I’m not that familiar with the internalist/externalist distinction, so I looked it up. Apologies if we’re doing Philosophy 101 here, but how does Plantinga make the claim that stuff about God is in fact one of those things we can be justified in believing without being able to become aware of a justifier? An externalist apparently just asserts that there are some such things.

Isn’t Chris’s point that Plantinga has not shown that the believer does have a reliable belief forming mechanism? If you say “where’s your evidence?” and I say “I don’t need any because I’m directly in a relationship with God”, you can certainly question whether my notion that I’m in that relationship is reliable. According to Stairs, Plantinga says that in general there’s no way of determining what are properly basic beliefs other than by looking at paradigmatic cases, but the case of religious belief (or perhaps more precisely, the notion that God has somehow engaged with you directly) is in fact one where Christians would deny that, say, a Mormon’s “burning in the bosom” was reliable. So if I’m a Christian or a Mormon, even if I find myself with the notion that I’m in a relationship with God, I ought to be concerned that my notion may in fact be mistaken, just as the other fellow’s is.

Stairs says that this controversy isn’t fatal, but that the more of it there is, the more of a problem it becomes. There does seem to be quite a lot of it about religion, though perhaps Plantinga’s argument is stronger if you just apply it to, say, theism rather than specifically to Christianity.

Very interesting post. On this bit though:

“A better response to Plantinga is just to point out that belief in the Christian God isn’t very much at all like most of the common-sense beliefs commonly cited as threated by Descartes & Hume-style skepticism (like belief in the reliability of our senses), but is an awful lot like beliefs most Christians wouldn’t accept without evidence–namely, the beliefs of other religions. That kind of response is very hard to reject without special pleading on behalf of Christianity, and doesn’t involve commitment to any potentially troublesome epistemic principles.”

- I am unsure that it is a problem for Plantinga that the beliefs Christians might accept are similar to those than muslims, for example. (though I’m no expert on Plantinga’s epistemology) Suppose that there is no qualitative difference between Christian claims and muslim claims – that they are in the same epistemic box.

For a start, I’m not sure that reformed epistemology governs all that many Christian beliefs. Sure, the existence of God can be properly basic, but it doesn’t follow from that that some specific piece of doctrine is. So all the Abrahamic religions can help themselves to reformed epistemology so far as the existence of God goes, but there’s still more to do. Plantinga would presumably say that divine inspiraton of The Bible over the Qur’an requires evidence.

So, if the set of propositions that reformed epistemology covers is actually quite limited, it’s not a problem for the reformed epistemologist that Muslims and Christians disagree. For, they might well agree on the set of propositions that reformed epistemology covers (eg. that God exists).

Even if that’s not the case though, I’m not sure the reformed epistemologist is in trouble. For, aren’t reformed epistemologists typically reliabilists of sorts (I’m fairly sure that Plantinga is a reliabilist of sorts). So, the Christian reformed epistemologist believes that (at least some) Christian beliefs are the product of a reliable belief forming practise (or something like that).

Now, if that’s right, it’s either the case that:

a) muslim beliefs that are inconsistent with Christian beliefs are the product of a reliable belief forming practise

or

b) they’re not the product of a reliable belief forming practise

Your worry is that the Christian reformed epistemologist might be forced to put muslim beliefs on a similar epistemic footing to Christian beliefs. Well, if (b) is true, they don’t. If (a) is true, then that’s not necessarily a problem. A belief can be the product of a reliable belief forming practise, but yet be false. So yeah, I don’t think either horn of that dilemma is a problem.

Why? It’s straightforward why if (b) is true, it’s not a problem. What about (a)? Well … when I was a Christian (I have since lost my faith) I didn’t think that it was a problem that muslim beliefs might be on a similar epistemic footing as my Christian beliefs. After all, muslims and Christians (and those of no faith, and so on) are all trying hard to answer difficult questions. It’s not obvious that one is on a better epistemic footing that another, and if one is on better epistemic footing that has the queer consequence that lots of intelligent people (eg. the non-muslims, if Islam turns out to be on a better epistemic footing than other belief-systems) are being massively epistemically irreponsible. So, I like the charity contained in the thought that mutually exclusive belief-systems might be on similar epistemic footing, and that at some point you must have to declare which side of the line you fall on.

Where it might create problems is when it comes to salvation. If there are no good reasons for preferring Christianity to Islam (for example) then it’d seem unfair for God to punish whichever of us get the wrong answer. But if you have a view of salvation in which everyone is saved (as I did, when I was a Christian), that’s not a problem.

Anyway, this comment is long enough. Thanks for the great post!