God cannot be obliged to produce evidence that only is accessible from the constraints of scientism, which holds that the only kind of knowledge we can have is scientific descriptions of regularly occurring and instrumentally perceived phenomena. If by definition God is an immaterial Spirit and his causal relation to the universe is bringing it into being and sustaining it in being, then such evidence is ruled out in principle. So God is not condemnable for not satisfying it. But this claim is self-defeating in that it itself cannot be supported by science. It also is circular in that it arbitrarily restricts knowledge to that which satisfies science only because that which satisfies science s the only knowledge its will accept. Finally, the view relies on the phenomenality of empirical observation from which the world is essentially qualitative and only presumed to be representational. But the qualitative character of the empirical is denied reality by final description. On the other hand is we suppose that God does exist and is able to create minds that are preadapted to the nature of things, that are mental and qualitative and intentional, as well as capable of forming more and more true beliefs through engagement with the organisms environment, which need not be just uniform but also intrinsically directed and involving singular events and even miracles, and if we look and see such things confirmed in this broader theistically compatible range of understanding and experience, then we should say that supposing that God exists, he has left ample evidence of His existence. If someone complains that this approach is also circular, we say that, it still renders the question of sufficient evidence moot. Further the theistic hypothesis is fruitful and self-referentially coherent in thought and practice, while the materialist is self-referentially incoherent in thought and self-defeating in practice. I am postulating a moderate, impure, higher order, sufficing coherentist view of justification of belief. On that ground at least, we can say that God does provide evidence for belief.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:41:07 +0000
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