Faith and Rational Belief

Religious faith is often presented as a virtue, a source of knowledge, or simply another name for ordinary trust. These essays examine whether those comparisons hold and what distinguishes rational confidence from belief maintained beyond the available evidence.

Key essays

Related topic guides

Divine Hiddenness · Biblical Morality · Resurrection Arguments · Christian Apologetics · Evidence and Epistemology

Recent posts

  • ✓ Fine-Tuning and Theism

    Does cosmic fine-tuning support theism? A critical review of probability assumptions, observer selection, multiverse alternatives, and design claims.

  • ✓ Would Any God Want Belief Beyond the Evidence?

    Would a truth-valuing God want belief stronger than the evidence allows? A simple test for whether religious faith can be rationally justified.

  • ✓ The Turek Mindset

    The Biggest Logical Blunders in a Contemporary Christian Apologetics Corpus I recently surveyed a local transcript corpus from Frank Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST podcast. The point was not to catch one awkward sentence or score cheap rhetorical points. The point was to identify the…

  • ✓ Plantinga’s Abandonment of Credence

    Alvin Plantinga’s “Warrant” isn’t an epistemic upgrade; it’s a design for inaccuracy. My formal proof demonstrates that maximizing the binary status of “knowledge” forces a cognitive system to be less accurate than one simply tracking evidence. We must eliminate “knowledge” as a rigorous concept, replacing it with credencing—the honest pursuit…

  • ✓ The Great Gaslighting Grift

    This article critiques the stark gap between the New Testament’s unequivocal promises of answered prayer and their empirical failure. It examines the theological “bait-and-switch” where bold pulpit guarantees of supernatural intervention are neutralized by “creative hermeneutics” in small groups, transforming literal promises into unfalsifiable, psychological coping mechanisms through evasive logic…

  • ✓ Theology’s Floating Fortress

    This article characterizes theology as a “floating fortress”—internally coherent but isolated from empirical reality. It details how specific theological claims regarding prayer, miracles, and scientific facts fail verification tests. The argument posits that theology survives only through evasion tactics like redefinition and metaphor, functioning as a self-contained simulation rather than…

  • ✓ Parsimony and Christianity

    This post applies parsimony (Occam’s Razor) to evaluate Christian Theism. It contrasts naturalism’s high “inductive density” with the precarious “stack of unverified assumptions” required for Christian belief, such as a disembodied mind and omni-attributes. It argues that ad hoc explanations for divine hiddenness further erode the probability of theistic claims,…

  • ✓ Grounding Ways of Knowing

    Modern apologists argue that religious belief is a rational map of evidence, likening it to scientific frameworks. However, a deeper analysis reveals a stark contrast. While science adapts to reality through empirical testing and falsifiability, theology insulates belief from contradictory evidence. The theological system absorbs anomalies instead of yielding to…

  • ✓ Childlike Faith

    This post critiques the concept of “childlike faith” in religion, arguing that it promotes an uncritical acceptance of beliefs without evidence. It highlights that while children naturally trust authority figures, this lack of skepticism can lead to false beliefs. The author emphasizes the importance of cognitive maturity and predictive power…

  • ✓ The Amalekite Infants

    This analysis examines the agonizing moral conflict presented by the explicit biblical command to slaughter Amalekite infants in 1 Samuel 15:3. Written from a skeptical, moral non-realist perspective, it rigorously deconstructs the various apologetic strategies employed to defend this divine directive as “good.” The post critiques common evasions, such as…

  • ✓ The Evidence-Mapping Illusion

    Modern Christian apologetics claims faith is based on evidence, but this is contradicted by practices within the faith. Children are encouraged to accept beliefs uncritically, while adults seeking evidence face discouragement. The community rewards conformity over inquiry, using moral obligations to stifle skepticism. Thus, the belief system prioritizes preservation over…

  • ✓ The Divine Judgment Evasion

    In the realm of Christian apologetics, few topics generate as much palpable discomfort as the Old Testament narratives depicting divinely ordered genocide. While many believers prefer to gloss over these passages, serious apologists feel compelled to defend them. They must reconcile a God described as “perfect love” with a deity…

  • ✓ Answered Prayers?

    This post examines various conditions Christians often attach to prayer promises, transforming them into unfalsifiable claims. It highlights how these ‘failsafe’ mechanisms protect the belief system from scrutiny, allowing believers to reinterpret prayer outcomes either as successes or failures based on internal states or hidden conditions. This results in a…

  • ✓ Categorical Labels Rarely Reflect Rationality

    In public discourse, labels such as “atheist,” “agnostic,” and “Christian” often oversimplify complex beliefs, leading to misunderstandings. These tags are low-resolution summaries that hinder rational discussions. Genuine inquiry requires moving beyond labels to assess individual credences and evidence. Understanding belief as a gradient reflects the nuances of thought, promoting clarity…

  • ✓ Why an Intelligible Universe?

    The featured argument, often employed in Christian apologetics, asserts that the universe’s intelligibility implies a divine mind. However, a meticulous examination reveals logical flaws, such as equivocation on “intelligible,” unsubstantiated jumps from observations to conclusions about authorship, and the failure to consider alternative explanations. Ultimately, while the universe exhibits structure…

  • ✓ How Myths Emerge

    The piece discusses how historical figures like Jesus and Alexander the Great undergo “legendary inflation,” where narratives evolve into more than mere history, shaped by cultural needs and societal functions. As communities invest meaning in these figures, their stories absorb mythical elements and motifs over time. This phenomenon illustrates how…

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    Hi Phil: I was wondering: After coming across an online discussion posted on a biblical studies website regarding whether the…

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    Just read this; enjoyed the summary of critiques of fine-tuning arguments. Building off what you said in one section above,…

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  8. Brett Fox's avatar

    Great in-depth brutal honesty for real soul searching, including a very logical conclusion. I think your work isn’t just important…

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  10. Christopher Moyer's avatar

    Dear Phil, I’ve been hanging onto Christianity out of fear for decades now. Back in college, I started doing some…

Phil Stilwell

A Deep Dive into Common Faith-Based Concepts & Claims

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