I probably would not be so hard on atheists if they did not make such a fuss about how 'rational' they are. Seriously, people: If you are going to proclaim how rational you are, then be rational!
Take my discussion on IRC the other night as one example. And this will be an abridged version of the discussion. There was an atheist whom I shall call Terry. He did not like the fact that his demand for evidence resulted in my calling his epistemology into question, essentially because he did not see the relevance. So I had explained to him, "Your demand for evidence is a product of your epistemology—which furthermore dictates what constitutes acceptable evidence."
"Okay, but why is this a problem?" he asked.
"Because I do not subscribe to your chosen epistemology, sir," I answered. "That is your worldview. Mine is very different. And here you are simply assuming that my argumentation must conform to your worldview, but there are two rather serious problems with this: (1) my argument does not work under your worldview, but more importantly (2) I emphatically reject your worldview because it is completely untenable in the first place."
"How come your argumentation does not work under my epistemology?" he asked. (Here is where I am skipping past a good deal of initial gratuitous invective he had offered up first.)
"Because our worldviews are antithetical at the most basic level," I replied. "My epistemology has a vastly different presuppositional starting point than yours does, one that your worldview would not accept." He then asked what my starting point was, and I answered, "It is that propositional revelation known as Scripture."
There is nothing wrong, rationally, with presupposing the truth of your own system of thought and tacitly insisting that your opponent work within the framework of that system. However, if it is permissible for the atheist to presuppose the truth of his system of thought and expect the Christian to work within the framework of that system, then it is also permissible for the inverse of that situation. Otherwise, the atheist would shoulder the epistemic responsibility for explaining why the only presuppositions permitted in the field of debate are his own.
"How do you know that Scripture is a valid starting point?" Terry asked me.
"Do you not see? That very question assumes that logic has priority rather than Scripture. Perhaps under your worldview logic is prior to everything else, but that is very different from mine. In other words, sir, your question is yet again expecting my argumentation to conform to your worldview. Under my worldview, God, not logic, is prior to everything else, and Scripture is that by which we know anything about God. In other words, the foundation of our epistemological infrastructure is Scripture, which propositionally reveals that which is prior to everything else, even logic—God."
"Nothing else can be prior to logic," he objected, "otherwise logical contradictions could prevail in that domain which is prior to logic."
"That statement is consistent with your worldview," I replied, "not mine. Under my worldview, that result would not occur. But this now raises a relevant and very interesting question: When another worldview is competing against yours, how do you evaluate them?"
"Whichever worldview demonstrates consistency, evidential support, predictive value, and simplicity."
"But those epistemological virtues are derived precisely from your worldview!" I replied. "To assume the truth of your worldview when evaluating a competing worldview against your own is to beg the question! One of the systems under question is assumed to be true before the evaluation process even began. That is a fallacious exercise."
"I have not assumed the truth of my worldview," he objected.
"Really? If you have not established in your mind whether your worldview is true or false, then why was it serving as the evaluative criteria?"
A slight pause. "I guess I did."
"And begging the question is not rational, under your view, Terry. What a dilemma."
It was an enjoyable discussion but it ended there because he had to leave for dinner. Terry usually makes a good deal of fuss about how rational he is, but there is nothing rational about fallacies and refusing to meet your burden of proof.
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