Randal Rauser's Blog, page 44

Conversations with Inner Atheists: An Interview

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Are there sufficient reasons to believe in God? My Opening Statement

In May, 2020, I participated in a debate on this question: Are there sufficient reasons to believe in God? My debate partner Sam and I divvied up the labor as follows: I argued that there are sufficient ‘reasons’ (i.e. properly basic grounds) to believe in God. Meanwhile, Sam argued that there are sufficient non-basic reasons (i.e. arguments/evidences) to believe in God.

I have included my opening statement below.

On behalf of Sam and myself, I’d like to thank Tom and Matt for agreeing to this debate and to Modern Day Debate for hosting it. The subject of debate is this question: “Are there sufficient reasons to believe in God?”

For the purposes of this debate, Sam and I will work with the following general definition of God:

belief in the existence of a transcendent, perfectly good being who is the cause of nature. Further, human flourishing is based at least in part by right relationship with that transcendent being. Thus, when we discuss the rationality of belief in God, it is to that definition that we refer. One can define rational belief both in negative and positive terms. Negatively, a rational belief is a belief the holding of which violates no epistemic duties.

For Matt and Tom to establish their thesis qua this standard, they would need to establish that belief in God, as defined above, always violates a specific epistemic duty. That, in turn, would require them to explain which duty it violates and why.

Positively, a rational belief is any belief that is either properly non-basic or properly basic.

A properly non-basic belief is a belief that is rational and justified as the valid conclusion to a reasoning process. Think, by analogy, of a mathematical theorem.
A properly basic belief is a belief that is rational and justified if formed in the right circumstances independent of a reasoning process. Think, by analogy, of a mathematical axiom, a starting point for reasoning.

It is clear that not all beliefs can be non-basic, because if every belief could only be justified as the conclusion of supporting premises, then those premises would themselves require supporting premises ad infinitum in which case any truth claim would require an infinite regress of argumentation. Consequently, there must be properly basic beliefs.

Properly basic beliefs include:

There are no married bachelors. [This is an analytic belief.]
7+5=12 [a priori belief.]
It is raining outside. [sense perceptual belief.]
I had cereal for breakfast. [memorial belief.]
It is wrong to torture a person. [moral intuitive belief.]
The restaurant is six blocks west.

Number (6) is an example of a belief that could be formed by way of testimony: under the right circumstances, when another human being testifies to the truth of a proposition, if you have no reason to distrust that human being, if they seem to be a credible witness, you are justified in accepting their testimony.

Keep in mind that all sources of belief – basic or non-basic – are fallible. But the mere possibility that rational intuition or sense perception or testimony can fail you does not undercut our general warrant for accepting these sources of belief barring any specific reason to question them in a particular case.

Now let’s apply testimony to our question. Imagine two parents, Amber the atheist and Chris the Christian. Amber teaches her child that God does not exist while Chris teaches his child that God does exist. If there are no defeaters to the testimony of which either child is aware, then each child is justified in forming a belief in the proposition in question based simply on that parent’s testimony: Amber’s child is rational to believe that God does not exist and Chris’s child is rational to believe that God does exist.

The Christian who wants to argue that atheism can never be rationally held based on testimony has an explanatory burden to bear. Likewise, the atheist who wants to argue, as Matt and Tom do, that theism can never be held rationally based on testimony, has an equally onerous burden to bear.

Keep in mind that belief in God by our definition of God, is held by the vast majority of people on earth:  uneducated farmers and highly educated scientists, housewives and Oxbridge philosophers, small children and Nobel laureates, refugees and heads of state.

Many of these people come to believe in God in this way, because a trusted authority – a parent or a philosopher, a teacher or a scientist – attests to the belief in God and they form that belief based upon that testimony in a basic fashion rather than through a process of discursive reasoning. It seems quite clear that such belief can in principle be properly basic and thus the possible vector of knowledge if God does, in fact, exist. It is the burden of Matt and Tom to argue that this is not possible, that all these people are all irrational. Suffice it to say, the burden is theirs for we have seen no basis to think theism necessarily violates any epistemic duties and excellent grounds to accept that belief in God can be properly basic and thus rational at least on the basis of testimony.

But theism can also be properly non-basic, that is, held by way of reasons. I will now invite my debate partner Sam to share some reasons by which one could have properly non-basic belief in God by way of arguments.

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The Long and Winding Road: My Dad’s Alzheimer’s in 32 Tweets

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The Cruel Trick: A Lament for Halloween Lost

COVID19 has taken so much. Now, it is taking Halloween, as well: a fraction of houses in our neighborhood are decorated. Most neighbors are going to have darkened doors. And those who venture out place themselves and others at risk of an especially cruel trick. This is a lament for Halloween lost.

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The Crusading Against Ignorance Interview

My interview with Micah Edvenson of the Crusade Against Ignorance YouTube channel. This was a fun and wide-ranging interview with topics including apologetics, biblical violence, hell, and heavy metal.

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Can you be saved if you don’t believe God raised Jesus from the dead?

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The Limits of Steelmanning

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The Ultimate Book Deal: My Latest Book for 99 Cents!

For October 20 and October 21, Amazon.com is selling the Kindle version of Conversations with My Inner Atheist for a mere 99 cents. My loss is your gain!

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Three Essential Elements of Every Christian Apologetic

In this video, I summarize my philosophy of Christian apologetics in terms of three essential pillars: arguments, character, and hope.

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Should you have a conversation with your inner atheist?

This article provides a brief general introduction to my most recent book.

I grew up in a church in which the status of your Christian faith was measured by the strength of your conviction. The serious Christian knew all the answers and had no doubts. And so, when I began to have doubts and to wrestle with questions, I largely kept them to myself. Sharing a nagging doubt or an unanswered question was equivalent to asking other people how to control dandruff or constipation: you just don’t share that kind of thing. Instead, you keep those issues to yourself. The good Christian quietly believes and that’s it.

However, the BBC movie God on Trial presents a very different picture. The film is set in the prisoners’ barracks in Auschwitz. As Jewish men face their own mortality, the question arises of whether God has been faithful to his covenant to bless his people. As they ponder this question, the men begin to talk about whether they should place God on trial to decide once and for all whether he has been faithful to his covenant with Israel. But then one man stands up in their midst of the group and fiercely reprimands the very notion as blasphemy. For a moment it seems as if the trial will not go forward. Then another man stands up and offers the following reply: “He gave us the Law. And to debate the Law even on such a terrible subject … is a kind of prayer.”

Now that’s surprising: how can doubts and questions be prayerful? Aren’t they the very sign of impiety? In fact, that man had a profound insight. In scripture, we see that the people with the most intimate relationship with God are those who are willing to share their questions and doubts. Indeed, the very name “Israel” comes from Jacob’s willingness to wrestle with the angel (Genesis 32:22-32) and time and again God’s people are willing to wrestle with their faith. Consider, for example, Abraham questioning God’s plan to destroy Sodom (Genesis 18:25), Moses persuading God to change his course of action (Exodus 32:11-14), and Job who spoke the truth of God in the midst of his questions (Job 42:7). From the cry of the psalmist to the piercing lament of Ecclesiastes, the Bible is full of questions and doubts. And they all testify not to the absence or tenuous nature of relationship, but rather to its strength and intimacy.

In my own life, I call that inner voice of questioning and doubt “My Inner Atheist”, “Mia” for short. I used to try to keep Mia quiet, fearful of the questions she would raise, worried that she might upend my faith. But this only worked for so long as eventually, I had to admit that she regularly raised difficult, nagging questions. For example, she would challenge me to explain how God’s Law could include such seemingly cruel punishments as the stoning of insubordinate children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). And she would ask how Jesus could respond to a woman’s plea for the healing of her child by saying it is not right to give the children’s food to the dogs (Matthew 15:26).

In my book Conversations with My Inner Atheist, I go from avoiding Mia’s queries to facing them head-on by working through 25 questions like these. In some cases, I believe I offered sound responses and my faith has been strengthened and deepened as a result. In other cases, I find that I am still working things out. But in all cases, I find that the exercise of facing my doubts and questions in their strongest form has led to me finding my own way into what it means to be true Israel by wrestling with my faith.

As I said at the beginning of this article, I grew up thinking that Christian faith was measured by the strength of your conviction. But I now believe that for people like myself, the real measure of my Christian faith is found as much in the strength of my resolve to maintain faith despite the doubts and questions, and even to find my faith within them.

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