Thread by @Helenreflects

Today, in my philosophy of religion course (check out #PORcourse for other installments), we will talk about Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief (henceforth WCB). Entire book is available here.
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7e0f/9f383793f… 1/

As of 2020, the book has >1700 citations on Google Scholar. It's a super-influential book in philosophy of religion. But it's important, before we start out, to know what Plantinga is arguing for. Plantinga does *not* argue for the truth of Christian belief. 2/

Aim of the book is to counter de jure objections against Christianity.
1. De jure objection: an objection showing that the belief is incoherent, irrational etc.
2. De facto objection : an objection showing that the belief is false.
P. is only concerned with countering (1) 3/

So, Plantinga will not show that Christianity is true. Rather, he argues for the much weaker claim that Christianity, if true, can be warranted (we'll come back to this in a sec). 4/

To contextualize the idea of warrant, we need to look at discussions in epistemology about the nature of knowledge. A standard picture: knowledge = justified true belief.
Gettier cases push back against that, but you can always add a clause, knowledge = not gettierized TB 5/

A few philosophers (Tim Williamson, Jennifer Nagel) think that knowledge is a separate state from belief. But most philosophers think knowledge = belief + something added. But what is that something? For Plantinga, it's warrant. 6/

Warranted Christian Belief can be seen as continuation of 2 other books by Plantinga: Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and proper function, both published in 1993. Warranted Christian Belief was published in 2000. 7/

For Plantinga,
A belief has warrant just if it is produced by cognitive processes or faculties that are
* functioning properly
* in a cognitive environment conducive to that exercise
* according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs. 8/

Note: "design plan" does not imply creationism, the design plan could be done through evolution (but P. is a bit skeptical of unguided evolution).
So, while justification is property of a person (I'm justified in believing that p), warrant is property of a belief. 9/

How can Christian belief have warrant? To argue this, Plantinga develops two models, the Aquinas/Calvin (AC) model, and the extended AC model. I'll explain these in detail 10/

AC model: Calin (and Aquinas) claimed that God has implanted in us a sense of divinity, a kind of intuitive religious sense, which can be occasioned by walks in nature, looking at the starry night sky, listening to music, reading the Bible, etc. 11/

Now the sensus divinitatis gives us a properly basic belief in God. What is properly basic belief?
A basic belief is a belief that does not derive its warrant from other beliefs. e.g., I infer a fire seeing a fire-engine is not basic but inferred. 12/

Classic foundationalism holds that beliefs, in order to be justified have to be either basic or derived from properly basic beliefs, e.g., being
* incorrigible
* evident to the senses
* self-evident.
e.g., 2+2=4 /13

But Plantinga thinks there are many other properly basic beliefs, even though they're not incorrigible, evident to senses or self-evident e.g.,
* other people have minds
* I had toast for breakfast
Memory and belief in other minds have warrant & are properly basic 14/

For Plantinga, we’re warranted to believe our memories and trust our idea that other people have minds.
Warrant is not the same as true, but in many cases, the warrant of a belief does depend on truth.
Thus, warrant is vulnerable to defeaters, e.g., memory insertion 15/

WCB presents a modest claim: Christian belief probably has warrant if it turns out that it is true.
How? AC model: God has implanted in us a sense of the divine. This sense of the divine is working properly. 16/

So far, so good. The idea that our cognition gives us a sense of the divine is not that outrageous given lots of recent work in the cognitive science of religion. See e.g., here
ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8…
and my talk on this here: facebook.com/events/link-au… 17/

But now things get complicated, and in my view, really messy and difficult for Plantinga. P. believes that sin has somehow marred our cognitive capacities (lots of Christians believe this see e.g., Augustine, Calvin etc), these are the so-called noetic effects of sin. 18/

The noetic effects of sin can be used to explain why people disbelieve, why they believe in polytheism etc. (otherwise how explain if we have a sensus divinitatis, we end up w "wrong" religious beliefs). But the problem with the noetic effects of sin is that they overshoot 19/

The noetic effects of sin quickly becomes a kind of universal acid that threatens to attack warrant. I've written about this topic here link.springer.com/article/10.100… so won't go into detail. This puts Christians in a worse position... 20/

Than, say, Muslims who have the idea of the fitrah, an innate endowment that gives you religious beliefs, rationality, and an intuitive moral sense, since according to Islam, we are not damaged by the Fall (they have a Fall story but it does not do permanent damage) 21/

So Plantinga gets out the extended A/C model. This includes specifically Christian concepts like the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit (IIHS), Scripture, and faith, to get us on the right track.
But as others have noted you can extend A/C model in all sorts of ways 22/

Warranted Muslim belief
Warranted Aztec belief
Warranted Wicca belief
Warranted Vedanta belief
etc etc 23/

More general problem of religious diversity for WCB, raised by Anita Renusch.
In the light of peer disagreement, we have no reason to accept Plantinga's extended A/C model over other theistic models. 24/

Potential reasons for disregarding peer disagreement:
* I just have some special insight (van Inwagen)
* Religious beliefs are just too complex (Elga)
* Religious beliefs are not factual (van Leeuwen)
My reasons for why this doesn't work here: cambridge.org/core/elements/…
25/

On the whole, WCB both strong and weak:
* weak: If Christianity is true, Christian belief can be warranted (conditional)
* strong, as P. argues you can't have any good de jure objections against Christianity, so need to do the work to actually refute Christian claims. /ends

@threadreaderapp - would appreciate an unroll so it's neat and easy to find back