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Inwagen's Argument Analysis

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It seems like a reasonable claim not to accept anything without sufficient evidence but according to Inwagen, doing so can lead to a problem in which no one will have enough evidence to justify anything that they believe in. Sufficient evidence can either be objective evidence that will convince any rational person to take a certain side or position, or it can be evidence that is intuitive and incommunicable. How could it be that, for example, two intelligent and well informed philosophers are able to disagree with each other on the same subject while being aware of and understanding his or her opponent 's argument but yet failing to agree with it? Both are provided with the same amount of objective evidence for each position but each philosopher …show more content…

And it is this unique insight that lets an individual come to a conclusion about certain beliefs. If this insight can be considered sufficient evidence to come to accept theories or arguments about philosophical, or political positions, then religion belief - belief in god, belief in the afterlife, belief in the central historical claims of Judaism or Christianity or Islam” (pg. 278) - should be justified as well. Religion is often subject to the Difference Thesis, as Inwagen puts it, which is the view that “religious beliefs should be held to a stricter evidentiary standard than philosophical or political beliefs...or if they are to be held to the same standard...religious beliefs fare worse under this standard than typical philosophical or political beliefs” (pg. 277). But is is a double standard to hold religious beliefs up to a stricter evidentiary standard because the objective evidence that politicians, philosophers, and other disciplines use can not be agreed on. If there was such a thing as objective evidence that could convince everyone then there would be no difference in opinion. But because there are differences in opinion evidence should be based on insight that is incommunicable. If evidence were to be based on insight then …show more content…

But I believe religion is different from other disciplines and should not be compared in terms of providing the same amount of evidence. Maybe there is some sort of incommunicable truth that comes from insight and public evidence will never be able to justify it. But religious and nonreligious evidence has to be different. For example, if science can not agree on some sort of theory there will most likely be a point in which enough public evidence will be gathered so that it would be obvious that this particular theory is true. One example might be the theory that the earth is round. It is still technically a theory but it is true based on all the accumulated public evidence. I am certain that all sane, informed, and well educated people believe that the earth is round because there should not be a reason why they should not believe it. It is much harder to proof something in religion because no matter how much insight evidence a person might have, he or she will never come in agreement with other people because those other people will have different insight evidence. There are many different religious beliefs who all claim that

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