This post is a refutation and thoughts of Alvin Plantinga's idea of 'properly basic belief' concept, which basically states that a belief that is 'properly basic' is one that is at the foundation of one's application of reason and logic and thus the belief cannot be tested.
Plantinga holds that as a properly basic belief you have Naturalism and Theism or variations of such, and that none of these assumptions can be tested. This to him makes his belief in Christianity 'reasonable' despite the fact that it is neither warranted or justified.
For this to make more sense we need to look at Plantinga's philosophical phases.
In the 1970's Plantinga developed a 'proof' for the existence of God, the Modal Ontological argument for the existence of God. He abandoned this argument some time later, mostly because it was possible for anyone to come up with a compatible 'parallel argument' proving the existence of something ridiculous.
Later he came up with the idea of 'Warrant', not in the sense we use the word normally, as in "I have a warrant for your arrest" but he loosely uses it to mean something more like "not unreasonable". In that he believed that he could prove that Christian belief is 'warranted' and thus the Christian was not intellectually void. He abandoned this project too, namely due to the same reasons, such as absolutely absurd things being consistent with the categories that warranted theism (The Great Pumpkin Objection).
Now he's stepped away from trying to prove God and to justify belief in Christianity through solid argument and/or evidence. He now has something called 'reformed epistemology' where by the belief at the foundation of our reasoning is our 'properly basic' belief. He argues that any properly basic belief is necessarily non-testable and cannot be necessitated by argument and evidence, he argues that the only real choices for a properly basic belief are Theism and Naturalism and thus Theists and Naturalists are equally unsupported in their foundations. While I totally disagree with this argument, It's not what I am getting at here.
I argue that it's possible to have a properly basic belief that is neither naturalism or theism AND is fully capable of being evaluated apart from it's own presuppositions, that being an Epistemology. Having an epistemology as a properly basic (foundational) belief can give you both the necessary foundation for reaching reasonable conclusions, while being objectively true or false (and assessable) based on whether or not any logically sound 'problem' can show that the Epistemology creates double standards (or becomes self refuting).
With this in mind, Christian belief again becomes inferior (even if we have falsely assumed for the example that naturalism is on equal footing) as we can achieve a justification for naturalism through a logically consistent epistemology (Such as Evidentialist Reliabilisim) where no theistic belief system at all can reach the state of epistemic justification in a coherent epistemology.
If it is the case that an Epistemology can be assessable and form a properly basic belief, then having an Epistemology at the core of your worldview is necessarily superior to having pure theism or naturalism at the core of the worldview.
And subsequently, since Naturalism can be justified with a coherent epistemology and Theism/supernaturalism cannot, Naturalism is necessarily superior to theism.
Plantinga holds that as a properly basic belief you have Naturalism and Theism or variations of such, and that none of these assumptions can be tested. This to him makes his belief in Christianity 'reasonable' despite the fact that it is neither warranted or justified.
For this to make more sense we need to look at Plantinga's philosophical phases.
In the 1970's Plantinga developed a 'proof' for the existence of God, the Modal Ontological argument for the existence of God. He abandoned this argument some time later, mostly because it was possible for anyone to come up with a compatible 'parallel argument' proving the existence of something ridiculous.
Later he came up with the idea of 'Warrant', not in the sense we use the word normally, as in "I have a warrant for your arrest" but he loosely uses it to mean something more like "not unreasonable". In that he believed that he could prove that Christian belief is 'warranted' and thus the Christian was not intellectually void. He abandoned this project too, namely due to the same reasons, such as absolutely absurd things being consistent with the categories that warranted theism (The Great Pumpkin Objection).
Now he's stepped away from trying to prove God and to justify belief in Christianity through solid argument and/or evidence. He now has something called 'reformed epistemology' where by the belief at the foundation of our reasoning is our 'properly basic' belief. He argues that any properly basic belief is necessarily non-testable and cannot be necessitated by argument and evidence, he argues that the only real choices for a properly basic belief are Theism and Naturalism and thus Theists and Naturalists are equally unsupported in their foundations. While I totally disagree with this argument, It's not what I am getting at here.
I argue that it's possible to have a properly basic belief that is neither naturalism or theism AND is fully capable of being evaluated apart from it's own presuppositions, that being an Epistemology. Having an epistemology as a properly basic (foundational) belief can give you both the necessary foundation for reaching reasonable conclusions, while being objectively true or false (and assessable) based on whether or not any logically sound 'problem' can show that the Epistemology creates double standards (or becomes self refuting).
With this in mind, Christian belief again becomes inferior (even if we have falsely assumed for the example that naturalism is on equal footing) as we can achieve a justification for naturalism through a logically consistent epistemology (Such as Evidentialist Reliabilisim) where no theistic belief system at all can reach the state of epistemic justification in a coherent epistemology.
If it is the case that an Epistemology can be assessable and form a properly basic belief, then having an Epistemology at the core of your worldview is necessarily superior to having pure theism or naturalism at the core of the worldview.
And subsequently, since Naturalism can be justified with a coherent epistemology and Theism/supernaturalism cannot, Naturalism is necessarily superior to theism.
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