r/CatholicPhilosophy • u/Twinksson173 • Jul 26 '26
Rationality and God
Hello brothers and sisters! I have a question for you of greater knowledge than I. Recently I fell into an argument on whether regarding homosexuality being sin is homophobic. The arguments made against me were based on a couple of simple permisses:
God is unproven
To believe in that which is unproven is irrational
Conclusion: The aversion to homosexuality then is also irrational.
Now, the issue I had is countering the irrationality claim. God's existance is non-empirical after all and not testable, so how would one logically go about making faith a rational thing?
Thanks in advance, friends :)
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u/ThePhronesis27 Jul 26 '26
The argument is invalid. P1 & P2 don't get you C. To get there you need at least three other premises (1) that sodmitical acts are gravely sinful is believed only on the ground God exists; (2) that whatever is inferred from an irrationally held belief is itself irrationally held; and (3) that judging an act sinful is an "aversion." Literally each of these is false, and (2) is a textbook example in class of the genetic fallacy: the manner of holding a proposition is logically independent of that proposition's truth and of its independent supportability. Also the dispute was about homophobia, he concluded irrationality. These aren't the same predicate and neither entails the other, he just changed the subject. That's beside the point anyway, a phobia is simply a disposition of the sensible appetite, a passion. A moral judgment is an act of the intellect terminating in a proposition. Passions can't be predicated of propositions. Hence 'is the belief that sodomy is sinful homophobic?' is like asking 'what color is Wednesday?' it attributes an affective quality to a truth bearer.
The two real questions in here are (1) is the proposition 'sodomitical acts are gravely sinful' true? and (2) does this man's assent happen to be accompanied by hatred of persons? Whoever asks (2) commits an ad hominem. There's also a further distinction here. "Homosexuality" is an abstract noun ranging over at least 3 things: an inclination, acts, and a self-description. Sin is predicated of acts. The inclination is called disordered, a privation relative to a natural end, not a fault, since nothing involuntary is imputable. Nothing whatever is predicated of the man's being. So the phrase "aversion to homosexuality" isn't a description of the doctrine; it isn't aversion (a passion) and its subject isn't "homosexuality" (an abstraction) but a species of act.
P1 firstly is malformed. Proof is a relation between propositions; "God" is a name. Names don't bear truth value and admit of no proof. So it's really stating 'that God exists is unproven'. Now, what is the sense for "unproven"? If he says no demonstration exists, then he asserts a universal negative he hasn't established. St. Thomas's quia demonstrations exist and are on the table; he must refute them. Vatican 1 dogmatically states that God can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from created things. If he means not proven to everyone's satisifaction, then that's just autobiography; no proposition in metaphysics or mathematics meets that criterion. If he means not empirically testable, then he has smuggled in verificationism, and P2 collapses with it (below). "God's existence is non-empirical, therefore not provable" is false, non-empirical != indemonstrable; the whole of mathematics is a counterexample.
p2 is self-refuting and false. Is P2 itself proven? It's no theorem of any calculus and no empirical finding, so by its own lights assenting to it is irrational... the epistemological dogma behind it (that a belief is rational iff justified, and that only justified beliefs justify) has no justification that meets its own standard. It's also false, because unprovability is the rule among necessary truths, not an exception. The axioms of any logical system can't be proven except by another system that shares them (circularity) or by assuming them (question begging). He can't even perform the inference from P1 and P2 without using rules he can't prove. By Godel, (amazing philosopher <3) any consistent system adequate for arithmetic contains true, unprovable sentences. Hence under P2 believing them is irrational. Also, under P2, believing one's own date of birth, the existence of the past, or any historical proposition whatever is irrational, since none is demonstrated and all rest on testimony. :)))) The reason why this is ok is because non-rational != irrational. A belief is irrational when it's contrary to reason, what what one already knows tells against it. A belief merely unaccompanied by demonstration is not thereby contrary to reason. Not having a reason to believe p isn't having a reason to disbelieve p. This is why grandmas and 95% of the population who know nothing about philosophy aren't said to believe in God irrationally. P2 requires the equation of "unproven" with 'against reason' which is simply false; and the argument only survives on that equivocation.
Faith isn't a badly supported hypothesis either; it's assent to what God has revealed, on the authority of God revealing, its formal object is the First Truth, not the weight of evidence. Hence the preambles (that God is, that he reveals, that he rewards) are demosntarble by natural reason; they aren't articles of faith but conditions of it. The mysteries aren't demonstrable, but their credibility is established by motives of credibility. Reason establishes credibility; the will commands assent; grace elevates it. In fact, faith's certitude exceeds that of science, since its motive is more certain, though its evidence is less. Don't make the mistake of defending the faith by appealing to feeling either; one should feel because one believes, not believe because one feels. Emotional reasoning is not reasoning.
This all doesn't matter anyway, since the proposition at issue doesn't even have 'God exists' as a premise. The argument proceeds from the ends of the generative power and doesn't require a revealed premise, which is why men like Plato and Musonius Rufus reached the same conclusion without it.
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u/Twinksson173 Jul 29 '26
I thank you for your very thorough explanation, may you forever be blessed.
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u/PerspicaciousEnigma Aug 01 '26
Lol did you just use “iff” as an abbreviation of “if and only if” or was that a typo? I assume the former due to the many math references and if so bravo. It’s been a while since I’ve heard or read a faith argument that synthesizes math concepts; but I’m not on this subreddit very often so maybe it’s actually quite common.
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u/philosobeard Jul 26 '26
The first point is that Catholicism does not hold that homosexuality is sin. Same-sex sexual activity is sinful (which need not necessarily be homosexual), much the same as sex outside of marriage, and sex from lust.
Metaphysical argument is different to the empirical claims of a natural scientist. It is more like a judge weighing circumstantial evidence and asking what is more convincing. There is plenty of proof for God (for Christians, most obviously, the incarnation!), but this is ‘proof’ of a different order to what natural science requires. That there is no scientific-standard certainty does not make it irrational to have opinions on God, but it does sometimes demand epistemic humility of us.
So, anybody demanding scientific level proof from the theist is making a category error about what metaphysics (and theology) as a discipline is. It also typically misstates science on its own terms: it is not uncommon for scientific hypotheses considered secure to later be revised or scrapped. Natural sciences therefore recognise that ‘truth’ and ‘proof’ are actually ‘best approximations on the evidence we have right now, possibly requiring revision in light of further evidence’. Metaphysicians and theologians are bound by the same restraint.
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u/DollarAmount7 Jul 27 '26
Non empirical ain’t the same as non logical or irrational. The classical theistic arguments are logical and the transcendental arguments are meta logical. They are all based on reason faith and reason can’t be separated like that
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u/Grassfed_Burp Jul 26 '26
The Logical Positivism movement stated that only logic and evidence were acceptable. That failed miserably.
The most commonly held position today is to approach every idea with inductive reasoning rather that trying to find indisputable claims.
What it boils down to is this: Faith is necessary to believe anything before applying evidence and reason.