Evidentialism and a Pedagogy of Belief and Doubt

In 2007, I was pleased to be accepted into a seminar, sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, to discuss the idea of a pedagogy of belief and doubt. The plan was that each participant would develop a course, in response to the seminar, which would enable our students to engage with questions of belief and doubt, especially as they relate to “big questions ” such as ethical or, in the case of my own proposed course, religious issues. Coming into the seminar, I found it almost natural to think of a pedagogy of belief and doubt in Socratic terms as a way of enabling our students to become more reflective with their beliefs, to recognize the importance of critically examining the reasons for their beliefs in the light of objections from others who may not see things quite the same way as they do. And this Socratic ideal of an examined or reflective life would seem to presuppose the evidentialist idea that we ought to have good reasons for thinking our beliefs true since securing good reasons for our beliefs, and weeding out beliefs for which we lack good reason, is what we are trying to achieve through adopting that reflective attitude. This was, in fact, the way I understood the course I had proposed which was centered in a close reading of Richard Dawkins ‟ The God Delusion. I wanted to give my students, both religious and skeptic, the opportunity for a sustained reflective examination of their beliefs, pr