McCabe- Why God?

Fideism:

Faith does not need reason or evidence. Faith can even go against reason.

Logical positivism:

A statement is meaningful only if it can be scientifically/empirically tested or is a logical/mathematical truth. Religious claims were rejected because they cannot be scientifically tested.

McCabe makes an important distinction between good and bad wishfulness.

a. What does he support? — GOOD wishfulness

Belief can involve a person's will/desire when evidence does not completely settle the question. We sometimes have to choose to commit to something even without absolute certainty.

What does he reject? — BAD wishfulness

He rejects the idea that religious people believe something just because they want it to be true.

Religious faith is neither irrational nor simply the result of logical evidence.

Instead, faith occupies a middle way between faith without reason and reason/evidence alone.

What is religious belief?

Religious belief involves accepting certain propositions as true and their opposites as false.

What question comes from affirming objective truth?

If a proposition is objectively true, we have to ask:

What is the relationship between having faith in something and having reasons for believing it?

In other words:

If I believe something is true, what role should reason and evidence play?

How does McCabe's “middle way” solve the problem?

McCabe rejects two extremes:

1. Faith has nothing to do with reason.

2. Faith is nothing more than having sufficient evidence/reasons.

Connection between faith in a proposition and reasoning about it

If you genuinely have faith in a proposition, you believe that the proposition cannot successfully be disproved.

For example:

If I have faith that Christ is God, I believe that Christ's divinity cannot ultimately be proven false.

So faith and reasoning are connected because faith is not supposed to simply ignore arguments against it.

What is achieved by distinguishing “faith about a proposition” from the ability to believe?

It helps show that faith is more than simply having evidence.

You can understand the arguments and evidence surrounding a proposition without necessarily making the personal commitment of faith.

👉 Knowing about something ≠ having faith in it.

. What does “the content of faith is human content” mean?

Christian faith concerns human history and events, especially God's actions within human history.

Faith isn't simply about some completely inaccessible or meaningless reality. Christianity makes claims about God acting in the human world.

Does context contradict objective truth?

No.

McCabe still believes propositions are objectively true or false.

However, understanding the context of a proposition helps us understand exactly what it means.

👉 Context affects our understanding of truth; it does not make truth merely subjective.

Religious agnostic, jealous husband, and OCD Fred

McCabe uses these examples to illustrate uncertainty and the difficulty of making a decision when complete certainty is impossible.

The point isn't that religious doubt is literally the same as jealousy or OCD.

Rather, the examples help demonstrate that:

Wanting complete certainty can prevent someone from making a commitment.

This connects back to McCabe's idea that belief can require an act of the will when evidence doesn't completely settle an issue.