Irrational Nobel Laureates? Really?

The Banff Springs Hotel (in Banff, Canada) has a great buffett overlooking Mt. Rundle. Every time I go there, I have that same giddy experience of a child surveying the pile of gifts on Christmas morn. Where to begin? Everything looks so tempting, and it all demands my immediate attention!

So it is with this blog. Comments, questions, accusations and the like that fill each thread are like so many delectable treats. And as soon as I resolve to follow up one line of thought, another comment surfaces that pulls me in another direction.

And so it is again. My last post on "faith-heads" has provided a marvelous range of comments to engage. But I know I cannot engage them all, because every time I offer a post in response, I get a whole new range of possible avenues of debate and discussion. I feel like Thomas Malthus facing the exponential growth of demand with only arthimetical resources.

But it is not all bad news. A few posts ago I resolved to return to the issue of rationality and religious belief. I have been reminded of that here, particularly by Susan_vD. I am grateful for her comments, particularly as a new poster. That much more so since she states the challenge so starkly:

if Randal really believes that he does not have to abandon rationality to believe in god, he can easily be proved wrong. Even C.S. Lewis cheerfully declared it with his "leap" business. After all, there is a reason they call it "Faith." If they knew through logic and reasoning that there was a god, they would lose their Faith.

My guess is that Susan_vD has not read, let alone digested, my many comments on epistemology, rationality, justification and knowledge in this blog. That's fine. I don't mind shouldering the task of some restatement. And so I shall do in the next few posts (supplemented by expansion, to explain once and for all, my epistemology of religious belief).

But for now let us just consider the nature of her charge. People who believe in God are irrational, full stop. Though I have been researching and writing in the area of epistemology for ten years, including the publication of two books on the topic, I am irrational. And never mind me, after all who's heard of this thirty-something Randal Rauser guy? Consider in addition that according to Susan_vD brilliant, tenured professors at the world's leading universities, nobel laureates, scientists of the first rank, statesmen, explorers, and even soccer moms, they're all irrational too.

This all begs the question: what is the theory of rationality and justification that Susan_vD is working with? What is her theory of knowledge? I don't know what she is referring to when she speaks of C.S. Lewis' "leap business". But if she is so sold on logic and reasoning, then what is the logic and reasoning that justifies her extraordinary thesis that all theists, which include among their ranks many of the world's leading philosophers (Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett) and scientists (Francis Collins, Richard Smalley), are irrational?