Jim:

I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks. That's why you haven't
heard from me in response ot your queries.

I had a lengthy paper on my website on Calvin and the knowledge of God
that provides answers to the questions you have raised recently.
Unfortuntely I took it off and didn't put it on again. I'll rectify that
when I return to Vermont. Check out the Miscelleneous Papers section of
my website later this week.

Meanwhile, let me suggest a few points.

(1) First, nearly everyone has missed an obvious point about your
question regarding what the SD in fact delivers, namely that it does not
*need* to have uniform de facto deliverances even if it *ought* to have
uniform deliverances. So let "there is a creator God (distinct from the
Universe)" and "we are obligated to worship and obey God" be paradigm
cases of what the SD ought to deliver (de iure deliverances). We should
expect that it *will* produce such beliefs for everyone without
exception, even if that is part of the design plan. After all, the
deliverances of the Sd is relative to cirumcumstances, and there is the
factor of malfunction that must be taken into account. This is quite
relevant to your question since you seem to be troubled by the factor of
religious diversity. The situation is after all analogically related to
how other belief forming processes work or fail to work. In particular,
given the noetic effects of sin, one should expect that the de facto
deliverances of the SD would vary from person to person. Calvin even
recognizes this point, though perhaps he, like many Reformed thinkers,
over estimates the range or scope of what the SD does produce uniformly.

(2) It could be argued I think that an SD type mechanism (with specific
intended deliverances) best explains the presence of de facto religious
beliefs however broad and inconsistent they might be. You are right of
course that something like the SD would lead us to expect rather uniform
and consistent theistic beliefs. Of course, it seems like we get a
defeater for the SD doctrine then since we don't observe these sorts of
de facto deliverances. However, I think that we should not
conditionalize on just the SD. You have to add in the noetic effects of
sin. At any rate, if you do, then you get exactly what you would expect.
Although the SD alone makes probable uniform (and rather specific)
theistic beliefs, the conjunction of the SD doctrine and sin makes
probable the very observations of doxastic religious diversity that we
in fact observe. So begin with your observations about the diversity of
religious beliefs R. What best explains this fact? Although R is not
probable given SD alone, it is probable I think given the SD and the
doctrine of the noetic effects of sin S. We could develop this in
detail, but I'm limited on time. Sorry. :)

One qualification. I am not saying that there aren't any other
hypotheses that would also lead us to expect R, but we need to deal with
those as they are proposed. I am only trying to show that it is easy to
maintain an SD doctrine and accept the fact of religious diversity. The
former plus sin makes the latter likely I think.

(3) This brings me to a third point, and your likely rejoinder to (2).
You seem to find something problematic in accounts of the SD that draw
on Christian presuppositions, or any other premises that are not
themselves the deliverances of the SD.

You wrote:
"My original question was what does the SD give - NOT what ought the SD
give. I think Erik has answered the latter question - but in answering
that question has revealed his presuppositions (creation, Plantingian
design, noetic effects of sin, etc...) but none of these theological
things seems to be given by the SD alone. They are all extra add-ons -
and, I don't think, are known in the SD 'fashion' (look at it this way -
othere 'religions' add-on other things to the SD too)."

Now I'm not sure I see the argument here at all Jim. You raised a
question about the de facto deliverances of the SD that Erik answered.
His answer drew upon some theological and philosophical premises. You
respond that this is inadequate because (and here is where I lose you)
such premises are not themselves the deliverances of the SD. Indeed,
they are not given by the SD. But why should an account of the SD (which
is what you asked for) be among the deliverances of the SD itself? This
sounds like an epistemic level confusion to me. Moreover, I'm not sure
why the fact that other religions add "other things" to the SD somehow
makes a Christian account unsound. Indeed, we could adjudicate the rival
explanations on other grounds. We might very well have independent
reason to suppose that the Christian package is the correct one. In
fact, to the extent to which the SD plus noetic effects of sin better
explains religious diversity, to that extent we have evidence for the
truth of the SD doctrine and the noetic effects of sin. Anyhow, for any
philosophical argument, there is always an alternative argument someone
else *can* give. This does nothing to show that one's argument is not
sound. We need something more specific here. And then we need to compare
an alternative account of religious diversity with a Christian account.
And Jim, surely you don't object to drawing on Christian premises in
thinking about epistemological matters. :)

(4) The truth of the matter about the source of religious belief must
take into account several factors in addition to the SD. There are many
sources for (true) religious beliefs: testimony, the SD, religious
experience, natural theology, Scripture, etc. In fact, I have argued in
a couple of papers that even Calvin does not restrict the sources of
theistic belief to the SD. There is also what can be arrived at
inferentially on the basis of the external general revelation of God in
nature. Some of the sources of religious belief are more important for
certain religious beliefs; other sources are more important for other
sorts of religious beliefs. I discuss this multiple support view in
detail in my book on natural theology - still underway. So when you say
that there may be other sources for religious beliefs, other than the
SD, you are probably right. But the fact of religious diversity
(involving false religious beliefs or perversions of the knowledge of
the true God) can be explained in terms of an SD and sin.

Best wishes,
Michael