The Perfectological Argument

THE PERFECTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT I N THIS AGE when the weight of philosophical opinion appears to be overwhelmingly against the soundness of any theistic arguments; when everyone knows that Kant or somebody else laid them low once for all; when even theologians decry them as rationalistic subterfuges; when at a place like M. I. T. one cannot, according to Huston Smith, even get the students into a decent bull-session on the subject; it may seem foolhearty in the extreme to proffer still another argument for the existence of God and to claim besides that the argument may have something new about it to commend it. That is the inevitable risk to be confronted in putting up one's wares for inspection. Yet there are reasons for doing so, and I believe they are reasons not only of the heart. One reason would be that the argument I propose to present might inject some variety and altered direction into the monotonous turnpikes of the subject. While the opponents of the theistic arguments claim to have brought the runaway proofs into the philosophical slaughterhouse , there is no evidence that they have stopped whipping the dead animals. Refutations abound and introductory texts repeat them faithfully so that every new generation of philosophy students will learn of the feeble efforts of theistic reasoners . One would think on moral grounds that so embarrassing a folly might be allowed to die out in favor of more fruitful undertakings. But the fracas continues, and as long as it does one might as well add some fresh booty to the spoils. Occasion might at least be given for sharpening a different set of tools. Such a reason, however, is superficial and open to the charge of mere professionalism. More justification is needed. It ought to be a sufficient justification-and doubtless would be in 394 THE PERFECTOLOGICAL ARGU~ENT 895 earlier times-to say that one finds the argument persuasive and hence commends it to others for acceptance. But such a reason-so simple and straightforward-is even more suspect than the other nowadays, is accused of mere subjective rationalization , and in any case is regularly interpreted, by friend and foe alike, as an instance of dressing up in argumentational form what one has already adopted on faith. Therefore I think the main justification for proposing any new argument today must be its furtherance of whatever human value is held to belong to the enterprise of theistic argumentation. It is widely held that there is some sort of value in such exploration, even though there is divergence about the character of that value and about the results of the inquiry to date. For my part I think that rational investigation of theism is a value in itself as an expression of the logos within us and as an inquiry into the logos in nature. In thi:> context it is well to keep somewhat distinct the question of the arguments themselves, i. e., whether they are valid and whether anything at all can be said on behalf of their premises, and the question of how many folks accept the arguments and how many of those folks were formerly believers rather than skeptics.1 No doubt these questions cannot be kept apart ultimately ; but a great deal more needs to be known about the conditions for accepting arguments. All of this, the whole matter of the function of theistic arguments, needs a separate study to present an author's outlook. I shall not pursue this farther in the present essay but will limit the discussion to my proposed argument. On the wider question it must suffice as a justification to appeal to the generally received, though divergently interpreted, conception of a human value in the rational enterprise.2 1 I have considerable sympathy on this point with James Ross's discussion of it in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (London: The Macmillan Company of Collier-Macmillan, Ltd., 1969), pp. 9-!'W. " FOl' an interesting new approach to theistic arguments, emphasizing their personrelated character as well as their logic, see George I. Mavrodes, Belief in God (New York: Random House, Inc., 1970), especially Chapter II. See also Mavrodes' comments...