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immutable characteristic, like eye color, I don’t consider it an identity. I’m willing to change my mind if I’m presented with compelling evidence for the existence of a God or gods. I can understand why many theists consider belief a part of their identity, as they often claim that they’re unwilling to change their minds. One may be more likely to consider something a part of one’s identity if it’s not subject to change.
In an e-mail I asked American physicist and best-selling author Dr. Victor Stenger where he places himself on the Dawkins’ God Scale. Vic replied, “8. It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of knowledge. I have knowledge beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no God” (personal correspondence, August 15, 2012). For more on why he thinks this, see God: The Failed Hypothesis (Stenger, 2007).
Aquinas’ five proofs: (1) motion (as nothing moves itself there must be a first, unmoved mover), (2) efficient causes (something must exist that is not caused), (3) possibility and necessity (because everything that’s possible to exist must not have existed at some point, then there must be something that necessarily exists), (4) gradation of being (because gradation exists there must be something that occupies the highest rung, perfection) (5) design (because natural bodies work toward some end, an intelligent being exists to which natural things are directed).
For more on Pascal’s Wager, see footnote 11 in chapter 4.
Anselm’s ontological argument, from Proslogion II : “Thus even the fool is convinced that something than which nothing greater can be conceived is in the understanding, since when he hears this, he understands it; and whatever is understood is in the understanding. And certainly that than which a greater cannot be conceived cannot be in the understanding alone. For if it is even in the understanding alone, it can be conceived to exist in reality also, which is greater. Thus if that than which a greater cannot be conceived is in the understanding alone, then that than which a greater cannot be conceived is itself that than which a greater can be conceived. But surely this cannot be. Thus without doubt something than which a greater cannot be conceived exists, both in the understanding and in reality.”
For more on the fine-tuning argument, see footnote 5 in chapter 7.
For more on the Kalm cosmological argument, see footnote 3 in chapter 7.
One of my Arts and Sciences colleagues asked me, “If faith doesn’t have the earmarks of an epistemology, why call it an epistemology? For an epistemology to be an epistemology, must empirical evidence play a significant role?” What he was getting at was that with faith, because empirical evidence does not play a role (or as philosophers say, faith “fails to satisfy the conditions” of an epistemology), why call it an epistemology?
There are many epistemologies, like rationalism and pragmatism, which do not rely upon empirical evidence. Descartes, for example, has a rationalist epistemology. For Descartes, reason by itself without any experience of the world is a source of knowledge. I don’t have to go out in the world—I can be a brain in a vat attached by electrodes to a computer, and just from the process of thought alone I can come to knowledge about the world. That’s basically a rationalist position. Hume, Locke, and Berkeley would deny that position and respond, “No, by itself reason can organize experience but it’s not a source of knowledge about experience. There’s only one source of knowledge about experience and that is empirical content, an encounter via the senses with the physical empirical universe.”
Historically, Kantians are yet another school. Their position is that both rationalism and empiricism are correct in different ways. For Kant, concepts without experience are empty but experience without concepts is blind; knowledge is a combination of the organizing function of the mind and sensory