Credenciais epistêmicas da crença em Deus: uma comparação entre Alvin Plantinga e Richard Swinburne

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to compare the epistemic merits of belief in God in religious epistemology between two prominent contemporary analytic philosophers of religion: Alvin Plantinga (1932- ) and Richard Swinburne (1934- ). Specifically, the study aims to explore how belief in God can be positively justified, intellectually reasoned, or rationally warranted through comparisons, contrasts, or additions to the proposals of the two philosophers. The research aims to evaluate how Plantinga and Swinburne address fundamental issues in analytic philosophy of religion related to the nature of faith and its relationship with reason, using three epistemological references: deontological justification, rationality, and warrant. The first part of the research clarifies the key terms and concepts related to the debate on the relationship between faith and reason in contemporary analytic philosophy, highlighting the central problem of the thesis. Moreover, it clarifies what it means for a belief to have the merit of justification, rationality, or warrant. The second part presents the two epistemological proposals that will be compared: Alvin Plantinga's reformed epistemology and Richard Swinburne's natural theology, which employs a probabilistic balance of evidence. Finally, the research aims to critically compare the two proposals and explore the possibility of reconciling the differences between these two approaches.