Knowledge, innate concepts, and the justification for the belief in god

Abstract

The epistemological approach of evidentialism maintains that a belief must have sufficient evidence in order to be rationally justified. The belief in God is no exception and, hence, it too must pass the litmus test of evidence as a measure of its rational justification. But what counts as evidence? Responding to this question and identifying the nature of the evidence that can be used to justify belief has become a point of contention between philosophers. While some evidentialists have denied the possibility of evidence for the belief in God, others have attacked the very basis of the evidentialist claim by promoting belief in God without evidence. The following paper briefly describes these two currents and culminates by discussing the notion of innate concepts and presential knowledge as proposed by Mulla Sadra. According to the authors, this type of presential knowledge can be included as 'evidence' even from the evidentialist point of view which does not limit evidence to conceptual knowledge.