Standards

What we hold ourselves to, and what we do not claim

The insert

Every deck ships with a printed insert. Its text is reproduced here in full, so that the box and the site say one thing.

Each card in this deck carries a philosophical argument for the existence of God: a set of premises, and the conclusion that follows from them.

An argument, in this sense, is not a quarrel. It is a logical process. Whether its premises are true is a separate question, and one the reader is invited to consider.

The formulations are ours. They have been composed from the original sources and compressed to fit a playing card, and every argument here admits of other statements. Objections have been raised to every one of these arguments. None is printed here; each card's page at ergocards.com links to where they may be read.

No author named in this deck, living or dead, has been consulted about our formulation of their argument, has approved it, or is associated with this project.

ergocards.com

Primary sources

Every argument is traced to the text in which its author stated it, and reconstructed from that text. Where the original is in Latin, Greek, Arabic, French, or German, we work from the original or from an edition in the public domain, not from a modern translation. Later interpretive layers, and in particular the versions that have become standard in contemporary apologetics, are stripped away. What is on the card is what the author argued, not what the author is now commonly said to have argued.

Fresh formulations, in our own English

The wording on every card is ours, composed afresh in plain modern English. It is a reconstruction, not a quotation, and it is a compression: a playing card is a small surface, and every argument has been fitted to it. The card gives the argument's skeleton. The card's page gives the full citation and points to the source, so that the argument can be read at length in the author's own words.

Valid, never sound

We hold every formulation to formal validity: the premises must license the conclusion, every step needed must be stated as a premise, and no term may shift its meaning between one premise and the next. That is the whole of what we claim for the logic. We do not claim that the premises are true, and we do not say that any argument proves its conclusion. Whether the premises are true is exactly the question the arguments exist to raise, and it is left to the reader.

Faithful to the author

A card concludes to what its author's premises deliver, and no more. Where that falls short of full theism, as it often does, the card says so: a first cause, a necessary being, a designing mind. Where the author goes on to identify that being as God, the card reports the identification as the author's, and does not present it as a further step in the argument. Writing God where the author concluded to less would be a misattribution, not a simplification. Every card carries the argument's established name, its author, and its source, all verified against the primary text before the card was finalised.

Established, not discredited

Most arguments in the deck have been in the literature for a century or more. That is deliberate: an argument that old has had time to be discredited, and if it has not been, it has earned its place. We exclude arguments that rest on a premise now known to be false. We do not exclude arguments merely because they are disputed; every argument in the deck is disputed, and a deck that excluded disputed arguments would be empty. A sprinkling of more recent arguments is included where they are widely discussed and in good standing.

Objections exist to every card

No argument in the deck is free of published objections, and no formulation could foreclose them. We do not print objections on the cards, other than the one that the first joker carries, and we do not answer them. We do consult them: each argument is formulated in its strongest available form, and not left exposed to an objection a better formulation would avoid. Each card's page links to at least one substantive criticism, chosen by us. Where no adequate freely available criticism could be found, the page says so rather than let the reader suppose there is none.

Living authors

A few cards carry arguments by authors who are living. Their names appear on the card face and on the card's page, and nowhere else: not on the box, not in advertising, not in any list of who is featured. Before such a card was finalised, we wrote to the author, enclosed the exact text of the card, said what the deck is, and invited correction. We did not ask for permission, and none was given. No living author named in the deck has been consulted beyond that letter, has approved our formulation, or is associated with this project in any way.

What we do not do

We do not defend the arguments, raise objections to them, or reply to objections. We do not offer expositions of our own. A large and serious literature does all of this, and each card's page points into it. We present the arguments, name them, and identify their authors and their sources. That is the whole of the undertaking.

When we are wrong

We will make mistakes, and when we do we will say so. Errors and departures found after printing are recorded at Corrections, and reports are welcome at info@athensjerusalem.com.