Faith After Foundationalism

Plantinga-rorty-lindbeck-berger-- Critiques And Alternatives

D. Z. Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367315665
• eBook ISBN: 9780429980213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

"Such is the clarity of its exposition and interest of its argument, that it can be recommended to those seeking an introduction to recent work in [epistemology]. The interest of the book, however, is greater than that. For the discussion of foundationalism and of recent reactions to it is subtly interwoven into a discussion of recent and not so recent philosophy of religion." — Colin Lyas Philosophy

Part One
Can There Be A Religious Epistemology?

It is difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.

Wittgenstein, On Certainty

1
Foundationalism and Religion: a Philosophical Scandal

It has been one of the scandals of the philosophy of religion that foundationalism in epistemology has been thought, and still is thought, to be the only philosophical perspective capable of doing justice to the nature of religious belief. Foundationalism is the view that a belief is a rational belief only if it is related, in appropriate ways, to a set of propositions which constitute the foundations of what we believe. It assumes, from the outset, that belief in God is not among these foundational propositions. Belief in the existence of God, it is said, stands in need of justifications, grounds, reasons, foundations. We have to ask whether it is rational to believe in God. We are acquainted with countless cases where it is appropriate to be asked why we believe what we say we believe, and it is simply assumed that belief in God is another belief of this kind. Once this assimilation of belief in God to other kinds of belief takes place, asking whether belief in God is rational quickly becomes a matter of seeking evidence for the existence of God. Such evidence, if it can be found, will constitute the foundation of the belief. If it cannot be found, it will have been shown that there is no good reason for believing in God. To continue to believe, without good reason, was held by W.K. Clifford, in the nineteenth century, to be itself a sin; to indulge in the pleasure of believing in such a way, he claimed, is to indulge in a 'stolen' pleasure:

Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our body and spread to the rest of the town.¹

Clifford's view culminated in the following remark: 'To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,'²

While, for the most part, continuing to believe without sufficient evidence is not condemned in religious terms by philosophers today, nevertheless, it is considered sufficient to place the believer beyond the pale as far as reasoned intellectual discussion is concerned. And so, within the philosophy of religion, the weighing of evidence, for and against the existence of God, proceeds. This is the mode of argument which is still dominant within the practice of the philosophy of religion. Philosophers who argue in this way are the friends of Cleanthes. For example, some philosophers, such as Richard Swinburne, argue that the preponderance of evidence is in favour of belief in God, while others, such as J.L. Mackie, have argued that the preponderance of evidence points against belief in God. But, as Alvin Plantinga has said, such philosophers 'concur in holding that belief in God is rational, only if there is, on balance, a preponderance of evidence for it — or less radically, only if there is not, on balance, a preponderance of evidence against it.'³ Little wonder that Swinburne has been called our twentieth-century Cleanthes. Yet, if Swinburne is the Cleanthes of believers, Mackie may well be called the Cleanthes of unbelievers.

This evidentialism, where God's reality is in question, shows that, for the most part, philosophy of religion is still at an animistic stage. According to E.B. Tylor's 'animism', primitives react to the unknown in the world which confronts them by postulating the existence of beings higher than themselves to explain otherwise inexplicable events. It is extremely important to note that, for Tylor, religious belief is not irrational. Religious beliefs are mistakes, but they might have been true. Tylor would agree with Frazer when he said of the primitives:

their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time they were propounded, but which a full experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and the rejection of the, false that truth is at last elicited.⁴

Notice, 'the rejection of the false', not the rejection of the unintelligible. Swinburne's reaction has been to reaffirm that the hypothesis of God's existence is the best explanation of the world as we know it.⁵ But, as Mackie shows, he has failed to come to terms with Hume's criticisms in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion which haunt all forms of argument from or to design or cosmological arguments. We cannot avoid these criticisms either by suggesting that the reasonableness of religious beliefs depends on the cumulative effect of considerations in themselves inconclusive.⁶ In Religion Without Explanation.⁷ I tried to show how Hume argues on three levels. At the first level, Hume emphasises that we do not have direct knowledge of God. His nature must be determined from the character of his works. From every reasonable point of view, the character of the works seems mixed, including good and bad features. At the very best, therefore, God seems to have a mixed or capricious character. At the second level, however, Hume asks why it is necessary to regard nature as an artifact in the first place. By so regarding it, we already assume that we have to look outside nature for an explanation of it. But is there not a perfectly natural way of explaining natural facts without reference to God? But what of the existence of the world as such? Is that not something which still stands in need of explanation? At the third level, however, Hume argues against the intelligibility of postulating God as the explanation of the world. First, we do not know what it means to ask for the cause of everything. The world is not some kind of object of which it makes sense to seek the cause. Second, we have no grounds for speaking of a maker of the world. We have experience of building houses. Therefore, when we see a house, we know that someone, somewhere, built the house. But when we look at the world about us, we have no idea of what it is to speak of worlds being made. We have no basis in our experience to speak of the world as God's artifact. Hume's arguments, at each level, are logical arguments. If, then, Hume's arguments are successful, their conclusion is not that it is highly unlikely that the world is a product of a divine plan. Hume's conclusion is that such talk is unintelligible.

There are times when Mackie seems to recognise the logical force of Hume's arguments. Consider, for example, his reaction to Swinburne's attempts to resuscitate the argument from design. In summing up the effect of Hume's and Kant's arguments on Swinburne's arguments, Mackie says, 'The advance of science has destroyed the starting-points which made it initially plausible and attractive to the eighteenth century, while the general philosophical objections which were brought against it by Kant and, above all, by Hume, remain in force against Swinburne's restatement of it, and, I surmise, against all possible reconstructions'.⁸ In the first part of the quotation, Mackie speaks of the traditional proof as something which has been undermined by science. But, if this were accepted, the believer could reply by saying, 'Perhaps the evidence will turn in my direction once again. It is true that the existence of a divine plan seems highly unlikely at the moment, but perhaps new facts will emerge in the future which will show that the existence of a divine plan is highly likely, as likely as it appeared to be in the eighteenth century.' But this response would not be open to the believer in response to what Mackie says of the criticisms of Hume and Kant. He says that these criticisms show that the conception of an argument from design is a product of conceptual confusion. Speaking of the traditional proofs of the existence of God, Mackie says, 'Since the early nineteenth century, and particularly through Kant's influence the traditional "proofs" of theistic doctrines have been widely rejected or abandoned.'⁹ Were the proofs abandoned because their conclusions were unlikely to be true? If so, perhaps there is always the likelihood that, were appropriate facts to come to light, the proofs' conclusions could be held to be likely to be true after all. But Mackie recognises that this is not the way in which the proofs have been rejected or abandoned. They have been rejected as the products of conceptual confusion. Mackie recognises that I see Hume's achievements as the exposure of such confusion:

D.Z. Phillips ... refers, indeed, to the 'enormous influence' of Hume on contemporary philosophy of religion, and says that 'given its assumptions, Hume's attack on certain theistic arguments is entirely successful'; ... Phillips concedes to Hume ... that we cannot infer a god from the world either by a design argument or a cosmological argument; in fact 'The whole notion of a God and another world which we can infer from the world we know is discredited'.¹⁰

Ironically, I am prepared to give more credit to Hume's argument against metaphysical tendencies in the philosophy of religion than Mackie is prepared to give.

Why, given all his objections, does Mackie spend ten of the fourteen chapters of his book coming to the wholly expected conclusion that design arguments or cosmological arguments do not work? The answer lies in the fact that Mackie, like so many philosophers of religion, can see no alternative way of discussing religious beliefs. He equates philosophical theism with religious belief. He refuses to call anything else an example of real religion. Further, despite his occasional insights into its conceptual defects, for most of the time he discusses that theism in terms of probabilities. For example, according to Mackie, God is a person without a body. In his opinion, there could be such a person; there is nothing unintelligible in such an assumption. Of course, Mackie's conclusion is that it is highly unlikely that there are persons without bodies. The majority of philosophers today would not argue in this way. They would say that the notion of a person without a body is meaningless. We may speak of the soul and the body, but in doing so we are not talking of two separate elements in a human being. Rather, we are talking of a human being under different aspects. Of course, the Bible does say that God is a spirit, and that they who worship him should worship him in spirit and in truth. Let's make the philosophical substitution: 'God is a person without a body and they who ...' On the other hand, let's forget it! For Mackie, however, and for the majority of philosophical theists who argue with him, all these matters are matters of probability.

My main aim, at the moment, however, is not to enter into these disputes, but to bring their character to your attention. They are disputes between opposing hypotheses, so that believer and non-believer may be said to hold opposite beliefs from each other. But if this is still the dominant way of philosophising about religion, then it fits in perfectly well with the methodological procedures proposed by Tylor and Frazer: 'It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited.' Speaking of such theories, Evans-Pritchard says: 'For the most part the theories ... are, for anthropologists at least, as dead as mutton, and today are chiefly of interest as specimens of the thought of their time.'¹¹ Whatever we may say of anthropologists, animism is alive and well among contemporary philosophers of religion.

Most philosophers would say that philosophers of religion and believers today have less excuse than the primitives for their animistic practices. As we have seen, of the primitives, at least, it could be said that their hypotheses were justifiable at the time, although, now, a full experience has shown them to be inadequate. But now, it seems, not everyone can have had a full experience, or, at least, not everyone could have appreciated its significance, since there are still people who believe in God. This stubborn remnant, however, can hardly expect the same consideration from today's intellectuals as Frazer thought he was giving to the primitives: 'We shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth.'¹² Now, as Norman Malcolm points out, the tone is very different:

In our Western academic philosophy, religious belief is commonly regarded as unreasonable and is viewed with condescension or even contempt. It is said that religion is a refuge for those who, because of weakness of intellect or character, are unable to confront the stern realities of the world. The objective, mature, strong attitude is to hold beliefs solely on the basis of evidence.¹³

When religious beliefs are discussed within the parameters of these assumptions the results are predictable enough:

In American universities there must be hundreds of courses in which [proofs for the existence of God] are the main topic. We can be sure that nearly always the critical verdict is that the proofs are invalid and consequently that, up to the present time at least, religious belief has received no rational justification.¹⁴

The stubborn remnant, it seems, is also a stupid remnant.

Notice, all that can be said on this view, is that up to the present time no rational justification has been given of religious belief. Echoing Mackie's sentiments in The Miracle of Theism, T.A. Roberts says,

For better or for worse we cannot escape the fact that we live in an age where the fate of Christianity as a system of beliefs which can be afforded to the intelligent man is in the balance. And, for the most part, what accounts for this anti-religious conceptual turn today is the growth and development of our detailed knowledge of the workings of nature which came in the wake of the scientific revolution since the seventeenth century. One consequence of this scientific knowledge is to make many things which it was reasonable to believe in the Middle Ages or in the time of Calvin unreasonable to believe in our age. If this is so, is there any reasonable ground now for holding any religious belief? The strong message of Mackie's book is that there is not.¹⁵

But what of the stubborn remnant? Need Mackie's arguments deter them? Not necessarily. As we have already seen, they might well take on the arguments on their own terms. They might be prepared to admit that, at the moment, the preponderance of evidence is against belief in God, but remain convinced that this is a temporary setback and that sufficient evidence will turn up sooner or later. Believing this, they continue, in the face of conflicting evidence, to believe in God. More radically, they may be pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Part One: Can There Be A Religious Epistemology?
• Part Two: Manners Without Grammar
• Part Three: Grammar and Theology
• Part Four: Religion and Concept-Formation
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Book and Author