Ed Feser's Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God

[bennyboy]

And I agree, but they need to learn to make this distinction. Its simply disingenuous not to acknowledge it. Despite all their efforts to re-frame this kind of debate, in the end, they are still simply presenting a "reality + something else" view and this “+something else” rightly needs justification – if it is true – so that all of us who are stuck in “just reality” can then move forward and expand our “just reality” to include their ideas and we can be all one happy agreeable humanity. But the onus remains theirs alone to bear, right?

Yes, that's right. Theists bear the burden of demonstrating that theism in general, or their specific flavor of theism, represents reality-- or even just a useful idea.

That being said, my argument with you isn't about the merits of theism-- only about whether all ideas need to be supported by empirical evidence. In my opinion, many do not, in particular philosophical questions where we not only don't have the means to make empirical observations, but have no reason to think we ever will.

The tools that we use to define our shared reality – empiricism, induction, deduction, logic, math, science, etc. – go a long way to addressing the bullshit issue. Philosophy and empirical science both, in fact, are not about discovering truth (its merely a side product of their processes), but rather about finding and eliminating bullshit when its encountered. Both are good tools for dissecting someone else's claims.

The tools you mentioned are extremely useful, but are context specific, that context being the spacetime framework in which math always works, and in which objects and the forces on them are known to be consistent: in other words, the normal framework in which we function as human beings.

When it comes to cosmogony, or why sentience exists rather than not, or things like that, then we are establishing a new context. We have to show the tools still function meaningfully-- and for the most part, we cannot. It may be that inside a black Hole or at the creation of the universe, for example, none of the intellectual tools we normally use really apply.

My point is that if we can acknowledge we're talking about a context that reaches beyond our normal frame of reference, appeals to evidence come with a caveat: that the person making the appeal also shares some burden-- of showing that evidence means anything in the context being talked about.

I agree, and that is how science-minded people tend to leave it too. In my experience, its merely the theological arguments that leap to conclusions ahead of their time.

That's true. It depends how the arguments are worded, and whether the surety of the conclusion is appropriate to the argument. The main problem is that theists are exclusively backward-tracing thinkers, i.e. that they already "know" the truth, and are looking for logical steps that arrive at it. Therefore their level of surety is invariabe, and this is seen as intellectual dishonesty by non-theists.

I think that logical extension of philosophical ideas used in our everyday context can and should be used to generate philosophical ideas for other contexts (again, like cosmogony). For example, I'd argue that a kind of deism is possible simply because mind exists in this universe-- and if "like makes like," then if the universe was ever created, whatever created it may also be sentient or at least partly so. To me, that is a perfectly viable candidate for cosmogony. But throwing an idea "out there" for the joy of speculation, and saying ". . . therefore definitely God" are very different.