Discussion Grounds

Luke,

The first order of business here ought to be clearing up confusion from last time. You wondered what I meant by saying that as the challenges to faith multiply, they weaken rather than grow. That’s a fair question. I believe that for the most part, where we have arguments for Christian theism A, B, C, … and the corresponding objections ~A, ~B, ~C, …, that ~A, ~B, and ~C are individually less plausible than A, B, and C respectively. (This is especially true if we consider arguments for theism generally, as opposed to the specific case of Christian theism.) The more implausibilities you have to accumulate in order to make your case, the less plausible is your overall case.

The reason is based in probability. If ~A, ~B, ~C, … are independent of each other, then their cumulative probability is equal to the product of their individual probabilities. Since I think their probabilities are all less than 1, then their combined probabilities must be less than their lowest individual probability. (If ~A, ~B, ~C, … are not independent of each other the math gets a whole lot messier, but I think we could find enough generally independent examples that the point is valid overall.)

Granted, the probabilities of A, B, C, … are also less than 1. We can’t prove either theism or atheism for certain. We have to resort instead to asking, what are A, B, and C … , and which are more plausible (or probable), those statements or their contraries? We’ll get to that soon, I’m sure.

You disagree with my making it sound like Christianity is the default position. I would argue that religious belief is certainly the default position, based on evidence from child development studies and from world culture, and from observation of what atheism requires (which I think we can take as the contrary to religious belief for our purposes here). Atheism requires that we re-order and re-conceptualize dozens of natural attitudes toward the world: that the appearance of design actually signifies design, for example. You say that Christianity offers a long list of highly contentious claims; I would say that atheism does too. (I am intentionally alternating between discussion of “religious belief” and the narrower topic of Christianity here.) What should the default view be? I don’t think you can use “should” with respect to a default view. You have to ask what is the default view, and it is neither atheism nor agnosticism. It is some form of spiritual or religious belief at least.

You say,

Christianity carries a heavy burden of proof, and a “challenge” to Christianity may be only the realization that it cannot carry this burden with regard to a particular claim.

That’s what is going to make the rest of this discussion so interesting!

With respect to properly basic beliefs, your approach is one that has a following and is reasonable; and I have been using a different one which also has a following. Mine is closest to that of Reformed epistemology on the Wikipedia page you linked to:

beliefs are held to be properly basic if they are reasonable and consistent with a sensible world view. This rather broad criterion can include faith in our senses, faith in our memory, and faith in God.

But to this,

It sounds like you may just mean that you have a direct inner perception of God, and that you think the best explanation for this subjective phenomenon is the real existence of God.

I say no, not quite. I believe I have a direct inner perception of God, and that there is knowledge just in that experience. It is not like inferring there is a laptop in front of me based on mixture of perceptions consistent with the presence of said laptop. It is more like looking out the window and seeing green, and knowing there is green there. I infer the presence of trees from that perception, but I do not infer the presence of green from that perception. I just see it. I believe the perception of God is of that order. Now, there are also inferences I can draw from that starting point, but they are in addition to a non-inferential starting point.

But I also doubt we’ll get very far in conversation about my perceptions and whether I infer knowledge from them or simply have knowledge from them; because you don’t have my perceptions, and I don’t expect my perceptions to be very useful in discussions with anyone except possibly another individual who seems to have the same kind of perception. I won’t build my public arguments here on my own private perceptions. Thus it seems to me that basicality of belief is moot for us.

You said,

I have not defended my beliefs thus far. I am happy to do so, but I won’t just start rambling. I’ll wait for your questions of me.

With your permission, I would like to take the first shot by offering one defense of my beliefs, and letting that be the first move into the next stage of our discussion. Would that be okay with you?