Reply to Stephen Feinstein, round one

Hi folks,

I’ve been asked by a third party to get involved in a discussion with a Christian named Stephen Feinstein. Stephen has created his own blog for the occasion, and his very first post is here:

http://sovereignway.blogspot.com/2012/07/debating-atheist.html

In order to keep this as a one-on-one discussion, I’ll be disabling comments on my posts and so will he. Hope you enjoy the discussion, which I imagine will probably last several weeks. When we both agree that we’re finished, I’ll probably open up a big post-mortem comment thread. Until then, enjoy and be patient.

[...]

Stephen, rather than going through your message point by point in order, I want to start by focusing on a comment you made halfway through about the interview that Matt Dillahunty and I did with Ray Comfort last year. First, thanks for watching. Here’s what you said:

Russell, the bottom line is most people take for granted what they believe. Even more axiomatic, they take for granted presuppositions. Everyone has them, and everyone comes to conclusions based on them. The way evidence is interpreted is never neutral, but it is always 100% of the time bound by one’s presuppositions. When you and your partner debated Ray Comfort on your show, your partner accused Ray of having presuppositions that caused him to reach Biblical conclusions, whereas you atheists have no presuppositions but instead are led by the evidence alone and make your conclusion from there. I mean no disrespect at all by saying this, but that is a careless and philosophically absurd statement.

I checked the transcript of the show you mentioned, because that really didn’t sound like something we’d say. The closest thing I found occurred at literally the very last minute in the show.

Matt: “I really wish that we could demonstrate exactly why this is dishonest, but I think you just did, by making an appeal back to the Bible, you’ve got this presupposition, which is what I pointed out at the beginning, and you’re judging it based on that presupposition.”

Ray: “Well, we all do that.”

Matt: “Well, no we actually all don’t and that’s…”

Russell: [Interrupted, because we were out of time.]

So I checked in with Matt and asked what he meant by that. He said, “My point was that we don’t all begin with THAT presupposition.”  He would have elaborated on this, but the show ended there.

So, you’ve got no argument from me on that point. Neither of us meant to say that atheists have no presuppositions. However, this is a good launching point to talk about having standards before claiming knowledge.

Having agreed to the idea that everybody is subject to some unprovable assumptions, I think we can probably agree that if you and I hope to have a meaningful exchange with each other, arguing over which set of assumptions to accept will be a relatively useless exercise.  The first thing you said was “atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible.”  I assume that you’re going to try to demonstrate this to the satisfaction of me and the readers of our two blogs, which means that you’re going to do more than simply say “Let’s start by assuming that the Bible is true.”  Right?

That would certainly be an easy way to win every argument, after all. “Now I’m going to prove to you that Keynesian Economics is the best possible monetary system.  First, I want you to accept my presupposition that all the particulars of Keynesian Economics are true.” “I’m going to tell you what happened to me last night, but first I want you to presuppose that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and that some of that intelligent life is hovering in a cloaked ship above the atmosphere at this very moment, and also it is desperately in love with me.”

I’m pretty sure neither one of us is going to glorify our assumptions to that extent.  And that being the case, it’s really best if we both start by identifying the areas where we agree.  I’m going to make an effort to identify some of those points of agreement now; I’m not saying I’ll get them right, since I don’t know you yet, but I’m just going to float these and see what you think.

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