David Basinger

What is the status of belief in God? Must a rational case be made or can such belief be properly basic? Is it possible to reconcile the concept of a good God with evil and suffering? In light of great differences among religions, can only one religion be true? The most comprehensive work of its kind, Reason and Religious Belief, now in its fourth edition, explores these and other perennial questions in the philosophy of religion. Drawing from the best in both classical and contemporary discussions, the authors examine religious experience, faith and reason, the divine attributes, arguments for and against the existence of God, divine action (in various forms of theism), Reformed epistemology, religious language, religious diversity, religion and science, and much more. Retaining the engaging style and thorough coverage of previous editions, the fifth edition features revised treatments of omnipotence, miracles, and providence and updated suggestions for further reading. A sophisticated yet accessible introduction, Reason and Religious Belief, Third Edition, is ideally suited for use with the authors' companion anthology, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, Fifth Edition (OUP, 2015).

While many ground religious tolerance on a sense of unity or enrichment resulting from religious diversity, the acclaimed scholars contributing to this volume place under scrutiny a fascinating alternative proposal for a pathway to religious tolerance: that the serious consideration of religious diversity tends to reveal the weakness of support many have for their religious commitments and that the humility produced tends to result in religious tolerance. The authors illuminate the debate within philosophyabout the way beliefs are supported, the controversy between internalism and externalism, and disagreement about how humility and tolerance are related.

Religious diversity exists whenever seemingly sincere, knowledgeable individuals hold incompatible beliefs on the same religious issue. Diversity of this sort is pervasive, existing not only across basic theistic systems but also within these theistic systems themselves. Religious Diversity explores the breadth and significance of such conflict. Examining the beliefs of various theistic systems, particularly within Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Basinger discusses seemingly incompatible claims about many religious issues, including the nature of God and the salvation of humankind. He considers particularly the work of Hick, Gellman, Plantinga, Schellenberg, Alston, Wainwright, and Quinn, applying their perspectives on 'exclusivism' and 'pluralism' as they become relevant to the issues in question. Basinger's survey of the relevant literature, proposed solutions, and fresh insights offer an invaluable contribution not only for philosophers of religion and philosophical theologians but for anyone interested in the increasingly significant question of what a religious believer can or cannot justifiably say about their religious perspective.

This book is a critical overview of the manner in which the concept of miracle is understood and discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. In its most basic sense, a miracle is an unusual, unexpected, observable event brought about by direct divine intervention. The focus of this study is on the key conceptual, epistemological, and theological issues that this definition of the miraculous continues to raise. As this topic is of existential as well as theoretical interest to many, there is no reason to believe the concept of miracle won't continue to be of ongoing interest to philosophers.

It has become quite popular recently to maintain that a God who possessed simple foreknowledge - knowledge of what has happened, is happening and will actually happen - would have absolutely no greater providential control over earthly affairs than a God who possessed no foreknowledge at all. In an article in this journal, David P. Hunt disputes this claim, arguing that it is at least true that it is possible for complete foreknowledge to contribute to more providential control than would be available with no foreknowledge. I argue that while Hunt's strategy - which is to place divine decision-making before creation and make it hypothetical - is ingenious, it ultimately fails.

There have been many calls recently for philosophers to rethink what philosophy is and how it should be practiced. Among the most vocal critics is an influential group of feminist philosophers who argue that since current philosophical activity is based primarily on a conception of reason that is both inherently inadequate and oppressive to women, it is imperative that our understanding of the nature and practice of philosophy be significantly modified. I argue that this criticism is fundamentally misguided. Specifically, it seems to me that while philosophers may at times need to rethink the role of the traditional philosophical method of inquiry in the context of general societal debate and rethink the techniques used to help others understand and apply this methodology, this method of inquiry, itself, is not in need of abandonment or major modification.

Few atheologians still maintain that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God. But many still wish to maintain not only that (a) the existence of evil in great abundance counts as evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God but also that the ability of the theist to respond to such evil is so limited that (b) on rational grounds one should believe that God does not exist. In a recent article, Michael Martin clearly sets forth what I consider to be the standard atheological argument for (a) and (b).¹ The purpose of this paper is not only to critique this argument but, in the process, to outline the set of tasks that I believe atheologians have yet to accomplish before it can be demonstrated that evil furnishes the basis for a good inductive argument against God's existence.

To say that God is omniscient, most philosophers and theologians agree, is to say that he knows all true propositions and none that are false. But there is a great deal of disagreement about what is knowable. Some believe that God's knowledge is limited to everything that is actual and that which will follow deterministically from it. He knows, for example, exactly what Caesar was thinking when he crossed the Rubicon and how many horses he had in his army that day. And he knows exactly how Gorbachev feels about the use of nuclear weapons. And since he knows how the ‘laws of nature’ function, he knows, for example, how certain weather systems will develop and what their effects will be on certain natural environments. But with respect to any future state of affairs which includes free human decision-making as a causal component, God is said not to know what will occur. God, as the ultimate psychoanalyst or behaviourist, can with great accuracy predict what we will freely decide to do in the future in many cases. He might well, for example, be able to predict quite accurately who will win the 1988 Presidential election. But a God who possesses only ‘present knowledge’ cannot know who will win. Given that the election in question is dependent on free choices which have yet to be made, there is presently nothing for God to know

In an ongoing dialogue, Robert Larmer and I have been discussing whether the undisputed occurrence of certain conceivable events would require all honest, thoughtful individuals to acknowledge that God has intervened in earthly affairs. I argue that there is no reason to believe that a nontheist who acknowledged certain healings to be strong evidence for theism but did not see such evidence as outweighing what she viewed as the stronger counterevidence, and thus remained a nontheist, could justifiably be accused of adopting a dogmatic, uncritical question-begging stance

Orthodox Christian theists frequently petition God in the sense that they ask him to bring about some state of affairs which they believe may not occur without divine intervention. Such petitions basically fall into three categories: requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly the natural environment – e.g. calm a hurricane, requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly the lives ofother individuals – e.g. reconcile the broken marriage of friends, and requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly his or her own life – e.g. soothe his or her troubled mind

Proponents of The Free Will Defense frequently argue that it is necessary for God to create self-directing beings who possess the capacity for producing evil because, in the words of F.R. Tennant, “moral goodness must be the result of a self-directing developmental process.” But if this is true, David Paulsen has recently argued, then the proponent of the Free Will Defense cannot claim that God has an eternally determinate nature. For if God has an eternally determinatenature and moral goodness must be the result of a developmental process, then God cannot be considered morally good. In response, I argue that (1) many contemporary Free Will theists do not affirm a developmental concept of morality and thus avoid Paulsen’s criticism and that (2) even those who affirm a developmental concept of morality on the human level need not grant that divine morality is also developmental in nature.

I have argued previously (in this journal) that the reality of pervasive religious pluralism obligates a believer to attempt to establish her perspective as the correct one. In a recent response, Jerome Gellman maintains that the believer who affirms a ‘religious epistemology’ is under no such obligation in that she need not subject her religious beliefs to any ‘rule of rationality’. In this paper I contend that there do exist some rules of rationality (some epistemic obligations) that must be acknowledged-and satisfied-within all epistemic systems (including all religious epistemic systems) and that for this reason Gellman’s critique of my position fails.