Objection · Case 07 · Philosophy
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?
One objection from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Response
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.
About this exhibit
This objection is to Alvin Plantinga, “Warranted Christian Belief,” the argument itself.
The argument runs like this. First, a belief has warrant when it comes from properly functioning faculties, in a suitable environment, aimed at truth. Second, if Christianity is true, then belief in…