1. Justification and Warrant

 

The traditional evidentialist objection to religious belief (Handout VI) is typically an objection to the rationality or justification of religious belief, where these epistemic concepts are taken in the deontological sense. But this represents only one form of the de iure objection against religious belief. In Warranted Christian Belief, Plantinga argues that the evidentialist objection, construed in terms of justification, is not a plausible way to think of the de iure objection, as a person may easily be within his or her intellectual rights in holding various religious beliefs in the absence of evidence. Plantinga contrasts the objection that religious belief is not justified or deontologically rational with a different sort of de iure objection, that religious belief lacks warrant.

Plantinga takes warrant to involve the proper functioning of one's truth-aimed cognitive faculties. Hence, warrant entails proper function rationality (see Handout II). Moreover, a belief constitutes knowledge, according to Plantinga, only if it is warranted (to a fairly high degree). Given these premises, even if religious belief is deontologically rational, there will be a straightforward objection to religious belief constituting knowledge (even if true).

The argument will run as follows:

[1] Religious belief constitutes knowledge only if it is warranted.

[2] Religious belief is not warranted.

---------------------------------------------

[3] Religious belief does not constitute knowledge.

 

2. Freud and Marx: Religious Belief Lacks Warrant

Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud present criticisms against religious belief noticeably distinct from the evidentialist objection. Like the evidentialist objection, the claim is not that religious belief is false, but that there is something epistemically defective with religious belief. Unlike evidentialism, however, the locus of deficiency is not necessarily a lack of evidence (though they both seem to agree that religious belief is not based on reasoning or evidence - notice how Freud just assumes that there is no proof or evidence for religious beliefs). Moreover, it isn't necessarily a matter of flouting one's intellectual duties (though perhaps they think this is true too). Rather it has to do with religious belief lacking warrant.

According to Plantinga, a belief will lack warrant under the following sorts of conditions.

1. A belief is produced by cognitive malfunction.
2. A belief is produced by properly functioning but impeded, truth-aimed cognitive faculties (e.g., impeded by emotions or feelings).
3. A belief is produced by properly functioning, non truth-aimed cognitive faculties (e.g., faculties or processes aimed at survival or relief from suffering).

Freud regards religious beliefs as the product of a non reality-oriented mechanism he calls wish fulfillment. Freud refers to all such beliefs as "illusions." In contrast to "delusions," illusions are not necessarily false, but they are not very likely to be true. The sense of helplessness human experience as children arouses in humans the need for protection at a very early age. The role of protector is assumed by a father figure. The persistence of this sense of helplessness and of fear into adulthood in a world wrought with dangers, and various hostile forces, causes the need for protection to remain. This desire finds its ultimate expression in the idea of Supreme father figure, i.e., God.

Plantinga provides a philosophical analysis of Freud's position according to which religious belief is construed as the product of properly functioning but non truth-aimed cognitive faculties. Plantinga thinks that Freud shares the widely held assumption that human persons possess a variety of cognitive mechanisms or belief producing and sustaining processes which are causally responsible for human knowledge. Part of this background assumption about our belief forming processes and their relation to knowledge is the further implicit belief that such processes produce knowledge only if they are truth oriented and functioning properly. It is recognized that some of the processes whereby we form beliefs are not aimed at acquiring truth, but helping with non-epistemic goals, such as survival or relief from suffering. Within such a framework, Freud can be read as maintaining that wish fulfillment represents a segment of the human cognitive design plan not aimed at the production of true beliefs, but which serves some pragmatic end such as survival or helping humans cope with the hostile forces of their environment. It is not that religious belief is produced by some cognitive disorder. It is quite natural, the normal response of humans with deep-seated desire for protection and comfort in the face of the harsh realities of life. But this mechanism of wish fulfillment is simply not reality or truth oriented. So on this account religious belief, even if true, does not possess warrant, and hence cannot constitute knowledge.

Plantinga contrasts Freud with Marx at this juncture. For Marx, religious belief results from a "perverted world consciousness." More precisely, it seems that religious belief is a kind of disorder induced or caused by a deviant or perverted social order. Religious people suffer from poor mental health. Marx is most obviously read as maintaining that religious belief is the product of cognitive malfunction or disorder, somehow causally related to a bad social environment. Hence, for Marx religious belief will lack warrant, but for reasons slightly different than in Freud's view. For Marx religious belief fails to have warrant because it is produced by cognitive malfunction or pathology; whereas for Freud it is not the product of cognitive disorder but properly functioning non truth-aimed faculties. So once again, religious belief fails to have warrant, and so cannot constitute knowledge (even if true).

Plantinga offers a couple of qualifications to this analysis of Marx. First, he might read as maintaining that a capitalist society constitutes a hostile or otherwise inappropriate environment for human cognitive faculties. An additional condition for warrant, according to Plantinga, is that one's properly functioning, truth-aimed cognitive faculties be in the sort of environment for which they were designed, an environment conducive to their design plan. (For example, the process of forming beliefs on the basis of testimony is intended for an environment in which people do not intend to deceive others by telling them falsehoods.) Perhaps a capitalist society provides the wrong sort of cognitive environment, one that leads to the oddity of religious beliefs. In this case, religious belief will also lack warrant. Another possibility, closer to Freud, would be to interpret Marx as saying that a capitalist socioeconomic system represents a hostile force to the human person or his cognitive faculties. Religious belief is a way that people cope within such a hostile environment, much like Freud's "illusions" offer a convenient defense mechanism against hostile external forces. Freud, of course, sees wish fulfillment as intrinsic to human nature, whereas Marx would, on a Freudian like interpretation, see the inclination toward the illusions of religion as grounded in unique social circumstances.

Freud and Marx are each trying to explain the origin of the idea of God in solely naturalistic terms. They are attempting to provide an account of why it is that people believe in God, but an account that makes no appeal to supernaturalistic causes, events, or entities. Plantinga makes two important critical points with respect to the Freud/Marx objection to religious belief.

Naturalistic explanations of beliefs in general do not necessarily show such beliefs unreliable. A naturalistic account of beliefs about mathematics and logic would not undermine the truth of such beliefs. The same goes for religious beliefs. After all, if God exists, he might very well have implanted in us certain natural mechanisms that are causally responsible for our forming beliefs about Him. Hence, even if the naturalistic explanation of religious belief were true, it would not discredit the truth or positive epistemic status of religious belief. It seems like the naturalistic explanation of religious belief found in Marx and Freud, as well as its Feuerbachian variant, only discredits the positive epistemic status of religious if one already assumes, prior to the explanation, that there is no God or that religious beliefs are in fact false.

In chapter 6 of Warranted Christian Belief Plantinga argues that if theism is false, then it is likely that belief in God lacks warrant. A belief will have warrant only if it is produced by properly functioning, truth-aimed cognitive faculties. But the process must also be reliable, be such that there is a high (statistical or objective) probability that the process yields true beliefs. However, a proposition or belief is objectively probable relative to some condition C, according to Plantinga, only if the proposition in question is true in most nearby possible worlds that display C, i.e. possible worlds that are similar to the actual world in certain fundamental features (e.g., similar causal laws). Now if belief in God were produced by a reliable cognitive process, then the belief that there is a God would be true in most nearby possible worlds (and so God would exist in most of the near by possible worlds). But if there is in fact no God (in the actual world), there can't be a God any nearby possible worlds. The existence of all knowing, all powerful, and all good being who is the creator of a possible world W would suffice to make W very different from the actual world W*. So although a reliable cognitive process could be responsible for forming a false belief, this can't happen in the case of a belief about God's existence since the falsity of that belief carries implications for what would be true or false in nearby possible worlds. Many other beliefs could be false in the actual world W* and true in nearby worlds since their truth in those worlds would not make those worlds significantly different from the actual world.

How can a Freudian naturalistic explanation of religious belief carry force as an epistemic objection to religious belief? It looks like only if one assumes that there is no God. In that case it is not likely that religious belief is produced by truth-aimed cognitive faculties. Hence, if theism is false, it probably lacks warrant. But then we have an epistemic objection to religious belief that depends for its force on the presupposition that theism is false. The de iure objection rests on a de facto objection.

Plantinga agrees that the de iure (epistemological) question really depends on the de facto (metaphysical) question. As the falsity of theism makes it likely that religious beliefs lack warrant, so the truth of theism makes it likely that religious beliefs, specifically the belief that there is a God, possesses warrant. If there is a God, then of course the belief that there is a God is true. According to Plantinga, though, it is likely that the cognitive process (or processes) that produces belief in God were designed to form those beliefs. If there is a God who has created human persons in His image, as cognitive beings capable of knowing their world and acting on it in love, then it is likely that God would want us to be aware of His presence and our duties to Him as our Maker. Hence, it is likely that the processes that lead to belief in God were aimed at that end by their designer. So belief in God likely has warrant if it is true that there is a God, but not otherwise.

Epistemology and its questions cannot in the final analysis be separated from the questions of metaphysics.