The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Friday, February 3, 2017

On Fideism

Many of the most fundamental things we believe, we believe without proof.

The external world, the past, the future, other minds, the general reliability of memory, that the future will resemble the past, that logic as we know it is reliable, and so on and on.

Why not God?

Especially me, with my crowded and colorful ontology of abstracta, possibilia, and immateria.

Which is not to say I have not, at various parts of my life, accepted arguments for God.

The argument a contingentia mundi, for example.

Or from the possibility of a necessary being.

But I don't actually see that it makes any practical difference.

No more than believing that there are sets, or propositions, or properties, say.

On hearing my granddaughter, age 12 today, practice the violin.

The Hallelujah Chorus.

It's not even Christmas.

It's her birthday.

The things skeptics say we believe without proof optimists describe as self-evident.

Look up Plantiga and whether the existence of God is self-evident.

And the picture of God presented by that beautiful chorus is wholly wrong.

The idea of God as a king and lawgiver derives from the mythology of the Bible, and is religious fiction with no basis in fact.

In fact, it is by no means clear that or why an infinite, necessary, perfect, immutable, eternal being would create a world of contingency, imperfection, and constant change, at all.

Let alone then ape a needy human monarch, commanding and threatening and posturing like some pathetic Trump.

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