This paper presents a critical analysis of Alvin Plantinga’s recent contention, developed in Warranted Christian Belief (forthcoming), that if theism is true, then it is unlikely that religious unbelief is the product of properly functioning, truth-aimed cognitive faculties. More specifically, Plantinga argues that, given his own model of properly basic theistic belief, religious unbelief would always depend on cognitive malfunction somewhere in a person’s noetic establishment. I argue that this claim is highly questionable and has adverse consequences for Plantinga’s epistemology (...) of religious belief. Plantinga’s proper basicality thesis together with his view of rationality defeaters suggests that there are circumstances in which theistic belief would not be proper function rational even if theism is true. (shrink)

In this paper I present a critical response to several claims made by John Beversluis on the closely allied topics of natural knowledge of God and the noetic effects of sin in relation to the work of John Calvin and Alvin Plantinga. I challenge Beversluis’ claim that Plantinga has misconstrued Calvin’s position on the sensus divinitatis and that he has weakened Calvin’s doctrine of the noetic effects of sin. Moreover, I develop a coherent case for the sense in which Calvin (...) maintains that fallen humans do and do not have a natural knowledge of God. My conclusion rebuts Beversluis’ claim that Calvin denies any natural knowledge of God for fallen human persons and defends Plantinga’s philosophical account of Calvin’s sensus divinitatis. (shrink)