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Rationality and Religious Belief RATIOMALITY AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF 131E ANDRE-1- TAADEUSZ ICOWALT-TIC BA (Hans) . Grad. Dip. Lib. SITBMITTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF - MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA DECEMBER, 1967. G MT IsTa" • PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 IRRATIONALISM. 7 CHAPTER 2 AQUINAS ON FAITH AND REASON. 26 CHAPTER 3 THE ONTOLOGICIAL ARGUMENT. 50 CHAPTER 4 THE COSMDLOGICIAL ARGUMENT. 78 CHAPTER 5 RATIONALITY WITHOUT PROOF. 111 CONCLUSION 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY 144 This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other higher degree or graduate diploma in any university, and to the best of my knowledge and belief,. it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except when due reference is made in the text of the thesis. AJDRZHJ TADHUSZ KQYALUI[ I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr. Ray Kearney, for his help in the preparation of this thesis. His assistance and direction, both in researching the topic and in writing the dissertation, were invaluable. I would also like to thank my wife Sue for her patience and support. JUBS-1—.R.A.C-1- • The aim of this dissertation is to enquire into the rationality of religious belief and, in particular, into the rationality of the Christian belief-system. The method employed is one of analysing what Christians have had to say about the rationality of what they believe rather than that of first arriving at a set of conditions severally necessary and jointly sufficient for the rationality of belief in general, and then determining whether or not the Christian belief-system would satisfy them. Irrationalism is the first position that is examined, with particular reference to the work of Soren Kierkegaard. The Irrationalist holds both that there is a fundamental conflict between faith and reason, and that irrationality is an absolute condition of an adequate Christian Faith. Both tenets of the. Irrationalist's position are considered and each is rejected as untenable. The second position examined is that of St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argues that there is a body of evidence which can settle the dispute between believer and sceptic. His position is examined with particular reference to his distinction between the preambles to faith and the articles of faith. A number of inconsistencies are pointed out. Chapters 3 and 4 consider two of the more important arguments for the existence of God. Chapter 3 considers the Ontological Argument with particular reference to Saint Anselm's version of it. The argument is rejected as are modern attempts to resurrect it. Chapter 4 considers the Cosmological Argument with particular reference to the first and most important three of Aquinas' five ways. These are also found wanting. Chapter 5 focuses upon two contemporary attempts to defend Christianity against charges that it is irrational in the absence of a successful theistic proof. The positions considered are those of Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga. Whilst there are significant differences between the two, both point out that evidence must end somewhere and argue that belief in the existence of God belongs to that set of beliefs which do not require evidence. Both positions are found wanting. - 1 - I 1NT ""1" 12 Q]DUF I C3 1 1■T The purpose of this dissertation is to enquire into the rationality of religious belief: to determine whether or not there is some sense in which religious belief can be considered rational. It is a difficult task requiring clear definition from the start. We must be certain that we understand the term "religious belief" and be clear on which method we are to employ in deciding whether or not religious belief is rational. The first issues that we must deal with, then, are conceptual and methodological ones. To begin with, it is important to realise that the term "religious belief" is used to refer to one particular system of religious belief, that of Christianity, and not to religious belief as such. After all, there are a large number of religions, each with its own unique system of beliefs. Whilst there may be some over-lap between the beliefs of individual religions, we should not be surprised to find a great deal of variation. Both Jews and Moslems, for example, believe in the existence of a supreme being, but there are many fundamental beliefs which they do not hold in common This area of disagreement would be even greater amongst Jews and Hindus, or Jews and Buddhists. Here there would not necessarily be agreement even about the existence of a supreme being. This being the case, it is not altogether clear how much sense it makes to talk of religious belief as such. It may be that there is no set of beliefs common to all religions, or If there is, that this set is a very small one. For this thesis to be - 2 - manageable, then, our concern must remain with one particular religion: Christianity. To this extent the title is misleading. Our main objective is to evaluate the rationality of the Christian belief-system. In attempting to fulfil this objective, however, one is faced with rather large methodological problems. The most natural way to proceed, it would seem, would be to outline a set of conditions, severally necessary and Jointly sufficient for the rationality of belief in general and then to determine whether or not the Christian belief-system would satisfy them. The problem with this method, however, is that it is notoriously difficult to arrive at any non-trivial conditions for the rationality of belief. Consider the following example to illustrate this point: The concept of rationality, we would agree, is closely connected to that of evidence. Indeed, it is often claimed that the process of proportioning the degree of one's belief to the strength of the available evidence is paradigmatic of rationality. We might proceed, then, by including a proposition something along the following lines amongst our necessary conditions for rationality:- (1) A belief can only be rational if the strength with which it is held is in direct proportion to the strength of the available evidence supporting its truth. However, a number of problems immediately spring to mind. To begin with, the term "available evidence" is far from crystal clear. To whom must this evidence be available? If I evaluate the truth of some proposition and reject it because of failure through carelessness, lack of time, or whatever, to find some crucial bit of evidence that would otherwise be available to me, am I being rational or not? Secondly, even if I manage to uncover all the available evidence, how do I determine the strength of some set of evidence E for the truth of some proposition p? Are there any rules or procedures for this? It is often argued that this process is a matter for personal Judgment and perhaps It is, but what if two or more individuals exercise their personal Judgment and arrive at vastly different conclusions? This, after all, is a common things in academic circles. It might be argued that some people are more rational than others and that we must follow the Judgment of the most rational of the group, but even here how does one decide whether some person A is more rational than some other person B? Thirdly, how do we decide whether E really is evidence for p? Are there rules for this or do we once again rely upon personal Judgment? I do not wish to suggest that these questions have no answer. Perhaps they do. Nevertheless, they do show that (1) is not as straight-forward as it would seem on first inspection. The problems, however, do not end here. There is a far more serious consideration for anyone who puts (1) forward as a necessary condition for the rationality of belief. The problem is that we cannot demand that all of our beliefs have the support of the available evidence without committing ourselves to vicious circularity or to an infinite regress of Justification. Our evidence for any particular belief that we hold must consist of other beliefs that we hold. I cannot argue that some set of propositions E is evidence for - some proposition p without holding that the propositions that make up E are themselves true. - 4 - These propositions, in other words, are themselves beliefs which I hold. But if p is to be rational, the beliefs which make up E must also be rational and, according to (1), these beliefs cannot be rational unless some new set of evidence El supports their truth. Now, the propositions that make up El must also be rational and thus require Justification. In other words, we must have evidence for our evidence and new evidence for this evidence and so on ad infinitum, or else be committed to circularity. Either way, we have not provided an adequate Justification for our beliefs. It must be rational, in other words, to hold that some of our beliefs are "basic"; that there are beliefs for which we require no evidence but to which we can appeal in order to justify other beliefs that we hold. Thus, we cannot hold that (1) is a necessary condition of rationality. The problems faced by any individual attempting to outline a non-trivial set of conditions for the rationality of belief, it will be agreed, are enormous. The difficulty is not so much that the problems I have raised cannot be solved, perhaps they can, but that it seems likely that the solutions will vary according to particular instances. It seems unlikely, for example, that we will be able to determine the conditions under which some set of purported evidence E is relevant to the truth of p without being aware of the content of p.
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