Ross Douthat on the Teapot Analogy
HT: Matt Jordan
Labels: Bertrand Russell
posted by Victor Reppert @ 10:01 PM
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- Name: Victor Reppert
- Location: Glendale, Arizona, United States
I am the author of C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, published by Inter-Varsity Press. I received a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.
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2 Comments:
At January 26, 2009 10:11 PM ,
Eric Koski said...
Douthat: "... which supposedly settles once and for all the question of whether nonbelievers should give any credence to the possibility that God exists:"
But that's just silly. The point of the analogy is that the mere fact that God's existence can't be disproven shouldn't dispose one to believe in His existence -- since it would be equally a reason for infinitely many other groundless beliefs. the argument is often and unfortunately mischaracterized as being much more ambitious than it truly is.
At January 26, 2009 10:46 PM ,
Victor Reppert said...
Yes, in proper context it is exactly identical to what is called the Great Pumpkin Objection in the Reformed epistemology debates. But at the more popular level, I think the teapot, and the spaghetti monster, are used as ways of actually ridiculing theism, on the grounds that the evidential consideration is the same between the teapot and God. And apparently some of Douthat's correspondents were using the teapot and such as tickets to a doubt and question free atheism.
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