Compact but strangely silent on the only information of relevance -- the history of religion and the pantheon of gods in which men have invested belief through the centuries. It is not merely a question of the absence of evidence but also a question of evidence of absence. Plantinga casts the argument between the believer in god and the atheist. He ignores the arguments against his particular god by those that believe in another. Theists collectively refute one another with greater zeal and effectiveness than the most ardent atheistic evidentialist and they do this by historical reference to the proofs of error with which all religions are necessarily imbued.
Additionally, Planting offers an argument to the effect that intellectual malfunction cannot be objectively defined with respect to belief in a god. He does not ask how the believer acquired his belief or if it matters at all what is believed as long as something is believed. If and when he treads down that path he will likely become an atheist himself.
Are there any polytheistic philosophers of note? Monotheism, pantheism, and atheism apppear to be the only abiding religious structures that philosophers can produce. Polytheism is too indifferent.
Additionally, Planting offers an argument to the effect that intellectual malfunction cannot be objectively defined with respect to belief in a god.
Not quite sure what you mean, here.
He does not ask how the believer acquired his belief or if it matters at all what is believed as long as something is believed.
But he is arguing for the truth of monotheism; it certainly matters. Do you think he's pushing indifferentism? Why?
If and when he treads down that path he will likely become an atheist himself.
But does atheistic belief really have any additional explanatory power that monotheistic belief lacks? How do his critiques of the evidentialist position and/or the geneticist position fail? Or does he miss something else?
"Even we godless antimetaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith thousands of years old, the Christian faith, which was also the faith of Plato: that God is the truth, that truth is divine."
-Freddy Nietzsche, The Gay Science
9 posted on 3/1/02 8:44 PM Hawaii-Aleutian by Vercingetorix
Translation--explanation for that one!
Maybe you could critique the... Realatarian Party---for me!