This is interesting, but not as interesting as you may think. The fact that humans in general have a theistic intuition was believed for a long time by religious and non-religious scholars alike, including the likes of Freud and Marx. Religious believers interpret these intuitions as Divinely installed God-seeking faculty (signs from God), while non-theists would interpret these as evolutionary spandrels. Freud, for example, said these religious intuitions came with the evolutionary fight-or-flight response package- they are illusory beliefs aiding us weak mortals in dealing with everyday challenges. As such, they are not truth-guiding intuitions at all. Marx said religious belief is a buffering mechanism against the pangs of the corrupt social structure that we inhabit (who could forget his opiate for the masses quip). The same emotion rings true with todays evolutionary psychologists like Steve Pinker and E. O. Wilson. On the other hand, as pointed out above, religious believers have a radically different way of interpreting these intuitions. Many theistic scholars like Ibn Taymiyya, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin regarded these intuitions as a fundamental part of human rationality. Ibn Taymiyyas famous remark captures this nicely: [The theistic intuition] is to truth like the light of the eye is to the sun. St. Aquinas echoed him when he said: To know in a general and confused manner that God exists is implanted in us by nature. For these scholars, theistic intuitions were on par with other fundamental beliefs like logic, arithmetics, or the basic premises of scientific observation like induction. The point being: the existence of these intuitions have been acknowledged by both camps since time immemorial. Thats not where the debate is. The debate is *interpreting* these intuitions. And the only way to do it is getting your hands dirty, and figuring out which set of beliefs (theistic vs. non-theistic) has greater justification. Without knowing this beforehand, one would not be able to settle the intuition-interpreting debate. If, for example, belief in God is demonstrated to be justified on rational grounds, then that tells us it is perfectly plausible to hold that God would want us to discover and know of His existence, and as such, His signs would be strewn across the human noetic faculty. On the other hand, if belief in God is demonstrated to be false, then these intuitions would be stripped of their truth-guiding values. Bottomline: knowing whether these intuitions are justified or not (the de jure question) is not independent of knowing whether the belief these intuitions point to are justified or not (the de facto question).
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 11:12:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015