David,
Polkinghorne's idea of motivated belief is as you understand it: we have reasons to think that something is true. His approach to religious faith does not comport well with Bernie's, unless I have misunderstood Bernie on this. Faith for P does go beyond the evidence, to some extent, but it's heavily rooted in evidence.
That's one reason I recommended NT Wright's study of the resurrection: faith rooted in evidence, going a bit beyond the evidence to arrive at beliefs about eschatology, but rooted nonetheless in genuine experiences of the resurrected body of Christ.
Of course, if one rules out the very possibility of the truth of those experiences--as Hume did and as many modern atheists do--then it follows that the resurrection is not a properly motivated belief. However, I would say, one ought to show toward Hume's scepticism a similar scepticism. A genuinely open-minded inquiry can't simply be sceptical in one direction only.
Ted
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Received on Tue Sep 22 13:56:21 2009
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