***you wrote,
Thankfully, the fact of the matter is that a plurality of views about
the
details of theism does *not* constitute a defeater for natural
knowledge of
God, at least not *for most of us.*
************************************
Why not? (many of the 'views' conflict, and are incompatible with each
other)

[Michael Sudduth] Right, but since *I* don't hold the conflicting views,
the fact of conflict is not a defeater for me. The matter of defeaters
requires spelling out of course, as there are different ways of looking at
them, even when they are construed in the broad sense of "reasons for
noetic revision." I don't have time to go into all that right now, though
it is covered sufficiently in the book I'm working on.

Let me just do it this way for the moment.

(1) I can get a defeater for my beliefs in three general ways. I can
acquire sufficient reason for supposing that my belief B is false
(rebutter). I can acquire sufficient reason for supposing that my grounds
for holding B are not sufficiently indicative of the truth of B when
combined with some new belief C. I have acquired (undercutter). Or, in the
case of non-basicbeliefs, I can acquire sufficient reason for supposing
that one of my reasons for holding B is false (reason-defeating defeater).

(2) Now I take it that the alleged defeatee belief under discussion is the
belief that <there is a natural knowledge of God by way of reason>, where
"reason" is being broadly construed as inclusive of both inferential and
non-inferential beliefs arrived at my man's natural cognitive faculties or
belief forming processes. The defeater is allegedly the belief that <human
persons arrive at different and incompatible theistic beliefs on the basis
of reason>. Let's call the defeatee, G, and the defeater, D.

(3) Now what sort of defeater is this supposed to be? It's quite hard to
see how D provides a sufficient reason for supposing that G is false. After
all, it's not true in general that an awareness of different opinions on
some matter provides one with reasons for supposing that one's own belief
on the matter is false. That doesn't seem correct. So I don't see that D is
a rebutting defeater for G. Nor do I see D as an undercutting defeater for
G. What ground for G (of the many I have suggested) would no longer be
sufficiently indicative of the truth of G if D were added to the mix?
Lastly, I don't see that D is necessarily a reason-defeating defeater for
any of the reasons for supposing that G is true. What reason, among the
ones I have offered, for the truth of G, is logically inconsistent with D?
(That would be required to get a reason-defeating defeater for G).

The only argument I can think of here is one that I suggested in an earlier
post. For instance, you might believe that <if there is something like an
SD, then all human persons would have some knowledge of God in common>, but
<not everyone has some knowledge of God in common>. If you believed both of
these propositions, then you might have a defeater for the antecedent of
the first conditional. I say"might" because we'd have to consider the
relevant rest of your noetic structure. But if we focus on just these
propositions, I will concede that you get a defeater for belief in
something like an SD. And if you further thought that the existence of
something like an SD was your only ground for affirming G, then you would
have a reason-defeating defeater for your ground of G.

But I don't see the conditional above as being true, and I have offered
reasons why in earlier posts. There is also good reason to doubt that the
second premise aboveis true. Either way, though, I don't get the relevant
defeater because I'm not the one with the relevant beliefs. I have good
reason to reject at least one of these beliefs, so they don't constitute a
defeater for me. Moreover, they would not constitute a defeater for me in
particular because I do not limit natural knowledge of God to SD grounds.

(4) Also, it strikes me that, in a few places, your original post on this
matter confused the beliefs that were in fact in disagreement. For
instance, you mention that theists disagree about whether God created in
six days or whether it was by evolution. Let us suppose that these are
inconsistent views. This is not a disagreement about the proposition <God
created the Universe>, nor a disagreement about <God created human
persons>. It is a disagreement about a different proposition, a proposition
regarding how it is that God created what he created. To argue that the
disagreement transfers from the one proposition to the other is like
arguing that Jack and Jeff disagree about whether Lisa is in Nashville
because Jack thinks she got there by a car and Jeff thinks she took a
plane. The latter do not entail any disagreement about where Lisa is at, in
fact they assume an agreement on that.

A similar mistake is made I think when you discuss different understandings
of the divine attributes. O.K., so people disagree about whether God is
timelessly eternal or is everlastingly eternal, has total logical
immutability or de facto character immutability, is logically necessary or
is metaphysically necessary, simple in Thomas' sense or simple in
Swinburne's sense, omnipotent or almighty, etc. etc. But I don't see these
as disagreements about whether there exists a personal, Supreme being who
created the Universe. In fact, such disagreements are consistent with many
other theistic beliefs, i..e, that the creator of the Universe is without
being or end, and is perfect in power and knowledge, etc. But even it these
did indicate disagreements about theism in a very fundamental way, it would
not entail that there is no natural knowledge of God, only that some people
lack some natural knowledge of God. Once again, it seems to me that there
is a fallacy of moving from instances of people who hold this or that false
belief about God to the conclusion that such people hold no true beliefs
about God, and hence lack all knowledge of God. I just don't see how that
follows.

Lastly, it's important to recognize the level of discourse at which
disagreements regarding theism emerge among theists, as well as the
implications of such disagreements. They hardly entail that there is no
agreement on theistic propositions with (non-trivial) content. At least, I
don't see a good agument for that in what you say. After all, even those
who disagree about what it means for God to be immutable, need not disagree
on everything else, and even those disagree on immutability might find that
there is significant overlap in their views. And the same thing is true
with respect to apparent disagreements between folks on other divine
attributes. Last resort, as the medievals would say, where there is a
contradiction, make a distinction - something folks employ all the time in
reading the Bible.

Peace,
Michael




Again, Nash in his book claims that there is an 'essence' of Theistic
belief between the 'Theisms' that are out there - sadly he only
mentions Judaism, Islam, and Christianity - he misses your Stoic, some
buddhists I can think of, and on-the-fringe-Deists just to name a few
others. So what's this essence? Is it an essence (whatever that is?)
or is just some vague contentless general verbiage that can be molded
into 'who knows what' and passed off as 'Theism'?
BTW - I thought I was the one who asked the question about knowledge
from Scripture (Rom 1) - no one has answered me either....

Deepest Thanks to all.....
PS - Jaco Pastorius is the god of the Electric Bass. John Paul Jones
is a close second (demi-god?).


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