Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
So, this is where I find myself at present where it comes to the rationalistic enterprise of justifying theism and my religion: There are two dominant trends in modern apologetics for "defending the faith": an evidentiary approach, and a presuppositional one. I think the latter is popular in some circles because it very clearly acknowledges the problem I have alluded to, and it attempts to bypass rational argumentation on the faulty grounds of shifting arguments to ontological and foundational matters. On the other side, an evidentialist theist is no better off, because his position is not defensible from a balanced appraisal of the evidence. So in the end, I am still a theist, even though I can not provide an evidentiary account for my beliefs, nor can I justify them as legitimate presuppositions. Much like I suspect Collins feels (In have not read his book), I find myself in a difficult position of wanting to both celebrate and eliminate mystery.
|
I've always kind of felt that apologetics started from a flawed premise, even back when I was young and full bore evangelical; if I had to prove my faith to someone else then a) I didn't have faith, I had knowledge and b) If I convinced someone with my apologetic they were convinced by knowledge not faith. Which ran contrary to the whole premise of the denominations I was in.
As for mystery, I don't know if there'll ever be a lack of mystery, it seems for every question we answer two more spring up, and often much harder ones.
I guess the problem is the mysteries become more and more esoteric and inaccessible without the necessary background knowledge. Some current mysteries in particle physics and cosmology are crazy (the "If we can't find something with this to go to the next idea we'll need to build a particle accelerator the size of the moon" kind of crazy), but are difficult to appreciate.
But I'm really not a mysteries kind of person, I hate ambiguity
