Ok, but here you're dealing with incorrigible beliefs. What evidence, for example, would you give for your belief that a certain single-celled organism is a human being? To give a foundation for a belief is to give the conditions that would lead you to reject it.
I don't quite see how giving a foundation for a belief is to give the conditions what would lead you to reject it. A foundation for belief is exactly that, a foundation. As for your single-celled organism scenario, a human being by definition is not a single-celled organism. It would be contradictory for me to state that a single-celled organism is a multi-celled organism. I am reasoning per the assumption of a law of logic. Of course, if I were asked where this supposed law of logic comes from, I would indeed point to God. For the unbeliever, he simply believes that the law of logic exists. In his mind "it just is". He assumes that a law exists without a law-giver. By the way, I consider evolution to be a rather silly theory, but then again, many a smart minds consider it to be truth. They believe they have a strong foundation to assume that single-celled organisms eventually evolved into human beings.
Sure there is: Hume himself admitted it---you can't live like that. The burden of proof is on the skeptic---it is always on the skeptic.
What Hume ends up showing is that he cannot exist outside of a universe created by God. No matter how hard he tries to interpret the universe apart from his Creator, he cannot. He lives the way he does because he is a creature of God. He cannot avoid using borrowed capitol. He will never naturally admit that God is required to make sense of the universe, to understand the laws of nature for what they are, and where they come from. He cannot avoid assuming a uniformity of nature. He tries as hard as he can to find an answer to the question that is not God, and fails. He shows how much he depends upon God, although he will never admit it. That is why people can continue to live the way they do. In one sense they live irrationally (not allowing that God is the creator of the universe and the laws of nature). In another sense they live rationally (they borrow from a Christian worldview because they cannot avoid being made in the image of God, and living in a universe that he created). This is exactly why atheists can be 'relatively good', and act morally. They don't follow through with their beliefs that there is no afterlife, no God, and no divine justice. They often live more moral lives than many Christians. But such actions and behaviors are inconsistent with their supposed 'atheistic' worldview.
But is that the reason that you believe in cause and effect? Did you form a syllogism with a first premise that "God exists" and concluding with "therefore cause and effect exists" (whatever that means)? If you didn't then God is not the foundation of your belief in cause and effect in terms of your epistemic system.
I have always believed in cause and effect and have assumed it to exist. Not until I became a Christian did I realize that all of this time I was living on borrowed capital. Both believers and unbelievers alike cannot help but live in a universe that has cause and effect. Both believers and unbelievers alike cannot help but believe in cause and effect. This does not mean that they can justify or account for their beliefs. Have you never come across a person who believes something without fully understanding why? There is always a reason why someone believes something. Sometimes a person believes things without really thinking deeply about them. I mean, unbelievers often commit sin without consciously thinking of themselves as rebelling against God. Certainly there are a few God-haters out there who are very outspoken, but I would say that this is not the majority. There are even some people who honestly don't think of God in any hateful or despicable way. Does this mean that they are not actually rebels against God? No, they are still under his wrath. So we see that a person can act and believe in certain ways without always being fully conscious of it. This does not mean that there is no reason for their actions. There is still a reason, even though it might be very difficult to see it immediately.
So in the case of cause and effect, God is the only foundation for my belief that makes any sense and is consistent. As a child I believed in cause and effect because when I stuck my hand in the fire, it burned. As I did this enough times, I came to assume that all fires burn. I based my beliefs upon my senses. I was a natural empiricist. Of course, I came to eventually realize that my sense are not always correct, so I cannot consistently rely upon my senses as providing me with true information. They should not be the ultimate foundation for my beliefs. As an unbeliever, the best that I could do is say that I simply have to accept that cause and effect exist. They 'just are'. It is much easier just to assume them to be true in order to get on with my life. Have I accounted for my belief? No. Have I justified it? No. I have simply thrown up my hands in despair to trying to find an explanation, ANY explanation that WAS NOT God. What a wonderful rebel that I was.
Yes, but this is a fairly warranted belief, given that the proposition is tautological.
Warranted based on what? How is it warranted? Because he believes his five senses? Because the majority of humans have said so? I don't doubt that he can believe in cause and effect for a variety of reasons, but are any of those foundations consistent? Are any of those foundations a true rock on which to build a worldview?
Not necessarily. A justification is a logical argument intended to satisfy some particular skeptic---a reason doesn't have to satisfy skeptics.
I don't care about 'satisfying' a skeptic. They will never be satisfied. A justification is a logical argument intended to provide the foundation for a particular belief. I do not agree that a justification is a logical argument intended to satisfy a skeptic. Even if no skeptics existed in the entire world, I would still have to justify my beliefs in order to avoid simple arbitrariness and chaos. I mean, every time I say that 'this is false', 'this is true', 'this is right', or 'this is wrong' I am essentially looking at whether a belief or action is justified. If I avoided looking at the foundation for anything, then I would never be able to discern between truth or falsehood. Often times this is subconscious. Consider the case of pilots. Often times when they are flying they actually feel like they are turning, climbing, or descending. They believe it so strongly at times that they will sometimes crash the plane into the ground thinking that they are climbing. In order to discern between truth and falsehood they must essentially seek to justify their beliefs. If I believe that I was turning left, I need to ask myself why I would feel this way. Was I recently turning left? Was the airplane losing control? In the end we are instructed to look at our instruments (because instruments are more likely to tell the truth than our own senses). I wasn't really turning left, even though I felt that I was. Usually I believe my senses, but this time they were wrong. I essentially compare the foundation for my belief. Do I belief my own senses, which I know can be deceived? Or do I believe my instruments, which I know are almost always correct? These thoughts are nearly subconscious, because they happen in a split-second. Yet no matter how fast these thoughts proceed, or how subconscious they are, they do happen.
Oh dear, we seem to be heading toward hard determinism.
You assume incorrectly. Just because I believe in cause and effect does not mean that I have exhaustive knowledge of all causes. I believe in secondary causes as well, and I believe that man does have a will. There are an innumerable amount of causes that lead me to do the things that I do. With this in mind I do not believe that a person has to be a hard-determinist to believe that cause and effect exist, and that causality is indeed a chain (albeit a VERY long, wide, and complicated chain that cannot be grasped except by the mind of God).
Here's where I'm going to call you out: who is judging you for having unjustified beliefs? Who has to be satisfied by your reason for your belief to be properly justified? Whose standard are we using and can you justify its use?
God is certainly judging me for having unjustified beliefs (if I was an unbeliever). If I were an unbeliever, and God asks me why I did not repent of my sins and worship him (and why I thought that he did not exist), any excuse I give would not be justified. God would not be satisfied with my excuses. His wrath would not be satisfied, no matter how much I believed myself to be right. God would show me his standard, and would show me how I failed to live up to his standards. He can justify the use of such standards because He is God, and there are none like him.
The point here is that even if I was the ONLY human being alive, I would still subconsciously seek to justify my beliefs. It is how we operate as humans. This does not mean that all of my reasons for doing something are right, or that my conclusions are correct. In a sense, the unbeliever (who has a sense of the divine, and knows that God is his creator), is always seeking to justify his rebellion. It is the only way to avoid the hard truth. He seeks to build his beliefs upon a false foundation, anything to avoid giving credit to God.
Why shouldn't I think so? If you can give me a reason why my senses are (in fact) failing me in this particular circumstance, then and only then am I in need of justification for belief. And even then, that would require you verifying the fact by means of appeal to the senses.
Reference the pilot scenario above. I don't doubt that even when I look at the instruments I still am 'believing what my eyes see'. But I still have yet to show WHY I should believe my senses. Is it because they have been correct so far? There is no guarantee that this will continue to be true. Also keep in mind that Adam, when he sinned, was not being deceived by his five senses. He was still wrong, and not justified in believing the serpent to be correct. Did God have to appeal to the senses in order to show that Adam was wrong?
Both consider Scripture to be the authority and both are regenerate. I know brothers in Christ who see particular moral issues differently, and oddly enough, we point to the exact same passages to warrant our beliefs. We're talking good reformed folks disagreeing on particular issues.
Ahh, but is this because scripture is unclear or inconsistent, or because not all Christians have a full understanding of the word of God? Right here we see the limitations and weaknesses of man, but not the weaknesses of scripture. Or do you believe that scripture is at fault, and not humans?
What about belief in God?
The foundation is in God. No one believes in the God of scripture unless by the power of the Holy Spirit. Just like God is the uncaused first cause. This question of yours is very similar to the "who created God?" question.
This is a foundation in terms of metaphysical systems, but not in terms of systems of belief (ie: how you get to know stuff, or the basis for belief X). You're confusing the order of being with the order of knowing.
You can't know it unless it exists. For humans, being exists before knowing. You still have a reason for believing something to be true, or for believing something to exist. Knowledge is very much tied to and connected with metaphysics. There are causes for our beliefs just like there are causes for things that exist.
Not at all. Necessary truths are obvious: "all bachelors are unmarried," "all effects have causes," "a self-contradictory position is necessarily false." These are terribly obvious beliefs that need no further justification.
Obvious to who? To the majority of people? To you? They certainly do need justification. People believe that bachelors are unmarried because they cannot conceive of a married bachelor. Their minds exist in a universe created by God, a universe that is not contradictory. They believe in the law of non-contradiction, yet they really don't know why. Why is it a law? They live by borrowing from a theistic worldview, albeit unknowingly. Believing in a uniformity of nature seems to make sense, but in the end instead of recognizing it as part of God's creative decree, they simply say 'it just is'.
By demonstrating it. Your argument has been that the only way to argue is de jure, whereas I would argue that de facto arguments are much stronger. De jure argumentation is useful when the goal is to help someone to strengthen or reinforce their existing beliefs by questioning them---it is not helpful (generally) for showing them to be false.
How would you demonstrate it? By demonstrating it you would unknowingly be showing that my justification for my belief is wrong, whereas yours is right. Your belief would align better with the 'facts' and with 'reasoning'. Your belief would be consistent with itself, and not contradictory. You would be unable to avoid comparing foundations in your 'demonstration'. So again, you cannot discern truth from falsehood without looking at the justification for a particular belief or action.