1 of 1- rustyshackleford
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So why don't....
I am fascinated that Feser believes that Aquinas and Medieval philosophy provides a reasonable enough argument to come back from atheism, but someone like Gary Gutting, who teaches at Notre Dame does not find them persuasive enough to be any more than agnostic.
I can't add a link yet but in a 12 part NYT series which he interviewed 11 philosophers about the question of God. He interviews himself in the 12th part, and he finds there are no philosophical arguments good enough to actually believe in God or I guess not believe there is a God.
I guess my question is when it comes to philosophy, which I know little about, can arguments be correct, but unconvincing, and does that matter?
- Dennis
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Re: So why don't....
Gary Gutting wrote:
g.g.: No, but few of them hold the positions the arguments refute. First of all, they don’t think saying that God exists is a scientific claim. On the contrary, they think it’s a claim that there is something beyond the scope of scientific investigation and testing. They may think it’s knowable by metaphysical arguments or (more likely) by religious experiences. But they don’t think either metaphysics or religious experiences are part of scientific inquiry.
G.G.: O.K., but at least aren’t believers who appeal to religious experience and metaphysical arguments admitting what popular atheism so insistently claims: There’s simply no evidence for God’s existence, and that alone warrants atheism?
g.g.: There’s no scientific evidence, but there are other sorts of evidence.
G.G.: I suspect that most atheists think scientific evidence — evidence that ultimately appeals only to empirically observable facts — is the only sort of evidence there is.
I think this is the heart of the matter.
g.g.: Agreed, but then they have to show that. They can’t just keep saying “there’s no empirical evidence” and think they’ve shown that a theism based on metaphysical reasoning or nonempirical experience is irrational. The core question is whether there is anything beyond the empirical — some transcendent reality we can call God. I think it can be rational to say there isn’t a transcendent reality. But to show that it’s irrational to say there is, you’d have to end the impasse in philosophical discussions of theism. That’s where atheism falls short and agnosticism is the preferable position.
In short, he's looking for a knock-down argument. Something that is totally irresistible. I suspect that there's a lot that could be said. Take Descartes proof for example. I used to think that it was an irresistible proof. Enter Meinong, all that went to the drain. Now I have to argue against Meinong's theory of objects and demonstrate why it's wrong. I'm not sure what this says, it says something, that's for sure. Whether it says something about arguments in general or about Descartes method (Cartesian doubt), or both, I'm unsure.
Here is Dr. Vallicella on Neither the Existence Nor the Nonexistence of God is Provable and God and Proof.
Last edited by Dennis (6/16/2016 8:40 am)
- Greg
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Re: So why don't....
Of course arguments can be correct but less than convincing. They can be less than convincing for arational reasons; for instance, someone rejects a "knockdown" argument because he does not like the conclusion. They can also be less than convincing for other reasons.
I think Vallicella is proposing an unreasonably strong criterion on an argument's being a "proof" or "demonstration": he requires that the premises be known, and he understands knowledge as absolute certainty. That is just a crazy, incredibly restrictive account of knowledge. If one has a Thomist, externalist account of knowledge, premises might be known even if one is not absolutely certain about them. This, I think, can be the case with first principles, which are self-evidence in themselves. This is why Feser insists that he has demonstrations of God's existence. He is not insisting that they are rationally compelling (in Vallicella's sense, at least--Feser might want to say that demonstrations in the scholastic sense are rationally compelling, in a scholastic sense). They don't knock someone over the head with Cartesian absolute certainty.
- brian_g
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Re: So why don't....
The more I study, the more I find evidence that Aquinas' arguments are frequently misunderstood. Not just by the Dawkins types, but even by those with PhDs in philosophy, and even Christian philosophers that are sympathetic to natural philosophy. In this environment, a lack of consensus tells us nothing about the force of the arguments.