= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
paper-machine comments on Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (271)
I can't speak for his blog writings (since I have only read a few articles), but I have read his book on Nozick and am almost done with his book on Aquinas.
I have no reason to doubt your claim, but it seems plausible that he is right in this case (if, in fact, he does so accuse atheists in this way). Why? Because I had 4 years of Bible class in high school and studied philosophy of religion at university and yet still only understood the straw man versions (most likely unintentional straw men, mind you) of the arguments made by "some medieval philosopher", or had any idea about the philosophical "underpinnings of Christianity".
It wasn't until I got interested enough in the history of science to actually bother to read primary texts (in astronomy, alchemy, and "physics") that I was able to get my mind situated in such a way that I could look around at the world from within these alien Medieval paradigms and see that some of these claims weren't just silly bullshit.
Anyway, if it takes such a roundabout sequence of obscure studies to even begin to make sense of this stuff, it is no wonder that modern atheists (or virtually all Christians, for that matter) have trouble getting it right.
Someone tells me, "1 + 1 = 2."
I tell them, "Ah, but if you take one cloud and another cloud, and add them together, you still get one cloud, so 1 + 1 = 1."
Neither claim is "silly bullshit", but the conclusion of the second sentence is clearly broken. I have no reason to doubt Feser is a domain expert in theology. It's what he does with his expertise that bothers me.
That's exactly the point. Christianity is already a sociological fact that bares almost no resemblance to whatever kind of Christianity it is that would "get it right."
I'm comfortable calling that claim silly bullshit. In fact, I can't think of a better word for it. It is exactly the kind of thing the phrase "silly bullshit" is there to describe.
Yeah, I think I see what you mean. Feser seems to want to take apart arguments put forward by the atheist in the street in a no-holds-barred style, but then berates atheists that do the same to the Christian in the street, rather than only grappling with the arguments advanced by the masters of theology.