Thanks for engaging with me. I’m afraid you’ll have to say more than that though to convince me. Of course I know about Occam’s Razor and how it can be applied to God. So do the theist philosophers. My uncertainty comes from general uncertainty about whether or not that is the right way to approach the question, especially given that Occam’s Razor is currently (a) unjustified and (b) arbitrary. Also, I think that it is better to be too open-minded and considerate than to be the opposite.
A. We have a good explanation of why they would be wrong.
Such explanations are easy to come by. For example, on any politically tinged issue, we have a good explanation for why anyone might be wrong. So would you say we shouldn’t take seriously expert opinions if they are on a politically sensitive topic? You would advise me against e.g. asking a bunch of libertarian grad students why they were libertarians?
B. Philosophy is not a discipline that reliably tracks the truth. Or converges to anything, really. See this. On topics that have been debated for centuries, many don’t even have an answer that 50% of philosophers can agree on. In spite of this, and in spite of the base rate among the general population for atheism, 72.8% of these philosophers surveyed were atheists. If you just look at philosophy of religion there’s a huge selection effect because a religious person is much more likely to think it’s worth studying.
Your conclusion from this is that the philosophers are the problem, and not the questions they are attempting to answer? You think, not that these questions are difficult and intractable, but that philosophers are stupid or irrational? That seems to me to be pretty obviously wrong, though I’d love to be convinced otherwise. (And if the questions are difficult and intractable, then you shouldn’t be as confident as you are!)
Thanks for engaging with me. I’m afraid you’ll have to say more than that though to convince me. Of course I know about Occam’s Razor and how it can be applied to God. So do the theist philosophers. My uncertainty comes from general uncertainty about whether or not that is the right way to approach the question, especially given that Occam’s Razor is currently (a) unjustified and (b) arbitrary. Also, I think that it is better to be too open-minded and considerate than to be the opposite.
Such explanations are easy to come by. For example, on any politically tinged issue, we have a good explanation for why anyone might be wrong. So would you say we shouldn’t take seriously expert opinions if they are on a politically sensitive topic? You would advise me against e.g. asking a bunch of libertarian grad students why they were libertarians?
Your conclusion from this is that the philosophers are the problem, and not the questions they are attempting to answer? You think, not that these questions are difficult and intractable, but that philosophers are stupid or irrational? That seems to me to be pretty obviously wrong, though I’d love to be convinced otherwise. (And if the questions are difficult and intractable, then you shouldn’t be as confident as you are!)