Minnesota Joe

Since when is belief based on desire alone reasonable? It seems to me it flies in the very face of 'reason'. Fideism isn't reasonable, it is just honest...and flakey. (Why not, for example, say that believe that Harry Potter's world is real just because we want it to be?)

And how many theists acknowledge or believe that their metaphysics is made-up?

It also seems to me that to say that a being is ineffable and uknowable is to say something meaningless; that is, the claim "God is an ineffable and unknowable being" entails no predictions that could possibly be experienced by theists (much less anyone else) and I mean experiences of even the hokus pokus kind of personal revelation that theists claim they have.

PoodleLovinPessimist

I assert that belief is reasonable on desire on the condition that it is defined to be impossible to have knowledge for or against the belief. In the face of even the possibility of knowledge, belief on the basis of desire alone is irrational and contrary to reason.

Without this acceptance, no belief is "reasonable", because every belief is ultimately founded on premises accepted by, if not choice, then some sort of arbitrary subjective mechanism. I don't think you can make foundationalism work.

It's not flaky at the metaphysical level. What reason can I give for adopting metaphysical naturalism other than it seems to work "better"?

Well, because the reality of Harry Potter's world is well with the range of knowability. People can't manage perfect unknowability very well; there's always a magic spell, special procedure, or unusual circumstance which will render apparent the otherwise mysterious world.

Whenever they say, "you can't disprove God," they are acknowledging that they're in the domain of fideistic belief: An unfalsifiable assertion is outside the domain of knowledge. If you want to have a belief in a totally unfalsifiable God, then I'm willing to grant that belief "reasonability", so long as you're consistent about holding that the belief makes no difference.

Of course, if someone is going to be logically inconsistent, I'll hold that against his or her reasonability on procedural grounds.

To say it of a being, yes. But some nontrivial definitions of "God" do not hold the word as naming a being.

Minnesota Joe

So you are talking about universal skepticism then? But that is a self-defeating and unreasonable position in its own right.

The inference to the best explanation? That is about all we have to go on when any of these strange, pathological cases are defended. How do we know we aren't in the Matrix? What if an Evil Demon is deceiving us--we could even be fooled into thinking deductive logic is reliable. What if there is an ineffable, unknowable god who we can never experience.

And it seems to me that we can argue for metaphysical naturalism over particular god-concepts--we can appeal to mind-brain dependence. We can also can give the works "better" argument that you mentioned; would methodological naturalism work so well if metaphysical naturalism was false? But I do think I see your point here; for 'Gods' who are inconsequential, no such argument would matter.

O.K., I see where you are going with this...I think. I should have been clearer. You could make Harry Potter's world perfectly unfalsifiable as well, right? Or, say, a parallel dimension which it is impossible to visit or communicate with.

And if I can do this to any concept I want, then theism holds no better status than many other ideas that are made-up. So why exclude belief in any of these made-up ideas (save, perhaps, that we haven't thought of them yet)?

This sounds like Paul Davies' conception of fideism; I guess I have never thought of it as 'reasonable'. I think he (or, perhaps, Michael Shermer...I forget where I read this) calls it 'permitted'.

When you call them 'reasonable' in that particular belief, I no longer understand what you mean except, maybe, that their reason for believing is that they desire to believe. But this seems like a very loose definition and I'm not sure what purpose it serves, for I'll just say that these people aren't 'reasonable*' where 'reasonable*' refers to beliefs that are "reasonable and falsifiable" (or something like that).

Then what the hell are they talking about? Some sort of 'law' or 'First Cause'?

Yahzi

I don't think I have that problem.

The evidence that we should disbelieve in things we have no evidence for is that we do; or rather, that is how our brains function.

I think advances in neuroscience have laid a base in reality for these things.