At Uncommon Descent — though not only there! — one often come across the view that naturalism is inconsistent with rationality: if one accepts naturalism, then one ought not regard one’s own rational capacities as reliable. Some version of this view is ascribed to Darwin himself, and we can call it “Darwin’s Doubt” or simply “the Doubt.” Should we endorse the Doubt? Or are there reasons for doubting the Doubt?
Here are some positions I can think of about the relationship between naturalism and rationality:
(1) Endorse the Doubt: if naturalism is true, then rationality is undermined; but rationality is a basic presupposition of all thought and discourse; so we should reject naturalism. (C. S. Lewis seems to have held this view, and Alvin Plantinga has a really nice, very powerful version of it he calls the EAAN, or Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism — we can get into that in the comments, or we can start another thread just about the EAAN);
(2) Endorse the Doubt (inverted): if naturalism is true, then rationality is undermined — but naturalism is true, and therefore so much the worse for rationality. (I would ascribe a sophisticated version of this view to Nietzsche.)
(3) Defuse the Doubt: naturalism and rationality are consistent, if we have a sufficiently emergentist (non-reductive, non-materialist) naturalism and a deflationary conception of what the philosophical tradition has called “rationality” — e,g. “intelligence”. (On my reading this is John Dewey’s position, and he’s very clear that we should reject the entire Plato-to-Kant/Hegel tradition — what he calls “the Quest for Certainty” — in favor of a more modest conception of human cognitive abilities.)
(4) Reject the Doubt: naturalism and rationality are consistent, if we think of rationality in terms of (a) discursive, inferential capacities that intrinsic to <I>language</I>; and (b) these capacities emerge from, and are grounded in the perceptual-practical abilities that we share with other animals (and that characterize each of us at a very early moment of our lives). (On my view, (a) was nicely worked out by Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom, and (b) is implicit in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty.)
The key issue at stake between (3) and (4) is how much continuity or discontinuity there is between the cognitive abilities of non-sapient animals and the discursive-inferential abilities of sapient animals. But I take it that a satisfactory hybrid view of (3) and (4), one that locates correctly the different dimensions of continuity and discontinuity, would be sufficient to refute both (1) and (2).
I have some thoughts about how to sketch out such a view, but I thought it better to turn this over to comments before saying too much more.
First, Plantinga is the one making the argument, so the onus is on him to show that natural processes can’t produce true beliefs, not on me to show that they can.
Second, we can readily see that computers can produce true results. If computers can do so, why shouldn’t brains be able to do so?
Gregory,
I think even you can see that if it isn’t self-contradictory for Plantinga to assume his opponent’s position arguendo, then it isn’t self-contradictory for me to assume theism arguendo in the TAAT.
keiths:
William:
Their reason is defective.
Reality is the arbiter. If someone thinks that walking across eight-lane freeways is a good way to stay safe, reality will quickly teach him or her otherwise. We don’t need God or any other imaginary arbiter of truth to fill that role.
If you are going to defend the position of naturalism, it’s incumbent upon you to explain how naturalism can be trusted to not only produce true beliefs, but a valid means of arbiting beliefs.
We can also readily see that computers can produce false results if they are so programmed. The problem with naturalism is that there is nothing “outside of the program” by which to evaluate the product of the program. So, we cannot deliberately find true beliefs; we can only have them by chance.
Platinga’s argument isn’t that naturalism cannot produce true beliefs, because it might – by chance. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Theism was a lucerative scam while it lasted.
What you have is an elaborate appeal to consequence. Ironic that you prop up a fairy tale with a fallacy.
Defective compared to what? How can “reason”, which is a product of physics, be “defective”?
If by “reality” you mean “physics”, how is physics arbiting a true belief from a false one?
If they don’t ever get hit, is “reality” teaching them that it is safe to walk across the highway? As long as they don’t get hit, then, it is rational for them to consider it safe?
So, you are saying that physics can produce a false belief, and then later change that belief to the opposite? That first, one might believe that such an act is safe, and then when hit by a car, they will then have a different belief?
That means that physics can program one to believe both X and not-X about the same thing in question. So, at what point should one believe as true what physics has programmed them? If physics is capable of producing false beliefs, it is necessarily true that the ensuing belief that it is not safe to cross such a highway cannot be held (necessarily) as any more valid than the original belief, since both beliefs were generated from the same source – physics.
The problem, keiths, is that you keep stealing concepts. You have nothing other than what produces false beliefs to arbit for true beliefs.
Under naturalism, what you call scams and fallacies are as valid and as meaningful as anything else produced by physics. You’re like an oak leaf arguing with a maple leaf that there’s something wrong or untrue with the shape of a maple leaf.
Keiths says “reality” is the arbiter of true beliefs, as if “reality” doesn’t produce and maintain false beliefs.
I’m not advocating anything. I’m just describing the growing irrelevance of theism.
Islam is the last embodyment of political theism. It is currrently in a frenzy — a natural reaction when one’oxygen has been cut off. But it will eventually wither.
Theism withers not because it is untrue, but because it has ceased to contribute anything productive. It is running on fumes.
Really. What can you say about an idea when its latest and greatest supporting argument is appeal to consequent?
A few commentators wanted to press me more on what I mean by “rationality” here. Firstly, rationality is a capacity; it need not be exercised all the time in order to be present. It is no objection to my view that human beings are not rational all the time — on the contrary, it is precisely because of the ideal of rationality that so much of our actions and thoughts can count as irrational rather than as a-rational. (Parallel with ‘immoral’ and ‘amoral’.)
Second, what is it a capacity for? It is a capacity of “responsiveness to reasons as such,” as John McDowell puts it — it is a capacity to give reasons for ones actions, and to ask for reasons from others. (So rationality is essentially intersubjective and linguistic.) I count as rational just insofar as I can respond to questions of the form, “why did you do that?”
(Note: in a limiting case, “I just felt like it” might count as a reason, but whether it does or not depends on context. If I’m strolling across a park, and I happen to catch a Frisbee intersecting my path, “oh, I just felt like it” might be a perfectly good response if I’m asked why I did that. But I kick a puppy, and I give, “oh, I just felt like it” in response to why I did that, I would be rightly regarded as severely lacking in both empathy and self-control.)
So, what is a reason, thus construed? I take a reason to be a norm or rule — to give a reason is to say what one ought to do (or be) in relevantly similar circumstances. Rationality is normativity — all reasons are ought-claims. (There are oughts of conduct and oughts of belief.) The norms I’m most interested in are the norms that structure the whole process whereby we make commitments (i.e. make an assertion or judgment to which we commit ourselves), offer entitlements (justifications) to those commitments, challenge each others commitments and entitlements, and in so doing, try and get into increasingly better mutual coordination between ourselves and others about the world.
So the problem I’m posing here about naturalism and rationality is just the same problem as what I presented a few months ago about naturalism, normativity, and nihilism.
As for Plantinga, I have read the latest version of the EAAN in Where the Conflict Really Lies, but I haven’t read the full-blown version in Warrant and Proper Function. I haven’t read the essays in Naturalism Defeated?; I considered writing something about it, but then decided against, for the time being. But I do think that Churchland’s response (“Is Evolutionary Naturalism Epistemologically Self-Defeating” in Philo 12(2): 2009) is exactly right, and Plantinga’s response to Churchland shows that he just doesn’t get it.
The issue here is, do naturalists have a theory of semantic content? Plantinga seems to think that semantic content, whatever it is, just cannot be identified with neurophysiological processes. But he doesn’t give any argument for this! By contrast, Churchland gives a detailed account of just how neurophysiological processes do have semantic content — they have content by virtue of being a mostly reliable, partial mapping of the organism’s environment. Plantinga doesn’t see how this could count as semantic content, because of his own unquestioned intuitions about what semantic content must be like, regardless of what the best theoretical account turns out to be.
The one point one which I think I might be able to contribute to that particular conversation is by explicating just how Churchland understands himself in relation to Hegel, Peirce, and Sellars, in contrast with Plantinga’s self-understanding in relation to Descartes, Hume, and Reid. There’s a profound and usually unrecognized divide between the Cartesian description of our cognitive situation and the pragmatist description of the cognitive situation. But I don’t know if the Churchland-Plantinga debate is itself interesting enough for it to be worthwhile for me to write about it.
When the consequent is the failure of rationality, I’d say that’s a pretty sound argument.
Why would that be? Regardless of whether evolution or creationism is “true” you have no way of knowing whether your own mind is sound or rational, or even whether rationality is an illusion.
The existence of an arbiter would not imply that your own understanding is sound.
Not really proof, but the existence of people whose reasoning is obviously defective argues that one cannot prove anything within one’s own frame of reference.
God may exist, may be an arbiter of truth, and you may yet be insane.
As I understand it, Plantinga thinks that, in general, our beliefs are reliable. I also understand that he may accept guided evolution as one way that people could have developed that ability.
I have not explored his views in detail. Do you know whether he believes that if guided evolution is accepted, a naturalistic explanation for how reliable beliefs are formed by people today is available? Or does he propose a non-naturalistic explanation for that as well? Or does he just leave it as a mystery.
I find his argument interesting because it helps me to have a deeper understanding of the challenges of naturalism. In addition to the mental contents issue, his argument also depends on some questionable conditional probability arguments and on possibly invalid use of the philosophical concept of “a defeater”. I found both of those topics interesting to explore in the context of his argument..
Whether his argument is useful to promote theism is not something I bother with.
For me, I am starting with an assumption of naturalism and seeing where the challenges are to that.
I don’t see that it adds anything to challenges to naturalism.
We cannot be certain of our own sanity because sanity cannot cannot be confirmed from within the system whose sanity is being tested.
I never followed the hubbub over existentialism and absurdity, but perhaps this is a related notion.
Arguing
God is a necessary condition for the existence of truth
I would like to be able to ascertain truth
Therefore god exists
seems a bit too stupid to appear in a serious discussion.
Actually the form appears to be this
God is a necessary condition for the existence of truth
If god does not exist, truth does not exist
Perhaps a valid construction, but the conclusion that god exists does not follow.
No, the form of the argument is that truth is two entirely different things under theism and under naturalism, just as free will are two entirely different things under the two ideologies. You cannot have theistic-brand truth under naturalism; the only kind of truth available under naturalism is relative and subjective. Thus, arguing that someone else’s belief is “false” is a concept unavailable under naturalism, and using subjective, relative “logic” to come to “true” conclusions is a perversion of the term “true”.
You might as well be arguing that peach cobbler is the tastiest dessert in the world.
Truth, reason and morality, under naturalism, is nothing more than rhetoric disguised by stealing terms from theist.
As if theists agree on truth.
What is your definition of subjective?
You seem to be asserting that objective truth is true because it is useful. That’s a utilitarian argument, and naturalism coexists just fine with utilitarianism.
Stealing terms? What terms?
Scientists don’t deal in truth. They deal in facts, and facts can change as a result of evidence. Didn’t you learn anything from Indiana Jones?
But you are welcome to your “brand” of truth.
I would suggest that Murray’s “arguments” against “naturalism” are nothing more than old hackneyed sectarian caricatures meant to demonize anyone who doesn’t hold to a specified set of narrow sectarian beliefs.
The arguments are just gussied up in highfalutin “philosophical” language in order to make them appear erudite; but basically they just boil down to sneering hate speech. The implied message is, “We sectarians are morally superior to atheists, naturalists, Darwinists; and we have the corner on rationality and goodness.”
His caricatures are simply projections of his subculture’s own inner demons onto others they don’t know and don’t like.
I’m not really interested in Murray’s arguments. I’m slightly more concerned that actual philosophers would be worrying themselves about the validity of rationality. As if we could validate truth and the arbiter of truth.
But I agree that this is a gussied up appeal to consequent. If x isn’t true than (fill in the blank). In other words, I’m better than you.
I’ve heard of Bhaskar’s critical realism, but I don’t know anything about it, or how it differs from many other positions which have the same label. I briefly perused the Wikipedia pages on Bhaskar and on critical realism, and it seems generally congenial with my own philosophical orientation towards transcendental philosophy, dialectics, pragmatism, and critical theory. Sorry I can’t be a better interlocutor with you on that point.
I’m not sure if this was directed at me or not, but just in case it was — I assure you that establishing the validity of rationality is no part of my project. Let me explain why, just in case it makes a difference.
I think that, when we philosophize, we discover that the norms of reason are always and already there at work in the very tissue of thought and conduct. So in the philosophical mood, there’s nothing deeper than those norms of reason — there’s nothing to dig down past or beyond or whatever. The norms of reason are, indeed, grounds for conduct and thought — but there is no ground beneath those grounds. (How could there be? Why would there need to be?) The phrase “groundless grounds” captures precisely that aspect of my thinking.
However, there is a considerable difference between merely showing that the grounds are groundless (as Wittgenstein and Heidegger do, brilliantly) and explaining the causal history whereby those grounds came to be (as Sellars tried to do) or explicating how those grounds are ‘rooted’ in our lived bodily habits and comportments (as Merleau-Ponty tried to do).
On my view, the distinctively human capacity to take ourselves as guided by norms of thought and conduct is an elaborated, augmented off-shoot of distinctively animal capacities to perceive motivationally salient stimuli and voluntarily respond accordingly. The question of how to reconcile naturalism and rationality is dealt with in three moves:
(i) a theory of rationality that emphasizes social-linguistic norms as central to what makes rational cognition different from non-rational cognition (the Brandomian strand);
(ii) a theory of animality that emphasizes perceptual-practical, embodied habits as central to what makes animality different from non-animality (the Merleau-Pontyian/Deweyan strand);
(iii) a theory of what is required to transform habits into norms.
Since (i) and (ii) are already worked out by philosopher far more competent than I, my modest contribution will consist of (iii). And, if I were successful in doing that, I think that that would both satisfy the need for a hybrid view (as stated in the OP) and refute both absolutism/theism (my (1) in the OP) and materialism/nihilism (my (2) in the OP). (In which case, it would turn out that WJM is mistaken in thinking that (1) and (2) are the only options.)
I have never understood what it is supposed to mean to say that “naturalism is true”.
I’m not a naturalist. However “search for truth” does not make sense to me.
However, truth is very relevant. I just don’t see it as a target of any kind of search.
I wasn’t responding to you, but to WJM et al.
I have nothing against norms. I just think the norms evolved.
There is something special about formal logic. It’s incredibly useful and “reliable.” These are utilitarian norms. Easily reached by evolution.
But they are self referential and cannot be self-validated. I suppose you could argue whether they are accepted by faith or by confidence based on experience.
That seems a weird viewpoint. If we see a bird nest (an artifact made by a bird) as natural, then we should be able to see human artifacts as just as natural. Admittedly we often use “natural” in a different sense. However, the appropriate meaning for naturalism would seem to include as natural, any artifact of natural organisms (such as humans).
In Plantinga’s terms, “guided evolution” is non-naturalistic. He defines “naturalism” as “the thought that there is no such person as God, or anything like God” (WCRL, p ix). If naturalism is rationally acceptable, then it is rationally acceptable to hold that nothing guides the evolutionary process; if naturalism is not rationally acceptable, then it is rationally acceptable to hold that something (i.e. God) does guide the evolutionary process.
Better put, Plantinga’s EAAN is supposed to show that, if one assumes that the evolutionary process is unguided, then the reliability of one’s own cognitive faculties is low or inscrutable, and so the whole view implodes. By contrast, if one assumes that the evolutionary process is guided, then the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties, while still admitting ordinary human fallibility, is neither low nor inscrutable, and so the whole view does not implode.
So the challenge posed by the EAAN is to show that an “ordinary” estimation of one’s cognitive faculties — that their reliability is neither low nor inscrutable — is compatible with (indeed, explained by) unguided evolutionary processes, hence (in Platinga’s formal terms) N+E is not a defeater (much less an undefeatable defeater) for R.
Naturalism works. It gives us cool things like digital watches.
I find it interesting that in its lucid moments, religions gives us aphorisms like “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” A seeming reference to our inability to perceive any ultimate truth.
But like much Biblical source material, it is ignored when it is inconvenient.
Yes, that’s my view as well.
Well, there’s a difference between thinking that our norms of rationality are (in some sense) the result of natural selection and thinking that they are just tools or means to an end. I mean, they are, in the sense that all adaptations are, but adaptations are effective because they allow the organism in question to grapple with that little bit of reality that it must interact with in order for the species to maintain its existence. And so cognitive habits, qua adaptations, also allow those animals that have them to grapple with the relevant bits of reality, and so too do rational norms.
I would say “neither” — the acceptability of the norms is a question that can’t be answered, since any account of why the norms of thought are acceptable will be, as an account, assessed using the very norms whose acceptability is (ex hypothesi) open to question.
The most we could do is:
(1) reconstruct the biological-historical narrative whereby we came to have general norms, normativity as such, at all (in contrast with the millions of other species that do perfectly well without rationality).
(2) reconstruct the cultural-historical narrative whereby we came to have the particular norms (epistemic, semantic, ethical) that we have;
(3) employ those very same norms in evaluating proposals to change those norms;
(4) subject to a strong dose of ‘therapy’ the desire for something more than (1)-(3) — here’s where Nietzsche, Freud, Dewey, and Wittgenstein all become very helpful.
I would argue the opposite conclusion. If evolution is guided, then we are teacup poodles — beings that would not survive in the wild. Our makeup is the result of some whim or fashion.
If were are naturally selected, then our makeup and behavior have survived the sieve of selection and have objective validation.
Nothing to do with truth in either case.
Perhaps the philosophers are making the problem too hard.
Maybe it simply comes down to rationalism being an emergent property of intelligent creatures finding the best way to survive. The more intelligent the creature is, the more options it must consider in making choices about future behavior. It now has to take in not only its interactions with other members of its own species, as well as with other species; it must now contemplate its greater knowledge of the larger environment and those futures it can now imagine.
If that intelligence is able to imagine likely futures from experiences in the past, the need to reason about how to get to desired futures becomes more complex as more options have to be considered. More knowledge means more options to consider.
Just looking at the history of humans tells us that religions don’t get it right. There have been, and continues to be, thousands of conflicting sectarian beliefs about thousands of deities that are presumed to hand down rules of behavior. Many of those deities were consciously invented by leaders of earlier cultures in order to control collective behavior.
Part of that control exploited ignorance and fear; and it gave advantage to priestly classes who gained a greater share of the wealth and resources as a result of their “rationality.”
Science gradually emerged; in which it became understood that collective knowledge about the physical world not only leads to greater ability to predict, but reveals that religions are not necessarily reliable sources of knowledge, and in fact, often lead to confusion and disagreement about “proper behavior.”
With the rapid growth of science and the industrial revolution came the rapid growth of the human population (rationality actually worked!) and the concomitant knowledge about the effects of that growth on the environment. Now “rational” behavior has to account for those effects as well; and sectarian conflicts are not of much help here.
So it appears that “rationality” emerges from the need for a growing collective intelligence to account for many more degrees of freedom in making optimal choices; and the many more degrees of freedom are a result of that intelligence being able to remember more details about the past and to project that knowledge into imagined futures.
Rationalism emerges in the natural world; it goes to hell in the sectarian world.
William, in a post at UD entitled
Stolen Obligations: Why do atheists care about truth, reason or morality?
Truth, reason and morality aren’t derivable from theism, either. You have simply defined them in terms of God, because a) he’s the biggest kid on the block, and b) he created us. Ironically, it’s exactly the kind of “might makes right” justification that you so often accuse others of.
If minds are not the computed product of physics, they output whatever they output.
There is no ideal form, perfection, or “truth” available to us against which we can compare our thoughts. Even if you assume there is, we definitely do not have reliable access to it, which means we can never be certain of the truth of any particular thought.
The situation is the same for naturalists and theists. Without reliable access to an Absolute Arbiter of truth, people just have to do their best. We can think about the problem in different ways, to see if we come up with the same answer. We can compare our answers to those of our fellow humans. We can observe the world to see if it conforms to our thinking, and we can revise our thinking if it does not.
All of those “tricks” are equally available under theism and naturalism.
Similarly, morality is just whatever people say it is. Thus stoning people to death is considered moral by some but not by others.
Naturalism and evolutionary theory are descriptive, not normative.
They care, and that is enough.
We see morality, truth and rationality as valuable even if they don’t score us any “points”, and we pity those for whom the value evaporates if Sky Daddy isn’t watching.
Why do atheists like to eat and sleep and have sex?
Demonstrate to me that the questions are different.
I almost agree, and perhaps my quibbles are just (or mostly) terminological — but let’s see . . .
Well, there is certainly is physical reality with which each and every cognitive subject can compare his or her judgments and with those of other cognitive subjects, and while our cognitive access to it is fallible, fallible does not mean unreliable — it just means not perfectly reliable.
Much more importantly, for my view — if it were not for the fact that we can and do compare our judgments about reality with reality itself and with the judgments of others, we would be completely unable to discover that we are fallible at all — let alone be able to correct those fallible judgments when they are discovered. In other words, some minimal degree of mostly reliable access to objective reality is a necessary condition for the possibility of discovering that we are fallible at all.
So, where you say
all I really want to add is the transcendental argument I sketched above — that we could not do even that much if we were not in some kind of cognitive contact with how things really are. So far, we’re pretty much in agreement.
However, when you say,
at this point I disagree. I think that our ethical practices (and discourse about those practices, and theories about both the practices and the discourse) can be right or wrong in roughly the same way that our scientific practices can be right or wrong.
Our scientific practices are going well (or badly) if they allow us to successfully intervene or interfere with physical things, generate novel and testable predictions, and so on. So physical reality serves as a benchmark for the empirical adequacy of scientific practices. In roughly the same way, the conditions of human flourishing serve as a benchmark for the ethical adequacy of our ethical practices. That’s why oppression and injustice are morally wrong, regardless of social consensus.
I like this way of putting it — though I wonder how much it will advance the discussion. For naturalists, it’s just ‘obvious’ that the questions are (basically) similar; for the theist, it’s just ‘obvious’ that they aren’t.
Okay, I’ll try to advance the discussion. Atheists (some of them) like to feel safe. It’s a bit like feeling warm but not hot, satisfied but not bloated, and so forth.
To feel safe you might work toward a society that encourages nonviolence and discourages cheating. Same goes for the atheist contemplating the society that his children will live in.
We all know people who cheat and people who don’t care about their descendants, but that has nothing to do with their philosophies. Some of the worst scum on earth have been priests.
Eating, sleeping, and sex are necessary for survival and/or procreation. Truth, reason, and morality are not.
Of course we have reliable access to it, and of course we can be certain of the truth of particular thoughts. It’s self-referential, self-contradictory, hyperskeptical madness to think otherwise.
The question is whether this
requires anything more than
On my construal of the respective quoted passages, nothing more than keiths model of intersubjective comparison, error-detection, and correction is required to explain how we are able to know that we have reliable cognitive contact with reality and be entitled to assert that some of our thoughts are true. And that’s because we would be unable to share our judgments, detect our errors, and correct our judgments, unless it were the case that we were in cognitive contact with reality.
But, to return to the theme of the OP, that model of rational discourse is fully compatible with an emergentist naturalism that locates the evolutionary antecedents of rational discourse in the complicated social behaviors of large-brained gregarious primates.
If morality is not necessary for survival why are you concerned about it?
It is beyond my capacity to enlighten you; I will let others take a spin on the William-go-round. You think a ‘materialist’ should only care about their own reproduction? A more buffoonish misunderstanding of both ‘materialism’ and evolutionary theory would be hard to find.
At the risk of being sent to guano, I have to say that there is a word for someone who doesn’t understand empathy and has no appetite for compassion and caring about others.
It is interesting, however, to contemplate an entire website dominated by people who feel no positive desire to be useful to others and are unable even intellectually to comprehend love.
Or a real arbiter of imaginary truths. Or an arbitrary imaginer of truths.
And what of a theist whose god tells him to destroy a city and kill all the men, women and children in it? Or tells an entire community to commit suicide, murdering anyone who does not do so voluntarily?
Exactly where is your moral advantage and where are your examples?
Is there a God? Why yes, there must be. Otherwise – ie, if the answer is no – there is no arbiter of truth, and hence the answer cannot be no, otherwise the answer ‘no’ would be true even though there was no-one to arbit it. QED. Take that, materialists.
How do you know?
My question wasn’t about survival. It was about appetite.
I find it extraordinary that anyone would not understand love or understand the appetite to be a good person.
That UD could be an entire community of people who have no appetite for love and moral behavior is quite an extraordinary revelation.
What WJM is trying to say, insofar as I understand him at all (which is doubtful), is that our care and concern for others (agape, caritas, love) only makes sense — is only intelligible — if one accepts theism. As he construes “naturalism” or “atheism,” the naturalist is in the unenviable epistemic position of being unable to make sense of her care and concern for others. Likewise, on his construal, the naturalist or atheist is in the unenviable epistemic position of being unable to make sense of her own desire to be a morally decent person.
In short, WJM imagines the atheist as someone who is unable to understand her own most fundamental motivations, since she lacks the only resources that would render those motivations intelligible, even to herself.
William,
Show us the contradiction.
I’ve asked you probably a dozen times by now, and yet you’ve never managed to show us how the lack of reliable A2AA (access to the Absolute Arbiter) leads to a contradiction.
The self-contradiction is in the quote that preceded my comment. It’s been pointed out to you dozens of times.