Alvin Plantinga, “Warranted Christian Belief,” the argument itself

Sources

• Alvin Plantinga, “Warranted Christian Belief” (opens in a new tab)

  Alvin Plantinga, “Warranted Christian Belief” (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Objections & responses

The Great Pumpkin objection: by the same reasoning, Linus is warranted in believing in the Great Pumpkin if the Great Pumpkin exists and gave him a pumpkin-sensing faculty. Doesn’t that make “warranted if true” useless?

This is the standard objection and Plantinga’s reply is worth knowing. The argument is not any belief is warranted if true but this particular belief has a plausible account of how it could be warranted if true: a divinely installed sense of God, a widely reported human phenomenon across cultures. Great Pumpkin belief has no such account and no community of experience. The conclusion is not that Christian belief is warranted, only that the critic who calls it irrational has to argue that it is false. Whether that shifts the burden fairly is debated; it is not nothing.

Religious experience is reported across all religions with contradictory content. If a sensus divinitatis produces Hindu, Muslim, and Christian beliefs, it isn’t reliably tracking truth, and Plantinga’s own reliability criterion sinks it.

This is the objection from religious diversity and it is the most serious challenge to Reformed epistemology. Plantinga’s response is that the sensus divinitatis produces the basic belief in a God or transcendent reality, which is widespread, while specific doctrinal beliefs come through additional means (for the Christian, the Holy Spirit’s testimony to Scripture). Critics reply that this only relocates the problem. The claim survives in a weakened form: the charge of irrationality still requires an argument about truth, but the diversity of religious experience is itself part of the evidence to be weighed.

Plantinga’s argument defends the believer’s rationality; it gives nobody else a reason to believe. It’s defensive, not persuasive. Shouldn’t a site that promises evidence avoid leaning on it?

Correct, and it does not prove God and should not be sold as if it did. Its value is to clear away one bad objection (you’re irrational unless you can prove it) so that the evidential arguments elsewhere on this site can be assessed on their merits. Plantinga himself offered two dozen or so theistic arguments in addition to this defense. The other cases are where the positive argument is made; this one only removes a reason not to look.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• Alvin Plantinga argues that belief in God can be “warranted” and rationally held without a supporting argument, which means the charge that such belief is irrational cannot be settled without first asking whether it is true.