Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Mystery of Persons and Belief in God

Are there good reasons for belief in God? Many philosophers, myself included, agree with Alvin Plantinga that religious belief can be properly basic, that is, reasonable even when it is not based on any reasons that could be employed in an argument. Nevertheless, this does not imply that good reasons for believing in God cannot be given. What kind of evidence should we expect to find, if God is real, and if He has provided evidence of His reality?
I believe that two characteristics would be found in any such evidence. First, I would expect the evidence to be widely available. If God exists, and it is important for us humans to know that, then we would not expect the evidence for His reality to be available only to a small esoteric group. Nor would we expect the evidence to be such that a Ph.D. in philosophy would be required to grasp it.
Secondly, I would expect the evidence to be the kind of evidence which could be doubted or explained away by someone who did not want to believe in God. Someone who is forced to be aware of God's reality might very well want to serve and obey God for less than noble motives, since God is supposed to be very powerful and very knowledgeable. Traditionally Christians have taught that God wants people to serve Him out of love, not fear or greed. So it would not be surprising that the evidence for God, though widely available, is also relatively easy to dismiss, write-off, or explain away if a person wishes to do this.
It is this last factor which doubtless is the reason why religious people put so much emphasis on faith as the precondition for religious knowledge. In the case of religion, the personal condition of the knower has a great impact on the knowledge to be gained. The person who wants to know can find evidence; the person who wants to be ignorant of God can be successful as well.

GANESH

GAUTAM BUDDHA

JESUS

MASJID

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