چالش دليل گرايي درباره ي عقلانيت باورهاي ديني و نقد رهيافت ضد دليل گرايي پلنتينگا

The Evidentialist Challenge to the Rationality of Religious Beliefs and Criticism of Plantingaʹs Anti- evidentialism Approach

The purpose of this paper is firstly, to defend the evidentialist approach to the rationality of beliefs, secondly, to examine the evidentialist challenge to the rationality of religious beliefs, and thirdly, to survey Plantingaʹs approach to the challenge. In this paper, I will argue that the evidentialist challenge is flawed; however, the evidentialism is defensible. So, Plantingaʹs project to refute evidentialism is not perfect, because he does not need to have a position against evidentialism to establish the rationality of belief in God, rather he may accept evidentialism and at the same time to refute the challenge by means of a complementary account of evidentialism. In this paper it will be shown that we can develop the concept of evidence to include private evidence as well, because evidence is not restricted to the propositional evidence or public evidence. Furthermore, I will argue that in spite of basicality of belief in God, the theistic beliefs still need the discriminating evidence in some contexts. Accordingly, a new concept of evidentialism will be offered for religious beliefs to be rationally justified.