u/Crafty-Addendum8783

I will keep this relatively short. This question I thought of when reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

If mind independent reality is ultimately indeterminate and irrational, by those terms I mean non-rationalized or uninterpreted, on one side. While on the other side, reality is determinate and rational, on the side of the human mind and cognition. This is a simplification, but the point I think is clear.

So, how then is experience possible, because in order for us to have sensation, we would need to bring these two together somehow, and by that I mean, a way to interpret or determine our reality, either through and according to a principle or something else. I don't see how it is possible to bring these two heterogeneous categories, to use a Kantian term in a similar way he does, into unity with each other, on either side. Whereby we can then have intelligible experience.

Hopefully the question is clear, and the concern makes sense.

My central thesis is that we are epistemically justified in the proposition that “God exists,” simply by virtue of adequate understanding of the relevant concepts within that proposition. So, I am arguing we can have direct a priori knowledge that God exists, I am not here making an ontological or any other empirical argument, rather my argument rests solely on the basis that I think we can have a priori knowledge that God exists. Thus we are justified on the basis of reason, simply by understanding the concepts and terms of the proposition that “God exists.” There are different ways to formulate that proposition, but that’s not quite relevant nor is it my concern here, since anyway you formulate the proposition, in which you retain the original meaning, still works as a linguistic expression of a truth of reason. Thus it should be noted, this is not a linguistic argument solely about terms and definitions, but rather it is an epistemic argument. Essentially the proposition is like an analytic proposition, though I am hesitant on calling it that strictly right now, because like an analytic proposition we are a priori justified in believing it simply by grasping the concepts involved. For example, the proposition “All vixens are female foxes,” is an example of an analytic proposition in which we are rationally justified in believing by virtue of understanding the relevant concepts. Analyticity is something essential to this argument, I am not resting upon ontological or any other rational arguments, rather I am arguing the proposition God exists is a priori justified, and thus can be considered a truth of reason. I also want to mention this argument does not rely on you being a Rationalist or having a foundationalist epistemology. I still think it can work within other theories of knowledge, but that isn’t my focus right now, and would take a while to flush out.

Now, with the framing out of the way, I can explain why I think we are epistemically justified in the proposition that “God exists.” If we take the concepts or terms involved in the sentence, “God” and “exists,” I would argue that the predicate of the sentence is contained within the subject of the sentence in a conceptual sense. The reason for that is clear if we investigate the definitional ontology of what “God'“ means. I think we can find a common or generic simple definition as “God is a necessary being.” Now whether this God is unitarian, Trinitarian, or ist it one God or many, is not relevant to the current topic. Specificizing the Divine attributes is something that is inferred. Right, now I want to start with something non-inferential, which we can have direct rational or a priori knowledge of. It should again be noted that by “definitional,” I am not relying on linguistics here in this argument. Rather I am using those terms to express or to demonstrate my central thesis, thus it functions more on a second order or meta level rather than on a first order level. Since the former of the two is being used to demonstrate and give my reason for the latter.

Now, if you wanted to alter or change the definition, to something like God is ontologically contingent, then we are no longer reasoning about the same thing, or rather God at all, since that definition would reduce God definitionally to a creature or something natural. Even if you say, “God is the greatest contingent being,” you are still reducing God conceptually to a creature. Thus I think we have sufficient reason to reject defining God as contingent in any way. Since contingency seems to at least causally rely and dependent on something else. Which would obviously not be fitting or correct as a definition. I have chosen a more simple definition for now, because I want to demonstrate and defend my thesis, since adding further definitions to what is God, would complicate this, and is simply not necessary, since I can demonstrate my point with the definition of God as a necessary being. It should be noted here, I am not relying on ontology for this argument, I am relying on conceptual understanding for this argument.

Now if a being is ontologically necessary, then it must exist in all possible, since that is the definition of modal necessity. Then if that being exists in all possible worlds, then it must logically exists in this world. Then if that if that being exists in all possible worlds, then it must logically exists in this world. Therefore, we are rationally justified in believing the proposition that “God exists.” Now what I am doing here with this argument is not attempting to deductively prove that God exists, but rather demonstrate we are rationally justified in believing that God exists, or a necessary being exists. Thus this is not a rational argument about ontology, but rather about our rational epistemic justification. Now, it should be obvious I am not simply trying to think things into existence. It should also be noted, that this argument I put forward is not relying on any type of ontological argument in any way. I am not relying on metaphysics to demonstrate my point, rather what I was doing previously in that argument, is showing the conceptual basis and analysis we should take, when observing the concept of God as ontologically necessary. Thus I am not trying to argue for God from that specific argument, it was simply to demonstrate the conceptual relation between God and exists, and how the latter is conceptually contained within the former of the two terms. Also, by doing this, I do not make the proposition that “God exists” synthetic simply because I gave or showed my reasons for it. To argue that, would be to equate knowledge (first order) with showing that we have knowledge (second order). The latter of the two is done simply to show our justification, though it is not required to have the former of the two.

It might now be objected we don’t have rational justification simply from grasping or understanding the terms or concepts in the proposition, because the term “God” in the proposition could either necessarily exists or necessarily not exists, thus it would seem we have no rational basis to prefer either of the two. My response to this argument is that, it would have force, if the argument or reasoning put forward defending my thesis were closer to an ontological argument, rather my reasoning is explicitly epistemological. To demonstrate my point, let’s look at the counter proposition given. The proposition is “God does not exist.” If we look at the sentence, the words or terms “does” and “not” have been added to the original proposition that I put forward. The question is now, does an adequate understanding of the proposition yield epistemic justification? I don’t think it does, because I don’t see how the predicates of “does” and “not” are conceptually or definitionally contained within the subject of “God.” Since, by grasping what “God” is, one comes to the rational basis of necessarily existing, but to say not necessarily existing seems to add something extra, which then changes the term, to what it means or is “God.” Which means you are not, then justified in believing the proposition simply by virtue of adequate rational understanding of the terms or concepts in the sentence. What that means is further justification or evidence must be given either rationally or empirically, in order for us to have epistemic justification or warrant for believing the proposition. But, if this argument, was an ontological argument, then I would say yes, that it could work both ways. But since it is not, given that my argument is about rational concepts, then the argument doesn’t follow nor succeed against my reasoning. Rather in a sense, it actually demonstrates what I have been arguing. Because, if you were to then say God does not exist, then as I have previously said, you are not justified in believing that solely on the basis of a priori grasping of a concept. Rather it would make the proposition synthetic in a way, in that further evidence, either rational or empirical, must be given on the first order basis in order to justify or give warrant to that proposition. Secondly, I also don’t see the rational basis for defining God as a necessarily not existing being, in that by simply thinking or understanding what “God” is or means as a concept, necessarily existing seems to be implied or even contained on a rational basis. That would seem to require further rational inference or empirical evidence.

So, in short, I believe the proposition “God exists” is in a sense analytical, and the proposition “God does not exists” requires rational inference, beyond just understanding the concepts, or empirical evidence. Thus we don’t have epistemic justification in believing that “God does not exist” simply by adequate understanding of the concepts or terms. So, I see a sort of conceptual asymmetry between the two propositions, thus that counter example against my argument fails on the basis of this asymmetry, and seems to beg the question against my argument.

So, for the proposition and argument that I have put forward, the implications of it, is that we can have direct, a priori justified belief that I believe constitutes knowledge about God. Though this argument is not all the arguments that could be put forth as arguments that show how we can have religious knowledge or knowledge about God. Those arguments could also further justify and give positive reasons for our belief in God, as well as further arguing for and clarifying what the Divine attribute of God are. Thus in a sense, I believe that we have justification for belief in God, since as I have argued, the proposition God exists is a non-inferential a priori belief that simply requires adequate understanding of the relevant concepts, which makes it analytic. Even though this argument is not a deductive proof or infallible demonstration, it should not be taken that way, it still does give us sufficient justification which I believe does constitute knowledge. So, in a sense I believe we have a sort of prima facie justification, in that we have rational justification for belief in God, unless we are given empirical evidence or any other rational argument that gives us sufficient evidence to reject the belief in God, and overrule or outweigh our a priori justification in God’s existence. What exactly this God is or the attributes of it, is beyond the scope of this argument.

I now conclude this by saying, I in no way intend this to deductively prove that God exists, but I do think we have sufficient a priori justification for our belief in God.

It should finally be noted that I wrote this as an article for a previous project I undertook. So, you can also find it on substack under the same title.