intellectual assent
What authenticates truths Roman Catholics assent too?
Truths are authenticated by The collective mind and experience of the RC Church
What authenticates scriptural truths for Protestants?
For Protestants, scriptural truths are generally self-authenticating because they come from God, or they are authenticated by the conscience.
The question of religious ‘truth’
- truth is relative
- scientific truth is of a different order from religious truth so religious truth doesn’t had to hang on propositional views of revelation
- scientific truth in terms of quantum physics is elusive
- religion is a language game in which truth is defined by the user
- truth is an anti-real concept anyway
