The pre-failure of apologetic arguments

[Matthaῖos]

Whether or not Tf00t's analogy applies, I think his main point was that what seems logical to us is not necessarily how the universe works. Our understanding of subatomic particles, light speed travel, the relationship between space, time and gravity are all examples of how "common sense" fails to predict what empirical tests prove. The universe is under no obligation to conform to our ideas of what would make sense to us and sometimes it can surprise us.

Thus, when speculating about unknowns like "what caused the Big Bang" or "how did the earliest forms of life come to be", pure conjecture is not "proof". At best, it is an untested hypothesis. It may be too charitable to even go this far, since many of the assertions are currently not falsifiable.

Hmm. Granted that there have been discoveries of counter-intuitive phenomena, does it follow that in general we should not trust our intuitions about what appears to us to be true? Well, we can only act based on what appears to be the case to us. We accept the very phenomena we discover based on what appear to be the results of our observations and experiments. With every knowledge claim there is a leap from the appearance that the claim is true (whether that judgement is by scientific enquiry or by inference or by intuition or whatever) to the acceptance that the claim is true. Scientific enquiry gets no special status in this regard. If we are going to, in general, doubt what appears to be the case, we must also doubt what scientific enquiry appears to tell us.

I would want to take a middle way between naïvely accepting all appearances and over-sceptically doubting all appearances. After all, accepting that 'what appears to be the case is not necessarily the case' is itself only based on appearances. I like Richard Swinburne's option: The Principle of Credulity. The Principle of Credulity says that "with the absence of any reason to disbelieve it, one should accept what appears to be true". (Self-consistently, this appears to me to be a true principle of epistemology!)

Now a speculation that something caused the universe would not satisfy this principle - to speculate is not the same as to accept based on what appears to be true (appearance requires some kind of positive stimulus recognized by a person). But intuitions, even metaphysical intuitions, may well be able to fulfil this: we intuit basic laws and principles based on the workings of that which we observe by our senses and which we analyse by our mental faculties. All laws and principles (including scientific ones) are extrapolated from a finite number of data points.

It certainly appears that the causal order we experience abides by the general principle that 'whatever begins to exist has a cause'. What's more, when we try and imagine what a world without such a principle would look like, it seems absurd. So it appears to be the case, at least given our experience of the world and our thinking about other possible worlds. That makes it more than a speculation. It doesn't mean it is an infallible intuition, or an entirely established fact about the universe, but it is plausible, more so than its negation.

Christians (and Muslims) have no store of magical artifacts, no sightings of angels recorded on verified video footage, no miracles that faith is supposed to be able to generate (Mark 16:17-18). They have nothing of substance to back up any of their extraordinary claims. The best they can offer are these mental constructs.

I take his argument one step further and invoke ECREE (Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence). The nature of the claims of Christianity demand extraordinary evidence. Even if the arguments like the Moral Argument, TAG, Ontological Argument, etc were logically sound (and I would argue they are not), they fall short of the standard set by their own claims.

This is what I mean by "pre-fail".

To be honest, I have always found ECREE to be a rather extraordinary epistemological claim that I have never seen any extraordinary evidence for. It requires the dubious view that ordinariness is somehow a normative property, when it seems plain that ordinariness is an entirely subjective notion. The existence of God (and indeed the possibility of miracles) may be deemed an extraordinary claim in secular societies like ours, but it is by no means extraordinary for most societies at most places and times throughout history. It takes quite a high degree of cultural snobbery to claim that modern Western societies have finally got the right perspective on the claim that God exists (and on whether miracles are possible).

I cannot speak for Islam (indeed I would speak against it, rationally speaking), but as a Christian the key question is about the Resurrection of Jesus. It is the test of historical enquiry that it has to pass, and the test that the New Testament writers encourage us to examine. I think that it does pass that test; obviously you don't, and that's a discussion for another time.

As for philosophical arguments being mere 'mental constructs', if that is your indictment against arguments for theism, it is also an indictment on our whole conversation, which is a whole string of arguments, both explicit and implicit. The entire history of philosophy is the story of incredibly powerful arguments affecting the way we think about reality, overturning whole paradigms of thought. The arguments from the Enlightenment, from which we get our cosy secularity, are pertinent examples of that, as are many of the theistic arguments that have influenced Western thought for centuries. It would be foolish to underestimate their power, whether we accept their conclusions or not.