What's wrong with illegal immigration?

Philosopher Bill Vallicella makes a number of good points regarding illegal immigration.

On private judgment

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/08/liccione-on-private-judgment.html

Van Til and Vallicella

The proof presupposes the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), and I am willing to grant that LNC and the other laws of logic can be argued to presuppose in their turn the existence of an omniscient necessary being. One argument to this conclusion is the Anderson-Welty argument which I critically examine here. I conclude that, while the argument is not rationally compelling, it does contribute to the rationality of belief in God.  In other words, the Anderson-Welty argument is a good reason to believe in the existence of God. It does not, however, establish the existence of God in a definitive manner. It does not show that the existence of God is absolutely certain.

At the very most, then, one can plausibly argue to, but not prove, the existence of an omniscient necessary being whose existence is a presupposition of our rational operations in accordance with the laws of logic.  But this is a far cry from what Van Til asserts above, namely, that the truth of Christianity with all its very specific claims is a condition of the possibility of proving anything. Trinity and Incarnation are among these specific claims. How are these doctrines supposed to bear upon the laws of logic? [emphasis mine]

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/01/van-til-on-an-absolutely-certain-proof-of-christianity.html

i) Is a philosophical argument a failure unless it can establish a claim with absolute certainty? Isn't that a retrograde definition of a successful philosophical argument? Aren't nearly all philosophical arguments failures by that austere standard? Is that a deficiency of the argument, or an artificial standard of success? 

ii) What if your aim was never to prove the truth of Christianity by one particular argument? Is your argument a failure if it misses a target it was never aiming for?

What if your particular argument is part of a cumulative case strategy? No one argument gets you to the finish line, but each argument combines with other arguments towards that objective? 

The epistemological boat

In one respect I agree with most of this:

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/01/god-the-cosmos-other-minds-in-the-same-epistemological-boat.html

However, I have several points of disagreement:

i) I don't think the various arguments from evil cast reasonable doubt on Christian theism. I've given my reasons on multiple occasions.

ii) As far as losing faith in God, I suspect what most folks in that situation really doubt isn't God's existence but God's benevolence. And there's a practical link between the two: if you doubt God's benevolence, then the question of his existence is secondary. You just don't care any more whether or not God exists. Where's the relevant point of contrast between an indifferent God and a nonexistent God? An indifferent God isn't looking out for you and a nonexistent God isn't looking out for you.

In terms of religious disillusionment, I don't think God's existence is the primary issue. If you can no longer bring yourself to believe in a God who cares about you, that moots the relevance of whether he exists. The question ceases to be of any interest once you cut the nerve of self-interest.

iii) There's a sense in which God is dubitable in a way that belief in other minds, the past, the external world is not. That, however, is the wrong way to cast the issue. Dubitability or indubitability are psychological states. The criterion shouldn't be psychology but reason, evidence, and justification. What's the explanatory power of naturalism compared to Christian theism? What is necessary to ground your beliefs? 

The important question at issue isn't whether people can and do doubt God's existence, but whether they ought to. Not whether it's possible but whether it's rational. 

Is Paul begging the question?

I'll make a few comments about this post:

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/01/reading-now-cornelius-van-til-the-defense-of-the-faith.html

1. It's anachronistic to read Paul through the prism of Hume. Viewed from a post-Enlightenment context, it may seem like Paul is begging the question, but the thought-world of the 1C Roman Empire was generally very different from the Enlightenment and its secular progeny. (There was, to be sure, the occasional skeptic or atheist.)

2. In addition, Paul is writing to and for Christians. Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity. The argument from authority is not fallacious if your target audience shares the same paradigm. The implied reader of Paul's letter acknowledged the dim view of pagan idolatry and immorality in OT Judaism. 

3. There's a circular quality to Vallicella's complaint. He doesn't identify as a Christian. He's merely a theist who's "sympathetic" to Christianity. Given his outlook, he naturally rejects Paul's classically Jewish characterization of pagan infidelity. In part, Vallicella is giving us his autobiographical reaction. He doesn't see it the same way as Paul because he's on the other side of the issue. But that carries no presumption that Paul is wrong. Whatever your position, by definition you will disagree with the opposing position. 

Needless to say, Paul's indictment will be unconvincing to someone who doesn't share that outlook. It wasn't meant to be independently persuasive. Rather, it plays an explanatory role in Paul's overall presentation. There's an inner logic to the argument in Romans. So the hermeneutical issue is the role that Rom 1 plays in the larger flow of argument. If God is just but humans are unjust, then that has implications for the nature of salvation. The hermeneutical question is the logical relationship between Rom 1 and the remainder of Romans. How Rom 1 functions in Paul's argumentative strategy, given the task he set for himself. Given the target audience.

Autonomous reason

William Vallicella has been commenting on Van Til's The Defense of the Faith. It's nice to have a philosopher of Vallicella's stature interact with Van Til: 

Why am I bothering to read Van Til?

I have been told that I am wasting my time with Van Til.  One, but not the only, reason I am ploughing through The Defense of the Faith (4th ed.) is because his striking formulations help me focus certain questions that concern me deeply.   One of these questions concerns the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith. (Leo Strauss is very good on the is tension.) Here is a Van Til passage that turns my crank:

So we cannot subject the authoritative pronouncements of Scripture about reality to the scrutiny of reason because it is reason itself that learns of its proper function from Scripture." (130) 

The Bible, then, is an absolutely infallible and finally authoritative source of truth which man cannot question and to which he must submit.  But what exactly does the Bible say? Does it say that God is triune? Yes, says Van Till. But now it should be clear that it is his Bible that he speaks of, the Bible as interpreted by him, using his finite, fallible, and indeed totally depraved reason, which somehow is not so totally depraved as to prevent him from discerning the truths that God reveals to us.

Remembering the dead

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2017/05/why-do-we-remember-the-dead.html

What's wrong with illegal immigration

I think Vallicella makes a number of good points, although I'd place less emphasis than he on the rule of law:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2017/02/whats-wrong-with-illegal-immigration.html

The church should be a liberal-free zone

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/12/miniscule-and-majuscule.html

Are tu quoque arguments fallacious?

Some pop internet sources classify the tu quoque argument as a fallacy, but that's erroneous:

I am using ad hominem in the way Peter Geach uses it on pp. 26-27 of his Reason and Argument (Basil Blackwell 1976):

This Latin term indicates that these are arguments addressed to a particular man -- in fact, the other fellow you are disputing with. You start from something he believes as a premise, and infer a conclusion he won't admit to be true. If you have not been cheating in your reasoning, you will have shown that your opponent's present body of beliefs is inconsistent and it's up to him to modify it somewhere.

As Geach points out, there is nothing fallacious about such an argumentative  procedure. If A succeeds in showing B that his doxastic system harbors a contradiction, then not everything that B believes can be true.  

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/11/the-problem-of-evil-and-the-argument-from-evil.html

Craig on the same God controversy

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/do-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god

And here's a post that helpfully classifies a number of pertinent distinctions:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/reference-some-distinctions.html

Another round on the same God controversy

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/same-god-more-from-francis-beckwith.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/edward-feser-on-christians-muslims-and-the-reference-of-god.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/a-searle-y-objection-to-the-causal-theory-of-names.html

Worship, reference, and existence

Includes a good comment by Lydia McGrew:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/01/worship-reference-and-existence-an-aporetic-triad.html

Vallicella on Miroslav Volf

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/12/do-christians-and-jews-worship-the-same-god.html

Worshiping nonentities

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/12/exactly-one-god-so-the-same-god.html

Maverick Philosopher on worshiping the same God

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/12/do-christians-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god.html

Israel, Hamas, and the Doctrine of Double Effect

Bill Vallicella kindly posted an answer to a question I ran by him:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/08/israel-hamas-and-the-doctrine-of-double-effect.html

Secular Self-Deception About the Value of Life

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/04/secular-self-deception-about-the-value-of-life.html

Scientism is not science

Bill Vallicella's post taking apart scientism is worth a read.

(As an aside, an appropriately conducted randomized controlled trial (RCT) would fit the "five characteristics of science in the strict and eminent sense." I haven't read the article Vallicella cites on these characteristics, but perhaps this is part of what's in mind as well.)

Blinkered Pinker

Bill Vallicella skewers Steven Pinker on scientism.