In one of Bill Vallicella’s recent posts on his journey through philosophical theology, he engaged the effort of Reformed apologist R. C. Sproul (1939-2017). Sproul preferred “classical apologetics” to the “presuppositional” approach of Cornelius Van Til against which he co-authored a book.[1] Questioning Sproul’s putative theistic proof and reviewing four possibilities, Bill the theist writes (as an atheist might):
Sproul needs to explain why the cosmos, physical world, nature cannot just exist. Why must it have an efficient cause or a reason/purpose (final cause)? Why can’t its existence be a brute fact? That is a (fifth) epistemic possibility he does not, as far as I can see, consider.[2]
What follows is essentially the comment I posted on his blog in answer to his question, except I’ve converted my address to Bill in the second person to the third.
As Bill may know, I first encountered the notion of “brute fact” in Bernard
Lonergan’s 1957 Insight. There couldn’t be a brute fact, he held, because being is completely intelligible . . . and therefore, God exists! (Okay, there are about two dozen steps in between.[3])
I’ve argued elsewhere (here and here) that Lonergan had it backwards: there are no brute facts (for God or anyone else) because God exists. “There are no brute facts” is another way of saying “Being is completely intelligible.”