This evening, I appeared on the personal YouTube channel for Eric Murphy of “Talk Heathen.” Though the original intent was to talk about moral arguments for God’s existence, we spent the bulk of our time talking about epistemology generally and moderate foundationalism in particular. But hey, that’s fine with me! It was a very enjoyable […]
proper basicality
Should we be (most) certain that God exists?
Today this tweet from Douglas Axe (director of Biologic Institute who tweets here) caught my attention: Since we humans always have to settle for something short of absolute proof, I'm not sure we have to qualify our certainty of God's existence in this way. We can be as confident of his existence as we can […]
Justin Schieber’s objections to the proper basicality of theism considered
In my March 8th debate with Justin Schieber I offered three arguments, the first of which was concerned with defending the claim that belief in God can be properly basic. In his rebuttal Justin offered a couple arguments. I’m going to respond briefly to these two arguments here. Universal Sanction Objection Justin’s main rebuttal to my argument […]
67. Justin Schieber on rationality and religious disagreement
On March 7th and 8th of 2015, I had the privilege of taking the stage with atheist debater and broadcaster Justin Schieber for two events, a debate at the University of Alberta and a dialogue at Taylor Seminary. The following morning, March 9th, I drove Justin to the airport in Calgary. The three hour drive provided the rich opportunity for us […]
Voodoo and beyond: A response to Tyler Wunder
In this article I offer a response to Tyler Wunder in “A Quick Response to Randal Rauser’s Critique of Universal Sanction (by Tyler Wunder)“. In his quick response Tyler offers two points. In my response I’ll focus on Wunder’s first point since it is, as I see it, the more substantive one. In my original […]
A Second Quick Response to Randal Rauser’s Critique of Universal Sanction (by Tyler Wunder)
Dr. Wunder added some further comments to “Must properly basic beliefs have universal sanction? A reply to James F. Sennett (Part 2)”. Given their length, clarity and quality, I have taken the liberty of adding them here to complement his guest post. It may be a couple days before I respond given the start of the semester tomorrow, […]
A Quick Response to Randal Rauser’s Critique of Universal Sanction (by Tyler Wunder)
In this guest post philosopher Tyler Wunder offers a response to my article “Must properly basic beliefs have universal sanction? A reply to James F. Sennett Part 2“. Dr. Wunder graduated with a PhD in philosophy from Boston University in 2007 with a dissertation on “Warrant and Religious Epistemology: A Critique of Alvin Plantinga’s Warrant […]
Must properly basic beliefs have universal sanction? A reply to James F. Sennett (Part 2)
In “Must properly basic beliefs have universal sanction? A Reply to James F. Sennett (Part 1)” I introduced James F. Sennett’s paper “Direct Justification and Universal Sanction” and stated my intention to offer a critique of it. This is that (long overdue) critique. Let me state at the outset that I share a lot of […]
Must properly basic beliefs have universal sanction? A Reply to James F. Sennett (Part 1)
James F. Sennett, “Direct Justification and Universal Sanction,” Journal of Philosophical Research, XXIII (1998), 257-87. A little while ago one of my readers, Silver Bullet, gave me a copy of this paper by James Sennett and asked me my opinion on Sennett’s argument. I promised to write an article in reply and so here it is. […]
Like two ships passing in the night … Jonathan Pearce’s abortive rebuttal
A couple weeks ago Jonathan MS Pearce asked me to provide a short statement of belief for a new series he was initiating called “Why I am a Christian” which was inspired by my “Why they don’t believe” series. So I obliged and Jonathan posted it here. Take a look, read my statement and Jonathan’s […]
Testimony as properly basic
In my last post I provided a simple way that a person could come to believe “Jesus rose from the dead” in a way that is properly basic. I did so by appealing to a very familiar source of knowledge and rational belief: the testimony of others. Those who are familiar with Alvin Plantinga’s work on this […]
Knowledge, scientific and otherwise
Robert presents a scenario which he seems to believe presents a problem for an account of religious beliefs as being properly basic. It goes like this: “imagine a biologist is confronted with new evidence that common descent is wrong, and replies, ‘That can’t be right. I have an inner witness that confirms common descent!’” Now […]
Encountering the Other: An exercise in moral perception finely-tuned
Yesterday I explained to FroKid my view that moral perception yields certain properly basic beliefs such that when we perceive certain actions we can perceive immediately in a properly basic way the action as right or wrong, good or evil. As I said, “I believe a human being with properly functioning moral perception will perceive […]
Tasting wine and sensing God
When Bill watches a beautiful sunset he automatically forms the belief that God is providentially active in the world. Bill cannot articulate his belief with the sophistication of a theologian, but he senses in a basic way that a very powerful and very good agent is operative in the sunset. There are many skeptics of […]
