Rationality (again)

Mr. Latar's second response returns to Plantinga's definition of rationality. I don't find this definition helpful in any way, as it basically defines "rationality" as the "proper function of the rational faculty." That tells us little.

More useful is the general definition I gave in the beginning: restricting one's self to the limits of reason. This enterprise is generally agreed to contain at least these two principles: logic and parsimony. Logic is necessary, particularly the laws of identity, merely so we can keep straight what we are talking about; and parsimony is necessary, as I had hoped to show in my meteorological elf example. Without parsimony, an infinite number of states of affairs are possible, without any of them being distinguishable from each other. This is clearly a ludicrous result, and not in keeping with the ordinary understanding of rationality that we are all familiar with.

The necessity of parsimony to the enterprise of rationality must first and foremost be settled. Either it is, or it isn't. I can only argue this through example and recourse to common experience. Everyone agrees that my original elf example is absurd; that to postulate an ever-increasing number of elves is not a reasonable response to the destruction of the single-elf theory. Mr. Latar must either agree with this principle, or explain how it is he is able to refute an infinite number of elf theories without spending an infinite amount of time. Because assuredly he does disbelieve in all rain-causing elf theories, regardless of how many elves are involved.

Mr. Latar's argument then proceeds to the category of evidence I originally labeled as "personal revelation." In its shortest form, my response is that you are not rational for believing you ate a chicken yesterday if your only evidence is your memory. We have all had the experience of remembering something incorrectly; this is so commonplace as to be uninteresting. What is interesting is how we go about checking our suspect memories: we resort to external information. For example, we look for chicken bones, or a receipt for purchase of a chicken, or we ask the person we were with yesterday, etc. Notice that all of these methods are essentially empirical; they all presume that clues to the real state of affairs can be found in the external, objective world.

The method we use for correcting our fallible memory is to seek external confirmation. However, religious revelation, by its very nature, cannot ever be confirmed in the external world. This automatically makes it suspect, and indeed, for every other form of knowledge that people obtain without any referent in the real world, we do not hesitate to label it irrational. Easter Bunnies, UFO's, Elvis sightings, are all non-problematic. Only spiritual claims are exempt, and then only in their specific cultures.

Evidence that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be reproduced or tested for in the external world, is not evidence. It is indistinguishable from fiction, and hence must be treated as such.

Mr. Latar also refers to the idea that evidence of God is indeed obtainable, as he has attempted to show in other debates. But this is premature: before we determine whether evidence for God exists, we must first determine if it matters. Mr. Latar seems confused on this point, both asserting that said evidence does exist, and asserting that it is not necessary. Surely only one proposition needs to be true: if evidence exists, then we can both agree evidence is necessary; and if evidence is not necessary, then it hardly matters whether evidence exists or not.

Either evidence is necessary, or it is not. Mr. Latar needs to select one of these positions, and argue it exclusively.

If the position is agreed that evidence is necessary, then the issue becomes merely the empirical problem of determining whether said evidence exists or not. However, it must be noted that the failure of the discipline charged with examining the world (namely, science) to find any evidence for God seems overwhelming. One observes that only theologians and apologists find evidence for God in the physical world; physicists, biologists, and even psychologists seem to do their research without noticing said evidence.

If the position is asserted that evidence is not necessary, then the problem becomes not one of justifying belief in God, but rather of justifying disbelief in anything. Absent the requirement of evidence, all propositions are equally true; even mutually contradictory ones, and infinite numbers of elves. Since no one considers elven meteorologists to be rational, we must ask Mr. Latar to explain how to conduct ourselves rationally while not being able to distinguish between propositions of any flavor.

Rationality requires parsimony; parsimony rejects the merely possible in favor of the observable; and personal revelation is notoriously unreliable even in regards to where you left your car keys. Consequently, absent any evidence that cannot be explained with fewer entities, God is non-parsimonious. The problem, again, is that all theologians accept the existence of every entity proposed by science; and then they add one. It's not like theologians refute electrons in favor of God; that would be clearly irrational. So they must show that God is in fact necessary, not merely possible and extraneous, to keep him in the bounds of parsimony.

Or, rejecting parsimony, they must show how it is rational to conclude that other gods do not exist.

Micheal Planck

Words: 900 approx