La ausencia de Dios para el creyente y el increyente: diferentes experiencias, juicios diferentes

DIFERENTES EXPERIENCIAS, JUICIOS DIFERENTES

Abstract

This paper begins by considering the different experiences of the absence of God that a believer and an unbeliever would have. Insofar as such experiences would be the reasons for making a judgment, it is only in appearance that the believer and the unbeliever would make the same judgment that God is not present (or is absent). To determine then what the difference in judgment between the two is, the analyses of Aristotle, B. Russell, and P. F. Strawson, pragmatically interpreted as analyses of judgment, will be examined. It will be argued that the believer's judgment should be analyzed in Strawson's terms, while the unbeliever's judgment should be analyzed in Russell's terms. This follows from the fact that the believer uses the term 'God' to refer to a particular person, while the unbeliever uses the term to identify the role that some undetermined person could play. Thus, if God does not exist, the believer's judgment will be neither true nor false, since the presupposition that God exists is false, but the unbeliever's judgment will be true, as the non-existence of God is a truth condition of that judgment.