Is Belief in God a Properly Basic Belief?

Dr. Craig and Cameron Bertuzzi talk about philosophical "seemings" and whether or not we need arguments and/or evidence to believe in God!

DR. CRAIG: I think that Christianity is epistemically justified – not just pragmatically, epistemically justified – even in the absence of argument and evidence on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit, which makes belief in the Gospel a properly basic belief rooted in the witness of the Spirit. And so in the absence of some defeater of that, I think you are epistemically justified in believing in Christ even if you don't have arguments and evidence in support of it.

CAMERON BERTUZZI: This may surprise you, I am actually an evidentialist, but I'm also a Reformed epistemologist. Yes. Reformed epistemology, as far as my understanding, is that you don't need arguments in order to justify belief in Christianity. But I think . . . there's a guy, he's a friend of mine, a personal friend of mine, he's also a philosopher, his name is Tyler McNabb. He does a lot of great work on Reformed epistemology. He's an evidentialist as well. What he says is that you've still got to have evidence for your beliefs, and what he does is he basically just broadens his view of evidence.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, exactly.

CAMERON BERTUZZI: So evidence can include philosophical seemings and these sorts of things. And so that's where I come from. I'm in agreement with you that we don't need arguments, but I do nevertheless think that we do need evidence.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, well now you show yourself to be right on the cutting edge of contemporary discussions, Cameron. I'm very impressed! In my systematic philosophical theology, I have a discussion of Reformed epistemology in which I take account of this new wrinkle that broadens the conception of evidence beyond what Plantinga meant by evidence. He meant argument and inference, but now so-called phenomenal conservatives are willing to take the way something seems to you to be evidence. So if it seems to you that there is an external world, then that's evidence that there is an external world, and you are justified in believing the external world even in the absence of some sort of an argument on the basis of the way things seem to you, so long as you do not have a defeater of that seeming. So actually I'm very sympathetic with your view as well.