Monday, January 10, 2011

Are Atheists Arbitrary in their Reasoning?

4 comments:

TheRealJnani said...

Wouldn't the Christian also have to "assume" the reliability of their senses? Even revelation must come from some form of sense. It seems that "assuming" the reliability of our senses would be a starting point for anyone to know anything. I would expect if you did not "assume" reliability of your senses you would have to question the reliability of revelation as well. Sounds like a problem for you.

Mike Felker said...

I don't think the issue is whether or not Christians assume the reliability of their senses. The fact of the matter is, having reliable senses is consistent with the Christian worldview. However, to the contrary, naturalism provides none of the preconditions of intelligibility whereby one's senses should perceive reality as it really is.

In the end, I think naturalism has too many defeaters to have a leg to stand on in offering such a critique of Christian theism.

TheRealJnani said...

I don't think you made your point that reliable senses are not consistent with a naturalistic WV. You may need to elaborate. It would seem to me that it would make MORE sense in a naturalistic WV than a WV where causation can be suspended.

Mike Felker said...

I elaborated on this point a bit more in the following:

http://www.theapologeticfront.com/2010/12/atheism-and-preconditions-of.html

And though I haven't written on it, I think Plantinga's "Evolutionary argument against naturalism" provides a very strong defeater for the reliability of one's reasoning faculties in a naturalistic worldview.