Counter to the Evidentialist Atheist

The evidentialist claims that it is irrational or unreasonable to hold a belief that has insufficient evidence.

Belief in God is purported to be one such belief that has insufficient or inadequate or poor evidence. (Either there's so much obvious counterevidence or the evidence one has is lacking or one simply dogmatically holds the belief without ever searching for evidence in the first place.)

Rationality and reasonableness are often construed as either intellectual obligations or duties or cognitive faculty.

To be irrational or unreasonable is to ignore or reject your intellectual duty or obligation; or, alternatively, to be irrational or unreasonable is to be in a shoddy or unfortunate cognitive mode or to have a cognitive defect.
Intellectual Duty as Rationality Claim: If you have insufficient evidence for your belief, then you ignore your intellectual duty.


Cognitive Health as Rationality Claim: If you have insufficient evidence for your belief, then you have some cognitive deficiency. (You might be caught under some illusion or "drugged" or whatever.)

Counter 1:

Intellectual duties are imposed on us by others, standards that we have to meet. I highly doubt there's any reason to suppose that we have intellectual duties insofar as our beliefs in God, etc. What's more, surely one cannot suppose reasonably that we have an intellectual obligation to have evidence for all of our beliefs, particularly those beliefs which the belief in God reasons upon.

Counter 2:

Do you really want to claim religious people (those disposed to believe in God) all have a cognitive defect? (What about theologians and esteemed theistic philosophers and scientists? Wouldn't you at the same time worry that their "defect" bleeds into their other intellectual efforts?)

But what exactly does it mean to be cognitively non-defective? That is, cognitively in working order? This isn't so clear. Ultimately, it seems, you'll have to give some underpinning metaphysical and epistemological account of what cognitively healthy or intellectually up-to-snuff means. But if you're atheistic, you likely already have preoccupations with, and commitments to, metaphysical and epistemological stances about human (working and non-working) cognition. But that's just circular!

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These are all very loose characterizations of Alvin Plantinga's arguments found in "Theism, Atheism, and Rationality".