Specter of Reason

Peter Pike, a Triablogger, has called my intellectual integrity into question. He has accused me of "steamrolling" and "obfuscation." I want to defend the behavior in question and also reveal just how intellectually dishonest Peter's accusations are. I plan on responding to Peter's philosophical argument in my next post here. The main issue there will revolve around proper usage of the term "logic" and related concepts. I will explain how Peter has failed to use the term "logic" (also, "logical" and "logically") in a coherent manner, and how a proper understanding of logic allows us to avoid the obstacles Peter has placed in front of us. Here, however, I am only going to deal with the matter of intellectual integrity. It begins with the word, "logic." Summarizing what he thinks is my position, Peter wrote, "The universe isn't logical; it just happens to at this point behave in a way that appr...

Here is the next installment in my series of responses to the Triabloggers. In the last one , I presented a proof showing that presuppositionalists cannot maintain both that all valid arguments do not beg the question and that all knowledge presupposes the existence of God. Thus, they must either abandon their presuppositionalism or claim that some valid arguments beg the question. If they claim that some valid arguments beg the question, then they should provide a compelling argument for why the rest of us should abandon such a basic rule of logical argument. At this point, it seems we have a choice between logic and presuppositionalism. I'm choosing logic. I will now turn my attention to theological noncognitivism. This is the view that theological terms (such as “God” and “the supernatural”) are non-sensical, and cannot even be entertained as concepts. I will focus here on the term “God” as defined and used by Steve Hays, one of the Triabloggers. The term “God” has ...