Should Christians Fear Evidentialism?

by dunsscot 54 Replies latest jw friends

proplog2

Dun:
I guess you're Dun. Apparently you can still post to this thread. Are you aware of this or not?
dunsscot

Dear Proplog:
As I stated elsewhere on this medium of communication, I will not be posting here much longer. I am going to concentrate on replying to AF, therefore, do not think I am ignoring your submissions. My comments below will appear without any name beside them.
You write:
DUNS: As a Christian I avoid arguments from natural theology. I am
not in a relationship with a force or an abstract superlative
entity devised by human adroitness. God has given me and all
others who love him more than enough evidence of his existence.
Your caricature of my views are somewhat a distortion of those said views. I never wrote that I "avoid arguments from natural theology." In fact, I think I declared just the opposite. But Alvin C. Plantinga, and I concur with him in large measure at this point, does not think arguments from natural theology are needed. There is a big difference between the two stances.
PROPLOG: I too would agree that looking for evidence of God in
nature is pointless. If God is a living person then he ought to be
able to talk to humans in a way that humans would know that he is
God or at least some kind of superior being. So far such an
extraordinary revelation has not occurred.
Natural theology does not entail looking at nature per se and arguing from nature to God. Of course, one can argue from effects to the Primal Cause of all as both Scotus and Aquinas did. But natural theology is given its name primarily because of the methodology employed when one engages in this type of God-talk. Natural theology refers to that type of inquiry that seeks to argue for God's existence on the basis of unaided reason alone. Frankly I prefer a weakened version of natural theology; what some have called "soft rationalism," in which the case for Christianity's religious veracity is made from an accumulation of "facts."
DUNS: Everything, even what you call "scientific proof" is a
matter of faith.
I would probably say that every position or tenet held, every strongly entrenched conviction, is really a belief.
PROPLOG: Suppose a man claimed that Aristotle is alive today and
that Mars is inhabited by fairies? Would it be reasonable for him
to retort when asked for evidence in support of these claims "Well,
what evidence do you have that the sun is going to come up
tomorrow"? Common-sense beliefs, e.g. "the sun will come up
tomorrow" are much more rationally supported than beliefs for which
we have no evidence.
What evidence do you have that the sun will "come up" tomorrow? You call it a "common-sense belief." But "common-sense" has often proved to be misleading. True, I think one who posited the modern-day existence of Aristotle or the actuality of fairies would be under obligation to produce evidence, if he or she wanted to be taken seriously. But the case of God cannot legitimately be likened to fairies or a dead man that evidently lived in ancient Greece, as I will show below.
Moreover, arguing that Aristotle is alive today is obviously fraught with assumptions that are difficult to prove in an apodictic way. We really do not know if a person named Aristotle really existed, do we? We assume that such a person existed and we trust certain written records that tell us Aristotle subsisted at one time. But do we really know Aristotle walked the earth and abstracted form from matter or tutored Alexander the Great? Are these not historical beliefs?
PROP:Common-sense beliefs and belief in God are
therefore not comparable. In our everyday lives we act upon
assumptions which we cannot prove to be true. But we still are able
to decide what to do on the basis of what is most probably true.:
You said it. We act on the basis of what is probably true. As David Hume demonstrated in his epistemology, however, we cannot even be sure that A causes B or that the sun will rise tomorrow. The rising of the sun is something that we infer from empirical or sensory experience. It is possible that the sun will neither rise or set tomorrow. Our belief in such an occurrence could simply be a result of habit or custom.
PROPLOG: Consider trying to walk off the observation deck of the
Empire State Building. We could have "faith" that we will fall and
be killed or we could have "faith" that we will have an enjoyable
walk on air. Faith can decide nothing in this situation. Yet we
do have good reasons for NOT walking off the edge of a building.
You, Duns, are arguing that SINCE we have to rely on a degree of
faith in our everyday lives THEREFORE faith in ANYTHING is somehow
justified- including belief in the existence of GOD. The fact
remains that we do not have GOOD reasons for believing in fairies,
unicorns or God. Faith or not, proof or not - we still have to
decide on the basis of whether there are good reasons available for
our beliefs.
No, I am not arguing that faith in anything is justified. I am contending that there are reasons for believing in God: reasons as good as or better than reasons for believing that 2 + 2 = 4. Some reasons involve the use of logic, but as Pascal also wrote, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know." Furthermore, I argue that God is a person. Belief in God is thus analogous to believing in one's marriage mate. If God communicates with us and we actually are in his presence at all times, then your analogy between God and fairies is misleading.
Additionally, I might add that your illustration about gravity only obtains under certain conditions as far as we know. Even scientific experiements suggests that it is theoretically possible for one to walk off of the Empire State Building and not fall to his or her death. If we alter the conditions of our environment somewhat, the "laws" that we think obtain now may not hold when we perform the said altering. Certainly at the evtn horizon of a black hole, conditions are such so that time and space act in "unpredictable" ways. Surely there is a possible world in which I take a walk off of the Empire State Bldg, if it really obtains, and I do not fall to my death.
DUNS: But "reasons" are not "proof".
PROPLOG: Whether or not good reasons are "proofs," they will have
to do until proofs come along.
Why can't the same principle apply to God's existence? There can be reasons for believing, but not apodictic proof per se.
DUNS: It remains that at best both common-sense claims and
theistic claims are based on assumptions.
PROPLOG: There is one difference. Theistic claims are based
MERELY on assumption whereas common-sense beliefs are based on
assumption PRECEDED by OBSERVATION. That is not just a difference
in degree. That is a difference in kind.
I personally do not think that theistic claims are built on assumptions. The Christian tradition has also historically affirmed the role of experience in the Christian's walk with God. I would argue that a number of "common-sense" beliefs are not based on observation, and those that are cannot always be trusted. For example, do you believe that there are other minds besides your own? If so, why do you think there are other minds? Have you ever observed someone else's mind? And what about your activities yesterday? Let's say that you decided to read a book yesterday. Do you remember the event? If so, how do you know you read a book yesterday? Were you able to observe yourself reading the book? Let us also say that perhaps you could in some unique way behold yourself reading a book. You must then ask yourself how you know your senses can be trusted. For while one could contend we can trust the senses most of the time, we both know that we cannot always trust our senses. Your example of the sun rising is a prime example of this point. I might also add that observations are never "bare" happenings. Data is always filtered through certain preunderstandings. There are no "bare" epistemological facts.
PROP: Chesterton was correct up to a certain point. He is correct in
placing reason over religion. Common-sense beliefs are more
fundamental than theistic beliefs. Showing that religious
assumptions are wrong does not automatically signal the end of all
common-sense beliefs. For example you must hold the common-sense
belief that there exist things other than yourself if you are to
believe that there is a God.
No, you do not have to believe that there are other things besides yourself to believe in God. George Berkeley certainly believed in God, while thinking there were only ideas produced by God and nothing material in the world at all. This empiricist thinker also held that we only know what is is our minds, for God gives us our ideas. Berkeley's famed saying, "esse est percipi," well sums up his thought.
:You must believe that what is true in
the past will continue to be true if you are to believe, from one
second to the next that God continues to exist. If common-sense
beliefs are unjustified, then theistic beliefs are doubly
unjustified since they rest on common-sense beliefs.:
If God is timeless, you are not bound to believe that what is true in the past will continue to be true if one is to believe in a Deity. And Plantinga would argue that belief in God is a basic belief, that is, this particular belief does not rest on anything. It is as basic as 2 + 2 = 4.
Duns the Scot
larc

Duns,
Quick note. About two months ago I totally abondoned my research and must get back to it, so my time here will be limited. If you ever want to e mail me, feel free. It is in that little envelope under my name.
dunsscot

I am in the same boat, larc. I need to get back to my research as well. Thanks for the invite to email. I might take you up on it one day.
I wish you well,
Dan
Duns the Scot
ros

Hello, dunnscot:
Christians are thus rightly obstinate in their theistic beliefs, even in the face of supposed contrary evidence that could deceive if possible, even the elect.
What contrary evidence?
proplog2

Your rebuttal is special pleading at its worst.
Unaided reason is "imagination". There is a difference between imagining a possible God and the actual existence of a real God.
If God can't do any better than that...
"The facts of Christianity" are not evidence for the existence of an actual GOD. They only express the wishful thinking of a community of believers.
Part of our experience is our scientific knowledge of inertia. Since we don't see anything in space that is likely to interfere with the momentum of the earth and sun therefore it is a very reliable belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. Of course to be completely accurate the sun will be revolved into view because it doesn't actually rise.
You have nothing to justify belief in GOD.
Pascal said "blah blah the heart has its reasons". Who cares what Pascal says? He was just a man. We're talking about the existence of God in the actual world. To which you will say "yeah but God isn't in the world." And again you are describing your theoretical God which has never been shown by anyone to be an actual God.
You state an interesting IF... If God communicates with us... then the fairie comparison is misleading." The reason the fairie comparison ISN'T misleading is because God DOESN'T communicate with us.
Your dismissal of the reliability of gravity is special pleading. The "other minds" problem is not a problem to people with common-sense. We at least know that there are other "brains". And we know what human brains do.
As far as Berkeley goes - again like Pascal who cares. So what if Berkeley is incoherent.
You conclude (or continue but I think you are concluding) IF God is timeless... That is a far cry from SINCE God is timeless... Anything you have said about God is imagined. One mans "imagined" God is no better than another man's "imgained" God.
I agree that imagining there is a God is no different from imagining that 2+2 = 4. So what. Some of us don't believe math has a necessary relationship with reality. We can live without mathematics, logic, and all the other imaginary stuff.
I believe in the spirit of philosophy - "seeing". Thinking is not the same as sensing. Duns, your problem is that you are a "thinker" not a "seer". A little bit of ordinary vision would organize a lot of the data you've transplanted from other peoples imaginations.
SixofNine

When I say that + does not "essentially" mean anything, I am contending that + is an arbitrary sign. It works for the same reason that the term "cat" works. A certain speech community agrees on the use and "meaning" of a particular sign. But the community could just as well have chosen another symbol to represent addition or the creature we call a "cat".
I hope this post cleared things up for you.

No, not really. If the above is all you are getting at, while I understand the concept (hell, a cat could understand the concept), I can't understand why a fellow human would spend one iota of precious life stuff expressing such a self evident thing.
After reading you last reply to Proplog, I can only say: Man oh man. Duns, you're just plain silly. Not an 1/8 of an ounce of intelligence in your words. You speak of common sense, but you have none. None.
DO NOT, for Gods sake (if he exist), go into teaching. I'm totally serious here. You have to know that you don't have anything to offer in the way of instruction to others. Sure, you are a veritable library of quotes, but then again, so are libraries. Impressionable students won't waste time thinking a library is anything more than a tool.
I fear they may miss that you are merely a "tool".
JanH

For a nice collection of Dunce's essays and writings, visit this web page: http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern
Too read the fascinating story about how postmodernist "thought" was undressed and exposed, visit http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal But as Dunce so well demonstrates, it's not easy to distinguish between parody and reality in the world of postmodern mumbo jumbo.
- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]
dunsscot

Ros writes:
Hello, dunnscot:
quote:
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Christians are thus rightly obstinate in their theistic beliefs, even in the face of supposed contrary evidence that could deceive if possible, even the elect.
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What contrary evidence?:
I do not have a lot of time this morning to discourse, interlocute, or circumlocute, so let me make this brief for now.
CS Lewis made the observation concerning contrary evidence that you note above. By this expression he is no doubt referring to challenges that confront the theist from the atheistic corner. We see plenty of supposed contrary evidence on this very forum. (The problem of evil or God's seeming lethargic attitude toward the world of humankind constitute such seeming contrary evidence. In other words, if God exists, why does he not speak or show himself to us? Why does he permit evil to be coextensive with human existence?)
But sometimes there are events that happen in our own lives that could cause us to doubt God's benevolence, goodness, even his very existence. Lewis has a nice section dealing with this matter in his work on obstinate Christian belief.
Sincerely,
Dan
Duns the Scot
SixofNine

Keyword: obstinate

Should Christians Fear Evidentialism?

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