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Anyone taking a class in Modern Philosophy will learn that one of the most important issues in 17th and 18th Century philosophy was the debate between rationalists and empiricists. In 2005, Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa edited a book entitled Contemporary Debates In Epistemology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2007), which includes a chapter entitled ‘Is There A Priori Knowledge?’ (pp. 98–122). In this chapter, Laurence BonJour defends rationalism and Michael Devitt defends empiricism. So, this philosophical debate has been going on for four centuries, and it still has not been settled. This is the kind of thing that gets philosophy a bad reputation. If a dispute can continue for four centuries without resolution, that is surely an indication that nobody knows how to tell a good answer from a bad one. In this article I want to consider why the debate is unresolved after so much time.

This paper evaluates the role that evolutionary psychology can play in examining the rationality of faith in the Christian sense. It is argued that because evolutionary psychology enables us to understand human nature, it can help us understand what faith is. I argue that faith is not a universal human instinct that all religions tap into. Rather, we must understand how the early Christian community used the basic building blocks provided by human nature in a particular way. It is argued that it is a misunderstanding of the nature of faith to assert that faith is intrinsically irrational. However, evolutionary psychology cannot tell us whether or not faith is rational.

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