withallyourmind.net

A commenter on my last post suggested that perhaps a pragmatist approach is best regarding the reliability of our rational faculties and senses. We may just presuppose that our mental faculties are reliable and get on from there. Well, one may presuppose anything, but on what grounds? All worldviews have presuppositions which form the basis of making sense of the world. The point is that the presuppositions of Christianity make sense of how the world really is, while the presuppostions of naturalism do not. The naturalist has no grounding for the reliability of his senses and reason. He may live inconsistently with his worldview if he wishes, by acting as if he had reason to believe his senses and reason were reliable. One great test of a worldview is whether one can live consistently with it. The naturalist cannot.

C. S. Lewis, in Miracles, states:

…no account of the universe [including meaphysical naturalism] can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound - a proof that there are no such things as proofs - which is nonsense.