i) God is a precondition for XMy student freethought group, AAFSA at UF, enjoys a hell of a faculty advisor -- a philosopher who specializes in religion and metaphysics. Prof. D. Gene Witmer is a pretty well-known guy in the world of physicalism (so far as I can tell from his numerous citations in academic works on the subject), and he teaches a phil of religion course every year, PHI 3700.
ii) X exists
iii) Therefore, God exists
(X = logic, uniformity of nature, induction, morality, mathematical truths, universals...)
I attended a PhilSoc meeting in March where Prof. Witmer discussed the problem of evil, after which I asked him how he would respond to Van Tillian Presuppositionalists (from C. Van Til) on the PoE. He seemed taken aback, and had no idea what in the hell I was talking about. I later came to find out that this is because the CPS ideas are basically absent from awareness in academic circles (at least at secular universities). Following this, we exchanged quite a few emails discussing CPS, and I suppose I piqued his interest into the arguments and methods employed by CPS's.
On Sept. 26, I asked Prof. Witmer if he would talk to our group, and we discussed possible topics a bit before he decided to talk about CPS at our meeting 9. I have now made the abstract of the talk, and the full-text (.pdf) of his presentation available online. Please download and feel free to comment on his arguments and major points. I especially enjoyed his presentation of a "conditional PoE", wherein he argues that either there are moral facts or there aren't, but either way, the PoE shows that God does not exist.
Download the .pdf HERE.
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Actually, if you want to know why it's not that common today it's because you pretty much have to be a Calvinist to accept the Biblical worldview required for presuppositionalism, and Calvinism is a "bad word" in modern-day Christianity (although not throughout historical Christianity). So I'm not surprised it's not going to be common, especially on secular campuses where the focus is going to be on the three whacky fundamentalists with their signs and the 70 people in Fred Phelp's church. (Okay, okay--sweeping generalization. You'll usually through in the Southern Baptists too.) :-D
ReplyDeleteAfter saying this:
ReplyDeleteSo I'm not surprised it's not going to be common, especially on secular campuses where the focus is going to be on the three whacky fundamentalists with their signs and the 70 people in Fred Phelp's church.
I'm always happy to see when people accede to their own fallacies of logic:
(Okay, okay--sweeping generalization. You'll usually through in the Southern Baptists too.)
;)
I mean, come on, this guy is a philosopher of religion. He's read "the works". He knows his stuff. He went to the #1 philosophy grad school in the country. And he had never heard of the names "Frame", "Bahnsen", or "Van Till".
I would say it's more because these arguments are not exactly "arguments", but a sort of insular defense system that asserts something it fails to prove (that all other worldviews than Christianity are incoherent).
You say he's read "the works" and I certainly believe you here. Butwhat is he going to focus on? He's going to focus on the most common arguments he gets.
ReplyDeleteCalvinism is a minority in modern Christianity. Presuppositionalism comes from a very unpopular belief (on both sides of the theism idea) than men are born depraved; most Christians would rather say that men are born "sick" but with the power to reach out for Jesus if only they try hard enough. But the Bible does say men are born dead in sins.
So it's not surprising that most Christian apologists who don't believe that are going to try a different apologetics approach.
In any case, I merely point out that the reason these arguments aren't more widely known has more to do with the fact that people don't want them to be true. And if both sides in a debate don't want this option to be true, it's pretty easy to dismiss it and pretend it isn't even there. Then, it only becomes a problem when folks like me show up :-)