I cannot really provide my friend with any philosophical proofs for God because he practically denies the existence of philosophy. He doesn’t like that I study philosophy because he thinks that philosophy is self-contradictory and pointless because it tries to make sense out of a metaphysical world which is chaotic. My friend is a raging atheist who has made a religion out of science, frequently pointing out how it is more superior than philosophy because it has definite proofs and verifiable evidence. Since philosophical proofs are not tangible and only exist in a metaphysical realm which has no scientific proof, he sees no reason to believe why metaphysical laws or philosophy exist at all. How can I convince my friend that philosophy is in fact real and a very important discipline?
Your friend seems to have a very garbled understanding of what philosophy
and science are. I’ve seen this belief among my own students (I teach university level biochemistry) that philosophy was nothing more than the imperfect predecessor to science, and now that we have the scientific method we can dispense entirely with philosophy (much like how alchemy preceded chemistry, the former of which is seen as utter nonsense today and the latter is based on empiricism).
There are a couple glaring problems with this belief. To start, the scientific method cannot exist in a philosophical vacuum. Science itself makes some pretty bold
philosophical assumptions, without which “science” doesn’t “work”. Namely, the scientific method requires empiricism, which itself is a philosophical school of thought! It is thus folly to see science as being independent of philosophy. Indeed science
is philosophy!
Philosophy is the study of thinking, and for your friend to assert that the empiricism of science gives science its credence requires a
philosophy of science. The scientific method itself cannot vindicate the scientific method as a worthwhile endeavor. We know this is true because such an argument is circular, and thanks to logic (which itself is philosophy!) we can categorically reject circular arguments.
Another problem with your friend’s belief is that he considers science to have “definite proofs” and, presumably, philosophy to only have tentative proofs. This is completely backwards. Science is inherently inductive, and as such cannot ever “prove” anything true, and no true scientist worth her salt would ever talk about the “proofs of science”. Indeed, the only academic disciplines which can ever “prove” anything are philosophy and mathematics. This is precisely due to the fact that philosophy and math are internally self-referential and contain no referents outside of themselves. Philosophy can be, and math is entirely,
deductive. This means we start with absolute premises, assume their truth value, and work our way down (using logic) to
absolutely true conclusions. Science, being inductive, can never do this! At best all we can do is say “Here’s all the physical evidence collected, the preponderance of which
indicates that X is true, and so we will
tentatively conclude that X is true”.
