God at the Crossroad of Worldviews: A Proposal for a Different Way of Arguing about the Existence of God

There is a bewildering array of different positions in contemporary philosophy regarding the existence of God. These positions, upon closer examination are incommensurable, and thus the debate is at an impasse, with seemingly no clear way forward. Thus, I propose here a different way of going about arguing for or against the existence of God -- or more precisely, a gestalt shift in how we understand what it is to argue, particularly in regard to God as the "First Cause." A general survey of contemporary philosophical debate on the existence of God, and a number significant contemporary developments in epistemology, presents a case that the rival positions in the debate are arguing from and against different, competing worldviews. Furthermore, each worldviews has a different conceptual scheme, standard of reasoning and justification, which leads to the impasse in the debate. What I propose implies the rejection of any notion of universal, neutral rationality completely independent of worldviews, and that atheism constitutes just such a "default" standpoint, to which the theist must present the evidence for their beliefs. Rather, even such a position is a worldview, with its particular, and often unsaid, metaphysical assumptions. This raises the problem of relativism, and it is Alasdair MacIntyre's account of rationality and intellectual tradition, which seems to pose the most promising solution so far. Using his account, I propose that to argue about the existence of God in the context of different worldviews is to argue from a crossroad of the intellectual journey of the rival worldviews. Indeed, the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas is a historical example of just such an argument, which presents only the first step in bridging rival worldviews, rather than simply offering "proofs" that God exists. I conclude with the suggestion that were we to argue for the existence of God in this way in the contemporary setting, a number of significant issues of contention in the debate would simply be "dissolved," and other issues currently deemed unimportant, or even irrelevant would become more significant.