Theists - I want to know what you think

[Neo-Scholastic]

I mean, if a belief can be reasonable without being rational can it also be rational without being reasonable? What's the difference?

I don’t want us to get all hung up on semantics and have a pointless argument about definitions. So instead of defining what makes a belief reasonable, I’ll explain when an opinion is warranted. Instead of writing about what counts as rational, I will write about justified beliefs.

My point is this. Someone can have warranted beliefs even if those beliefs cannot be justified.

Someone’s opinion is warranted if it is 1) coherent, 2) makes few unnecessary assumptions, and 3) that someone has performed adequate due diligence in forming his opinion. Determining warrant is a judgement call. People who are consistent, don’t jump to conclusions and carefully mull things over are the kinds of people we call “reasonable.”

A belief is not justified if 1) it doesn’t depend on a prior belief and 2) it is not possible, even in theory, to establish with certainty whether it is true. Axioms, rules of thought, and absolutes are foundational beliefs that usually cannot be justified. The Principle of Non-Contradiction is a good example. The PNC is a first principle; there are no prior ideas that must be accepted to support the truth of PNC. The PNC is also apparently self-evident. However, just because it is so strongly intuitive doesn’t mean it is true. Human beings could just be mentally wired in such a way that they cannot believe otherwise. There is no way to know if the PNC is a fundamental principle of reality or if it is simply a useful artifact of evolution. It is not that we can really know that the PNC is true, we just must trust it, i.e. make a leap of faith that it is indeed true. In that sense the Principle of Non-Contradiction is “irrational” – it is a belief you can only reason from and not a belief you could ever reason to.

This makes you sound like a presuppositionalist. It makes you sound like you are saying that you think the most fundamental premises for any worldview is ultimately entirely irrational. It makes it sound like you're saying that theism isn't based on reason but atheism isn't either.

I don’t know much about presuppositionalism as a Christian apologetic, so I cannot say. I get the sense the it’s just basic existentialism wrapped up in Reformed theology, but I don’t know. I know it gets a lot of bad press. My ideas follow from mostly from Kierkegaard and Sartre. It’s getting late for me and I could write more but it’s probably wiser for me to let you consider what I’ve said before going any further.

(Wow, Hammy! I went a whole post without insulting you. We’re doing pretty good I’d say.)