Accidental Blogger

Interesting NY Times blog post here by Gary Gutting, who is a philosophy professor at Notre Dame.

In these popular debates about God’s existence, the winners are
neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics — the neglected
step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that
neither side in the debate has made its case.   This is the position
supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion.

This conclusion should particularly discomfit popular proponents of
atheism, such as Richard Dawkins, whose position is entirely based on
demonstrably faulty arguments. * * *

An answer may lie in work by philosophers as different as David Hume,
Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alvin Plantinga.  In various ways, they have
shown that everyday life is based on “basic” beliefs for which we have
no good arguments. There are, for example, no more basic truths from
which we can prove that the past is often a good guide to the future,
that our memories are reliable, or that other people have a conscious
inner life.  Such beliefs simply — and quite properly — arise from our
experience in the world. Plantinga in particular has argued that core
religious beliefs can have a status similar to these basic but unproven
beliefs. His argument has clear plausibility for some sorts of religious
beliefs. Through experiences of, for example, natural beauty, moral
obligation, or loving and being loved, we may develop an abiding sense
of the reality of an extraordinarily good and powerful being who cares
about us.  Who is to say that such experiences do not give reason for
belief in God as much as parallel (though different) experiences give
reason for belief in reliable knowledge of the past and future and of
other human minds?  There is still room for philosophical disputes about
this line of thought, but it remains the most plausible starting point
of a philosophical case for religious belief.

But this defense of faith faces a steep hurdle. Although it may
support generic religious claims about a good and powerful being who
cares for us, it is very hard to see it sustaining the specific and
robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is
concretely and continually involved in our existence. * * *

We all know how I feel about religion.  Or maybe we don't — I recall some exchanges between Ruchira and Dean, but I'm not sure whether I've participated in that discussion.  Anyway, I think it's an interesting read. 

And yes, he's obviously right that the agnostics have it right.  He's also wrong to ridicule the atheists, in that there's no evidence of God, or, at least there's insufficient evidence of God, and it's perfectly rational to say that we should base our beliefs on evidence. 

But mostly I'm toying with the idea that this is all beside the point.  I don't know if consequentialist epistemology is a real thing, and in any event I'm not smart enough to do philosophy, but why not say that what we believe and think we know should be based on the consequences of believing it?  Religion is an easy target because it (1) gives people inner peace and (2) causes wars and has resulted in more human suffering than anything else I can think of, but why not expand that?  To take a popular philosophy example, the question isn't whether we know the sun will rise in the morning, but what are the consequences of knowing/believing or disbelieving/not knowing that the sun will rise in the morning.