If it’s true but I don’t believe it, I don’t know it. If it’s true, I believe it, but I’m not justified in believing it, I don’t know it. If I believe it, I’m justified in believing it, but as it happens it’s not true, I don’t know it. So knowledge, according to Plato, is justified true belief. Fine. But do I have to know that the belief is justified? If so justification is saddled with an infinite regress, and if so we can know nothing. So to know anything at all, it must be true, I must believe it, and that belief must be justified, but I don’t need to know it’s justified. It just needs to be justified.

That solves the infinite regress problem. And so it saves the possibility that we can know things. But there’s a cost. If somewhere down the tower of turtles on the backs of turtles we have to believe on what amounts to faith, we’re hardly in a position to bethink ourselves superior to the theist. But most of my foaming-at-the-mouth atheist friends can’t live with that. And that’s a problem, not for atheism as such. After all, one can be an atheist because of Occam’s Razor or for theodicy reasons or … But it’s a problem for the conceit that atheism doesn’t rely on faith. So bottom line: if you want to ridicule another’s Faith, don’t start by dissing faith.

Categories: Philosophy of Religion

Tags: faith, infinite regress, justification, knowledge, science