Since today is another heavy mail day at work, I’m not going to respond to every comment Daniel Morgan made on my blog posts re: Witmer.  In fact, I won’t respond to any of his comment yet! :-)  This is because I’m waiting for him to respond to parts 6 & 7 before I do a full reply.

However, I did see that Daniel posted a response to Steve Hay’s over on the Debunking Atheism website.  In response to a comment there, Daniel wrote that he does think it’s important to address presuppositionalism; yet he continues to reject the notion that he needs to account for such things as logic.  Indeed, he writes:

The demand that I “account” for that statement has been shown, both by the nature of the internal/external issue, and by virtue of his attempt to explain how it is even possible/feasible, to be invalid.

This, of course, has not actually been shown at all.  Instead, Daniel simply asserts that he doesn’t need to provide such an account and then ignores my response to his argument and then proclaims that it has been demonstrated.  He likewise pretends it’s actually part of his worldview, even though he has no reason for it to be in his worldview and it is, indeed, antithical to the rest of his worldview.  Thus, Daniel also writes:

Thus, I see this as quite relevant, for it shifts the entire nature of these debates from “hey atheist, give me a brief book on metaphysics,” to “hey presup, you’re demanding something of me that is inconsistent with my own worldview, and thus with your own claim to ‘internal critiques only’,” I think it is quite important.

This is simply amazing.  Daniel is complaining that presuppositionalists require him to come up with a metaphysical position!  How dare we!  Don’t you know that philosophy doesn’t need metaphysics?

For that matter, logic is actually an epistemological issue anyway.  But who’s keeping track? :-)

In any case, Daniel’s argument at this point pretty much matches the fundamentalist:  “We don’t need to give you any reasons for what we believe; you’re just supposed to let us believe the way we do.”  Unfortunately, such a thing does indeed undermine Daniel’s own definition of “reason”…

In any case, to set the matter bluntly and to call Daniel out on it: Yes, Daniel, I do want you to provide your metaphysical grounding.  If you cannot do so, then you are basing your atheism on faith, and only faith, not reason.  Therefore, either provide a reason for your position or admit that you are a fideist who therefore has no consistent grounds to attack anyone else’s faith.