Yekcidmij
Presbyterian, Polymath
- Feb 18, 2002
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I tend at times towards fideism, ie just believing in God without valid reasons, something like what Francis Schaeffer described as an "upper story" leap. If one "just believes" does it not end up in subjectivity - or faith in faith if one has no reasons for believing? However postmodernism and the idea there is no objective truth or reality also dogs my thinking.
Kierkegarrd is probably best known for fideism - and rejecting proofs of God existence. "I reason from existence, not towards existence."
Søren Kierkegaard, "God's Existence Cannot Be Proved"
Pascal also proposed his famous wager - that if one believes in God and lives accordingly and it turns out God does exist one gains eternal life - and if he doesn't one hasn't lost anything - but if one disbelives and lives for oneself - and it turns out God is real - one loses everything, ends up in hell - something like that if I recall it correctly.
Kant as far as I understand ended in agnosticism as regards knowledge of God by pure reason. He seems to however have regarded God as a necessary postulate of practical reason.
What path is there back from postmodernism, or (if that is the wrong term) a rejection of objective truth and reality - back to reality - this has really dogged me for years - I had a breakdown some years ago because of the whole question of reality and how it seemed the world was completely absurd. How does one connect with reality? If the world seems completely absurd how does one live? I can see how if one doesn't believe in God one could come to the conclusion of absurdism - and that belief in God would keep one from reaching that point - but what if through not believing you reach that point of thinking everything is absurd - how does one get back from that place?
It depends on what you mean. Giving a reason does not necessarily mean giving a deductive argument, though it can mean that. Any formal system of thought must start with a set of axioms and rules. Why can't it be that the existence of God is just axiomatic to the system in some way? In that case, a deductive proof is not required, but its the reverse - God as the axiom is required for the system.
In some philosophical circles (namely, "foundationalism"), there is a set of beliefs that is considered "properly basic," which is required as an assumption for other beliefs. These foundational beliefs typically must be assumed and cannot be provided with further evidence for their truth - ie, they are typically considered self-evidently true, or something like that. Properly basic beliefs include things like the belief in an external world, the belief in other minds, belief in the uniformity of nature, belief in mathematical relationships, belief in the reliability of our senses and cognitive faculties, etc.. Some Christian philosophers (eg, Plantinga and Craig) would consider belief in God to be a properly basic belief. Plantinga makes the analogy that believing in God is analogous to believing in the existence of other minds; a sort of analogical argument.
Some reformed apologists make similar arguments about "presuppositions" (eg, Van Til, Bahnsen, Frame), though undoubtedly a Calvinist will show up now and tell me how different those are from Plantinga (but I think they aren't all that different).
In any case, most of the traditional theistic arguments fall short of the desired conclusion for various reaons, imo.
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