Array
(
    [fullTitle] => The Moral and Evidential Requirements of Faith
    [abstract] => 
What is the relationship between faith and evidence? It is often claimed that faith requires going beyond evidence. In this paper, I reject this claim by showing how the moral demands to have faith warrant a person in maintaining faith in the face of counter-evidence, and by showing how the moral demands to have faith, and the moral constraints of evidentialism, are in clear tension with going beyond evidence. In arguing for these views, I develop a taxonomy of different ways of irrationally going beyond evidence and contrast this with rational ways of going against evidence. I then defend instances of having a moral demand to have faith, explore how this stands in tension with going beyond and against evidence, and develop an argument for the claim that faith involves a disposition to go against, but not beyond evidence.

    [authors] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [givenName] => Finlay
                    [affiliation] => University of Hertforshire
                )

        )

    [keywords] => Array
        (
            [0] => Faith
            [1] => belief
            [2] => action
            [3] => going beyond evidence
            [4] => moral demands.
        )

    [doi] => 10.24204/ejpr.v0i0.2658
    [datePublished] => 2020-03-25
    [pdf] => https://www.philosophy-of-religion.eu/menuscript/index.php/ejpr/article/view/2658/version/562/2542
)
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The Moral and Evidential Requirements of Faith

Finlay
University of Hertforshire

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v0i0.2658

Abstract

What is the relationship between faith and evidence? It is often claimed that faith requires going beyond evidence. In this paper, I reject this claim by showing how the moral demands to have faith warrant a person in maintaining faith in the face of counter-evidence, and by showing how the moral demands to have faith, and the moral constraints of evidentialism, are in clear tension with going beyond evidence. In arguing for these views, I develop a taxonomy of different ways of irrationally going beyond evidence and contrast this with rational ways of going against evidence. I then defend instances of having a moral demand to have faith, explore how this stands in tension with going beyond and against evidence, and develop an argument for the claim that faith involves a disposition to go against, but not beyond evidence.

Keywords: Faith

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