It's really a pleasure to be here.

I have an overly complicated handout.

If you picked up the handout, it's overly complicated.

But really, I have five, really five main points

that I would like to share with you,

even though there are six on my handout.

That's for incomplete editing. The first point that I want to make is what we might

call the cover story of modernity. That'll be my first point, the cover story of modernity.

My second point will be the reasonableness of believing. My third will be religion as a special case of

believing. And then my final points will have to do with belief and plausibility and the problems

around that.

So I realized I just enumerated four points for you.

Well, we'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it goes.

So let me begin then.

The first point has to do with the cover story of modernity.

And the backdrop to this, in a way, is the appreciation of the fact that medieval culture

is a tradition reverencing culture.

And intellectual discussion in medieval culture was really largely around the parameters

of received authorities. In fact, it's scholastic theology to establish the existence of a

question, a topic for discussion, it was sufficient to demonstrate that you had at least two

authorities on either side of the question.

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