Rationality of religious belief

Plato 

• Given the goodness and beauty of the world and its orderliness, there has to be a divine cause for it, therefore there has to be a God, given the orderly and good design of it 

Aristotle 

• The world is everlasting but we need a mover to explain why there is motion 
• Therefore the first unmoved mover is God, and he cannot be the same as everyone else as he is unmoved, thus he must be God

Newton 

• The first cause cannot be a mechanic because it has a lot of work that a mechanic cannot do 
• Suggests a God qua incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, omniscient, who – and this is specific for Newton – has infinite space as his sensorium in which he perceives things 
• Should assume a "voluntary cause" and a God at the first cause and we cannot assume to explain everything in terms of matter alone
• If all matter was evenly scattered either through a finite or infinite space, we would not get our world 

Newton

• The world wouldn't exist without the sun and heat, therefore the author of the system must have created this
• Motions of the planets cannot come from a natural cause but must come from an intelligent agent, otherwise, planets would move in eccentric orbits like comets 
• To set up our solar system, with all the exact velocities of the planets in relation to their distance to the sun and their mass requires a first cause "skilled in geometry and maths"
• Where the planets are placed proves they have a function 
• This inclination of the earth's axis proves a God 

Natural religion is not necessarily based on observing nature but based on reasoning that is naturally accessible to most people

Revealed religion is historically contingent: it is based on a direct divine revelation that takes place at a particular time, thus for Christians, it is based on the Bible 

Descartes 

• The idea of religion would have been too great to come up with, therefore only God could have created it and implanted it into his mind 
• Therefore, with rationality, God is a religious authority 

Locke

• Experience is the source of all our ideas and knowledge 
• Ideas come not from experience but are directly implanted by God onto the mind 
• There must be some internal thing that is the source of all other existence as you cannot deny your own existence and your existence could not have come out of anything
• You have to assume some starting point  

Hume 

• We derive our conclusions about the world by induction, therefore we hold norms that do not require further justification 
• We just do what we do because that is how things have always been; there is no call for revision 
• The norms of reasoning turn out to be quite restrictive about what we're permitted to believe and you cannot argue for exemption from the norms on principle, precisely because they’re not founded on any principles! 
• Therefore Hume is against religion unless it allows us to enjoy a common good 
• Testimony is not enough to believe in miracles as it is a violation of the laws of nature 

Spinoza 

• To believe in miracle is to give up on our norms of reasoning and thus to undermine all our means of reasoning 
• Miracles are simply things that happened at the time that people could not explain then that we can explain now; they couldn’t explain natural causalities 

Hume

• There was never a miracle established on evidence 
  • The testimony is not sufficient because the people are not a group nor educated 
  • Laws of nature cannot be violated for the passion of surprise and wonder
  • Science then cannot explain what we know now because there was no Enlightenment progress 
  • Different people attest different miracles and they can't all be right 
• Hume's Dialogues 
  • Cleanthes ("accurate philosophical turn") 
  • Philo ("careless scepticism")
  • Demea ("rigid inflexible orthodoxy")
  • Many readers assume Philo is a stand in for Hume's views 
  • Philo suggests we can't use common sense for religion because it is so different to any other movement that we can't get our head around it 
  • Cleanthes argues that things seem to be beyond our grasp may be difficult to grasp but we shouldn’t limit our knowledge to what we already know and with a Philo attitude we wouldn't make any progress 
    
  • Demea supports the idea that we can't understand God or religion because we are too restricted creatures 

Hume 

• Demea doesn't think that the existence of God needs to be proven because it is self-evident but we cannot comprehend God's nature 
• Demea suggests it is wrong to understand God as a Mind and you cannot place him under a human category so you cannot ascribe intelligence to him
• Cleanthes position is that God has superhuman intelligence because of the design of the universe 
• Philo agrees that the universe has an intelligent designer because of the appearance of design 
• Cleanthes gives examples from science where causes are inferred from effects without constant conjunction of causes and effects 
• Philo suggests we can infer that A causes B when we have seen lots of instances of B arising from A 
• Philo suggests that is okay to infer some things about reptile circulation from observation of mammal circulation but not okay to infer much about the circulation of plant sap from observation of mammal circulation