A Different Kind of God Debate

Whenever a theist and an atheist get together to debate the existence of God, you can be pretty certain of hearing a catalog of “traditional” arguments for and against; the argument from design, the argument from evil, and so on. Most of these arguments I am not interested in rehashing here. If people are still debating them after centuries if not millennia, that is not because they are conclusive but because they are comforting.

In Neal Stephenson’s novel Anathem the skeptical narrator responds to a believer by saying “That’s funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we’d just tell him ‘nice proof, Fraa Bly’ and start believing in God.” That’s sort of how I feel about these so-called proofs. If you believe in God, it almost certainly wasn’t the cosmological argument that convinced you, though it may confirm you in your belief; nor is the argument from evil likely to shake your faith.

The same could be said for the atheist. Such arguments are, at best, post hoc rationalizations; at worst, they are distractions from the more interesting discussion of why we believe the things we do, why we can have confidence in our beliefs, and when, if ever, we should have confidence in our convictions even in the face of seemingly disconfirming evidence.

There is, however, a category of arguments often featured in these debates that does squarely address these questions. Sometimes it goes by the name of presuppositionalism, sometimes the argument from perceived transcendence, but by whatever name…