Quote:
|
Hardly. If you want to prove it to a believer, then your standards don't need to be very high -- that whole "preaching to the choir" thing... If you want to prove it to a skeptic, good luck. That's quite a burden of proof to shoulder.
|
Lets use the standard of reason and assume for a while Kierkegard's leap of faith assertion is false. If the quote above holds any water then for an atheist a mere assertion of an impossbility of a rational proof of God's existence will be poolproof.
Quote:
|
Because a purely rational proof will at best lead to a logical tautology that has no relationship to ACTUAL existence outside the proof itself. Though realistically I'd bet that most such proofs will inevitably have circularity and assumptions just below the surface as well.
|
What is wrong with logical tautology if it adds to knowledge? Prooving that a "three angular close figure" is also a "three sided close figure" adds to the knowledge of a a triangle. I agree that an actual existence can not be derived from a logical tautology and even a logical neccessity. But in the original post starter, it use thomas aguinas which is in my reading does not offer ontological-logical proof but a metaphysical proof.
To say that a rational proof of God's existence is impossible must have its rational foundation too. The only way to do this is to proove the incosistency or the self-contradictory nature of the concept we call God.