Is Belief in God Properly Basic?

After posting my previous post I have been inspired to consider matters in Reformed Epistemology (call it RE). Alvin Plantinga's book pictured above is a hallmark book as it applies to this topic. RE might roughly be defined as a theory of knowledge which is sympathetic to the Protestant tradition going back to John Calvin.

Traditionally, it has been asserted that belief in God is either irrational or intellectually irresponsible because there is insufficient evidence for it (call them AT for A-Theology); or belief in God is rational or intellectually acceptable because there is sufficient evidence for it (call them NT for Natural Theology). It is the case that both AT and NT accept belief in God if and only if there is sufficient evidence to warrant that belief.

Now, I think that both AT and NT are rooted in classical Foundationalism, Plantinga deals with NT and claims that it is rooted in classical Foundationalism (dating back to Plato and Aritstotle). Classical Foundationalism simply says that one's belief is based (founded) upon other beliefs so that I believe proposition A (It is raining outside) on the basis of proposition B (The sidewalk is wet) and proposition C (Dark clouds have formed in the sky) etc. Now, there are some beliefs which are not accepted on the basis of any other beliefs and these beliefs are called "basic". They are basic because they do not require a basis for their acceptance. For instance, I believe that 1+1=2 and I do not believe it on the basis of anything else.

The question then arises "What makes a belief basic?" When is a belief properly or rightly acceptable or warranted? That is, what makes a basic belief properly basic? NT, and many other classical foundationlists, have said that a belief is properly basic if and only if that belief is incorrigible ("I exist") or self-evident (A cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same sense). Now, NT says that belief in God is not incorrigible nor self-evident therefore one is justified in believing that God exists if and only if one has sufficient evidence for believing that God exists. That is, proposition D (God Exists) must be based upon some other propostion(s) which serve as a foundation for D. We might say then that NT is rooted in Evidentialism (the belief that one must have evidence to believe in God's existence).

This is where the RE comes in. RE holds that belief in God is properly basic. That is, it is rational or intellectually acceptable to believe that God exists without accepting it on the basis of any other belief or proposition. It is important to understand that RE does not reject NT as many of the Reformers did. Rather, RE holds that a theist is entirely within his intellectual rights in believing that God exists even if the theist does not know any good arguments or hold any good arguments for God's existence, or even if any such arguments exist (please understand this distinction).

If I went on to give Plantinga's arguments (or any other RE arguments...e.g. Alston or Wolterstorff) for epistemic warrant, it would probably take more pages for me to write than the 500+ pages that Plantinga wrote in W.C.B. I will hope that my readers have read it, or at least heard about, or will read it and can talk intelligently about it. I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.