| donathos said: I don't think that I am begging the question. Instead, I think that we are changing the question: we started off by saying that, for an anti-theist to avoid having "faith-based" beliefs, he would have to be able to prove them (according to the means already discussed). And I suggested that, while this is true, we haven't established that proving anti-theism is impossible, which we would have to do in order to make the general case that anti-theism is faith-based. So, to prove that proving anti-theism is impossible, you posited an god who doesn't want to be proven. To counter, I posited an uber anti-theist with the power of perfect proving/disproving ability (or, actually, it doesn't have to be an "uber anti-theist"; it could be any non-god entity with that power); such a being would theoretically be able to construct an airtight argument against any possible god, assuming that god doesn't actually exist (because, if god did exist, then my uber anti-theist would quickly become an uber theist). Assuming that god doesn't actually exist for my uber anti-theist is a hefty qualifier, and yet absent being able to metaphysically determine whether or not a god actually exists--apparently beyond both of us, for obvious reasons :)--we cannot say for certain that such an uber anti-theist could not exist. It is not begging the question to dismiss god in this scenario, because the proposition at issue was not, "could an omnipotent god exist," but "could there exist an airtight argument that god does not exist"? And it is theoretically possible, if we happen to to live in a universe in which there is no god, which is not something that either you or I claim to know for sure. To say "an omnipotent god is possible, therefore such an argument is impossible" isn't quite correct... rather, an omnipotent god is possible, therefore a logical argument proving no god exists is possibly impossible; it doesn't discount that such an argument is also possibly possible--in a universe where an omnipotent god doesn't, in fact, exist, opening the door for the possibility of an uber anti-theist. Yeesh, the third. Thats where the "(sort of)" came in actually. In order for your uber theist to be part of the same possibility it would beg the question, but it could also legitimately be part of another possibility which would not be begging the question. But as a distinct possibility on its own it doesn't help the argument along because it is distinct and does nothing to disprove the other possibility. To look at it another way, if I'm guilty of begging the question here, we both are: we cannot rule out an airtight argument against god. The only universe in which such an argument could not exist would be one that has the omnipotent god you'd suggested; we can only disprove the possibility of such an argument by proving that god does, in fact, exist. And so... if we can't do that, then we can't disprove the possibility of such an argument. I can't actually beg the question in this instance though, since I'm not asserting the truth of the possibilities I'm putting forward I'm never actually relying on the assumptions I'm making as part of any proof. This is what is really clever about the argument actually, because to disprove god you must show that all cases have been handled I only have to offer up a single case where it is logically impossible to disprove god and I make my point...I'm not actually trying to prove that the possibility is correct (I know I can't because if I did it this way I would be begging the question). I only need it to remain possible. So, I would say that neither an omnipotent god nor an uber anti-theist can be proven against... or, at least, not by me, and I suspect not by you, either. And if we can't prove against either, then maybe the real conclusion is: Neither theism nor anti-theism are necessarily faith-based.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
