Question One popular take on religious belief is that it can only be arrived at through faith, rather than considerations of evidence or reasons. Even admitting there to be a paucity of evidence in favor of god's existence, we are to suppose that one may legitimately believe in him nonetheless. A theist who not only holds this view about, but claims to believe in god in precisely this way, would then seem to claim something like the following: "Although I recognize there to be insufficient evidence for the existence of god, I still believe in him." I want to ask whether we can really take this claim at face value. Set aside the question of whether religious belief is justified from an objective standpoint, and ask whether it is really coherent for someone to genuinely believe both (1) that X, and (2) that there is insufficient evidence for belief in X. To me this notion has a paradoxical flavor, and I wonder if what is really going on in here is something else entirely. That is, I wonder whether theists of the sort in question actually <i>do</i> take themselves to have sufficient evidence or reasons for belief in god. (In that case, what they are really claiming in their talk of faith is that anti-theistic arguments are generally insufficient to defeat said evidence or reasons.)

Accepted:

February 9, 2011