A general note before I respond to individual posts . . . This idea that the question of God’s existence is a meaningless question is an idea that Alvin Plantinga specifically addresses in some of his writings. This is what he writes:
Now many objections have been put forward to belief in God. First, there is the claim that as a matter of fact there is no such thing as belief in God, because the sentence “God exists” is, strictly speaking, nonsense. This is the positivists’ contention that such sentences as “God exists” are unverifiable and hence “cognitively meaningless” (to use their charming phrase), in which case they altogether fail to express propositions. On this view those who claim to believe in God are in the pitiable position of claiming to believe a proposition that as a matter of fact does not so much as exist. This objection, fortunately, has retreated into obscurity that it so richly deserves, and I shall say no more about it.
The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader
Edited by James F. Sennett
Chapter 5: Reason and Belief in God (pp. 106-107)
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998Apparently Plantinga says more about this in his book,
God and Other Minds, which I have not yet read. However, I hope to do so in the (hopefully) near future, and when I do, I may have additional comments to make about this.
Will S wrote:I'm in a great rush, but re. Sophie's last message: that's very much how I see it.
As I was trying to argue in the OP, it's perfectly reasonable to harp on about the weakness of the human intellect, and the limitations of human understanding.
But, if you do that, then you must be content just to
DO it! There's no way in which you can follow up by plonking down a 'Therefore ...' and lead on to some new revelation or insight.
I confess that I've never read any book of Wittgenstein's from beginning to end, but isn't that what he's saying in his famous
dictum: 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'? (If so, it strikes me are being pretty obvious - once you set wishful thinking aside, that is.

)
Will—I think there are people who would say that they do not, in fact, feel compelled to be silent about that which they cannot speak. Just the opposite in fact! And I think those people are called Christian apologists.
Destroyer wrote:However, such reasoning is fallacious: just because there is a reality that is beyond our senses, does not put that reality beyond our observation . . .
How can one observe something that is beyond one's senses?
Can you provide an example of something that you can observe that does not employ the use of your senses? (Even if you want to talk about using a microscope or some other tool, you will still require your senses to observe, interpret, etc. what is seen through the microscope.)
This is where something like Plato’s cave becomes relevant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2afuTvUzBQIt is possible, for example, that you and I are just minds in a vat. We might think that we are capable, in those circumstances, of observing all of reality. We might think that the only limits we have in that regard would be the limits of reality itself. However, we would be wrong.
This is what D’Souza/Kant (and when I use D’Souza/Kant, I am referring to D’Souza’s claims about Kant's views) seem to be saying. Here’s another excerpt from the chapter on Kant in D’Souza’s book to show you what I mean:
Moreover, the reality we apprehend is not reality in itself. It is merely our experience or “take” on reality. Kant’s point has been widely misunderstood. Many people think that Kant is making the pedestrian claim that our senses give us an imperfect facsimile or a rough approximation of reality. Philosphical novelist Ayn Rand once attacked Kant for saying that man has eyes but cannot see, and ears but cannot hear—in short, that man’s senses are fundamentally deluded. But Kant’s point is not that our senses are unreliable. True, our senses can fool us, as when we see a straight twig as bent because it is partly submerged in water. Human beings have found ways to correct these sensory distortions. Kant is quite aware of this, and it is not what he is after.
Kant’s argument is that we have no basis to assume that our perception of reality ever resembles reality itself. Our experience of things can never penetrate to things as they really are. That reality remains permanently hidden to us. To see the force of Kant’s point, ask yourself this question: how can you know that your experience of reality is any way “like” reality itself? Normally we answer this question by considering the two things separately. I can tell if my daughter’s portrait of her teacher looks like her teacher by placing the portrait alongside the person and comparing the two. I establish verisimilitude by the degree to which the copy conforms to the original. Kant points out, however, that we can never compare our experience of reality to reality itself. All we have is the experience, and that’s all we can ever have. We only have the copies, but we never have the originals. Moreover, the copies come to us through the medium of our senses, while the originals exist independently of our means of perceiving them. So we have no basis for inferring that the two are even comparable, and when we presume that our experience corresponds to reality, we are making an unjustified leap. We have absolutely no way to know this.
What’s So Great About Christianity?
Dinesh D’Souza
Chapter 15: The World Beyond Our Senses: Kant and the Limits of Reason (pp. 176-177)
Tyndale, 2007So –
You seem to be saying that we can observe all of reality (although—I don’t know what you mean when you say we could do this in some way apart from our senses) where D’Souza/Kant seems to be saying that we cannot observe all of reality. My position is one that disagrees with you and with D’Souza/Kant . . . we can’t know if we are able to observe all of reality. However, this “not knowing” does not in any way justify a leap to God.
katja z wrote:In fact, our view of reality
must correspond reasonably well to reality, as the history of science and technology since Kant has shown. None of this could work if our perception of reality did not model "reality itself" to a considerable extent. After all, it isn't my perception of my computer that I'm just using to write and post this, it is my computer in itself

This is a good point. But D’Souza/Kant would not say that the “phenomenal world” does not exist only that it is not the
only world that exists.
Here is what D’Souza writes about that:
It is essential, at this point, to recognize that Kant is not diminishing the importance of experience or of the phenomenal world. That world is very important, if only because it is all we have access to. It constitutes the entirety of our human experience and is, consequently, of vital significance for us. It is entirely rational for us to believe in this phenomenal world, and to use science and reason to discover its operating principles. A recognized scientist and mathematician, Kant did not degrade the value of science. But he believed science should be understood as applying to the world of phenomena rather than to the nominal or “other” world.
. . . Perhaps the best way to understand this is to see Kant as positing two kinds of reality: the reality that we experience and reality itself. The important thing is not to establish which is more real, but to recognize that human reason operates only in the phenomenal domain of experience. We can know that the phenomenal realm exists, but beyond that we can know nothing about it. Human reason can never grasp reality itself.
What’s So Great About Christianity?
Dinesh D’Souza
Chapter 15: The World Beyond Our Senses: Kant and the Limits of Reason (pp. 178-179)
Tyndale, 2007archibald wrote:Interesting post Sophie.
And, if you manage to briefly weave into your next one why there isn't any rational reason for not swopping 'god' for 'leprechaun', I'll be even more impressed. :]
Alright then. Wouldn't want to disappoint anyone.
And thank for asking me to do so. I am convinced that it is only in taking seriously the arguments of certain theologians and Christian apologists that we can provide strong refutations of such arguments. For me, “being” (or attempting to be) various theologians and apologists is the best way I know of to better understand their perspectives so that I can, in turn, offer my best refutation of their claims and/or so that I can (when I choose to do so) satirize such arguments (or present caricatures of them) in order to offer, um--creative commentary.
I should emphasize that I am not, in any way, an expert on Plantinga. So—I will answer you the best I can, based on my current (limited) understanding of Plantinga's views.
With that in mind then, I think that the way Plantinga
might respond to your question is as follows:
Belief in the existence of God (when God is defined as a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good) is what Plantinga would consider to be “properly basic.” In other words, it is a belief that occurs in certain circumstances, i.e. when we are "functioning properly." It is a belief that is not contingent on any other beliefs, and it is a belief that does not require any sort of argument or evidence to be rationally held. To Plantinga, a belief in the existence of God would be “properly basic” in the same way that my belief that my mother exists or my belief that the world was not created five minutes ago are “properly basic” beliefs. In other words, these beliefs are beliefs that do not require argument or evidence in order to be rationally held nor are they beliefs that are contingent on other beliefs. In other words, these are beliefs that are self-evident.
Here’s how Plantinga worded it (exactly):
What the Reformers meant to hold is that it is entirely right, rational, reasonable, and proper to believe in God without any evidence or argument at all; in this respect belief in God resembles belief in the past, in the existence of other persons, and in the existence of material objects.
The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader
Edited by James F. Sennett
Chapter 5: Reason and Belief in God (p. 103)
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998You bring up the case of leprechauns, and you would understandably ask how it is that Plantinga does not consider belief in the existence of leprechauns to be a belief that is "properly basic." Plantinga actually addresses this question, and he refers to it as "The Great Pumpkin Objection." To this question, Plantinga seems to claim, basically, that he does not not have any sort of criterion for determining what beliefs are “properly basic.” However, he asserts that not having any criterion for determining what beliefs are properly basic does not mean that he cannot reject certain beliefs as not being properly basic.
This is where Plantinga goes on to explain that while a belief in the existence of God (as I defined above) is “properly basic,” he does not believe that such a belief is
groundless.
Here’s what he writes about it:
If I see someone displaying typical pain behavior, I take it that he or she is in pain. Again, I do not take the displayed behavior as evidence for that belief; I do not infer that belief from others I hold; I do not accept it on the basis of other beliefs. Still, my perceiving the pain behavior plays a unique role in the formation and justification of that belief in question.
The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader
Edited by James F. Sennett
Chapter 5: Reason and Belief in God (p. 152)
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998Note that in the above quote, he refers to
perceiving. I think, although I am not sure, that Plantinga would go on to say that a Christian’s experiences of God (for example, experiencing a sense of guilt before God or gratitude toward God) would provide justification for his belief in the existence of God. However, I think he would say that while these experiences provide justification for the one experiencing them, they obviously would not provide justification for someone not experiencing them. Here is what is written in the introduction to the section on Reformed Epistemology in the book
The Analytic Theist:
He [Plantinga] is not claiming that these experiences can serve as the basis for arguments that God exists. He is not even claiming that these experiences can ever legitimately serve to ground belief for anyone other than the subject of the experiences. Plantinga’s claim is that such experiences can and do rationally ground theistic belief for the subject, even if they cannot provide rational grounds for theistic belief for anyone else.
The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader
Edited by James F. Sennett
(p. 99)
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998Plantinga seems to believe that if human beings are "functioning properly," then they will know that God (as defined above) exists. And thus, their belief in the existence of God (in the right circumstances, i.e. that they are functioning properly) is properly basic. I think he would say, then, that belief in the existence of God cannot be ruled out as being properly basic unless it can be proven that God does not exist. By the same token, however, I would think that an atheist could respond to this by saying that belief in the existence of The Great Pumpkin (or leprechauns) cannot be ruled out as being properly basic unless it can be demonstrated that The Great Pumpkin (or leprechauns) do not actually exist. However, Plantinga might then respond to this response by saying that no (properly functioning, i.e. sane) person actually believes in the existence of either leprechauns or The Great Pumpkin, and so there is no reason to think that belief in the existence of The Great Pumpkin or in leprechauns is a belief that is properly basic. Of course, a skeptic could then respond to this response by saying that no (properly functioning, i.e. sane) person actually believes in the existence of God. To this, I think Plantinga might respond that the majority of mental health experts would disagree with this conclusion and would say that many sane people do, in fact, believe in the existence of God.
Anyway, the reason that Plantinga's argument that belief in the existence of God is "properly basic," is relevant to our discussion is this:
IF God (as defined above) exists, then theists are not being irrational when they believe in the existence of God,
even if they have no arguments and/or evidence to support such a belief. This is what Plantinga seems to be saying anyway.
This was probably a much longer explanation than you wanted, but there you have it.
