Reason Not The Only Source of Knowledge
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.I agree that a belief in god is mystical, but I disagree that the fact that god doesn't exist must be blatant and that believing in god must necessarily involve some dishonest refusal to look into the matter. Or, perhaps to be more precise: The refusal to look into the matter could be a result of genuine disinterest in the light of more pressing problems, rather than some irrational fear response to changing one's mind on the topic.
Perhaps consider a child growing up on a medieval farm in Europe. His entire social context is certain of the existence of god, the kid would never encounter any criticism of it without creating it himself. Water is wet, fire is hot and the universe was created by sky daddy. He didn't ask for this last "fact", it's just what mom and dad told him. He's young, he doesn't really care, he's much more interested in a thousand other things, so he heard of god once, thought to himself "alright, whatever" and went straight back to wondering about whether the dirt in the yard could possibly make for a tasty meal. Perhaps if this kid was to encounter some argument for why the universe cannot have been created by an omnipotent being, the child would just say "ah alright, now that you say it that way, it does sound a bit silly..." and upon examining the matter critically for a mere second the kid would ditch his belief in god without further ado. The reason why he hasn't done so is because he was occupied with things other than the big questions of the origins of the cosmos, the meaning of life and what not. Is this kid being irrational?
Is this kid being irrational?
Perhaps not. However, I find your example implausible. Let’s look at it more closely. You originally wrote that a belief in god could be rational if two conditions are both met:
- “[The] belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and …”
- “… the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.”
As for 1, a sincere effort to explain the world implies a critical attitude, honesty, conscientiousness/thoroughness, which means subjecting candidate ideas to lots of criticism, following up on counter-criticisms (as opposed to running off and doing something else), etc. A child might prioritize playing in the dirt today, but at some point he will ask questions. A sincere effort to explain anything means he’d rather say ‘I don’t know’ than believe something as silly as god.
God as a concept is arbitrary on its face. It cannot survive even very basic criticism. So it cannot possibly stem from a sincere effort to explain the world.
As for 2, kids ask tons of questions and criticize ideas. They’re naturally curious and conscientious in this way. The problem is that parents beat the god idea into their kids (figuratively if not literally) so that the kids don’t question it. So then those kids are not willing to jettison the idea anymore. Which is why the idea sticks around despite not being a sincere effort to explain the world.
Yeah fair. I'll admit, my example is rather contrived. My hope was to show that one could in principle maintain a belief in god in a rational fashion, at least for a time. However, just because it is theoretically possible doesn't mean that it is at all likely. I agree that this isn't what is usually going with believers.