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Proper basicality for belief in God : Alvin Plantinga and the evidentialist objection to theism

This study explores how successful Alvin Plantinga is in his contention that belief in God can be obtained and maintained in a basic way that attains and retains rationality for reflective persons. Plantinga indeed calls into question any confident presumption that theistic belief is epistemically irresponsible. He not only seriously challenges the necessity for propositional evidence to be available for such belief to be justified, he also supplies significant support for the conclusion that it remains legitimate even if it faces a preponderance of contrary considerations. However, Plantinga does not convincingly demonstrate that basic theistic belief merits privileged status by virtue of a character sufficiently analogous to paradigmatic perceptual, memory and ascriptive beliefs. Nor does he adequately argue its independence from the bearing of evidentialist concerns, especially regarding its background moorings. He needs to do more work to show the full warrant for theistic belief.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.23330
Date January 1995
CreatorsDyck, Timothy Lee
ContributorsBoutin, Maurice (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Faculty of Religious Studies.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001485822, proquestno: MM12021, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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