Recently a fairly long article was promoted by some friends
of mine as a criticism of “militant atheists”:
I enjoyed this article.
It seemed a fairly well-stated description of the epistemological basis
argument for generic monotheism.
However, it was not without flaw (writing rarely is, especially my own).
Believing When True
Brandon writes,
All truth rests on a single basic proposition: God is. This is the fountainhead of all true knowledge and wisdom. This is the bedrock of all true belief. There is no other foundation for epistemological certainty.
This says that God is
provides basis for knowledge. But
knowledge isn’t defined, and it has many meanings. I think in this case it is used as:
Knowledge: belief when you have good reasons to believe if the thing is true
But using that we can know mutually exclusive things. We can know Yahweh, and Krishna, and Suijin,
and Thor. This definition is incomplete. “God is” is an assumption. If true, epistemological certainty may
exist. But assuming it true does not make
your beliefs knowledge. The assumption
could be misaligned with reality.
Disbelieving When False
The thing that is missing from that definition of knowledge
is this expansion:
Knowledge: belief when you have good reasons to believe if the thing is true and when you have good reasons to disbelieve if the thing is false
This is critical.
Without applying this method the human mind will believe incorrect
things with certainty. Given that
expansion, the article would need to replace references to knowledge as
references to belief or assumption, and strike references to the word
true. Truth isn’t available to us. You can say that you believe you know truth
on the testimony of God, but this relies on assumption. The theist that claims this represents true
knowledge is demonstrating unjustified confidence.
To most well-reasoned non-theists that I know, the reaction
to this is not red-faced anger, or getting flustered as the article suggests. It is usually silence because they realize
the person they are talking to is not really looking for knowledge. Most statements in that article must
necessarily have the unwritten prefix “Assuming God”. When the theist communicates, the non-theist
fills it in. Brandon writes the
statement:
There is no neutral, common ground because God owns it all.
I read this as:
What the non-theist sees as neutral, common ground I do not because, since I assume God is, I act as if God owns it all
The knife cuts both ways.
If the non-theist’s beliefs are expected due to rebellion against God,
then the theist’s beliefs are expected due to rebellion against not-God,
against the illusion of the horror of his non-existence, against the fear that
he may not be there.
If you are a theist, have you tried to assume God doesn’t
exist, and asked yourself what that world should look like? If you think it is impossible to ask that
question, to imagine existence if God isn’t, then you have no knowledge of God.
Who Really Believes This?
Another large issue is that this is just rationalizing a
deeply-held belief. No one I know comes
to saving faith in Christ because God’s existence provides epistemological
certainty. Conversion usually happens as
a result of repeated exposure to scriptural teachings as truth and personal
experience. Once you have this faith,
this belief is typically only held by apologists and those that read
apologists. When you earnestly try to
provide adequate basis for disbelief in God if God isn’t there, the
overwhelming likelihood is that you will become a non-theist. If belief in God is the beginning of the path
to true knowledge, the end of it seems to be realizing that the original belief
was unjustified, and for reasons the religious leaders know but do not openly discuss. When you devise a method to produce disbelief
on God’s non-existence, that method tends to produce ample fruit, a wealth of
data. Explaining this data requires
extreme special pleading. Yes, you can
explain the data. You can always
explain the data.
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