Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[Esquilax]

I write only for the sake of those who find themselves swayed by Esquilax’s rhetoric, although I wish nothing for him but the best. While you may share with him an inclination to disbelieve in God, he has hardened himself against reason and hopefully my reply below will demonstrate more fully his errors.

I love that you have to do this in every thread you reply to me in. You try to poison the well against anybody who dares disagree with you; in your last post you asserted that I could only possibly disagree with you because I have a "darkened intellect," and here apparently I've "hardened my heart against reason." Are you really so terrified that people won't know that you think the only possible reason anybody could ever think you were wrong is because of dark forces conspiring against it, that you've presupposed that you can never be wrong, that you have to resort to this ridiculous rhetorical grandstanding every time?

And for that matter, do you really think that people are going to read your completely baseless, self serving accusations and think "you know, he's right. Esquilax disagrees with Chad, and therefore he must be influenced by evil. Never mind the contents of his arguments or anything, Chad says that dark forces have swayed him, and there can't possibly be any other reason for a person to disagree with Chad, so Esquilax must be wrong."? Is that really what you think is going to happen?

And if you don't think your silly little jabs are going to convince anyone, why are they there? Just to make you feel better?

Most of us have read and contributed to threads about what evidence would suffice to convince an atheist that God exists. The stand taken by Esquilax against the 5W and his reasons for opposing them demonstrates that for many, no form of evidence would ever suffice. He has ruled out beforehand rational reflection as a source for a priori knowledge without realizing that in so doing he has contradicted himself. How does one go about empirically proving that only empirical knowledge is valid? And how can he dismiss a priori knowledge known by rational reflection without using a priori knowledge?

You test that. What, did you think that was impossible?

You take claims made based on empirical evidence, and you take a priori claims made without reference to objective reality, and you see which ones bear out most consistently with the world around us. Of course, then comes the question of how one judges the consistency of claims about reality: you would need- oh no!- empirical evidence for that. What you couldn't do, to determine the truth of a claim, is just go by a priori certitude; no amount of "because I said so!" will ever demonstrate a claim about reality. Your "rational reflection" is insufficient from the get go.

Why would you even want to rely on just reflection anyway? That kind of thinking, apart from evidence, has caused so many wrong beliefs, and only ever been right by accident. Every single big discovery that was true, was made and confirmed by empirical evidence, not just thinking about it really hard.

I mean, you're also just strawmanning me, since I never said that only empirical knowledge is valid, just that the type of claim you're making necessarily influences the ways it can be demonstrated. For claims about objective reality, which all the five ways are, if those claims are true, there will be empirical evidence to support them. Unfortunately for you, all of the evidence we currently have demonstrates that Aquinas was severely mistaken in how he thought the world works, and frankly, I'm pretty amused that you think that objective evidence should change or disappear just because you've reflected on an issue and come to a different conclusion. You're literally saying that reality must be wrong because you've gotta be right.

Because I have regular e-mail exchanges with notable contemporary Thomist scholars, like Dr. Fesser who wrote the article referenced by the OP, I can say with confidence that the views I present reflect not only my interpretation but that the best thinkers in the field.

How am I not surprised that you're a Feser fan? Your styles of argumentation are almost identical: no substance, just empty grandstanding and the presupposition that if somebody really understood your position, they'd agree with it.

Besides, when I pointed out the problem with what you were asserting, the "I" in the sentence was not the objectionable part.

In the case of Esquilax, he will employ all the resources of his intellect to direct attention away from valid demonstrations. When he finds himself unable to do so, he hand-waves and inserts rolling eyes emoticons as if his incredulity were enough to justify his opinions.

Ha ha, let's just roll this back a bit, shall we? I responded to all of your assertions, in full. In response to that, you said you weren't going to play anymore and quit the thread, asserting that I had a "darkened intellect." So just to begin with, your accusation that I hadn't offered anything substantive in support of my position is hilariously hypocritical, since I did that, and then you waved me off as under the influence of dark forces. Secondly, you're kinda quote mining me here, since what you quoted of mine for this section was specifically in reference to your habit of asserting that anybody who disagrees with you does so for other, supernatural reasons unrelated to their stated objections. I was taking you to task for poisoning the well, not offering a justification for my disagreement with the five ways overall.

No, you'd have to go back to the reply you haughtily said you wouldn't respond to, for that.

I accept that not all will be convinced because not all can be convinced. For those who have confirmed in themselves an ardent disbelief no amount of evidence or rational demonstration will lead them to the truth.

See, this is exactly what I was talking about: you can't offer a substantial argument, so you're reduced to impugning the character and motivation of anybody who won't just take you at your word. Breathtakingly dishonest.

Many of you have heard that before: arguments are not evidence. Since my initial reply fails to satisfy then I will call on a greater authority than myself. In Book 4, Chapter 3 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle presents the Principle of Non-Contradiction (a.k.a. the PNC) which states that nothing can be and not-be simultaneously and in all ways. The PNC shows conclusively that 1) human being have the capacity to know fundamental truths and 2) humans can have certain and true a priori knowledge that transcends sensory verification, i.e. it lies beyond empirical knowledge.

... And if we found something tomorrow that both was and not-was at once, you know what'd happen to the PNC? It'd be rendered untrue. "A priori knowledge" is always subordinate to empirical evidence, and in the case of Aquinas, if you really want to go there, then the a priori knowledge supposedly contained within the five ways has been falsified by what we now know about the big bang and the expansionary universe, or at the very least, that Aquinas' assertions are not justified within the current model of the universe. If you just want to appeal to some special way of knowing, if you're going to assert that you know it's true despite all of the evidence being against it, then sorry, but that's no different than saying "because I said so!" A belief that you hold about the world but cannot demonstrate, that is in fact contradicted by the evidence around us, is no different than a delusion, and even if it were true, nobody else would be rationally justified in holding it based on what you've presented here.

But I want to hear you say it, Chad: if this is what you're really going with, then I want you to acknowledge that your position is that reality itself, insofar as we can currently apprehend it, must be wrong because you know that you're right.

But I also want to get into this claim you've made that the principle of non-contradiction demonstrates that people can have knowledge outside of what's empirically demonstrable, because that it ridiculous: the principle of non-contradiction is constantly re-verified by every observation of reality we've ever made. It is the surest expression of the value of empirical evidence: at the time Aristotle formulated it, every available observation showed that objects cannot be themselves and not-themselves simultaneously, and thus he was able to present a piece of knowledge based on the empirical observations contained within his culture's knowledge base. He didn't know it because of some special, a priori magic knowledge, he knew it because the world around him consistently bore it out, and if we were to find an object both being and not-being at the same time, if we had that staring us in the face, the smart man would reject the principle of non-contradiction. He would not, as you are doing now, stare at the thing being and not-being and assert that it doesn't exist, because he knows things cannot both be and not-be.

This is not to say that other rational demonstrations for deity are valid. The point here is that contrary to popular opinion, it is indeed possible to ‘logic something into existence’ and to provide evidence for facts about the world that are not subject to sensory verification. Since Esquilax is unable or unwilling to overcome his incredulity for all forms of rational demonstration, he prevents himself from recognizing or even considering any ideas that could challenge his preconceptions.

See above. Are you sad yet?

Esquilax, says this so often and with such conviction that he has started to believe it. If people followed his example, they would say Agatha Christi is a bad writer because she doesn’t reveal ‘whodunit’ in the first chapter. The 5W are the beginning and not the end of the Summa.

Funnily enough, Aquinas seems to disagree with you: in the translation of the Summa that I read over in preparation for all this, the preface for the five ways asserts, and I quote:

"The existence of God can be proved in five ways."

Aquinas seems to think that the five ways are sufficient on their own. I assume that the scholarly consensus on the works of Aquinas doesn't preclude unambiguous statements made within the works themselves?

Besides, you were the one bigging up the five ways as, and I quote, "decisive" proof for god's existence. If what you really meant was that the Summa Theologica is that proof, then maybe you should have said that from the start, but frankly, I wouldn't be any more convinced of that than the five ways themselves, if this is the best argumentation the man could come up with.

I cannot speak to his examples of ‘parsimonious explanations’ since Esquilax presents none.

Well, it's like this: current science does not support many of the assumptions Aquinas makes about the nature of the universe. Just as an example, Aquinas argument for a first mover presupposes the normative cause-and-effect notion of time remains constant right up until the universe's inception, but we know now that, more than likely, it does not, and that in fact causation might not even make sense as a concept at that point. There is no need for a first mover at the point that Aquinas asserts there must be one, because the idea of "first," as a linear qualification doesn't necessarily apply there. The more parsimonious explanation is one that accepts the current evidence, rather than positing a supernatural mover not in evidence, nor required by what we know to be the beginnings of the universe.

I'm taking the science of the 21st century over the intuitions of the 13th from a man who simply could not possibly know any better, basically. You seem to want to shuck the modern science and stick with the 13th century beliefs, while tarting them up as knowledge by fiat, but if you're going to do that I wish you'd be consistent about it and stop using your computer so you can go and find a house that's not hooked up to the electric grid, so you can properly live without the benefits of science prior to the 13th century. Of course, you're not going to do that because what you really want is to accept all science up until the point that it begins disagreeing with the presuppositions you've already made about the inerrancy of the five ways.

I can say; however, that natural science presupposes certain truths and facts about reality that can only be known a priori, like the PNC. Those kinds of facts about reality stand regardless of who thinks them or when they thought them. Truth has no expiration date. Natural science cannot give ‘parsimonious explanations’ of things that lie beyond its epistemological reach.

So essentially you're going to continue believing the five ways no matter what evidence to the contrary you're presented with. So intellectually rigorous!