Justifiability of Ordinary Belief in God through Epistemology Based on Trusted Hearings

Abstract

There have been many epistemological challenges about the justification of belief in God over the past three centuries, so that some, such as Plantinga, have merely proposed warranted belief rather than justifying an argument in this regard and showed the belief in God's existence as a basic belief. But millions of people, regardless of these challenges, believe in God's existence as justified for themselves without being a fideist. Where does this justification come from? Can their justification be explained epistemologically? In this paper, while explaining the new currents of social epistemology and "testimony", the importance of epistemology based on trusted hearings is shown and then it is argued that our trusted hearings about the existence of God and his attributes and those of the prophets, and that it is based on God's confession and his explanation of himself, can be the best justification for our beliefs. Finally, the question of how God's testimony to his existence and attributes, which has come to us through the prophets, can be one of the best epistemological justifications for believing in the existence and attributes of God? And what advantages can this type of religious epistemology have over evidevtialism or various forms of arguing for the existence of God and his attributes?

Keywords

• social epistemology
• testimony
• belief based on trusted hearings
• justification of belief in god