I don't know. It just makes me wonder how people think of us when they actually think some of the greatest philosophers such as Aristotle, and Aquinas would really offer "everything has a cause" as a premise, and not being able to notice the obvious flaw in it, when even non-philosophers can see it. Plus the reason I get so upset is these fools(Especially Dawkins and his cronies) are unaware of how ill-informed they are, but the thing is the general public is just as ill-informed, so when these guys sprout nonsense, the public eats it up like its the greatest thing ever, and treat these people like "intellectual" giants, spreading more ignorance, and making the situation even worse(Again just look at Dawkins with his "attack" on Aquinas, and Boeing 747 nonsense, and how many people think this is what qualifies him as "smart"). The arrogance exhibited by these kinds of people is so frustrating because a quick conversation with someone who knows the topic would crush it in like three seconds. I feel this is what Socrates and Plato must have felt like during their time period with the Sophist. If so, no wonder why they looked forward to death, because for them, it ensured you would only be with smart people.

Greg wrote:

Part of the problem with philosophical defenses of theism is that they are among the few philosophical defenses of anything that are widely heard by non-philosophical audiences. I imagine lots of people would not like other philosophical arguments and would respond to them uncharitably, if only they heard them.

I've played around with the idea of how well mathematical proofs would stand up to the "scrutiny" most philosophers, and especially non-philosophers, put to cosmological arguments and such.

I really have my doubts that such proofs would enjoy anything close to the level of indubitablity must people are willing to allow mathematics free reign over; even mathematicians doubt their arithmetic when they figure out that they have come up short on the rent.

And theistic arguments built on metaphysical suppositions have conclusions that imply so many things that would have a direct influence on one's life that many people would just rather not go there; even if they might be willing to grant that the argument works, they are squemish when it comes to the certainty.

For instance, how many people, even people who accept the thereom, would grant that the well over two hundred page proof for Fermat's Last Thereom works if it had the same sort of consequences for one's life that cosmological arguments have? I doubt anyone would have even ever got to the position to launch such a proof, since much the same could be said for a lot of the background ideas that are used in said proof.

May I also point out though that it is only in the last two hundred years or so where the dialectical situation is such that there is such widespread doubt that a successful argument for God's existence can be lanched, even if only a rather Deistic one.

Last edited by Timotheos (5/05/2016 5:34 am)

Alexander wrote:

Agreed, but I was really referring to the run-of-the-mill polemic, rather than anything by a serious philosopher who ought to know better. The former seems far more common.

I still think that even with low level atheist stuff there is often imbued with the rhetoric of appeal to ridicule (this is a cultural issue rather than a specifically philosophical one - when I was a nihilisticly inclined agnostic I loathed secular humanists for just this reason). An equivalent would be if all Christian theists stuffed their work full of asides about 'saving souls'.

Jean65 wrote:

In philosophy, despite the intellectual rigor deployed in this domain, it seems that a whole range of question (if not the majority) are always subject to question, and that it is nearly impossible to get definitive answers. I think I will be exaggerating, but from a non-philosopher perspective (and probably whit a relativist bias), it seems that during the whole history of philosophy, philosophers have debated and they found just a few points to agree with.

On a practical basis I think this is because of the branching nature of philosophical thesis i.e. it's virtually impossible to differ only in one basic thesis without that difference having a knock-on effect elsewhere.

But I would disagree about progress not being made. Certainly within the tradition which does hard work there has been progress even if a lot of it has been primarily negative, that is sifting out weaker variants of ideas - for instance a lot of bad 'Nominalisms', and this is virtually all the old forms of Nominalism, have fallen by the wayside. Ditto for old school Humean views of necessity. If that's not progress then I don't know what is. 

Ultimately though to care overmuch about consensus is to let others 'do' your philosophy for you.

Last edited by DanielCC (5/04/2016 2:14 pm)

Mysterious Brony wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

AKG wrote:

I am so done with Theism being strawmanned. If I see it one more time, I'm gonna turn into the Hulk. But seriously do people think we're that stupid or dumb? I'm insulted.

I sympathize but ask yourself: what in the end is there really to get angry about? These people make themselves look like idiots and embarrass the universities which employ them and granted them their initial degrees.

(An aside: I always find it funny when people ask something to the effect 'Doesn't it worry you that the majority of philosophers are atheists?'. First of all the majority of philosophers aren't even literate on the subject, secondly about half of those that are misunderstand it, at which point we've gone down from the 'majority' to at most a couple of hundred professionals worth taking seriously)

Alexander wrote:

Most people would rather think a position was obviously stupid than have to engage with it and seriously consider that they might be wrong. This is true of any position, not just theism.

I wouldn't be inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt in this case. For a large number of people who 'just don't like religion' I'd agree but in the case of 'self-styled' skeptics there is a blatant element of bad faith, something all the more glaring in the case of someone like Grunbaum or Law who has engaged with Philosophy of Religion in the past.

(Richard Gale, a colleague of Grunbaum and one of the foremost atheist/agnostic philosophers of religion, once recounted a tale to the effect that he - Grunbaum - was rather surly in his atheism)  
 

Even some atheists who specialize in the Philosophy of Religion or involve themselves in the field don't get some of the theistic arguments. For example, Mackie, in his Miracle of Theism, didn't really get the Thomistic arguments. I don't know if you ever seen the Sinnott vs WLC debate, but Dr. Sinnott didn't get the moral argument.

Re Thomist arguments,it's the same with J.H. Sobel in Theism and Logic.  But I did say even half the professionals in the field seem to misunderstand ;)

EDIT: Mind you I don't know how much theists themselves have contributed to this state-of-affairs. I'm just embarking on H.J. McCann's Creation and the Sovereignty of God and within the first page of the chapter on the Cosmological Argument he has already twice refered to God as 'a being the existence of which requires no explaination' (granted he does discuss necessity later but that's a pretty bad way of introducing things).

Last edited by DanielCC (5/05/2016 5:00 am)

Mysterious Brony wrote:

@DanielCC
Have you ever read Schellenberg's Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason ?
 

No, not as yet I'm afraid. I will read it one day but I confess to being able to muster up very little interest in works on the POE and permutations.