In my previous post I criticised the rationalist objection to belief in God. In this post I want to sketch an alternative view of faith and reason defended by Alvin Plantinga. In my next post I will address two common objections to this conception.Belief in God as Properly BasicIn several of his works Alvin Plantinga [...]
Entries Tagged as 'William Alston'
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part II
April 6th, 2009 2 Comments
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Faith and Reason · William Alston
Does Pluralism Make Faith Arbitrary?
October 20th, 2008 2 Comments
Recently I have been reading Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. (This is not like me because I don’t typically read popular apologetics books, and it is even more rare that I would lead a blog entry with one.)
One thing that interested me is that when Keller examines [...]
Tags: Apologetics · Faith and Reason · Pluralism · Timothy Keller · William Alston
The Bible Tells Me So
July 25th, 2008 2 Comments
Suppose a person upon reading scripture and hearing the scriptures expounded through preaching from the pulpit believes that God has prohibited a certain class of actions. Suppose further that the believer is aware of no conclusive argument either for God’s existence or for the affirmation of the command in question. Nor is he or she [...]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Faith and Reason · Greg Dawes · William Alston
The Battle of the Bills: A Review of the Craig – Cooke Debate
June 18th, 2008 8 Comments
My small idea of getting Dr William Lane Craig to have a debate at Auckland University ended up being an event that far exceeded my expectations. Despite the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH) booking a larger lecture theatre at the last minute we still had to open up three additional lecture theatres [...]
Tags: Apologetics · Atheism · Bill Cooke · Debates · Faith and Reason · NZARH · Philosophy of Religion · Rationalists · William Alston · William Lane Craig
The Euthyphro Objection Part I: Against Divine Commands & Avoiding Strawmen
October 28th, 2007 2 Comments
Perhaps the most common argument against an appeal to divine commands in ethical reasoning is the Euthyphro dilemma, first articulated by Plato and utilised by numerous critics of divine commands ever since. A representative example of this line of argument occurs in Peter Singer’s widely-acclaimed monograph Practical Ethics. In the first chapter of Practical Ethics, [...]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Edward Weirenga · Ethics · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · John Hare · Peter Singer · Philip Quinn · Philosophy of Religion · Robert Adams · William Alston
On Believing Without Proof: Some reflections on Faith and Reason
September 24th, 2007 2 Comments
Recently in correspondence with non believer I have repeatedly meet with the following argument. This is usually touted as a kind of self evident mantra.
[1] There is no proof that God exists [2] Its irrational to believe something unless you have proof . Therefore: [3] belief in the existence of God is irrational. [...]
Tags: Apologetics · Faith and Reason · William Alston
Caricature at no god zone
August 1st, 2007 No Comments
As a person who studies theology and philosophy I have, over the years, read some brilliant skeptics; John Mackie and Paul Draper come to mind. I also have become reasonably informed about the debate over theism in the literature. Consquently, I have a good idea when the issues are being caricatured.
Unfortunately rebuttal of a theological [...]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Hell Pizza · Libertarianism · William Alston
