Assessment

To see why it is implausible to think of theism as properly basic, we need to look again at what Plantinga says about the ‘grounding’ of other properly basic beliefs. In each case, he invokes some kind of experience as being what grounds the belief in question. Thus, the belief that I am in pain is grounded in my feeling of pain; the belief that I am perceiving a tree is grounded in my sensory awareness of a tree; my belief that someone else is in pain is grounded in my perception of her pain behaviour; my memory belief about having breakfast this morning is grounded in my having ‘a certain pasttinged experience that is familiar to all but hard to describe’ (Plantinga in Sennett 1998: 153). In each case, Plantinga says that the belief is properly basic and that the ‘experience is what justifies me in holding it; [the experience] is the ground of my justification, and by extension, the ground of the belief itself’ (ibid. p. 152).