I Cannot Convince Oppy: My Rejoinder to His Reply

This paper offers offers two developments of the two issues I had presented in a previous paper and that Oppy has kindly taken into account.

First, Oppy rightly says that he never affirmed that his starting point was “what everybody knows”. However, both he and I need such a starting point, because it is the only one that permits us to discuss our topic and try to convince each other.

Second, Oppy affirms that it is “just obvious […] that a large part of any satisfactory comprehensive worldview will be utterly independent of distinctively Christian assumptions”. But Christian faith doesn’t promise to render believers more capable than non-believers. It promises to render them better than they would be otherwise.

However, I understand that Oppy is not convinced by my explanation, because, from the rational point of view, what I have just said is only epistemically possible. In other words, I understand that he remains confident in mere reason alone. But reason alone, though it be the only possible way of thinking and discussing, is not free from contradiction.

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