You here commit the error I outlined in your own words:

If we want to say that there is a God who does things, on the other hand, believing we have rational justification for such a claim then a cogent explanation would be required. But such an explanation is impossible since we have no idea how an immaterial entity could do things. — Janus

The logical conclusion of these two sentences is, "Therefore, we cannot say that there is a God who does things" (modus tollens).

I don't see how we really have any alternative. — Tom Storm

No do I.

Which is why I often think that we approach so many of our values and beliefs aesthetically. We recognise a kind of aesthetic, poetic truth and, perhaps, mistake it for something more. — Tom Storm

Totally agree. I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human.

If feels a little like a stalemate. I wonder if there will ever be a breakthrough, some new science, some new philosophy? — Tom Storm

It's hard (for me at least) to see how such a thing would ever be possible.

The logical conclusion of these two sentences is, "Therefore, we cannot say that there is a God who does things." — Leontiskos

No, the logical conclusion is that we cannot, with rational justification, say that there is a God who does things. I have no problem with anyone saying that they believe there is a God who does things, provided they acknowledge that their belief is based purely on faith (as it must be since we know nothing of immaterial entities doing things).

No, the logical conclusion is that we cannot, with rational justification, say that there is a God who does things. — Janus

Right, same difference. And by the same sort of reasoning, the child cannot say that their parent fixed their bicycle.

I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human. — Janus

Or to provides a way to avoid facing, what it is to be human.

How do you think this affords naturalism an equal footing?

With respect to what you quoted of me, my point was that if a theist can appeal to ambiguity; then so can a naturalist.

If you say “God’s infinite”, I can say “Reality is infinite”. If you say “God is eternal”, I can say “reality is eternal”. If you say “God is so unique and supreme, that we cannot give a full explication of His nature”, I can “Nature (reality) is so unique and supreme, that we cannot give a full explication of “Her” nature”. Etc.

Obviously, and to your point, if one believes that there are certain phenomena which naturalism cannot afford an answer; then naturalism is no longer more parsimonious than supernaturalism.

Is a system which posits an infinite being on "equal footing" with a system that denies an infinite being, so far as the inexplicable goes?

Naturalism does not preclude the existence of an infinite being. It just doesn’t. Another great example is Arthur Schopenhauer, a staunch atheist (and naturalist), that was an idealist that believed reality is universal will; and that will is infinite...but it is not God because it has no mind and is impersonal (since it is not a person).

In a more mainstream sense, a naturalist that believes the universe, or multi-verse or something similar, is infinite also doesn’t fit well with your quote (above) here.

What is the proportion of naturalist incompatibilists to non-naturalist incompatibilists? Why?

In the literature, I would say most libertarians are non-naturalists, but not supernaturalists.

Among the masses, I would say most libertarians are supernaturalists—hands down.

It is because most people don’t believe that libertarianism is compatible with naturalism; but this doesn’t lend any support to your argument, because most people lack proper education on the subject. Most people use “naturalism”, “materialism”, and “physicalism” interchangeabley; and they still yet misrepresent all three with stereotypes. So, so what if most people think naturalism is incompatible with libertarian free will? That doesn’t settle the matter at all.

Generally we would say that someone who believes in a universal mind is a theist.

Nope. Theism is the view that there is a personal universal mind. If the mind is not a person, then it is not God. Schopenhauer is rolling over in his grave (:

I spoke of transcendent moral norms, not moral realism.

For a moral norm to be transcendent, it must be objective; and I am assuming moral cognitivism and non-nihilism here (to save wasting time). If there is some sort of nuanced distinction between the two, then please elaborate.

Again, what is the proportion of naturalists who believe in transcendent moral norms (or also moral realism) to non-naturalists who believe in such a thing? Why?

In the literature, the vast majority of atheists and naturalists are moral realists, hands down. So you are wrong there.

Among the masses, the vast majority of atheists and naturalists are moral anti-realists, hands down. Again, who cares? We are talking about the average, ignorant person. The question is whether there are any phenomena that require supernaturalistic explanation—not if people generally believe it does or doesn’t.

"Well, 90% of incompatibilists are non-naturalists, but incompatibilism is still way more parsimonious on naturalism," which is a prima facie irrational claim.

I don’t see how it is an irrational claim. I think that positing that a soul is perfectly natural, and analyzing it in terms of scientific investigation, would make more sense than going the supernaturalist route. Why are we assuming that one cannot have a soul (i.e., an immaterial mind) under naturalism (i.e., that everything is a part of the processes of nature)?

Beyond that you still haven't told us (and specifically @NotAristotle) what parsimony has to do with anything, much less truth.

I have said it many times, and will say it again: if naturalism is on equal footing with supernaturalism, then it is more parsimonious to go with the former over the latter. Now, if one doesn’t think they are on equal footing, then they have no reason to accept the consequent because they have rejected the antecedent.

miracles like that defy our understanding of nature and not nature itself — Bob Ross

Then you've botched the definition of a miracle, and you are equivocating.

Implying that a ‘miracle’ cannot truly be one unless it is supernatural is merely begging the question. I am providing why a ‘miracle’ would be more parsimoniously explained naturalistically.

The very fact that so many people are and have been non-naturalists is itself strong evidence against the OP.

Not at all! The OP is not about “how many people believe that there are phenomena which require supernaturalistic explanation”.

If naturalism was such an obviously better explanation then everyone would be naturalist.

Who said it was obvious?

They do, and that's the point. For example, theists (tend to) believe in miracles; naturalists don't. The explanandum differs

Obviously, the “explanandum” differ insofar as theists posit some things are supernatural (which is all you just said here): the question is whether naturalism can account for the same phenomena, because then it is more parsimonious to be a naturalist than a supernaturalist. I don’t think you are fully appreciating the OP yet.

Each camp is attempting to account for a different set of existing things, because each camp believes different things exist.

Not at its core. People are trying to explain the same phenomena: the differing is in what people posit ontologically to account for them.

Right, same difference. And by the same sort of reasoning, the child cannot say that their parent fixed their bike. — Leontiskos

The child might have seen the parents fix the bike. Or has been told by the parents that they fixed the bike, this time and every other time that it needed repair. There is no problem with understanding how a material entity (a parent) can do things to another material entity (a bike) so the analogy is not a good one.

Or to provides a way to avoid facing, what it is to be human. — wonderer1

Yes, it could be that too. Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. Fantasy and confabulation may be ineliminably central to humanity, We, or at least some of us, may need to fantasize and confabulate transcendent things in order to make life bearable.

The child might have seen the parents fix the bike. — Janus

I already gave the scenario <here>. They didn't see it.

Or has been told by the parents that they fixed the bike, this time and every other time that it needed repair. — Janus

And why wouldn't that method also apply to God?

There is no problem with understanding how a material entity (a parent) can do things to another material entity (a bike) so the analogy is not a good one. — Janus

Again:

The key here is that the parent "transcends" the child, so to speak. The parent can do things that the child cannot do or even understand, and the child knows this. — Leontiskos

What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument.

Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. — Janus

I'd say that's a pretty reasonable doubt. :wink:

What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument. — Leontiskos

Even to a very young pre-rational child the parents are entities the child can see doing things, so the analogy fails, since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity.

I'd say that's a pretty reasonable doubt. — wonderer1

:up:

...since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity. — Janus

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false.

The Biblical response to @Bob Ross' inquiry usually goes to miracles, and often the specific miracle of sortilege. There are endless examples, but to take one:

And Gideon said to him, “Pray, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this befallen us? And where are all his wonderful deeds which our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Mid′ian.” And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Mid′ian; do not I send you?” And he said to him, “Pray, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manas′seh, and I am the least in my family.” And the Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall smite the Mid′ianites as one man.” And he said to him, “If now I have found favor with thee, then show me a sign that it is thou who speakest with me. Do not depart from here, I pray thee, until I come to thee, and bring out my present, and set it before thee.” And he said, “I will stay till you return.”

[...]

Then Gideon said to God, “If thou wilt deliver Israel by my hand, as thou hast said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that thou wilt deliver Israel by my hand, as thou hast said.” And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, “Let not thy anger burn against me, let me speak but this once; pray, let me make trial only this once with the fleece; pray, let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night; for it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew. — Judges 6:13-18, 36-40, RSV

Again, this sort of thing is quite common. "Hello, this is God." "Prove it by doing X." "Okay." "Alright, now I know you're God." (This kind of verification is also used in human affairs, except without miracles.)

Now are you going to tell me that Gideon has no rational justification for his belief that he is dealing with God?

The case for @Bob Ross' OP is much the same, because apparently if God appeared to Oppy, Oppy would claim that there is no possible sign that could convince him that he is dealing with God (a variation out of Ahaz' playbook in Isaiah 7). Gideon's reasoning is, "If you can do X, then this will prove to me that you are God." What @Janus and @Bob Ross seem to be claiming is that there is no X that would yield any form of rational justification for the claim that one is dealing with God. This seems clearly wrong.

(Wayfarer is right to note that we do not need to depart from natural theology to answer the OP, but I think the OP fails in all sorts of ways.)

What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument.
— Leontiskos

Even to a very young pre-rational child the parents are entities the child can see doing things, so the analogy fails, since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity. — Janus

Quite. Well for one thing,we know that there are such things as parents and that parents exist physically and do things. We can demonstrate their existance and identify how they came to be parents. We can't say the same about gods in any such capacity. In focusing merely on whther they were not observed doing, the comparison seems to miss the mark.

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false. — Leontiskos

Surely not an argumentum ad populum? Yes, I would agree that there are countless numbers of people who have had any number of experiences they are wrong about or misinformed about or exaggerate about or lie about. This is not news.

Surely not an argumentum ad populum? Yes, I would agree that there are countless numbers of people who have had any number of experiences they are wrong about or misinformed about or exaggerate about or lie about. This is not news. — Tom Storm

Janus claimed that, "God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity." Think about what that claim entails for a few seconds, Tom.

What is my purpose? Where do I ultimately come from? Why do bad things sometimes happen? What is justice, or love for that matter? Can naturalism explain these questions in a satisfying way? — NotAristotle

From the naturalistic viewpoint, the answers are to be sought in terms of evolutionary development, a pragmatic philosophy and a utilitarian outlook. Justice and love are the adaptations of social hominids. And so on. Combined with democratic liberalism, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but whether it is all there is to life is an open question. (And at least, in democratic liberal cultures, one which we're free to pursue.)

A useful essay by John Hick. He was an English philosopher of religion, notable for his commitment to religious pluralism. Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! - Who or What is God?

The basic principle that we are aware of anything, not as it is in itself unobserved, but always and necessarily as it appears to beings with our particular cognitive equipment, was brilliantly stated by Aquinas when he said that ‘Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower’ (S.T., II/II, Q. 1, art. 2). And in the case of religious awareness, the mode of the knower differs significantly from religion to religion. And so my hypothesis is that the ultimate reality of which the religions speak, and which we refer to as God, is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to, in historical forms of life within the different religious traditions.

What does this mean for the different, and often conflicting, belief-systems of the religions? It means that they are descriptions of different manifestations of the Ultimate; and as such they do not conflict with one another. They each arise from some immensely powerful moment or period of religious experience, notably the Buddha’s experience of enlightenment under the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, Jesus’ sense of the presence of the heavenly Father, Muhammad’s experience of hearing the words that became the Qur’an, and also the experiences of Vedic sages, of Hebrew prophets, of Taoist sages. But these experiences are always formed in the terms available to that individual or community at that time and are then further elaborated within the resulting new religious movements. — John Hick

It depends on how you define parsimony. How many "brute facts," does naturalism require? The jury is out on that. Seemingly, it might be quite a lot.

So you end up with a lot of things that have no reason for being, they just are, irreducibly. Just from the Fine Tuning Problem, you would seem to have quite a few.

An explanation where God creates the world to have life only has to posit one such fact that "is its own reason."

If parsimony is considered from the point of view of explanation, it doesn't seem possible to beat theism. The answer "from whence comes..." always has one ultimate answer.

But from the perspective of ontological entities, I would agree that the argument holds in favor of naturalism.

Actually, on second thought, that might not be true. Various conceptions of panentheism have just one ontological entity. Shankara has Brahman and Maya and Maya is illusion, so that seems to get us to one entity. It doesn't seem possible to do with less. Because no higher reality stands behind the apparent one in naturalism, it would seem to require quite a number of ontological entities.

Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! - Who or What is God? — Wayfarer

Thanks. As we discussed elsewhere, a thread on this would be interesting.

Janus claimed that, "God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity." Think about what that claim entails for a few seconds, Tom. — Leontiskos

Sorry, you'll have to help me. 1) What is the significance of this? 2) How do you see it connecting to the point Janus made?

I guess my point is, doesn't pragmatism always assume some goal or make some kind of commitments? — NotAristotle

Yes, but in doing so you could admit to a high degree of arbitrariness about it. I.E. be highly subjectivist about this choice or view it in the same sense that a Pyrrhonian skeptic would with regard to every belief they have. To fully, or as best as one could, suspend judgement on the veracity of any such beliefs and even regard the thought that it may be 'correct' or 'true' as mere delusion. Perhaps, as those same ancient skeptics would contend, you haven't thought hard enough about a possible contrary position of equal footing.

Further, even once you admit to goal seeking or possessing commitments the possible scenario under which we possess a plethora of options can dilute the philosophical weight that any one single position has. To the point that we may become rather indifferent to the choice. See it as rather meaningless.

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false.

I agree. It is a straw man that Janus is arguing against (most of the time).

Now are you going to tell me that Gideon has no rational justification for his belief that he is dealing with God?

I appreciate you providing an example, and quite an interesting one at that!

The problem I have with this example, and most like it, is that I don’t think it demonstrates, even if the events were all granted as having occurred, justification for believing in God’s existence (even if just for that particular subject in the example) because the tests are wholly incapable of verifying the claim.

Let me give you a much easier example of what I mean (that I believe we can both agree on): let’s say I am holding something in my hand, and you say “that’s a banana”. Now, let’s say I do not know if it is a banana or not, and so I respond “if what you say is true, then do five jumping jacks...if you can do five jumping jacks, then I know what you say is the truth”. Lo and behold, you drop down and do five jumping jacks: am I justified in believing that the object in my hand is a banana? Of course not! Why?

It is because the test I deployed to verify the claim has no potential, even in principle, to actually verify it.

I know there is more to the story and there are many other similar cases Christian’s site, but, to keep this simple, I find Gideon’s test to be analogous to the jumping jack test example: at best, it demonstrates that there is a being that is more powerful than Gideon, who can remove or add dew to a fleece of wool.

How could such a test, in principle, ever verify that the more powerful being is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. let alone the creator of the entire world? It can’t. It just demonstrates, at its very best, that there was at least one being, in that day and age, capable of doing things humans could not.

Adding God into the explanation for this phenomena (of experiencing the wool with dew vs. not in accordance with what was demanded preemptively) is extraneous. A person who says “yeah, if that really happened, then there must be some being capable of performing things humans did not seem to have the capabilities to perform back then” is giving a more parsimonious explanation than one who says “God, an all-supreme creator of everything (who is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.), performed those things which the humans were not capable of doing”.

there is no X that would yield any form of rational justification for the claim that one is dealing with God

This is an interesting thought. With respect to there being supernatural entities (in general), I can envision scenarios where it would be perfectly rational to believe in them—e.g., positing numbers are Platonic Forms, if there were beings that were consistently violating our understanding of the laws of nature then that would lend support to the belief in something like an ‘angel’ or ‘demon’, etc.). In terms of God, I must profess I cannot envision any; and perhaps you can help me see some (if there are any). It seems like God’s attributes are so extravagant that positing even a slightly less extravagant being would be more parsimonious to explain a set of supernatural phenomena that positing God.

The Gideon example is also interesting because in general it's not considered to be a good sign of his character that he "puts the Lord to the test." Gideon, like all the Judges aside from Deborah and Samuel, ends up being ultimately flawed, a backslider, and his need for this evidence is often taken as an indicator of his future deficits. For the idea is that one should love the Good and God in themselves.

Indeed, Jesus denigrates the need for signs and those who ask for them (despite working many signs).

How could such a test, in principle, ever verify that the more powerful being is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. let alone the creator of the entire world? It can’t. It just demonstrates, at its very best, that there was at least one being, in that day and age, capable of doing things humans could not.

Well, consider how one learns what a banana is. People show you bananas or describe them to you. People discuss their unique properties. They transmit a definition.

Given this, you now can compare you experience to what you have learned about bananas and say: "this is what people call bananas."

In the same way, super natural beings have unique attributes and abilities, and through observing these the same sort of inference can be made.

But of course, you raise a good point. Finite experience can never be evidence for a truly infinite God. So, the trouble distinguishing between "powerful and seemingly 'supernatural,'" and God is a real difficulty.

This is precisely why St. Aquinas says we cannot know God's essence. Also because God is simple, but human reason is necessarily discursive, working through joining and dividing concepts.

Yet he draws a distinction between knowing "what God is," and knowing "that God is." God's existence can be determined by signs/traces of God in the natural world (Romans 1:20), as can things about God. But for Aquinas, this unknowability was why revelation had to work as the first principles of any divine science. The point of theology then is not to prove the axioms, as this undermines faith at any rate (a person is "forced" to accept a logical demonstration). The point is to pull out what revelation entails.

But this intersects with the proof question in that recognizing God would ostensibly work in the same way we can recognize something that has been described to us or shown to us in pictures.

Aside from this, there is also direct noetic experience of God, God known in the same way we grasp self-evident truths that ground our knowledge in anything. So there is this path too, the "infused" knowledge, which is the focus of St. Denis and many of the mystics. Since God can make people grasp truths about God in this fully noetic way, outward demonstrations are less important.

When you demand evidence for belief in God, I think a perfectly rational theistic response is 'look around you, you're standing in it'...And let's not forget that while science discovers and exploits the order of nature, it doesn't explain it. — Wayfarer

Naturalism is a metaphysical theory - just as is theism. A metaphysical theory provides the explanation. The theory must explain all the objective facts of world (what we see by "looking around") - both can do that, but theism depends on more ad hoc assumptions.

That's what I mean about the shortcoming of empirical demands - 'show me where this "god" is. You can't produce any evidence'. It's a misplaced demand. But, that said, I'm not going to go all-in to try and win the argument, it's take it or leave it, and most will leave it.

The proper demand is: show me evidence (facts) that can't be explained by naturalism.

The Gideon example is also interesting because in general it's not considered to be a good sign of his character that he "puts the Lord to the test." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Declaring it a sign of poor character, to engage in critical thinking when it comes to one's religion, seems like it could be a psychologically effective way of keeping people from questioning the religious beliefs they inherited.

Is there a reason to think otherwise in the case of Abrahamic religions?

Declaring it a sign of poor character, to engage in critical thinking when it comes to one's religion,

This is really a misreading of the concerns with Gideon. Gideon points to his material conditions and says the Lord has abandoned Israel and asks why he hasn't already seen wonders. When asked to do something for the Lord he makes excuses and demands a sign. Contrast this with the Patriarchs, whose response is always "here I am." The idea is that Gideon fails to recognize the Angel of the Lord in the first place precisely because of his weak faith.

And this would probably be passed over if not for Gideon's later history. God helps Gideon achieve a miraculous victory over the people oppressing Israel. He then piously turns down becoming king. But after this he becomes vindictive and violent, pursuing his own ends, eventually making a huge golden idol that the Hebrews come to worship. So it's a textual analysis about the seeds of this when compared to other figures who always instantly recognized angles.

It's in line with the main theme: "in those days of the judges, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what seemed right in his own eyes," (including the Judges). This is where we get Sampson and some of the other warrior heros that seem much more in line with Greek heroes or other near Eastern ones than the rest of the Biblical heroes. The general point seems to be that greatness alone, Herculean strength, etc., is nothing if not oriented towards the higher good, e.g. Sampson's great powers are undone by vice.

Plenty of other places seem plenty in favor of critical thinking. Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Peter's invocation to be prepared to explain the reasons for one's faith, etc.

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false. — Leontiskos

That people might say they know something about God does not entail that they actually know anything about God. They would need to be able to explain how they came to know things about a purportedly immaterial, infinite entity.

Wouldn't knowing that God is unknowable constitute knowing something about God? Or knowing that God is infinite and that our terms cannot be predicated univocally of God? And might we be able to still make statements about what God is not (apophatic negations)?

But then there seem to also be ways of justifying analogical predication of God within these constraints as well, at least potentially given divine revelation. For as respects knowledge via revelation, "with man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible."

You could say that knowing God is unknowable is knowing something about God. But for all we know God is merely an idea, the idea of an infinite, unknowable being. So, of course we know what our idea is, but that is all we could be said to know, something about the nature of our idea of God.

We have no way of knowing whether revelation comes from God or merely from the imaginations of people.

The element that is generally absent in many of these discussions is the element of cognitive transformation that characterises the kinds of insights being discussed. Instances can be cited from the earliest strata of philosophy, one being the prose-poem of Parmenides, which encompasses a mystical element from the beginning:

The introductory section of Parmenides’ philosophical poem begins, “The mares that carry me as far as my spirit [θυμὸς] aspires escorted me …” (B 1.1– 2). He then describes his chariot-ride to “the gates of night and day,” (B 1.11) the opening of these gates by Justice, his passage though them, and his reception by a Goddess, perhaps Justice herself. The introduction concludes with her telling him, “It is needful that you learn all things [πάντα], whether the untrembling heart of well-rounded truth or the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief” (B 1.28–30). From the outset, then, we are engaged with the urgent drive of the inmost center of the self, the θυμὸς, toward its parmenides 13 uttermost desire, the apprehension of being as a whole, “all things.”2 Since the rest of the poem is presented as the speech of the Goddess, this grasp of the whole is received as a gift, a revelation from the divine. — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being

In other texts, the reference to the 'gates of day and night' are interpreted as a clear reference to non-dualism. In any case, as is often stated, Parmenides is recognised as one of the sources of Western philosophy generally and of metaphysics in particular.

'I can't understand this' or 'it doesn't make sense to me' or 'I don't see how that is possible', don't constitute arguments.

The proper demand is: show me evidence (facts) that can't be explained by naturalism. — Relativist

As already stated, naturalism assumes an order of nature, without which it wouldn't be able to get started. But it doesn't explain the order of nature - nor does it need to. For all practical purposes, it doesn't really make any difference. Natural theology is able to rationally argue that the fact of the order is itself an indication of a prior intelligence, through arguments such as the cosmological anthropic principle. The fact that such arguments may be inconclusive or beyond adjutication does not make them irrational.

A useful essay by John Hick. He was an English philosopher of religion, notable for his commitment to religious pluralism. Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! — Wayfarer

While Hick is far and away more coherent than anything that is occurring in this thread, I would still argue that he represents little more than an academic fad in philosophy of religion. A little over a decade ago I took a graduate seminar on interreligious dialogue, and even at that time Hick was already but a footnote in the history of that field. When we did the historical overview each student was assigned one or two figures to research and present on, and I was assigned Hick along with Paul Knitter.

Thomas Nagel's The Last Word includes no chapter on religion proper, but if it did Hick would be the subject of that chapter. Hick extends the precise sort of relativism that Nagel opposes to the religious sphere, and he is a Kantian to boot. If Nagel had been more knowledgable of religion I think it would have been good to include such a chapter, but plenty of other folks have leveled the same sort of Nagel-esque arguments against Hick.

I think there is a reason Hick's influence waned more quickly than his compatriots in other fields. It is because the sort of a priori second-order argumentation that Nagel targets has always been less effective when it comes to religion. Religion favors the a posteriori, the experiential, the earthy realities like ritual and tradition. Antiseptic a priori systems of philosophers don't often drive religious thought, and the academic religious anthropologists understand this same truth. Hick's thesis has left a more lasting impression on the popular mind than on the academic field (or, one could equally argue, the popular mind and the conditions of modern life birthed Hick's thesis).

If we want to take Janus seriously then he is proposing a kind of apophatic exclusivism, and I admit that this resonates with Hick to a certain degree. But what Hick has said is a great deal more fleshed out and Kantian than what Janus has said. In Christian terms Hick is a modalist rather than a strict apophaticist, and as such his proposal is a great deal more coherent than Janus'. It seems to me that Janus has given voice to an extreme form of cultural secularism, where Charles Taylor's "self" is buffered not only implicitly but explicitly. "Thou shalt not have contact with God!"

The John Hick essay is rather good as an overview of a transcategorical understanding of god. Thanks again.