[knightoffaith]

I think the context matters. The original context for all of this is whether from the perspective of the Christian, in thinking rationally for himself/herself, must have an argument for Christianity. I think the answer is no, just as the atheist, in thinking rationally for himself/herself, does not need an argument for atheism. I think the context of a generic discussion of Christianity is different - if we set the topic of our discussion to be whether Christianity is true or not, then yes, obviously we cannot just take its truth as a premise.

Maybe I'll draw an analogy - a foundational premise of science is that the past resembles the future. If we determine certain laws of nature based on past experimentation, that's not going to change in the future. Does the scientist, in thinking rationally for himself/herself, need to have an argument for this belief? I don't think so - the scientist can go on analyzing and understanding things scientifically through the scientific worldview without ever needing to construct an argument for this foundational premise. He/she is, however, on the lookout for contradictions - things or events that science can't explain or seem to defy science. I don't think I've described an irrational person here. Of course, if we have a discussion about the enterprise of science and its validity as a whole, then it may come to questioning this premise. But does a scientist in doing science have some kind of burden of proving this premise? I don't think so, just as the Christian in looking at the world through the Christian worldview does not have some kind of burden of proving Christianity.

>I present some of my own thinking below... What you've outlined here is actually firmly in the scope of natural theology, the project of establishing certain theological claims through human reason alone, though not all Christians agree that this project is successful. You may be interested in section 5 of chapter 2 of The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology that addresses the Gap problem, which is exactly what you've described, the problem of the gap between the conclusion of a cosmological argument, i.e. the existence of an ultimate cause, and the traditional omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevolent God.

Christians who don't buy natural theology would instead just say that God and His most important properties are self-evident through spiritual experience. (Even Christians who buy it would agree, I think, that this purely rational project doesn't really get you to the fullness of Christianity, and that spiritual experience is key to having the fullest sense of who God is, the presence of Christ here today, our role in the world, etc.)

As to your last point about whether we're being tricked, it is true that we cannot have certainty about these claims. Uncertainty is part of the human condition. But that doesn't prevent us from having knowledge of things. I know that there's a floor beneath me, even though I don't have a certain proof of it (it's not necessarily true - I could be dreaming, there could be an evil demon feeding me false sensory data, etc.)

>But I do get interested whenever religion wants to be an exclusive arbiter of reality and what's right or wrong. And every time, I have found it to fall short of all its claims.

Well, religion being an exclusive arbiter of reality is only something held by a fringe group of religious people I think. Most reasonable religious people will have no problem with mathematical proofs or scientific evidence revealing things about reality. Many religious people will also accept that those of other religions can have knowledge of moral truths. But if you just mean that religion wants to be the ultimate truth, well, yeah, it does.

[sdht0]

> I think the context matters.

Fair enough :)

> He/she is, however, on the lookout for contradictions

I'll just note that contradiction is not the right term in context of the premise. Rather, it'd be discrepancy that when studied further will become part of normal science: that the laws of physics evolve over time.

> But does a scientist in doing science have some kind of burden of proving this premise

To be a little clearer, yes, scientists do not need to prove the premises in everyday research. However, they do need to kept in mind when reasoning about reality. The current scientific premises are based on strong observational foundations. We have data to show that experiments done 50 years ago give exactly the same results today. If tomorrow the results change, then the premise will most definitely come under question.

> Uncertainty is part of the human condition

Definitely. Cogito, ergo sum is the only absolute surety we have. Everything else is Bayesian reasoning :)

Same for believing the floor is real vs the resurrection might not be. I've empirically tested the claim about the floor and it has never failed to hold up. When it does, I'll have to update my priors. But we only have one data point for the resurrection and thus have no real way to make strong judgements about what's the actual reality behind the resurrection.

> Well, religion being an exclusive arbiter of reality

Sorry I didn't mean to imply arbiter of reality to the exclusion of science, although religion did try back in the day when science was getting off the ground. Today, religions make specific claims about reality for which science doesn't have an answer (gaps). However, when asked why one should believe those specific claims (eternal heaven/hell after death) but not other contradicting claims (reincarnation), the answers ultimately fall back to taking it on faith. And at that point, one gets to basically pick and choose which faith-based answer feels the best.

[knightoffaith]

Well, "past resembling the future" doesn't seem to be something that's properly justified by empirical observation. What would that look like? "Since the past has resembled the future in the past many times, that gives us evidence that the past resembles the future." That's circular. And it's not a claim that's logically necessary. So our belief in it is justified by intuition, not by empirical evidence or logic.

>And at that point, one gets to basically pick and choose which faith-based answer feels the best.

Well, faith isn't just belief in arbitrary things for no reason, it's a belief grounded in spiritual experience that doesn't contradict our reason. (Though there are reasoned arguments for heaven/hell given certain premises.) Talking more broadly, there is a point at which your justifications for your beliefs bottom out, a point at which you believe in things not because of empirical or logical reasons, even if you reject all religions.

[sdht0]

> Since the past has resembled the future in the past many times, that gives us evidence that the past resembles the future

Ah not evidence in the strict sense of the world. I mean in the sense of probabilistic Bayesian reasoning [0], which I think we all use in some form (consciously or subconsciously) in forming our beliefs of reality. Since the laws have been stable in the past, we can hold a strong credence (say 99%, but never 100%) they will continue to hold in the future, until new data proves otherwise. Same reason we don't think twice before stepping into an airplane, trusting the .

In general, our intuitions do develop from our empirical evidence and logic. How can it be otherwise? Even our evaluation of which religion is true depends heavily on our upbringing and which ideas we are exposed to the most, which feed our intuition.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/

[knightoffaith]

Right, but what's at stake is induction itself, which is what Bayesian reasoning is just a formalization of. I never understood why Bayesianism could be a solution to the problem of induction, it just seems to move the problem elsewhere - like, in Bayesian language, what justifies our choice of a particular prior (assuming a uniform prior is still a choice).

>How can it be otherwise?

Chains of reasoning have to bottom out somewhere right?

[sdht0]

> what justifies our choice of a particular prior

Right that's a good question. I'll point to an answer Sean Carroll gave in an AMA episode [0] of his Mindscape podcast:

  The pros and cons of Bayesian reasoning are almost all in the choice of a prior. People who are pro-Bayesian will say, look, as long as your priors aren't completely crazy, if you collect enough data, the priors cease to matter. [...] The promise of Bayesian reasoning is that data overwhelms your prior ultimately. And therefore, there is no algorithmic way of choosing what your prior should be. It's a little bit fuzzy to say when things are priors and when things are posteriors because we all have certain inclinations, intuitions, pictures of the world, and that's perfectly okay. But as a good Bayesian, you shouldn't be too worried about picking your priors. You should be mostly worried about updating those priors when data comes in, when information comes in.

> Chains of reasoning have to bottom out somewhere

Absolutely. We should do our best to keep asking the why question, but at the end, we'll be left with a brute-force fact. The question then is, where do we stop, right? In the context of this thread, religion wants to say, God is the final answer. What caused God? Nothing, God is His own cause (kalam cosmological argument). And as a naturalist I'd say, the universe can be its own cause. There's no rational inconsistency there, contrary to what the kalam argument claims. Theists and atheists give different credence to these two viewpoints. And until we have more data, the question cannot really be settled with certainty. So both will keep trying to justify why one viewpoint should have a higher prior over the other, based on secondary evidence.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/04/03/ama-...