Plantinga and the Position of Reasoning in Believing God

Plantinga’s most important view is that while believing God is a completely rational and logical belief, but it doesn’t need any rational reasoning. This means that it is one of the real fundamental beliefs. Unlike some who tend to reason– rational theology- who try to make demonstration for God’s existence, and believe that no religion is acceptable unless it is rational and no religion is rational unless it is stressed by context and reason, they believe that except axioms and the sensa which are the real basic beliefs, the other beliefs are only rationally valuable when they are referred to the mentioned beliefs. Plantinga identifies the mentioned basis and criterion unfinished and has pointed out some of its defects. He then suggests another criterion for identifying basic beliefs, that is: any belief that doesn’t need any reason to accept it, is a basic belief. According to the mentioned criterion, Plantinga regards believing God as a basic belief for a religious person. Because if a religious person realizes that his belief is from the kind of beliefs that accepting them is not based on deducing them from other beliefs, his belief will be a real basic belief. In the rest of the article, other criticisms of this theory is mentioned and investigated.