Belief, Faith and Evidence

Attitudes towards the role that evidence should play in the assessment of religious belief differ widely. Some suppose that one can only be reasonable in one’s religious believing if one appropriately apportions one’s beliefs according to the evidence that one has. Others suppose that reasonable religious belief can be a matter of faith, that is of belief in the absence of sufficient evidence to justify the belief in question. Yet others believe that all properly cognitively functioning people are born with — or acquire, as a result of exposure to universally available environmental triggers — the characteristic beliefs of the one true religion. We offer reasons for thinking that worldview beliefs should be properly proportioned to evidence.