FTA part 2: General questions for Aron (part of the Aron Series)

Aron, how are you doing? I’m glad to hear from you again! I hope you continue to think deeply about these questions.

To be honest, I didn't realize that I was going against what Larry believed about using epistemic probabilities and such. At any rate, I am glad we came to some agreement about how TAG could possibly be used in an argument, even if we still don’t agree on whether certainty in TAG renders evidence for God useless.

Hey, but now that we've come to some sort of conclusion, it sounds like you want to switch gears and go more in-depth into the fine tuning? Would that be correct? I’m interested in doing that. I find the fine tuning argument fascinating, and it is definitely one of the arguments that first opened the door to my skeptical way of thinking to allow me to entertain the possibility that God exists.

But before we get too in-depth with this argument, and I see that you have put forth a couple challenges to it, I was wondering if you’d answer a couple of questions? The reason why is I don’t know you very well. (Maybe Larry does, but I don’t!)

First, I am assuming you are not a believer in Jesus in the classical Christian sense. Is that right? Did you ever at one point consider yourself to be a Christian?

Assuming your answer to the first question is, “No, I am not a believer,” what is your interest in Ratio Christi?

What is your favorite argument in favor of the existence of God?

What is your favorite argument against the existence of God?

A lot of atheists these days take a very hard scientistic stance, in which the only allowable evidence in discussions about whether God exists is evidence that can be tested scientifically. I am assuming that would not be your stance, given how into the TAG you got, but I just wanted to make sure.

Thanks a bunch for humoring me on answering these questions. The reason why I think they’re important is because knowing your background might help us avoid talking past each other. To be fair, I will give you my answers.

I am a believer, but I grew up atheist. My favorite argument in favor of the existence of God is...well, it’s hard to pin one down. I've switched back and forth over the years, but as I said, the fine tuning argument was one of the first that I heard and it really went along way to convincing me to go from being an atheist to theist. For this reason, I am really passionate about apologetics, which is why I am passionate about Ratio Christi.

My favorite argument for atheism is the problem of evil, as well as the horrific events in the OT as evidence against Yahweh being perfectly good; those two are very tough problems for the Christian.

I am clearly not a proponent of scientism, although I am a scientist.

[See summary page of this discussion, with links to all the posts, here.]