Michael Cariño

The question of whether or not religious believing is reasonable is one of the most important of all human concerns. This paper will explore a virtue-theoretic approach, i.e., the stress on the role of agent-based intellectual virtues, to the justification of religious belief. In this thesis, I will argue that the epistemic justification or the rationality of religious beliefs is primarily based on whether the belief was conscientiously held by an intellectually virtuous agent. Rationality is not determined by the content of a belief per se, but the way in which the belief is formed and maintained. All things considered, it is the behavior of the intellectually virtuous person that determines justified believing and is the paradigm for evaluating what is rational. This means that religious beliefs are considered rational when they originate from the performance of excellent epistemic traits. We are concerned not just with what is believed, but above all with what the belief reveals of the person. Hence, rationality is better defined in relation to how rational agents or wise persons behave. There is a good-making quality about the virtues that enable the epistemic agent to connect his beliefs to the world in a way that opens the door to a heightened attentiveness to reality.

Religious communities that strive to acquire intellectual virtues become environments for excellent religious believing and reliable belief formation. They embrace an integrative-holistic model of rationality that includes the whole person (head, heart, habits, habitat, & humanness) in attaining justified beliefs. They acknowledge their own fallibility and trust a collaborative approach in seeking answers to their questions. They have the intellectual integrity to revise their beliefs in light of better evidence. They are open to hearing different voices that may help in the acquisition of excellent beliefs, especially if the voices come from the insights of wise exemplars. They become reservoirs for the attainment of epistemic goods and the advancement of human flourishing.

This work will focus on the salient role of intellectual virtues in producing rational beliefs. Intellectual virtues help generate rational beliefs by placing conscientious agents in a better position to acquire excellences. These virtue-driven excellences bring religious believers to at least three rationality-conducive belief-forming states: (1) “epistemic conscientiousness,” (2) “epistemic trust,” and (3) “epistemic grasping.” It is my contention that religious beliefs formed this way are responsible, rational, reliable, warranted, and justified.

As fallible beings trying to make sense of our world, we need others to help us complete the big picture. In doing theology, we need insights, narratives, testimonies, experiences, and inputs from our communities. We need the wisdom of the wise to help in excellent formation of theologies.

In this paper, I will explore a brand of communal theological formation that highlights the significant role of social collaboration through reliance on communities and “exemplars” (i.e trusted wise experts). I will argue that Christian theology thrives better in intellectual environments where theological beliefs are formed through communities. In other words, Christian theology in Asia is better off when, as communities of faith (1) we listen to one another, and (2) we listen to wise persons among us. For the Asian theologian, the praxis of excellent theologizing, after all, requires a more collaborative attitude with community of believers in order to have a better grasp of reality. When we humbly admit that all our theologies are fallible, imperfect, and provisional, we realize that we tend to flourish better when we work together.

Our world is replete with bands of experts. These are small groups of men and women who excel at a particular field of interest, and who are better than the average person in successfully achieving knowledge in their own domain. Whether it is in the area of science, medicine, technology, sports, music, arts, religion, ethics, politics, business, or warfare, there would always be a core team of trusted specialists whose beliefs, knowledge, wisdom, and understanding about certain matters are considered reliable. Some philosophers tag these groups of excellent knowers as "epistemic communities" and their knowledge as "expert testimonies".

Is God simply an emotional projection of man (Ludwig Feuerbach)? An opium of the people (Karl Marx)? A resentment of those who have inferior minds (Friedrich Nietzsche)? An illusion of those who have remained childish (Sigmund Freud)? An imagined impossibility (Jean-Paul Sartre)? A placebo for fear (Bertrand Russel)? A delusion (Richard Dawkins)? Atheism’s march through modern history has resulted to the ever increasing notion that belief in God is irrational –- that religious belief is nothing but a crutch for the psychologically weak and the mentally frail.

However, a growing number of philosophers, scientists, and scholars are saying otherwise. Many epistemologists argue that it is reasonable to hold religious belief, and that belief in God is rationally justified. A growing number of philosophers affirm that the existence of God can be demonstrated or made probable by argument.

When disasters strike, many Filipino believers argue that God is angry because of the increasing number of sinners, unbelievers, and idolaters in a particular place. Such believers interpret calamities as testings for the faithful to increase their devotion to God and warnings to the unfaithful to turn from sin and escape the wrath of God. These responses to catastrophes reflect the premodern, animistic Filipino worldview, in which the world is controlled by spirits, and life is a struggle against cosmic powers. The tribal shaman—or the village clergy—are the authorities on the problems of pestilence, disease, or disasters, and traditionally they attribute such calamities to spiritual forces rather than natural causes. The Enlightenment period drew humanity out of this age of superstition, giving way to what is known as the Age of Reason. Provoked by the tragedy of the Lisbon earthquake, modern philosophers responded in various ways to the question of disasters in the world. Thus, the problem of evil (i.e., how can a good and powerful God exist if there is evil in the world?) was one of the forces that guided modern philosophical thought.

Two world wars, the holocaust, and the shattered promise of human progress gave birth to the postmodern paradigm.  Postmodernism is essentially a rejection of the modern thought.  Disillusioned with modernism’s failure to create a better life and a better world, people realized that there is more to truth and reality than what empiricism and rationalism can provide.  This is A Generation That Rejects Any Claim to Absolutes. To the postmodern mind, truth is experiential and personal. Reality is imagined and created.  Thus, each person defines truth and reality based on one’s own predisposition or the community’s preference. There is no single meaning, no pure objectives, no absolutes.  Morals, ethics, and other propositions are relative to one’s own opinion and interpretation. The primary focus is to understand various perspectives in community and understand one’s place in relation to individuals with other perspectives. While modernism rejected faith, and exalted reason and science as a means of discovering truth, postmodernism refuses any absolute claim to reality or truth.  Teens today believe everything to be true yet nothing is totally true.  As modernism tried to free the world from spiritual authority, postmodernism is trying to free society from scientific authority.  Now, instead of finding truth through scientific discovery, we have virtual reality – “an experience that is real in effect but not in fact.”  Virtual reality teaches us to trust only what our senses can verify.  Since our senses perceive the world differently, each individual’s view of reality will be unique.  Virtual reality blends fact and fiction, causing today’s youth to search for stability amidst the quicksand of confusion.

Christian conversion is defined as the human response to the saving work of God through Christ.  It is an encounter of an individual with Jesus Christ Himself, which establishes a redemptive relationship with God. It is the act of believing and choosing to follow Christ.  There are two paradigms of conversion within the evangelical community that seems to describe the variety of experiences that people go through: sudden conversion — the experience of the Apostle Paul, and gradual conversion — the experience of the twelve disciples. This paper aims to conduct a benign critical analysis of predominant methods of evangelism and paradigms of conversion in light of biblical and theological perspectives.  The author hopes to help Christians evaluate, rethink and improve on our evangelism efforts and seeks to revisit the Church’s mindset about conversion. Richard Peace says it well when he said that, “the experience of conversion lies at the very heart of evangelism.  In order to be effective in evangelism, it is necessary to have a clear and nuanced understanding of the nature of conversion.” Peace has come to believe that “how we conceive of conversion determines how we do evangelism.”    The nature of evangelistic activities and methods we employ is greatly dependent on the kind of mindset we adopt concerning conversion.  This conviction will be the lens we intend to use as we look at present day evangelism and conversion perspectives.

Is the gospel “good news” for all who are lost or only for some who are lost but chosen? Can an evangelist sincerely tell an individual that Jesus Christ died specifically for him, and not doubt the honesty of his message? This paper seeks to answer the question: Did Christ died for all people or did He die only for a selected few?  Because a proper view of the extent of the atonement can have a serious impact on how we do evangelism and the content of the gospel message we proclaim. It is my contention that Christ suffered and died on the cross for the sins of every individual person in the world, but his death is effective only when the individual accepts it.  I agree with John Calvin who wrote, “Christ suffered for the sins of the whole world, and in the goodness of God is offered unto all men without distinction, His blood being shed not for part of the world only, but for the whole human race.”  God sent Jesus Christ into the world that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17). That is the reason why Jesus is referred to as the Savior of the world (John 4:42; 1 John 4:14). In dying for the whole world, Christ tasted death for every individual person (Hebrews 2:9), which makes Him truly the Savior of all men (1 Timothy 4:10). Atonement is unlimited in scope in the sense that the offer of salvation is for all men. Atonement is limited in effect in the sense that only those who believe in Jesus are truly saved.

A proper understanding of the order of salvation will impact the believers’ paradigm and practice of evangelism today.  One controversial question that Christians are wrestling with is “Do we become born again in order to believe, or do we believe in order to become born again?”  Is “believing in Christ” a condition or a consequence of the new birth?  This paper aims to answer this question without going through the details of what conversion and regeneration is.  I will focus on the question whether we are converted because we are already regenerated, or does God regenerate those who repent and believe. It is my position that an individual must repent and believe in order to become born again.  The moment a person trusts Christ for salvation, only then can he experience the new birth.

In David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Philo, Demea, and Cleanthes enter into a conversation about God.  Their debate seems to abstain from either proving or denying that God exists.  The dialogues between the three friends tend to assume that God exists. Instead, their religious talk was about a different subject matter altogether --- God’s essence. This essay seeks to discover why Philo, Demea, and Cleanthes refused to engage in any talk about proving the existence of God.  The author will also discern what these dialogues on the essence of God is all about and how is it not about the existence of God. For Philo, Demea, and Cleanthes God’s being or existence is self-evident and undeniable (D, 2.1/141; 2.3/142).  That is why their dialogue refrains from arguing whether God exists or not.  However, it is God’s nature or essence that should be subject to discussion. Their dialogue focused more on whether God’s attributes can be known, and if they can be known, what are these traits.

For traditional theodicy, either (1) there is no genuine evil or (2) certain evils are necessary for the good of the universe as a whole. 
But for Rousseau, like Kant, the development through evil was more or less inevitable in the process of development to stable, self-reflected moral maturity. Without some assumptions about the natural goodness of humankind, and the ways in which it (at least potentially) may have developed through a series of painful historical processes to a more free and reasonable state, we cannot have confidence in our efforts to contribute to that development. If evil is knowable while God is not, the only morally legitimate response to the problem of evil is to reject attempts at theodicy and devote our efforts to the practical task of abolishing what evil is within our reach. God is benevolent but we do not need Him.

A virtue is an acquired excellence of the soul, or to use more modern terminology, it is an acquired excellence of the person in a deep and lasting sense. A virtue is acquired by a process that involves a certain amount of time and work on the part of the agent. A virtue is not simply a skill. Skills have many of the same features as virtues in their manner of acquisition and in their area of application, and virtuous persons are expected to have the correlative skills in order to be effective in action, but skills do not have the intrinsic value of virtues.  A virtue has a component of motivation. A motivation is a disposition to have a certain motive, and a motive is an emotion that initiates and directs action to produce an end with certain desired features.  “Virtue" is a success term. The motivational component of a virtue means that it has an end, whether internal or external. A person does not have a virtue unless she is reliable at bringing about the end that is the aim of the motivational component of the virtue.

Plato, in books VIII and IX of The Republic, elaborated on the role of desires to either build or destroy a person’s life.  The ancient philosopher speaks of rational desires (of the aristocratic soul), spirited desires (of the timocratic soul), necessary desires (of the oligarchic soul), unnecessary desires (of the democratic soul), and lawless desires (of the tyrannical soul). Reflecting on Plato’s account of necessary, unnecessary, and lawless desires, I realized that my tends appetites have enslaved the rest of my soul and empowered the beast within me.  I seem to have fluctuated from the oligarchic to the democratic to the tyrannical and back.  For a long segment of my existence, such undomesticated instinct is part of the reason for the seeming unhappiness, fear, enslavement, and miserableness in several chapters of my life.

The Ring of Gyges is like a test to the human soul.  Will I choose evil and injustice if I possess such great power, or will I choose good and justice?  In my opinion, throwing the ring away would be depriving oneself of knowing how strong or how weak one’s soul is.  Perhaps when I fail the test, I can always learn from my mistakes thru self-reflection and self-mastery.  I believe that humans are not doomed to be mastered by our appetites forever.  That is the beauty of human progress.  We can always correct ourselves.  Because of practical reason, we can rescue ourselves from ourselves.

Plato’s educational scheme is indeed a “turning around” of the soul.  His intensive training program involves (1) the soul’s liberation from the shackles of ignorance, (2) the soul’s painful but rewarding realizations of new realities, (3) the soul’s upward journey towards the light of understanding, and (4) the soul’s longing to use new found realities to set others free. By contrast, I sense that most of today’s education lacks this element of “turning around” of the soul.  Schools today tend to merely dump knowledge and information, rather than train individuals to reflect and think critically.  Students are not trained to contemplate on “the good,” rather they are allowed to live their lives with untamed passions.  Instead of wise and virtuous individuals, most students today are lovers of wealth, pleasure, vanity, and convenience.

Plato’s The Republic seeks to answer the question “what is justice?” and attempts to reflect the philosophical of views of his teacher Socrates.  The book begins with some of Socrates’ friends trying to figure out what justice is: (1) Justice is telling the truth and returning what you received (Cephalus), (2) justice is giving each his due (Polemarchus), and (3) justice is the advantage of the stronger (Thrasymachus).  Socrates rejects each of these definitions. He starts a discussion to find out what true justice is and to discover whether the just man or the unjust man is happier. I admire Plato’s philosophy.  He seems to be saying that “just” human beings produce “just” societies.  There can never be any justice or goodness in this world if there is no justice or goodness in the human heart.  This is a profound concept.  While many tend to focus primarily on structures, rules, and rewards, Plato brings us to the heart of the problem, which is the problem of the human heart.

Immanuel Kant’s book A Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential and important works in the history of Western philosophy.  Among Kant’s many significant ideas in the said book, these three seems to be among the best: (1) synthetic a priori knowledge, (2) transcendental idealism, and (3) principle of causation. Is Kant successful in vindicating "reason"? The answer is “yes” but not without any difficulty. Kant’s accounts of truth, scientific method and the limited insights of theoretical reason are all complex. While knowledge and scientific enquiry, are both subject to the demands of rationality, however, Kant's account of "reason" is based in avoiding principles of enquiry --- that is why Kant strongly resists claims to transcendent insight. Such arguments would make those of divine revelation and religious authority to be irrational as long as they rest on principles of belief that is outside the boundaries of reason.

Hannah Arendt, in "The Human Condition", also paints a gloomy picture of modernity’s impact on human species.  While modernism has brought technological, medical, scientific, literary, and educational advancements, modernism also carried problems with it.  Arendt argues that modernity is characterized by the “loss of the world.”  By that she means the elimination of the public sphere of speech and action; the rise of totalitarianism; the loss of plurality, freedom, and human solidarity; and the erosion of traditional standards and values. As a result, we created a life obsessed with the artificial; we have become thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget; and we have regressed into a classless society of jobholders.  For Arendt, our insatiable desire for exploration, experimentation, and expansion have damaged our world. This paper aims to reflect on Arendt’s critical assessment of modernism’s destructive effects, and how we can rescue ourselves from the mess we are in.  This paper will also examine Arendt’s thoughts on the political and the anti-political, and in so doing, seek to discover therapeutic treatments (so to speak) for the idiosyncratic influences of modernism.

This essay seeks to understand what philosophy for Wittgenstein is, explain how his approach to philosophy differs from traditional philosophy, and why his break away from it deserves significant analysis.  The paper is outlined based on what seems to be at least two of Wittgenstein’s goals for philosophy: (1) conceptual geography --- the surveyability and perspicuity of language, and (2) intellectual therapy --- the liberation of language from confusions and illusions. In Wittgensteinian philosophy, the task of the philosopher is not to explain the world but to describe the world, not to solve philosophical problems but to dissolve philosophical problems.  For Wittgenstein, philosophy is not a body of discovered theoretical concepts, but rather, it is a cultural and social activity that leads to clarification of what we already know.

Out of the many metaphors and analogies that Wittgenstein used in his Philosophical Investigations, two of them seem to capture most of his thoughts --- that is the fly inside the bottle and the beetle inside the box.  These two bug illustrations express powerful insights into the revolutionary philosophy of Wittgenstein.  The fly-in the-bottle illustration describes the power of language to clarify and disentangle philosophy’s confusions and illusions.  The beetle-in-the-box illustration explains the absurdity of philosophy’s obsession with an inner world and hidden essences. Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy was revolutionary because he made a shift of focus from logical investigation --- using logic to discover the hidden essence of all things that are yet to be known, to grammatical investigation --- using language to describe, clarify, and arrange what we have always known (PI, 89-92, 109).  Philosophers assume that the first question should be "Is it true?" But for Wittgenstein, the first question should be "What is its meaning?"

For traditional philosophy, meaning in language is based on theoretical concepts.  Words are defined by some antecedent, prescriptive standard (e.g. essence or forms) independent of experience.  The philosopher need only discover these forms in order to determine whether use of terms such as “justice”, “truth”, “good” is correct or not.
For Wittgenstein, language is a tool, an instrument (e.g. hammer, pliers, screw-driver, etc.), which enables us to get things done (PI, 11; 23). It is on how we use words as tools that we can get a sense of what they mean. Correct meaning and proper use of language are based on its use (PI, 138) --- i.e. custom and practice (PI, 197-199; 202).  There is nothing outside of use that can justify correct use. For Wittgenstein, the task of philosophy is investigating how language is used in everyday life, and this investigation should be descriptive, not prescriptive (PI, 124-128).

According to Levinas, this “face to face” encounter with “the Other” awakens a person from his ontological sleep and brings him into a new level of consciousness where he realizes his own narcissism, tyranny, and violence.  Such discourse with “the face” moves him into a level of being that seeks intimacy and love --- “the face” appeals, invites, and commands him to enter into fraternity with him --- a separation away from his own alterity, towards a response and participation to the infinity of “the face” of “the Other.”  This mutual experience of awakening changes his attitude of supremacy and replaces it with an attitude of humility--- he is now willing to let go of control and be subordinated to “the Other” or “one to another.” From this desire to be connected with “the Other” comes a mutual dialogue between the two faces.  Within this dialogue “the Other” reveals his weakness and appeals for his needs. Then, the subject relates to “the Other,” and is obligated to fulfill the commands of “the face.”

The trace that points to the Transcendent Being is embedded through the face of the Other because Infinity and Transcendence can be experienced only through the spiritual fraternity of human beings.  The face of the Other points me to a common Creator. We can find the trace of the Infinite through the face of another human being because a trace does not begin in things, ideas, language, or sense data.  A trace does not belong to this world; it belongs to the One who is absolutely Absent.  Like the face, the trace seems to come to my sphere of existence as an alien visitation with strangeness, an otherness of the Other.

One of the new and emerging philosophical studies of knowledge is known as virtue epistemology.  In this new epistemological discipline, the focus is not only on the validity of knowledge but also on the virtue of the knower.  Virtue Epistemology believes that “intellectual agents are the primary source of epistemic value and the primary focus of epistemic evaluation.” This focus places a heavy weight on the character traits and cognitive qualities of the agent as an excellent cognizer of knowledge. Virtue epistemologists are generally split into two camps: virtue responsibilists and virtue reliabilists.  Virtue reliabilists (e.g. Goldman, Greco, Sosa) understand intellectual virtues to include faculties such as perception, intuition and memory (faculty-virtues). Virtue responsibilists (e.g. Code, Hookway, Montmarquet, Zagzebski) understand intellectual virtues to include refined character traits such as conscientiousness and open-mindedness (trait-virtues).  This paper seeks to contribute a harmonizing approach to the evidentialist-reliabilist debate and explore a theory of epistemic justification that blends evidentialism with reliabilism.  The writer will prove that these competing theories have the potential of becoming complementary theories.

The writer hopes to achieve the said purpose by exploring: (1) what is evidentialism, (2) problems for evidentialism, (3) what is reliabilism, (4) problems for reliabilism, (5) apparent incompatibility of evidentialism and reliabilism, and (6) potential compatibility of evidentialism and reliabilism.  The paper ends with some personal reflections and likely implications of such epistemological merger.

Is it possible to know anything at all? How do we know if our beliefs are true and that we are not deluded? The skeptic says, “No.”  Epistemological Skepticism declares we do not have any knowledge, and insists that we can never be certain that our beliefs are true. Thus, there is no way we can be sure that the external world actually exists. Skeptics like Rene Descartes and David Hume argue that it is impossible to know whether the external world is real or not because our evidences, our perceptions, our senses, and our reasons for justifying our beliefs are all inaccurate, unreliable, and uncertain.  What if we are merely dreaming or hallucinating?  What if there is a wicked demon playing with our minds? What if a mad scientist placed our brains in a container and wired it to a computer that creates an imaginary world?  The skeptic claims we can never be sure that what we know is real and what we believe is true.

William Clifford would say that beliefs without evidence are irrational and wrong.  He claimed that “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything without sufficient evidence.”  On the other hand, William James would say that beliefs without evidence are rational and right. He declared that “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds.”  Thus the classic debate between Evidentialism and Pragmaticism was born.

This paper seeks to analyze the two opposing epistemological positions for the rationality of belief -- Evidentialism and Pragmatism.  Amidst all the arguments in the debate, the writer will attempt to discern which epistemic approach reinforces rationality in light of the moral, epistemic, and prudential issues.

What is belief? How is belief formed? These questions have played a major role in the ethics of belief debate. Philosophers tend to generally agree “that belief is (roughly) a dispositional affirmative attitude towards a proposition (or state of affairs). To believe that p is to take it to be true that p — to take it that the state of affairs described by the sentence ‘p’ obtains.” Epistemologists also widely agree that the majority of our beliefs are not occurrent at any given time, and that belief comes in degrees of strength, confidence, or firmness.

However, beyond the apparent agreement, there are also several disagreements: Representationalists say that “beliefs are structures in the mind that represent the propositions they affirm (like a mental language).” Behavioralist-dispositionalists regard “beliefs as dispositions to act in certain ways in certain circumstances. ” Eliminativists consider “beliefs as designating convenient fictions that we ascribe to people in folk psychology.” Primitivists think of “beliefs as basic mental states which do not admit of analysis.”