Plantinga’s style of argument is to take the strongest objections to his position, state them as strongly as possible, and then topple them like a house of cards. His book, Knowledge and Christian Belief is an example of the quality of work he does and he makes his arguments accessible to well read individuals, who may not have extensive backgrounds in philosophy. He was a winsome and potent advocate for orthodox Christianity and his arguments take on all challengers. Unfortunately, some Christians do a pretty poor job of dealing with the problem of evil, especially those Christians equipped with a semester of philosophy.Īlvin Plantinga remains one of the foremost Christian philosophers. It’s been a knotty problem for generations of Christian philosophers. The arguments along those lines generally flow from the problem of evil, which was really aptly stated by Epicurus and oft repeated since then: If there is a God in the world and there is evil in the world, then that God must be evil, since an omniscient, omnipotent God (the sort of God that matters) would stop evil. Some have gone as far as to say that it is morally repugnant to believe in God. Setting that digression aside, it is more apt to this discussion to note that there are many atheists and agnostics that would argue that it is foolish to believe in God, or at least to have any confidence that there is a God. At least, it does not follow by that statement alone. A fool may say there is no God, but it does not follow that someone who says there is no God is a fool. Second, the logic doesn’t flow the way the Christian would like. First, fool is a moral category in Scripture, not “doofus” or “idiot” as we might think in our own culture.
However, it is not helpful and often falls short of the mark. That quote, which opens Psalm 14, is no doubt true. Especially those who have been taught to begin debates with an assertion, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
To many Christians, this seems like an obvious answer.
Is being a Christian at all intellectually defensible?
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