To consider that I may have gone wrong somewhere in terms of reasonability is to consider that there is something more reasonable than running empirical evidence through logical reasoning in order to arrive at the closest approximation to reality attainable. This is the best definition of reasonable I’m aware of.
This presupposes that you have actually run the empirical evidence through logical reasoning in a correct way, unhindered by irrational biases and other considerations. There are good reasons to doubt that this is fully possible at all, so yes, you have automatically gone wrong as soon as you try to reduce any sort of decision making process to some sort of mechanical, easily dissected system. You've taken a flawed conception of human psychology and declared it reasonable.
You might call this smug or arrogant, and you’re welcome to your opinion, but if we’re discussing whether disbelief can fairly be called rebellious or sinfully negligent in a scenario where a hidden god exists, my answer is soundly no. Even if there were some line of reasoning that could successfully get us to theism, it would take a nonbeliever some time to fully uncover and understand it before they finally believed. During this time of discovery, they would still be a nonbeliever, but until the end would you still call them sinfully negligent? If so, then you are suggesting God values belief as an end by which any means is justified, whether it’s mere credulity, an error, or careful philosophical consideration, and so the ugly traits we observe on both sides of this debate are inconsequential. Negligence, intellectual laziness, and even rebellion are only sinful if they protect the wrong belief. If, on the other hand, you wouldn’t call an earnest nonbeliever sinfully negligent, then it follows that God should not condemn a nonbeliever for not believing as long as their search for truth was earnest, and yet he does. Either way, God’s conditions for salvation are indefensible.
The only way to maintain that disbelief is a sin is to define earnest nonbelievers out of existence, as the presuppositionalists do. I avoid engaging with them because they claim to know what’s in my mind better than I do.
You would need to establish what constitutes "sinfully negligent" and why. I will be honest with here: I think your entire epistemology is sinfully negligent, as every important question about reality has been reduced to how well it can be studied, categorized, and ultimately placed under human dominion. I don't think nonbelief is
necessarily sinfully negligent in and of itself, but approaching theism in this light, trying to dissect and control it, absolutely is. And the two often go together.
That said, I think you're being far too quick to determine what is and isn't indefensible. You're taking one narrow theological narrative and running with it as if it were the only way of addressing the question. I think I've stated that I lean towards universalism, and it is very possible to maintain that disbelief is a sin there. Disbelief is simply another thing that would need to be healed, and the further you've hardened your heart against God, the more difficult that will be. For those whose atheism has turned into a fullblown hatred of the notion of divine authority, that's unlikely to be very pleasant at all (assuming it's even still possible).
I never said I had an epistemology that gave me all the answers to life, the universe, and everything. My position is that my epistemology is the best I know of to get me to the closest approximation of reality attainable. It does have its limits and there are some things we accept out of practical necessity. I don’t think God is one of them. So for God to place himself squarely outside of anything the epistemology I use for everyday life can detect and outside of the set of fundamental assumptions needed to function as a human is a puzzling move for someone who wants a relationship with me.
See, this strikes me as egoistic. If God wants a relationship, it ought to be on my terms, and if he doesn't jump through the right hoops, obviously he's not there or not interested. You're insisting that God submit to the modern need to control and dominate reality, and there's no reason to expect him to do so and good reason to expect that he won't. (Would it even be good for us if he did?)
If the problem is your epistemology, then it's your epistemology that will eventually have to change. You could ask why God hasn't been pushing you to change it, but who can really say that he hasn't been? A life isn't the sort of thing you're going to be able to fully make sense of until after it's over.
As for the intellectual tradition, I dig deeper every day. If I’m wrong here, you can look forward to the day I switch sides again.
The intellectual tradition of theism? Gaara, you're all the way back to "if God exists, why can't I pick up his voice with sonar?" That is honestly the opposite of digging deeper into the intellectual tradition.
If your argument is that humans are so stupid we’re better off preserving certain outdated traditions because most are incapable of grasping the proper justification of their ethical prescriptions, then you’re just as cynical as I am
Come on, I'm quite possibly the most cynical person here.
If naturalism is true, I think the most important moral question is whether life is a net good or evil. I say the latter, which would honestly have pretty ugly ramifications on a truly moral public policy. Life is an absurd and cruel system of sacrifice that ought to be extinguished in as humane a manner as possible. (This is the sort of questioning of cultural convictions that you would presumably rather not see carried out en masse.)
For a less extreme example, if someone believes that the goal of public policy ought to be the evolutionary success of the species, then they could very argue that modern medicine has thrown a wrench in things because people who would have once been weeded out of the gene pool are now surviving to reproduce, and that this is a danger that needs genuine correction. Enter eugenics once more.
You cannot get to the justification of morality while ignoring teleology. All ethical reasoning is aimed at some sort of end, and ends are something that the modern scientific picture of reality ignores. Which means that empiricism is not enough to get us to public policy, since you cannot empirically determine which ends are to be favored. If someone wants to implement a dictatorship, they can do so with empirically and logically sound policies.
I don't know what type of outdated traditions you're talking about, though. The argument from public policy came from literally nowhere, and I don't see what it has to do with theism itself, as theists can basically be anywhere on the political spectrum.
