The Presupposition of Nonsense

I'm a bit grumpy right now. I have written more calmly on this issue here. But today I am grumpy.

I have this True Believer friend who constantly tries to reconvert me. He uses C. S. Lewis' Argument from Reason all the time, but he infects it (bad as it already was) with presuppositionalism.

His contention is that atheism is solipsistic and therefore has no ontological ground for reasoning. This is precisely backward. Theism is solipsistic. Lewis was a solipsist. I get there in two ways. One is through Hitchens who so tersely demonstrated that the assumption that the cosmos was designed by a being with oneself in mind, and pretending that this is a humble belief, is irresolvably dissonant.

The cosmos is not yours, and it is not your dad's, and it is not your inheritance. So much for solipsism. Now, as for presuppositional arguments from reason. Again, I can depend on the rigors of empiricism because that method makes no prior metaphysical claim. One simply designs tests to discover what is, not what is within one's worldview. If there is a God mucking with the gears, empiricism will discover it.

Theism, though, lacks the exact ontological ground that the argument from reason is complaining about. If the cosmos is the "spilled milk" of chaos, as Lewis complains, why should that impede our ability to know and study it? If the cosmos is the spilled milk of god, however, over which she claims constant dominion, there is a HUGE defeater to the knowledge of it. This is that she might decide to make of the cosmos any other thing she likes, or she might decide to hide its true identity. This method cannot even seek the gears for the monkey that guards them.

Anyway, what do you think?

Comments

A Review of David Tennant's Hamlet

He That Increaseth Knowledge Increaseth Sorrow : How Hamlet Demonstrates That Conscience does Make Cowards of Us All It is among the most pleasurable, and the most maddening, enterprises in life to read The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare. Pleasurable because of its inexhaustible depth, its perfect turns of phrase, and its expansion of the art form that is the English language. Maddening because of the impenetrable layers of madness throughout the text, and within its many characters. At the end of the play, one is left feeling that something profound has been said, but that one is powerless to reiterate what it was. In Stephen Greenblatt’s seminal treatment of Hamlet he identified eleven essential unanswered questions in the play, among which are, “Why does Hamlet delay avenging the murder of his father by Claudius, his father’s brother? How much guilt does Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude . . . bear in this crime? How trustworthy is the ghost of Ha...

Conference Recap Part 4: From Now On It's Us and Them (Hymn 258)

Our Great Leader, who is Jesus , Not Elohim, but Yahweh, Please don’t kill, don’t maim, or cleave us, We’re with you and not with “they” Here’s the chorus of this war song Here is where we pledge to fight With our president who’ll speak next Against all he says aren’t right Why are hymns so bathed in bloodshed; Why the battle metaphors Why not sing of beauty instead Why do You hate peace not wars? Here’s the battle chorus once more Belief is a flag we fly Those young men who knock on your door Preach with Vader, “Join or die!” (Starts at 2:53:17) Every Conference you remind us That our loved ones are at ri...

Church Wishes it was Dungeons and Dragons

You walk into a home. A woman is unconscious on the floor. A strong breeze chills your cheeks and you realize that, in addition to the sounds of the road behind you, you can hear children playing basketball in the back yard. Toxic fumes burn your nostrils and lungs. You hear a loud thump upstairs as a baby begins to scream. What do you do? Did you think of an answer? If so, gotcha!!! You just played Dungeons and Dragons . I know, right? That isn’t what I thought the game was like either. I always had this image in my head that playing D & D was more like pretending you were following along as your math teacher used a convoluted Lord of the Rings analogy to explain derivation; all while a halitosis infested gamer-gater asks you if you have a date to the prom. But recently, I have started playing the game and I want to tell you what it is like. I also want to ask you, from the bottom of my heart, to do me a big favor . We will get to that later. About...

Diligently Seek

Search This Blog