In the Ontological Argument thread which I started, Cato referred me to an article on that topic found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and I'm going to spend some time on it tonight.
However, I also looked up the article on the Moral Argument, and I came across a passage which seems important given some discussion we've had about the value of philosophical arguments and the burden of proof in this thread.
Since Cato recommended the site, I hope this will reassure everyone that it is from an unbiased source.
It's a bit long, so I'll highlight some important points and include a couple of personal comments as notes embedded in the text.
Well, those are the words approved by the Editorial Board of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. What do you think of them?
However, I also looked up the article on the Moral Argument, and I came across a passage which seems important given some discussion we've had about the value of philosophical arguments and the burden of proof in this thread.
Since Cato recommended the site, I hope this will reassure everyone that it is from an unbiased source.
It's a bit long, so I'll highlight some important points and include a couple of personal comments as notes embedded in the text.
Quote:1. The Goals of Theistic Arguments
Before attempting to explain and assess moral arguments for the existence of God, it would be helpful to have some perspective on the goals of arguments for God's existence. (I shall generically term arguments for God's existence “theistic arguments.”) Of course views about this are diverse, but most contemporary proponents of such arguments do not see theistic arguments as attempted “proofs,” in the sense that they are supposed to provide valid arguments with premises that no reasonable person could deny. Such a standard of achievement would clearly be setting the bar for success very high, and proponents of theistic arguments rightly note that philosophical arguments for interesting conclusions in any field outside of formal logic hardly ever reach such a standard. More reasonable questions to ask about theistic arguments would seem to be the following: Are there valid arguments for the conclusion that God exists that have premises that are known or reasonably believed by some people? Are the premises of such arguments more reasonable than their denials, at least for some reasonable people? Arguments that met these standards could have value in making belief in God reasonable for some people, or even giving some people knowledge of God's existence, even if it turns out that some of the premises of the arguments can be reasonably denied by other people, and thus that the arguments fail as proofs.
It is of course possible that an argument for God's existence could provide some evidence for God's existence, in the sense that the argument increases the probability or plausibility of the claim that God exists, even if the argument does not provide enough support by itself for full-fledged belief that God exists. A proponent of the moral argument who viewed the argument in this way might in that case regard the argument as part of a cumulative case for theism, and hold that the moral argument must be supplemented by other possible arguments, such as the “fine-tuning” argument from the physical constants of the universe, or an argument from religious experience. A non-believer might even concede some version of a theistic argument has some evidential force, but claim that the overall balance of evidence does not support belief. [My note: this is the point I have made in my interaction with Evie who argues that there is simply NO evidence whatsoever.]
A major issue that cannot be settled here concerns the question of where the burden of proof lies with respect to theistic arguments. Many secular philosophers follow Antony Flew (1976) in holding that there is a “presumption of atheism.” Believing in God is like believing in the Loch Ness Monster or leprechauns, something that reasonable people do not do without sufficient evidence. If such evidence is lacking, the proper stance is atheism rather than agnosticism.
This “presumption of atheism” has been challenged in a number of ways. Alvin Plantinga (2000) has argued that reasonable belief in God does not have to be based on propositional evidence, but can be “properly basic.” On this view, reasonable belief in God can be the outcome of a basic faculty (called the sensus divinitatis by theologian John Calvin) and thus needs no support from arguments at all. In response some would argue that even if theistic belief is not grounded in propositional evidence, it still might require non-propositional evidence (such as experience), so it is not clear that Plantinga's view by itself removes the burden of proof challenge.
A second way to challenge the presumption of atheism is to question an implicit assumption made by those who defend such a presumption, which is that belief in God is epistemologically more risky than unbelief. The assumption might be defended in the following way: One might think that theists and atheists share a belief in many entities: atoms, middle-sized physical objects, animals, and stars, for example. Someone, however, who believes in leprechauns or sea monsters in addition to these commonly accepted objects thereby incurs a burden of proof. Such a person believes in “one additional thing” and thus seems to incur additional epistemological risk. One might think that belief in God is relevantly like belief in a leprechaun or sea monster, and thus that the theist also bears an additional burden of proof. Without good evidence in favor of belief in God the safe option is to refrain from belief.
However, the theist may hold that this account does not accurately represent the situation. Instead, the theist may argue that the debate between atheism and theism is not simply an argument about whether “one more thing” exists in the world. In fact, God is not to be understood as an entity in the world at all; any such entity would by definition not be God. The debate is rather a debate about the character of the universe. The theist believes that every object in the natural world exists because God creates and conserves that object; every finite thing has the character of being dependent on God. The atheist denies this and affirms that the basic entities in the natural world have the character of existing “on their own.” If this is the right way to think about the debate, then it is not obvious that atheism is safer than theism. The debate is not about the existence of one object, but the character of the universe as a whole. Both parties are making claims about the character of everything in the natural world, and both claims seem risky. This point is especially important in dealing with moral arguments for theism, since one of the questions raised by such arguments is the adequacy of a naturalistic worldview in explaining morality. Evidentialists may properly ask about the evidence for theism, but it also seems proper to ask about the evidence for atheism if the atheist is committed to a rival metaphysic such as naturalism. [My note: I have tried to make this point regarding the burden of proof, also.
Well, those are the words approved by the Editorial Board of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. What do you think of them?
