CADRE Comments

Sometimes I'm asked to try to explain the Trinity simply -- sometimes for the humor of watching me try it! {wry g} And sometimes for the perceived apologetic value in my acknowledgment that the doctrinal set of trinitarian theism isn't simple, as if simplicity of a doctrinal set was itself evidence of truth (tell that to an astrophysicist of any flavor), or as if the complexity in itself should be regarded as evidence of unnecessary (and thus false) over-complication. There are only distant analogies to the Trinity in Nature, and that doesn't help, although that ought to be expected since we're supposed to be talking about the one and only self-existent ground of all reality. The Latin phrase sui generis is sometimes used here; that just means it's one of a kind and so every analogy to it for illustration will bring built-in differences from it. But one of my nieces (not yet ten years old) started catechism training this year, with some portions of doctrine (re...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here. This entry continues a fourth chapter, begun here. I highly recommend reading at least as far back as this, first.] If my brother, Spencer, thinks he has good grounds for believing that my belief of a snake in the hole has been fostered purely from a cocaine-fit, then he would not (or at least should not) be embarrassed to discover there was, after all, a snake in the hole. He had no good reason to believe the snake was there. Furthermore, my argument that he (and I) should stay away from the hole was ultimately untrustworthy. The form of the argument that we should stay away from the hole was not itself invalid; but without the anchor of rationality at the beginning, there was no good reason to pay attention either to my initial belief ("a snake is in the hole") or to my consequent inferred belief ("we should stay away from the hol...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here. ] Having explained why, as a Christian, I do not hold to what many people (Christian and sceptic) have considered the 'party line' that reason and faith are mutually exclusive, I will now explore this issue from a deeper philosophical perspective. A Christian (or other religious theist) who accepts a faith/reason disparity will usually do so for religious reasons. His argument that these two aspects must be mutually exclusive (or at least need not have anything to do with each other) will be grounded on positions and presumptions which usually proceed from a devout loyalty to God's status, or from authority of specifically religious leaders, or from the structure of religious ritual, or some combination thereof. And a sceptic who accepts a faith/reason disparity might do so only because, as far as he can tell, his opposition has chosen that ...