My last post set off a bit of a firestorm, which I expected. Following J’s friendly amendment, I thought I’d write up something quick to explain a bit more what I mean by a reasonable belief and how that’s connected to my project in religion and politics. I plan to do two more posts on reasonable Christian belief before I move on, but this quick point is important.

I take a reasonable belief to have an epistemic component. A reasonable belief is one held by a person with at least some mild degree of epistemic credence, epistemic entitlement or epistemic justification. If a person holds a reasonable belief, then that person cannot immediately make herself aware of a defeater for her belief and has at least some prima facie reason to hold the belief she does. So we can say that X believes p reasonably when she is minimally entitled or justified in holding p. In public reason liberalism, Rawls’s conception of reasonable beliefs has other components, but for my purposes, that’s all I need.

Notice then that a reasonable belief can be false. I can hold a belief reasonably, even if it isn’t true. This much seems obvious to me, as scientists in one generation can have a high degree of justification for their scientific beliefs even if in the next generation those beliefs are shown to be false. Newton had an extremely high degree of justification for his belief in Newtonian mechanics, even though Newtonian mechanics is false.

A reasonable belief can also be one that, on a high degree of scrutiny, turns out to be unjustified or defeated. For instance, if I read thirteen policy papers that favor single-payer healthcare, and two that tell against it, then I can be rationally entitled to hold my belief even if I later become aware of ten more policy papers criticizing single-payer healthcare that convince me to change my mind. So a reasonable belief can be all-things-considered irrational to hold.

But notice that reasonable beliefs are held with enough evidence, entitlement, justification or whatever to generate undefeated reasons for action. Newton had reason to teach Newtonian mechanics as truth, because he had a high degree of justification for his beliefs. And the policy paper reader has reason* to lobby for universal health care based on her reading of careful policy papers, even if a fuller consideration of the evidence would lead a rational person to change her mind. So a reasonable belief is one that is sufficiently rational to give people reason to organize their actions in a particular way.

It is this sense in which I think Christian belief is reasonable (though I think it both true and capable of surviving a high degree of rational scrutiny – more on this later). As a public reason guy, I need an epistemic concept that we can employ to explain our sense that others have reason to conduct their lives in ways we regard as false and unjustified based on a full understanding of the evidence. So in one sense, if we understand epistemic warrant following John Pollock, as the pro-status a belief acquires after one completes all possibly relevant reasoning, and epistemic justification the pro-status a belief acquires based on reasoning up to the present time, then we can say that a practical reason for action can be justified even if it is unwarranted.

That is why I think appeals to authority are plainly enough to hold reasonable beliefs. Reasonable beliefs can be rooted in the testimony of expert communities. If such beliefs were not reasonable, then we would have very few reasons for action given how much expert testimony we rely on in our day-to-day lives. So in characterizing Christian belief as reasonable, it is perfectly fine for me to appeal to authorities like Aquinas and Augustine. In fact, it’s perfectly fine for me to appeal to the advice a seminary-educated Catholic priest gives to his parishioners, based on careful reflection in light of what he learned while studying Aquinas and Augustine.

In sum, Christian belief is reasonable in the sense that it is sufficiently epistemically rational to give Christians strong reasons for action consistent with Christianity, say to go to church on Sundays, to believe Biblical requirements on helping the poor, to become pastors, have their children baptize and, most importantly for my purposes, to oppose coercive actions that would restrict their ability to act on what they believe God requires of them, such as not using contraception, not participating in gay marriages, and not having abortions.

*So long, of course, as she thinks that universal healthcare can be justified to all. 😉