Specter of Reason

Imagine a community called Storyville, where there are no religious institutions per se, but where various stories are circulated which we would call "religious."  Let's say these are stories from the Bible, such as the story of Job.  In Storyville, the questions might arise:  Are these stories based on facts?  Do they represent some features of the world or our history?  Does the character of Job represent a real person who lived some time in the past?  Does the character of God represent a real person who lived in the past? A denizen of Storyville might respond, "Job may have been a real person, but what sort of person could God have been?  I don't think God sounds like a person at all.  Is God supposed to represent some abstract quality or force of nature?  Maybe God is supposed to be both:  a person, but also some other kind of force of nature, or some quality inherent in nature.  It doesn't seem to make sense, but it's just...

I want to consider the idea that there are three different common uses for each the following sentences: (1) God does not exist. (2) God exists.  I will outline a version of theological noncognitivism (TN), which is normally taken to entail the belief that (1) and (2) are neither true nor false.  The idea of noncognitivism in general (be it theological, moral, or what have you) is that the concepts in question are not propositional, which is another way of saying that they cannot be evaluated as either true or false.  TN implies that (1) and (2) are non-truth-evaluable under religious usages of (1) and (2).  However, what I will argue is that TN can acknowledge truth-evaluable versions of (1) and (2), and that noncognitivists can even assent to common uses of (1) which are truth-evaluable. It might look like I'm trying to mix noncognitivism with cognitivism, but that's not entirely true.  It also might look like I'm trying to tweak noncognitivism to make ...

Here's something I didn't know: Bishop Berkeley argued for non-cognitivism with respect to a number of linguistic terms, such as "self," "personality" and "substance," as well as more obviously theological terms, like "grace" and "trinity." You can read a very nice introductory discussion of Berkeley's arguments by Lewis Powell at The Mod Squad, a new group blog devoted to Modern Philosophy. Like Powell, I wonder how Berkeley negotiated his non-cognitivism with respect to his religious beliefs as a whole. It's hard to imagine how he could be a non-cognitivist about grace and the trinity, and yet still be a realist about God. Powell suggests Berkeley may have tried to have it both ways, though I'm not clear on how that is supposed to work. In any case, Berkeley used unconventional linguistic principles to very strongly suggest , if not plainly conclude, that the core of theological discourse is nothing more than...

If we define atheism as either a lack of belief in God or as the rejection of belief in God, then theological noncognitivism qualifies as a variety of atheism. Specifically, it is the belief that the term "God" is nonsensical and, therefore, that statements of theistic belief (e.g., "God exists" and "I believe in God") do not express propositions and so cannot be rationally considered. According to theological noncognitivists, belief in God is not a rational option for anyone . Thus, if somebody says they believe in God, they are not expressing a rational belief in a particular entity. They may mean any number of things: that there is an extra-biological justification for life, that they are loyal members of a clan, etc. Theological noncognitivism does not regard statements of belief as meaning anything in particular. There need not be a single thread which defines religious language as such. Theological noncognitivism is only a position on what sta...

I want to clarify some misconceptions about theological noncognitivism. The first has to do with the way theological noncognitivists use theological terms. The second has to do with the difference between theological noncognitivism and other forms of atheism, such as “weak atheism” or “teapot agnosticism.” On the usage of theistic terms, such as “God” Paul Manata has recently criticized me for using the term “God” at all. He says that my arguments for theological noncognitivism and my argument against the ability of presuppositionalism to support itself with valid arguments are inconsistent, because I reject the meaning of the term “God” in the former and yet utilize the term “God” in the latter. How can I use the term “God,” if I reject all claims that have the word God in them? Well, for one thing, I don’t reject all claims that have the word “God” in them. I never said I did. Manata’s criticism here rests on a fabrication. He says I told him I "reject...

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 ...