Q&A: The Proof from Epistemology
The Proof from Epistemology
Question
I’m not sure I understand the punch line of the proof from epistemology that makes it better than the physico-theological argument—you say that someone who holds that a complex thing can come into being by chance is basically assuming the same thing about his senses as well, and therefore he can’t rely on them. But if I don’t accept that a complex thing needs a cause in order to come into being, why should a reliable thing need a cause in order to come into being? Why not assume that my senses are reliable without there being some cause that produced that, and that they are simply that way?
Answer
First, I didn’t say it is better. It is different. In fact, they work from the two sides of the same coin.
As for your question itself, you missed the whole point of theological proofs. I am not asking whether it is possible that the senses are reliable. It is possible that this happened by chance. The question is: how do you know that? That is, on what basis do you assume they are reliable? You have no basis at all, because everything is random, and the probability is that a random system is not reliable (the chance that it would come out reliable by accident is negligible).