Is it Rational to Believe in God? YES!

First off, I would like to thank Micheal Planck for engaging with me on this debate/dialogue on the rationality of religious belief. He has approached this in a gentleman fashion and I commend him for it.

Rationality

Mr. Planck is right when he says that rationality differs from truth. So I am not going to put a lot of emphasis on demonstrating whether God exists or not. I have done that elsewhere. [1] I will put emphasis mostly on rationality and maybe if warranted later on the debate.

What exactly is rationality? There are a lot of debates on what rationality entails. I hold to the simple definition of Alvin Plantinga that rationality is the

“absence of dysfunction, disorder, impairment, pathology with respect to rational faculties.” [2]

What this requires is proper function. Something is functioning properly when it is functioning the way it was designed to function. As Plantinga has said,

“My car works properly if it works the way it was designed to work. My refrigerator is working properly if it refrigerates, if it does what a refrigerator is designed to do.” [3]

What about Mr. Planck’s thesis that it is irrational to believe in something if there is no evidence? His argument is, “Lacking evidence, and here we mean real evidence, the kind that cannot be explained by recourse to fewer entities and simpler explanations, belief in God is irrational.” Is this true?

We Can Be Rational Without Evidence, the Problem of Induction

Mr. Planck’s major weakness in his argument is that he believes we must have some evidence (“testability”) in order to be rational in believing something. But this is not true. Take the example of the problem of induction. We believe that the sun rises every morning. We go to sleep at night and when we get up, there is light. Or take the example of the fact that as every second passes, our houses do not collapse, the earth does not explode, and that we can still receive oxygen. We do not assume for a second that at any second, we will not receive oxygen or that the sun will not rise. We seem to live in a routine where we take these things for granted. In other words, we all use induction.

But there is a major fallacy here. What evidence do we have of believing that tomorrow, the sun will rise, we will receive oxygen, or our homes will not fall? One might answer, “Because the sun rose today and yesterday, received oxygen, etc.” But that’s a fallacy. We are assuming that the future will be like the past. What evidence do we have that the future will be like the past? One might answer, “In the past, the future was like the past.” But that begs the question. If in the past, the future was like the past, what makes us believe that the future will be like that past? Here, we have what David Hume calls the problem of induction. We do not have evidence that the future will be like the past. Are we therefore irrational in believing that tomorrow, the sun will rise? Mr. Planck might answer by saying that we might not have a definitive answer, but the probability is that the future will be like the past. The major problem with this is that

(1) it isn’t evidence (it isn’t “testable”) and

(2) what exactly is probability but the frequency of events in the past?

If probability is #2, then it still falls into the same fallacy.

Is it rational to believe in the problem of induction? I believe so. We use induction all the time. My answer is that we experience this to be so. Unless we have a rational defeater for our experiences that the future will be like the past or a good reason why we should not think that the sun will rise tomorrow, then why is it irrational to believe in induction?

It is Rational to Believe in God

Suppose that I am reading the Bible. By reading the Bible, I experienced God loving me and sending His only Son for me to die on the Cross. I then form a belief that God exists. I may not be able to “prove” this, but I believe I have experienced God. Why should I not trust my experience? If there are no rational defeaters for this belief, why am I irrational in believing? I am rational when I base my belief in induction on experience? I do not have evidence. But without a defeater, I affirm that my belief is rational.

Take another example. Let’s imagine a scenario. Mr. X died by falling off the roof. I was in the library when this happened. But people are claiming that I pushed him. The evidence may even be against me. One person says that the last time he saw Mr. X is with me. Another found out that I have a history of assault. Another says that I had a hatred for Mr. X. Finally, someone saw a Filipino with glasses with Mr. X when he fell. I fit the description. Even if they are true, am I irrational to believe that I did not murder Mr. X? Am I irrational? The answer is of course No. The reason why is that I was at the library when this happened. So even if the evidence seems to be against me, if it is contrary to truth, then it is an irrational defeater, and hence, it does not defeat the belief.

Thomas Aquinas says that “our intellect was made for the purpose of seeing God” [4] and “the ultimate end of man is to know God.” [5] In other words, our minds are made in a way that we can form a belief that God exists. If I was in the circumstance of reading the Bible and my cognitive faculties were functioning properly, that is, they are functioning the way they were designed and that is to know God, then it is rational for me to believe in God without evidence.

It may be objected that I am begging the question. How do I know that God designed our minds in such a way that we can form a belief in God? But I do not have to prove that. All I have to refute is Mr. Planck’s thesis that we are irrational believing in God if we do not have evidence. But if I was reading the Bible and I experienced what I believe was God, and if God gave us our minds to know Him, then even if we do not have the evidence for Him, it is still rational for us to believe in God.

Conclusion

I have argued against Mr. Planck’s thesis that we need evidence in order to be rational in believing in God. I have argued that we are rational if

(1) there is no rational defeater for the belief and

(2) if God designed our minds to know Him, and we experience Him, we do not need evidence for God.

Therefore we are rational to believe in God.

Notes

[1] See http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p47.htm 

[2] See “A Defense of Religious Exclusivism” in The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith ed. Thomas D. Senor, Cornell University Press, 1995, page 209.

[3] See “Theism, Atheism, and Rationality”

[4] De Veritate, q. 10, art. 11, ad 7 um.

[5] Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.25

Apolonio Latar III

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