Illustrating the burden of proof - pay me!

[Neo-Scholastic]

Just to clarify, I was talking about the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) as a necessary feature of an intelligibility. The 5W of Aquinas only work if two conditions are met: 1) reality is intelligible and 2) human reason is effective. Believing either of conditions to be the case requires a leap of faith.

I'm sorry but I think I may have got a little lost in translation there too... what I meant I was always curious about was LFC's question to you... ie whether you were curious about the reason/how of God's actual existence, or whether you treat its existence as a brute fact that requires no further explanation beyond the necessity implied by the Five Ways... the latter either out of necessity/practicality, in the sense of still having questions like the former but accepting you can't answer them, or in the sense of seeing the Five Ways as a complete explanation of God's existence. Rightly or wrongly I've always assumed you do treat it as a brute fact, on account of the Five Ways, but I've never seen you explicitly state it, nor if that's the case, whether that is out of necessity/practicality or because you consider the Five Ways a complete explanation. So here I was only really replying to your first sentence in reply to LFC... 'Not at this time.' rather than anything that followed (or may have been in the previous, larger post), just curious what you meant by saying you don't see it as a brute fact, at least 'not at this time'.

All I can say is that for me trying to understand a problem from all sides raises more questions and reveals unexpected uncertainties. I may once have niavely considered the existence of God a kind of brute fact but I do not think I openly expressed the sentiment. As a practical matter, I consider belief in the Divine to be properly basic, i.e. a useful framework through which to interpret everyday experience. On a theoretical level though, I think do nt think the proposition "God exists" can serve as a foundational premise. But my problem is not anything about the premise "God exists" but rather difficulty with foundationalism. And my difficulty with foundationalism is that it prioritizes certainty over epistemic virtue. IMHO there is no foundation premise but there are unavoidable foundational choices, existential stances forced upon us as conscious beings. Either the world has a rational order or it does nor. Either that order is intelligible or it is not. Pick a side. Take a stand...for any or no reason at all. Because IMO the most obvious of all brute facts is the inexplicability of choice.