Abstract

My aim is to highlight four philosophical presuppositional issues that underliethe questions associated with God-arguments precisely as such.Apresuppositional issue is some matter that systematically precedes a question onwhich one is focusing, and one‟s stance on the presuppositional issue provides afundamental component of one‟s stance on that focalquestion. Moreover, differences between stances on presuppositional issuesfrequently constitute a basic part of disputes overstances on focal questions. Finally, philosophical presuppositional issues areespecially crucial, since they regard one‟s fundamental horizon – one‟s basiccategories of meaning and criteria of verification. For example, yourdisagreement with your friend about whether capital punishment could ever bemorally good may well arise at least partly from an underlying disagreement between the two of you about just what “moralgoodness” means and how its presence in a concrete situation can be confirmedor disconfirmed.The first of the philosophical presuppositional issues I have in mind isepistemological: Do I ever genuinely know anything at all? The remaining issuesare metaphysical. One is general: What are the characteristics of reality preciselyas such? And two are particular: Is utter badness real? Is direct divine selfdisclosurereal?In the first of my paper‟s three parts, I will recount four common stanceson these issues that short-circuit the enterprise of attempting to arguephilosophically in favor of God before it even gets started. To maintain any ofthem is to maintain a philosophical presupposition that excludes in advance thepotential rational success of any particular argument for God, thus leaving everysuch argument as at most the symbolic expression of individual or collectivefeelings, experiences, memories, hopes, expectations, and so forth, or perhaps asjust a matter of historical interest. In the second part of my paper, I will review two other common stancesthat serve to undercut the potential religious relevance of any philosophical Godargument,evenifithappenstoberationallysuccessful.Thesestancesconstitutephilosophicalpresuppositionsthatexclude in advance the possibility that what aphilosophical argument might establish has any connection at all with what thereligious believer means by “God.”Finally, in my paper‟s third part I will spell out a further set ofphilosophical presuppositions, all of which, in my view, must be in place if anyparticular argument in favor of God is to have hope of being rationally successfuland religiously relevant. Although maintaining these latter presuppositions doesnot guarantee the success and relevance of any particular God-argument, it leavessuch matters open to being determined argument by argument, rather than havingtheir very possibility dismissed before any particular argument has actually beenstudied.I must add three important prefatory notes. First, in this paper what Inormally mean by “God” is what is meant by that word in the philosophicaltradition typified by the views of Augustine and Aquinas. More exactly, forpresent purposes let me say that by “God” I mean at least this: a reality that isessentially spiritual, world-transcending, all-knowing, all-powerful, and allloving.Second, my primary purpose in this paper is elucidation, not evaluation.While you will not be surprised to learn that I think the presuppositions discussedin the third part are notably more defensible than those discussed in parts one andtwo, I am mainly concerned not to justify any specific set of presuppositions butrather to illuminate the role that presuppositions play, whether explicitly or justimplicitly, and therefore the importance of taking them into account in order toproperly situate particular arguments for God.Third, my interest in this topic grows out of my own experience in theclassroom. An important part of my pedagogical responsibility is to help studentsunderstand and assess some of the traditional philosophical arguments for God –cosmological, ontological, moral, and so forth. The propensity of many studentsto remain unmoved by those arguments stems not from their study of specificfeatures of the arguments themselves but rather from their antecedentassumptions about knowing and reality. That is to say, for many students thecrucial philosophical factor in their rejection of this or that particular Godargumentis their stance, whether patent or just latent, on some issue that isproper not to philosophy of religion but rather to general epistemology ormetaphysics.2