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Fallacious Arguments for God
Consider the following quotation:
Many of you will encounter, if you haven't, traditional rational arguments for the existence of God. They are all of them afflicted with fallacies. They presuppose in the premises what they claim to demonstrate in the conclusion. And, further, they presuppose in their premises something about the very nature of God.Who said that? Bertrand Russell? Richard Dawkins? Christopher Hitchens?
Nope.
Try Truman G. Madsen.
(It occurs to me that many arguments against God also presuppose something about the nature of God.)
2 comments:
I love this talk by Madsen. He's brilliant and always reminds of what type of saint I want to be.
The first time I heard Madsen's lecture on Joseph Smith's first vision was on my mission and I remember saying to my companion at the time, "I want to be able to think like this guy." He, more than anybody else, made me want to study philosophy.
As for the post, I think that something about God's nature MUST be assumed in the premise of each argument, otherwise the word loses pretty much all of its meaning. Although I don't have much to support the following assertion, I suspect that this excuses arguments against God more than it does arguments for God.
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