Argument
Argument from reason
Overview
The argument from reason is a transcendental argument against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God (or at least a supernatural being that is the source of human reason). The best-known defender of the argument is C. S. Lewis. Lewis first defended the argument at length in his 1947 book, Miracles: A Preliminary Study. In the second edition of Miracles (1960), Lewis substantially revised and expanded the argument.
Contemporary defenders of the argument from reason include Alvin Plantinga, Victor Reppert and William Hasker.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
_The fourth argument from reason is this: the order, beauty, and perfection of the world requireth that in the universe should be agents of all sorts; some necessary, some free, some contingent. He that shall make all things necessary, or all things free, or all things contingent, doth overthrow the beauty and perfection of the world._ In which argument I observe, first a _contradiction_; for seeing he that…
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
States what Argument from reason is; opens on Argument from reason.
Both of the above arguments are transcendental; in other words, they do not proceed upon empirical principles. For, although the cosmological argument professed to lay a basis of experience for its edifice of reasoning, it did not ground its procedure upon the peculiar constitution of experience, but upon pure principles of…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
Close in meaning to Argument from reason; the term itself is not named.
(5) The use of human reason in religion is of two sorts: the former, in the conception and apprehension of the mysteries of God to us revealed; the other, in the inferring and deriving of doctrine and direction thereupon. The former extendeth to the mysteries themselves; but how? by way of illustration, and not by way of argument. The latter consisteth indeed of probation and argument.
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
Close in meaning to Argument from reason; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Argument from reason
Related ideas
- Miracles (book)
- Natural selection
- Neuroscience
- Indeterminacy of translation
- Eliminative materialism
- Metaphysical naturalism
- Supernatural
- C. S. Lewis
- G. E. M. Anscombe
- Existence of God
- J. B. S. Haldane
- Church–Turing thesis
- Alvin Plantinga
- William Hasker
- Peter Kreeft
- J. P. Moreland
- Evolutionary argument against naturalism
- Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
- Victor Reppert
Place in the tradition
Part of Metaphysical naturalism.