100% rational people, we will have no arguments to consider.
Of course I'm not saying that having false beliefs makes one irrational. I'm simply saying that a person who continues to believe in, say, young earth creationism or the inerrancy of scripture is irrational.
I do not think we are any smarter in brain power than the ancient people. We got better tools and more data to work with. Mankind has always asked questions and tried to come up with answers.
When was it that the US Supreme court ruled that creationism can not be taught in public schools, 1984 or close to that time?
So guys, we have won the argument thirty years ago.
Shouldn’t this be about why the education system is failing to teach evolution in a manner that should bury creationism? I mean the CFI helping in the lawsuits against schools trying to teach creationism in the public system only shows that after thirty years that evolution teaching has not done it job. You only go back to your old (job, girlfriend, music, pick one) if the new one is not better or fore filling the need. I feel that evolution more than fills the need. So it must be that the school system is not properly teaching evolution.
Point is; what is irrational today was at one time the rational thinking that replaced other irrational thinking.
Therefore Plantinga’s Christian thinking is in a transitional phase and to many he may be rational and to the new thinking irrational.
I see this type of thinking going on in Egypt today. One group of old bald headed men and no women, against younger computer generation men and women.
Same laws and religion just different view points of the understanding of the meanings.
But hang on a minute. Plantinga, Craig, and Swinburne are not young earth creationists. They all accept evolution.
The reason I brought up young earth creationism is that I think it's just as irrational for these guys to believe in the inerrancy of scripture as it is for someone to believe in young earth creationism. On top of that, they all believe in the trinity, the virgin birth, heaven and hell, and all sorts of other things that they've got from the Bible and from the Christian tradition, and I think these beliefs are all irrational too.
But as Doug suggested, the main focus of philosophy of religion is about whether God exists, and not about whether Christianity is true or whether scripture is divinely inspired. So as long as they keep their personal Christian beliefs out of it, I guess their views about the existence of God can now be respected, whereas at an earlier time even their belief in God would have been considered irrational.