Why Do We Exist?
RELIGION: BETWEEN FAITH AND RATIONALM
THE CASE FOR RATIONALITY
W. K. CLIFFORDS' ARGUMENTS:
• All beliefs must be subject to the standards of rational argument.
• Religion should not be seen as an exception to rational evaluation.
• It is wrong to accept any belief if it is based upon insufficient evidence.
• The harmful effect of holding a false belief is too high a price to pay for avoiding rational debate.
• To remain true to one-self and to others, a religious believer must advance a rational justification for holding onto a particular religious doctrine.
• Avoiding rational debate will only serve to numb our critical faculties and thus make us all the more susceptible to the acceptance of erroneous beliefs.
ADDITIONAL ARGUMENTS
• Religious beliefs are inherently judgemental in nature; given this fact it would appear that such beliefs, which undermine the claims of others, should possess some rational justification of their own.
• It is self-contradictory to claim that it is unreasonable for one not to believe in a certain religion whilst simultaneously maintaining that religious beliefs are beyond the pale of reason.
• It is not possible to determine the veracity of the claims that are made by contradictory religious beliefs except by means of rational evaluation.
• It is inconsistent to express religious beliefs and teachings in rational terms and yet try to make them immune from rational criticism.
Fideism
Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
• Faith is a subjective experience of inward passion and commitment; it is not something that is governed by the rules of
rational argument.
• Objective uncertainty is what gives rise to faith.
• Religious faith is not an intellectual postulate.
William James put forward a similar argument but also tried to challenge some of the basic premises of rationalism.
• If a reason is required to hold a belief then what reason do we have to believe in reason without presupposing a belief in
reason? In other words, without going in a circle and always end up begging the question.
• Since reason cannot justify reason without ending up in a circular argument, the rationalist is unable to fulfil his own
criterion of rational justification.
• Reason is therefore accepted without an independent evidential basis, which illustrates the fact that reason is also
irreducibly a faith.
• Given the fact that reason is also a faith, the dichotomy between reason and faith is artificial because it does not hold any
philosophical purchase.
• All our beliefs can be reduced to fundamental assumptions that cannot be justified beyond themselves. Our belief in visual
perception is one such belief. I cannot actually prove, independently of a belief in visual perception, that when I hold my hand
in from of my face, I am actually seeing my hand. The only reason that could be brought forward is the fact that I believe I am
seeing it, yet this is an argument that assumes that the visual perception is true to being with. I cannot use visual perception
to prove the truth of visual perception because the argument would always end up being an assumption and therefore not a
proof.
• If we all hold beliefs that are irreducibly based upon fundamental assumptions, then why cannot the religious believer be
committed to his religion as a fundamental assumption- something that does not require an evidential grounding?
• Religious belief is a faith just like our fundamental assumptions are acts of faith.
• To say that we can hold fundamental assumptions and not religious beliefs is to apply double standards because both are
ultimately rooted in acts of faith that are not grounded at an evidential level.
Critique of Fideism
• The argument that `reason cannot justify reason' is only superficially paradoxical. The supposed paradox is guilty of falling into
the fallacy of equivocation- the meaning given to the word `reason' is not the same in the first instance as it is in the second
instance.
• In the first instance `reason' stands for a process of structured thinking (which is the general sense in which the rationalist
uses the term), yet in the second instance `reason' is defined as a belief that is on a par with religious beliefs.
• The argument however is that reason is not a belief like a religious belief and therefore does not stand in need of justification
in the way that a religious belief does. Since `reason' is not equivalent to a religious belief the argument that `reason cannot
justify reason' is not genuinely paradoxical.
• The structure of the fideistic argument in itself illustrates the fact that reason is not a belief akin to religious beliefs, for
fideism uses rational argumentation is trying to make a case that rational argument is irrelevant to holding a religious belief.
If rational argument is needed even when trying to undermine rationality, then this not only seems to prove the
indispensability of rationality but also the fact that it is not a belief on a par with religious beliefs.
• The inevitable use of reason by fideism suggests that reason is not a belief but a tool that allows for meaningful intellectual
exchange (something that helps us structure and process our arguments).
• The distinction between reason and faith can therefore still be maintained.
• Our fundamental assumptions are not analogous to religious beliefs, which therefore does not permit the deductive inference
that religious beliefs can also be held as fundamental assumptions.
• Our fundamental assumptions do not require justification by means of evidence because they are epistemologically
fundamental. The same cannot be said of religious beliefs that are particular world-views and therefore not
epistemologically fundamental.
• Religious beliefs are in fact predicated upon epistemologically fundamental beliefs. One could therefore argue that one would
be justified in rejecting a religious belief if it contradicted a belief that was epistemologically fundamental.
• Alvin Plantinga argues that the belief in God can be held as a properly basic belief- a belief that is not derived from other
beliefs or supported by further evidence.
• Plantinga fails to convincingly prove why the belief in God should necessarily enjoy such a status.
• He is not advocating fideism since he recognises that rational arguments can become important if someone wanted to
disprove the belief, he is simply arguing for the fact that the theist does not have to rationally justify his belief in the first
instance.
• if the helief in God figures as a properly basic belief for anyone then they are rationally justified in believing in it.
• Gary Gutting argues that it is absurd to hold the belief in God as a properly basic belief when there is so much widespread
disagreement about it.
• Theistic beliefs exist in a dialectical context with non-theistic beliefs. If the theist is perfectly within rational limits in treating
the belief in God as properly basic then why cannot the atheist treat 'the non-existence of God as a properly basic belief?
• This is a problem precisely because of the dialectical context in which theistic and atheistic beliefs are held and hence the fact of such a context suggests that rational arguments do need to be provided in the first instance, particularly when both theists and atheists contend that their beliefs have a literal purchase on reality.