Fideism

"Fideism" is a new word for me. It cropped up on Friendly Atheist in one of the comment threads [Impromptu Religious Debate on Real Time]. I had to look it up. Here's the description of fideism on Wikepedia ...

Alvin Plantinga defines "fideism" as "the exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason and utilized especially in the pursuit of philosophical or religious truth." The fideist therefore "urges reliance on faith rather than reason, in matters philosophical and religious," and therefore may go on to disparage the claims of reason.[3] The fideist seeks truth, above all: and affirms that reason cannot achieve certain kinds of truth, which must instead be accepted only by faith.[4] Plantinga's definition might be revised to say that what the fideist objects to is not so much "reason" per se — it seems excessive to call Blaise Pascal anti-rational — but evidentialism: the notion that no belief should be held unless it is supported by evidence.

The fideist notes that religions that are founded on revelation call their faithful to believe in a transcendent deity even if believers cannot fully understand the object of their faith. Some fideists also contend that human rational faculties are themselves untrustworthy, because the entire human nature has been corrupted by sin, and as such the conclusions reached by human reason are therefore untrustworthy: the truths affirmed by divine revelation must be believed even if they find no support in human reason. Fideism, of a sort which has been called naive fideism, is frequently found in response to anti-religious arguments; the fideist resolves to hold to what has been revealed as true in his faith, in the face of contrary lines of reasoning.

Specifically, fideism teaches that rational or scientific arguments for the existence of God are fallacious and irrelevant, and have nothing to do with the truth of Christian theology.

I wonder if this belief is widespread? I always thought that Christians wanted their religious beliefs to be rational and certainly the Intelligent Design Creationists are among those who think that God's existence has been demonstrated.

Nevertheless, when discussing the existence of God with most Christians I've discovered that the "faith" argument is eventually trotted out as their main defense. It's another way of saying that science and religion are different ways of knowing. Science relies on evidence and rationality and religion relies on something else.

Maybe this is why religion gets special privileges in our society? It's because religion doesn't play by the same rules that we use to demonstrate stupidity in politics and economics. I doubt that most religious people could define fideism and I doubt that they could defend it as well as Alvin Plantinga, but I bet it's what they really believe; namely, that faith cannot be criticized using rational arguments and evidence.

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