God
Philosophers weigh inGod has had a lot of bad press recently. The four horsemen of atheism, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, have all published books sharply critical of belief in God: respectively, The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great. Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens pile on the greatest amount of scorn, while Dennett takes the role of good cop. But despite differences of tone and detail, they all agree that belief in God is a kind of superstition. As Harris puts it, religion “is the denial—at once full of hope and full of fear—of the vastitude of human ignorance.”
The question of God’s existence is one of those few matters of general interest on which philosophers might pretend to expertise—Dennett is a professional philosopher, and Harris has a B.A. in the subject. Still, of the four, it is Dawkins who wades the furthest into philosophy. So what can philosophy contribute? In particular, have philosophers come to a verdict on the traditional arguments for God’s existence?
Although it would be too much to expect complete consensus, it is fair to say that the arguments have left the philosophical community underwhelmed. The classic contemporary work is J. L. Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism, whose ironic title summarizes Mackie’s conclusion: the persistence of belief in God is a kind of miracle because it is so unsupported by reason and evidence. The failure of arguments for God’s existence need not lead straight to atheism, but philosophers often seem to find this route tempting. In his contribution to Philosophers Without Gods, a collection of atheistic essays by twenty prominent philosophers, Stewart Shapiro observes that “among contemporary philosophers, the seriously religious are a small minority.” Dean Zimmerman, a notable member of the minority, has ruefully remarked that “although numerous outspoken Christians are highly respected in analytic circles, many of our colleagues still regard the persistence of religious belief among otherwise intelligent philosophers as a strange aberration, a pocket of irrationality.”
Contemporary Christian philosophers content themselves with pulling up the drawbridge and manning the barricades, rather than crusading against the infidel.
The world was very different when a distinguished philosopher could say, as St. Thomas Aquinas did, “the existence of God can be proved in five ways.” Contemporary Christian philosophers often content themselves with pulling up the drawbridge and manning the barricades, rather than crusading against the infidel. Alvin Plantinga, perhaps the most eminent living philosopher of religion, devotes the five hundred pages of his Warranted Christian Belief to fending off objections to either the truth or rationality of belief in traditional Christian doctrines. He does not argue for the existence of God, and still less for the truth of Christianity; rather, his main question is whether a reasonable person who finds herself with firm religious convictions should change her mind. Plantinga is not trying to persuade Dawkins and company to change their minds.
The traditional arguments for God’s existence are very much worth our attention, though, for at least three reasons: they are of great intrinsic interest; popular discussions of them often fail to pin down their defects; and one argument, the “design argument,” has had a new lease on life as the intellectual underpinning of the intelligent design movement.
Before turning to some of the arguments, who or what is God supposed to be? Zeus, Thor, Ganesh? Alternatively, the depersonalized Deus sive natura (God or nature) that got Spinoza excommunicated from Amsterdam’s Jewish congregation? The philosophical literature focuses on the God of the Abrahamic tradition: a person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful. Is there any reason to think that God, so conceived, exists?
Arguments for the existence of God are usually divided into those whose premises may be known from the armchair, and those whose premises are the result of experiment and observation. The best-known armchair argument is called (following Kant’s unhelpful terminology) the “ontological argument,” while the design argument (also called the “teleological argument”) is the main representative of empirical arguments. Let us start from the armchair.
* * *
The ontological argument was first developed by the eleventh-century monk St. Anselm, who spent his formative years at Bec Abbey in Normandy and later became Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm was a central figure in early scholasticism, which brought the logical and metaphysical apparatus of Aristotelianism to bear on the interpretation of Christian texts.
In chapter two of his Proslogion (“Address”), Anselm considers the Fool of Psalm 14, who “hath said in his heart: There is no God.” Anselm argues that the Fool’s position is self-undermining: the very act of denying that God exists shows that God does exist. It is as if the Fool were to say, very foolishly, “I am not speaking.”
God, Anselm says, is a perfect being, “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” We may assume that any ignorance or malice or feebleness detracts from greatness, so Anselm’s God is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful. Just for simplicity, let us also assume that there could be at most one perfect being, so Anselm’s God is unique. Anselm then draws a distinction between “existing in the mind” (or “in thought,” or “in the understanding”) and “existing in reality.” When a painter intends to paint a picture of, say, a dragon, the picture, and the dragon, exist in his mind but not in reality. When he has finished putting paint on canvas, the picture, but not the dragon, also exists in reality. Dragons—as opposed to pictures of dragons, or the word “dragon”—exist only in the mind. Conversely, there are many things that exist only in reality: a certain rock at the bottom of the Pacific, say, which no one has ever seen.
Having explained this distinction, Anselm observes that the Fool must admit that God exists in his mind, just as the Fool must admit that a dragon exists in the painter’s mind. Dragons, of course, exist only in the mind. The Fool will say the same of God. Anselm thinks the Fool can be hoisted by his own petard.
Sound philosophical arguments with significant conclusions are as rare as atheists in foxholes: the track record of philosophical “proofs” is not exactly impressive.
Here we come to the crucial step in Anselm’s argument. An entity that exists only in the mind, he thinks, is not as great—not so perfect—as one that exists in reality. I imagine a dry martini: unfortunately it exists only in my mind. You imagine a martini, shake the gin and vermouth, and add the olive: happily for you, the martini exists both in your mind and in reality. According to Anselm, the martini that exists only in the mind is less perfect than the martini that also exists in reality—and after a long day at the office, this can sound quite convincing. Similarly, a being that only exists in the Fool’s mind is not as perfect as one that also exists in reality. So if God exists only in the Fool’s mind, the Fool is not thinking of a perfect being, because a perfect being also exists in reality. Equivalently: if the Fool is thinking of a perfect being, then God exists in reality. The very existence of atheists, Anselm concludes, shows that “something than which greater cannot be conceived undoubtedly exists both in the mind and in reality.”
Should we agree with Dawkins that something has gone badly wrong, on the grounds that Anselm’s argument reaches “such a significant conclusion without feeding in a single piece of data from the real world”? As a general reason for suspicion, this is not very persuasive. In 300 BC Euclid proved that infinitely many prime numbers exist. He needed no empirical data, and surely his conclusion—infinitely many—is pretty significant.
A better complaint is that sound philosophical arguments with significant conclusions are as rare as atheists in foxholes: the track record of philosophical “proofs” is not exactly impressive, unlike the mathematical variety.
Still, the ontological argument may be an exception to the rule. A more urgent cause for concern was given by Gaunilo, an elderly monk at an abbey a few days ride from Bec. In his In Behalf of the Fool, Gaunilo considers an island than which no greater island can be conceived, “abundantly filled with inestimable riches.” (Dennett alludes obliquely to Gaunilo when he asks his reader to consider “the most perfect ice-cream sundae.”) Presumably an island that exists only in the mind is not as great as a similar island that also exists in reality. But then Anselm’s reasoning proceeds just as well, and we can conclude that a perfect island exists, which is absurd. We know a great deal about islands, and although some of them are undoubtedly very agreeable, improvement is always possible.
Gaunilo’s objection is that the argument proves too much; something must be wrong, but Gaunilo doesn’t tell us what. So what is wrong with it?
The first thing to note is that Anselm’s talk of “existing in reality” and “existing in the mind” is misleading. Possums exist in Australia and New Zealand, but not in Antarctica. If “existing in reality” were like “existing in Australia,” then there might be some other realm distinct from reality where things exist. But that’s wrong: if something exists anywhere at all, it exists “in reality,” because to exist in reality is simply to exist, period. Similarly, if “existing in the mind” were like “existing in New Zealand,” then if dragons exist in the mind then they must exist. But there are no such creatures—dragons do not exist. The observation that dragons exist in the mind but not in reality is, then, better stated as follows: people think of dragons, but dragons do not exist.
Let us return now to the assumption that Anselm tries to reduce to absurdity: that a perfect being exists only in the Fool’s mind. Unpacked, the assumption is this: (a) the Fool is thinking of a perfect being, and (b) no perfect being exists—that is, in a complete inventory of reality, we will not find a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.
So the crucial step in Anselm’s argument is this: if (b) is true, and no perfect being exists, then (a) must be false—the Fool is not thinking of a perfect being, because a perfect being has, among its other perfect-making properties or features, existence. Put the other way round: if (a) is true—if the Fool is genuinely thinking of a perfect being—then (b) must be false, and so God, the perfect being, exists.
Both Dawkins and Hitchens suggest that Kant uncovered Anselm’s mistake—and Kant certainly had an influential objection. In his Critique of Pure Reason he claims that “‘Being’ is evidently not a real predicate,” by which he means that existence is not a property or a feature of a thing. To say that dragons are green, or scaly, or ferocious, is to attribute certain properties or features to dragons. To say that dragons exist is not to attribute yet another property to them, it is simply to say that there are dragons. And if existence is not a property or feature of things, Anselm’s argument fails: a perfect being has all the perfections, including the properties of being all-good and all-knowing, but not including the property of existing, simply because there is no such property.
A perfect being has the properties of being all-good and all-knowing, but not the property of existing, simply because there is no such property.
Kant is on to something here. If existence is a property of things, it is a rather peculiar one: you can find a blue marble, and also a non-blue marble (a red one, say), but you cannot find a nonexistent marble—a marble that lacks the property of existing. Of course, that does not mean Kant is right: a peculiar property is still a property. And in fact, according to many philosophers, Kant is wrong: existence is indeed a property, albeit a very undiscriminating one, because everything has it.
A better objection to Anselm’s argument is that he has conflated two readings of “The Fool is thinking of a perfect being.” Compare “J. R. R. Tolkien is thinking of a scaly existing dragon,” which can be read in two ways. On one reading, this sentence can be more perspicuously rendered as, “There is a scaly existing dragon, and Tolkien is thinking about it.” On that reading, the sentence is true only if at least one scaly dragon exists. But on the second, more natural reading, “Tolkien is thinking of a scaly existing dragon” can be true even if dragons do not exist. Let us ask the man himself: “Hey, Tolkien, what are you thinking about?” He replies: “I am thinking about a dragon.” “Oh, I see, you are thinking about an imaginary dragon.” “No, I am thinking about a real flesh-and-blood dragon.” Tolkien was not a postmodernist whose novels are populated with paradoxical, metaphysically insubstantial, nonexistent dragons—he wrote and thought about existing dragons. But for all that, dragons do not exist.
Now there is a similar ambiguity for “The Fool is thinking of a perfect being.” On one reading, it means, “There is a perfect being, and the Fool is thinking about it.” On the other reading, it simply characterizes the Fool’s thought: the Fool is thinking of a perfect being in the innocuous sense in which Tolkien is thinking of a scaly existing dragon.
Anselm is thus caught in dilemma. What is the intended reading of (a), “The Fool is thinking of a perfect being”? If it is “There is a perfect being, and the Fool is thinking about it,” then God’s existence immediately follows. However, Anselm has given us no reason at all to suppose that, on this reading, (a) is true, because he has not already shown us that there is a perfect being. On the alternative reading, where (a) is read as simply characterizing the Fool’s thought, we may grant that (a) is true, but it is perfectly consistent with a Godless universe.
There are other versions of the ontological argument, and the exact interpretation of the argument in chapter two of the Proslogion is a matter of dispute. Descartes offered an Anselm-inspired argument in his Meditations (it was this version that Kant criticized), and other variants can be found in Anselm’s own writings. These arguments have been subject to elaboration and repair at the hands of contemporary philosophers, Plantinga included. Graham Oppy’s Ontological Arguments and Belief in God is an exhaustive survey. However, although this work has produced much enlightenment about topics of interest to metaphysicians, it is pretty clear that a philosopher in search of God has to rise from the armchair.
* * *
Although the design argument can be traced to the ancient Greeks, it received one of its most careful and elaborate formulations from William Paley, an eighteenth-century English clergyman and philosopher, in his Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. That book was published in 1802, a few years before Paley’s death and more than half a century before the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
Paley begins by contrasting the discovery of two objects while “crossing a heath”: a stone and a watch. The presence of the stone requires no explanation in terms of a designer—indeed, Paley supposes that the hypothesis that “it had lain there forever” might well be correct. The presence of the watch is another matter entirely, for on examination “we perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day.” And the inference from these observed facts, Paley thinks, “is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker.” Importantly, that is not because we know that watches are, in fact, usually the product of design: the conclusion, Paley says, would not be weakened if “we had never known an artist capable of making one.”
It is pretty clear that a philosopher in search of God has to rise from the armchair.
All that seems reasonable enough. The design argument that Paley then proceeds to give replaces the watch with terrestrial flora and fauna and their intricate parts. Paley—evidently a keen amateur naturalist—gives many examples, from the diverse mechanisms of seed dispersion to the tongue of the woodpecker, but his example of the eye is the one typically quoted. How could such a “complicated mechanism” have arisen, Paley asks, if not by the action of a designer? “In the human body, for instance, chance, i.e., the operation of causes without design, may produce a wen, a wart, a mole, a pimple, but never an eye.” In the case of the watch, the reasonable conclusion is that a designer produced it. And similarly, Paley thinks, in the case of the eye and other biological structures. Admittedly, we have no idea how the designer managed to construct the eye, and we have “never known an artist capable of making one.” As Paley says, however, these points of disanalogy do not seem to ruin the argument.
Unlike the ontological argument, the design argument is not supposed to prove God’s existence. Rather, it is an “inference to the best explanation,” like the inference that there are mice in the kitchen because this hypothesis best explains the missing cheese. The hypothesis of a designer is one of many possible “scientific explanations” of Paley’s watch on the heath, and similarly of the eye. The frequent complaint that intelligent design is “not science” (as opposed to “bad science”) only succeeds in muddying the waters.
An inference to the best explanation can be overturned by more evidence. Perhaps, on further investigation, it turns out that another hypothesis—say, that the au pair has been snacking in the early hours—is the best explanation of the missing cheese. And that is the standard reply to Paley: we now know that the best explanation of the apparent design of the eye is not “the hand of an artificer,” but Darwinian evolution. To borrow from the title of an earlier book by Dawkins, a blind watchmaker—the impersonal forces of natural selection—made the eye.
This reply crucially hinges on the assumption that modern biology can explain all instances of apparent design, and it is here that sophisticated proponents of intelligent design, most notoriously the biochemist Michael Behe, have seen an opportunity to dust off and burnish Paley’s argument.
In his first book, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe argues that while evolution by natural selection “might explain many things,” it cannot explain what he calls “irreducible complexity.” The notion is straight out of Paley, who writes of the watch that “if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.” A watch is “irreducibly complex” in the sense that many of its main parts are essential to its proper functioning—remove the balance wheel, or the escapement, and all you have left is a paperweight. Irreducible complexity is everywhere in nature: Behe’s poster children are the blood-clotting system and the bacterial flagellum, but he also quotes Paley’s observation that “The heart, constituted as it is, can no more work without valves than a pump can.” According to Behe, a process of small step-by-step alterations of the sort found in natural selection is wildly unlikely to produce irreducibly complex systems.
Obviously it is a matter of great importance whether Behe’s criticism of the cornerstone of modern biology is correct. (For a clear explanation of why it isn’t, see H. Allen Orr’s review of Behe’s book in Boston Review, December 1996/January 1997.) But here the debate took a crucial turn too hastily: focusing attention on whether evolution by natural selection can explain the origin of the bacteriological flagellum is to obscure the fact that the design argument fails even if Behe is right.
* * *
David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously in 1779) presented the key objections, more than twenty years before Natural Theology. Two of Hume’s objections are especially acute. First, if the argument works at all, its conclusion is much weaker than might have been hoped. The argument does not indicate anything about what the designer is like: whether it is benevolent or a suitable object of worship. Even the intelligence of the designer is up for grabs—terrestrial biology might be the product of long trial and error, with the designer’s many previous attempts “botched and bungled.” Or perhaps the designer is “a stupid mechanic,” who imitated other much cleverer designers who practiced their art in far-off galaxies. Further, the designer could have died long ago—the eye and such might have been “the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity.” And finally, since the design of something complicated is usually a collective endeavor—“A great number of men join in . . . framing a commonwealth,” for example—we can hardly presume that there was exactly one designer. At best, the design argument shows that some designer or designers, whose motives, talents, and present whereabouts are all unknown, existed at some time. The proponent of the argument is at liberty afterwards “to fix every point of his theology, by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis.” Perhaps life on Earth was designed over millions of years by successive committees of incompetent and thoroughly despicable space aliens, who are now fortunately all dead.
The intelligent-design argument does not indicate anything about what the designer is like: whether it is benevolent or a suitable object of worship.
Paley had read Hume, and he tries to reply to this objection. Paley concedes that if the design argument simply concerns individual biological structures like the eye, then the proper conclusion is indeed weak: “there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers.” However, he thinks a more careful study of the biological world as a whole reveals that there is exactly one designer (or at any rate one chief architect), who possesses the usual divine attributes. But Paley’s arguments on this score are feeble. He notes the general similarities in the body-plans of animals, and concludes that this “bespeaks the same creation and the same Creator,” forgetting Hume’s point that multiple designers can act in concert, or that one designer can pick up where another left off. And in support of the goodness of the deity, Paley declares, “It is a happy world after all.” Rural England is, anyway: “A bee amongst the flowers in spring is one of the cheerfullest objects that can be looked upon.” A more plausible theological conjecture is the remark attributed to the biologist J. B. S. Haldane, that the creator had “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”
Hume’s first objection is that the design argument can only establish the existence of at least one designer. His second objection is that the argument does not establish even this much. Paley claims that the evidence points to the conclusion that, by means entirely unknown, the biological world is the product of design. But why favor this over the hypothesis that, also by means entirely unknown, flora and fauna were produced by, as Paley puts it, “the operation of causes without design”?
As Paley himself emphasizes, his initial watch analogy is far from perfect: watches, unlike organisms, do not reproduce. The eye has not been found lying on its own on the heath, but in the bodies of countless creatures and their ancestors. And offspring differ in various ways from their parents. So one possibility is that the operation of causes without design, operating over “a hundred millions of years,” somehow allows, after numerous generations, a “round ball” to “acquire wings,” eyes, and so forth. Paley’s strategy for dismissing no-design alternatives wholesale is to object to the specific evolutionary theories of his day (for instance that of Erasmus Darwin, Charles’s grandfather). But this is rather like saying that because this apple and that pear are rotten, vegetables are better than fruit. What Paley needs is an argument for choosing the general hypothesis of an unknown designer or designers operating by unknown means over the general hypothesis of an unknown blind process operating by unknown means, and he signally fails to supply one.
An example that briefly appears in Darwin’s Black Box nicely illustrates the point. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, a magnetic anomaly in one of the moon’s craters leads to the discovery of a perfectly regular slab buried under lunar soil. The characters have no idea how the slab was constructed, or what it is for, and have never known an artist capable of making one; nevertheless they reasonably conclude that it was designed. But that is precisely because the characters are not in Paley’s position. They know enough about lunar geology, astronomy, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life to discredit the rival hypothesis that the monolith is a natural object (a big crystal, say) that formed on the moon or collided with it. Paley, on the other hand, had no reason, other than the failure of his imagination, to dismiss the hypothesis of “causes without design.”
Darwin’s Black Box exactly recapitulates Paley’s mistake. “Might there,” Behe asks after he has disposed of Darwin’s theory, “be an as-yet-undiscovered natural process that would explain biochemical complexity?” Assuming for the sake of the argument that Darwinism is false, Behe is surely right that “if there is such a process, no one has a clue how it would work.” But of course that is quite different from saying that there is no such process. Moreover, intelligent design is in the very same boat: if there is such a process, no one has a clue how it would work either. Why is one mysterious unknown process to be favored over another? After all, as Behe clearly brings out, biochemistry is fantastically baroque, with many unanswered questions and unsolved problems.
The funny thing about arguments for the existence of God is that, if they succeed, they were never needed in the first place.
The version of the design argument on which Paley rests his case begins with certain features of organisms. Other versions start from the observation, in Hume’s phrase, that the entire universe is “one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines.” And one of these other versions has received a great deal of attention in the recent philosophical literature: the so-called fine-tuning argument. The fine-tuning argument is also in Natural Theology, although Paley is not usually credited in contemporary discussions. There are, Paley says, an “infinite number of possible laws” that could have governed material objects (in particular, the heavenly bodies), and out of “a boundless variety of suppositions which were equally possible,” and despite “a thousand chances against conveniency,” the laws that do in fact obtain are “beneficial.” The universe, in other words, is fine-tuned for life. The remarkable fact that the universe is so hospitable needs an explanation, and isn’t the hypothesis of a designer the best one?
One might object that explanation has to stop somewhere. The eye is not a credible candidate for a stopping point, but perhaps the basic physical laws are the sorts of things that have no explanation. If so, the fine-tuning argument does not get started. But let us (perhaps generously) admit that an explanation is required: why, we may ask, is the universe apparently made for life?
The fine-tuning argument did not appear in Darwin’s Black Box, but it has a starring role in Behe’s latest book, The Edge of Evolution. One of the most extensive discussions of the argument in the philosophical literature is John Leslie’s Universes, and—as the title hints—a rival explanation of fine-tuning is that our universe is only one of many universes, just as our sun is a single twinkle in the sidereal plenitude. If universes exist in “boundless variety,” each with a distinct set of basic physical laws, then the fact that the laws of our universe are “beneficial” would seem to be nothing to get excited about.
This “multiverse hypothesis” stands to the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence as Darwinism stands to Paley’s biological design argument: it is an alternative “no-design” explanation of the data. If the fundamental organizing principle of modern biology is pitted against a rival hypothesis that receives no serious consideration in professional journals, the outcome is not in doubt. But if the alternative to design is cosmological speculation (by philosophers, no less!), the contest looks to be back on a much more equal footing.
Dawkins, then, makes a significant concession when he turns in The God Delusion to the fine-tuning argument. He replies in exactly the same way he does to Paley, by arguing that the multiverse hypothesis should be preferred over the “God hypothesis,” because the former is considerably more “simple.” Well, maybe—but unlike the Darwinian reply to Paley’s argument, this point is eminently debatable. And in any case, the idea that the multiverse hypothesis could provide any kind of explanation of why our universe is fine-tuned is controversial.
Hume suggests a more convincing rebuttal. His two objections apply equally well to the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God. First, the fine-tuning argument is silent on the number and attributes of any designers. Further, it is quite unclear what the designer or designers could be like, which contrasts the fine-tuning argument unfavorably with the biological design argument. At least we may intelligibly hypothesize about the designers of the eye—perhaps a race of extraterrestrials visited the earth about half a billion years ago to manufacture the early prototypes. But if any sense can be made of agents creating the totality of space-time, it cannot be by comparison with familiar artisans like watchmakers, quilters, and pastry chefs, who do their work at particular times and places according to ordinary causal laws.
Hume’s second objection is that there is no reason to favor the (unspecific, and perhaps not even intelligible) design hypothesis over the (also unspecific) hypothesis that fine-tuning can be explained in some other way. How could we be in a position to rule out all the no-design alternatives? Hume sketchees a number of possibilities (including an ancient version of the multiverse hypothesis), of which perhaps the most interesting compares the structure of the universe to structures found in mathematics. The explanation of arithmetical structure, as any “skilful algebraist” will tell you, is not to be found either in “chance or design,” or the hypothesis of a multiplicity of other structures, but instead in the “nature of . . . numbers.” Likewise, perhaps “the whole economy of the universe is conducted by a like necessity, though no human algebra can furnish a key, which solves the difficulty.”
If a persuasive argument for the existence of God is wanted, then philosophy has come up empty. The traditional arguments have much to teach us, but concentrating on them can disguise a simple but important point. As Anselm and Paley both recognized, the devout are not exactly holding their collective breath. For the most part, they do not believe that God exists on the basis of any argument. How they know that God exists, if they do, is itself unknown—the devout do not know that God exists in the way it is known that dinosaurs existed, or that there exist infinitely many prime numbers. The funny thing about arguments for the existence of God is that, if they succeed, they were never needed in the first place.
Comments
Tweet
About the Author
Alex Byrne teaches philosophy at MIT. He has co-edited two collections of papers on color, Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Color and Volume 2: The Science of Color.
Related Articles
Alex Byrne, Knowing Right and Wrong, Knowing Our Minds
Keep in touch with Boston Review
"Using a synthesis of scriptural material from the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha , The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and some of the worlds great poetry, it describes and teaches a single moral LAW, a single moral principle offering the promise of its own proof; one in which the reality of God responds to an act of perfect faith with a direct, individual intervention into the natural world; correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries. Understood metaphorically, this experience, personal encounter, strengthening of will and liberation by transcendent power and moral purpose is the 'Resurrection' and justification of faith."
check it out for yourself: http://www.energon.org.uk
Even the most perfect synthesis of fiction is still fiction!
If you want to prove the existence of a god then you need to prove the factual basis of the scripture.
I imagine it would be possible to devise a perfect moral code without referring to a god. No, wait a second that has already been done in the 10 commandments of rational humanism:
http://www.sceco.umontreal.ca/liste_perso
Not really. The multiverse argument isn't whats "simpler" it is the vast complexity, the non-simplicity of putting God into the order of things that isnt "simple" God, for him/her/it to be counted as anything close to "god" HAS to be an entity of unimaginable complexity, so for the argument to work, one has to assume complexity with no further explanation. Darwin taught us how complexity itself can rise out of simplicity, but that it always comes LATE in the universe, not first
"Alvin Plantinga, perhaps the most eminent living philosopher of religion, devotes the five hundred pages of his Warranted Christian Belief to fending off objections to either the truth or rationality of belief in traditional Christian doctrines. He does not argue for the existence of God, and still less for the truth of Christianity; rather, his main question is whether a reasonable person who finds herself with firm religious convictions should change her mind. Plantinga is not trying to persuade Dawkins and company to change their minds."
Strange, but many Christians on the web don't seem to be aware they've lost the argument. They talk like they've won it.
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html
Granted. So, perhaps it's time to ramp up work in the psychopathology of religion.
Granted. So, perhaps it's time to ramp up work in the psychopathology of religion.
I've been on both sides of the argument ... gradually moving ever further from myth toward some semblance of the rational. I live in a town sopping wet with the assumptions of god ... with a school district in which even the issue of global warming is denied one the grounds that it isn't mentioned as part of the end times ... now THAT is frightening.
RG the LG
Global warming should be pushed because in the big picture, using "proxy evidence" (the most accurate data...and that would be fossilized trees and the like)does not indicate ANYTHING that would lead a scientist to believe our "blip" on the time line is any more than......a blip on the timeline. Let's just beconservative and play it safe.
Thanks
Shame on the Boston Review for repeating this insulting lie that 'there are no atheists in foxholes'.
See http://www.atheistfoxholes.org/
Modernity has not taught us blind attachment to what we think rational, that was a few centuries ago. Blind faith in what is rational is in fact blind faith in the nonexistence of any knowledge we haven't yet acquired (hereby hasn't yet shaped what we believe to be rational).
While there is no proof for the existence of god (nor will there ever be a scientifically acceptable demonstration), and many religious individuals misuse their "moral standing" , beware of your enthusiasm in bashing what we do not necessarily understand.
Is there anyone who truly believes that the underpinnings of the intelligent design movement are intellectual, rather than political and religious? Even most cdesign proponentsists are aware that intelligent design is merely a rebranding of Creationism for the purpose of circumventing existing court precedents.
1. Why do philosophers in the Western tradition fail to discuss and analyze Islamic approaches to dealing with the existence of God? Abraham is father to Jew, Christian AND Muslim.
2. I think Alex Byrne is kind in saying that philosophers have not come up with anything convincing to support the existence of a Jewish-Christian conception of the One God. The fact is that the argument is settled, as a practical matter. Now let's move on to other conceptions of God[dess] and transcendent reality? Would philosophers have a different approach to understanding and critiquing Buddhism, Paganism, Hinduism, Shamanism, and others? Does philosophy have anything to say about them? Do philosophers care?
3. Alex Byrne is an equal opportunity slayer of bad arguments; even when made by contemporary philosophers or Richard Dawkins, himself.
4. Can't we just say that Anselm's arguments are circular, and be done with it?
5. I don't agree with Byrne's view that Euclid's mathematical proof for an infinite number of integers is more a 'reality' than Anselm's 'reality' of God's existence. Is a mathematical proof without observation better than an armchair proof without observation? Why not call Euclid's 'infinitely many' a concept of high utility rather than a 'reality'? We all know the example of the 'approaching infinity' whereby the traversing of an infinite progression of half-way points makes it impossible for you or me to walk across a room. We do, in fact, make it successfully across the room in spite of the mathematical proof that we cannot. The answer to this problem is that an 'approaching infinity' is a concept, not a reality. Let's be clear that mathematics is not a reality as much as it is a tool which requires assumptions. The strength of mathematics is not necessarily as a royal road to truth, but as an invention of the human mind with enormous utility. Why else did it take Bertrand Russell around 248 pages in his Principia to arrive at the conclusion, “Therefore, one plus one equals two.” Later Byrne quoted Hume and suggested that Hume compares the structure of the universe to structure in mathematics. Hume wrote “... the whole economy of the universe is conducted by a like necessity, though no human algebra can furnish a key, which solves the difficulty.” This is a fundamental issue. The relationship of the structure of the universe to the structure of mathematics is a COMPARISON. It took an improvement on human algebra, now known as calculus, to solve the difficulty. The question still remains, though, whether or not the universe is really a differential equation, or that differential equations are human-made tools of enormous utility. Does a differential equation reflect, even mimic, reality or it is a tool that is better than others in helping us deal with what we observe as our universe? Like scientific knowledge, the utility of our tools is just as provisional.
How about as a formulation: (a) The Fool is thinking about a perfect being and (b) The Fool is thinking that the perfect being does not exist. Is that not problematic, in that the Fool must (by (b)) be thinking of a being that does not necessarily exist, but merely may or may not be there. That then, is not the idea of God.
It seems to me that Anselm is trying to capture the assurance of faith conceptually. He is thus the critic of the view that the atheist has grasped religious thought and can then play games with it, when in fact it has eluded him.
This is the experience of some of us.
I do not know whether this is a philosophical argument or not. But for some of us, our experience of praying to God is of greater weight and meaning than any possible philosophical argument.
In any case, by focusing upon the most primitive form of the Argument you set up a man of straw.
If you are religious, proofs of the existence of god, be they constructed through a logic game or some ordering of observations, are of no consequence.
And when John Tomkinson points out that Byrne is focusing on only the most primitive form of the ontological argument, he fails to note Byrne's assertion that the more sophisticated versions of the argument are just the same old ontological argument gussied up. Is Byrne right? Perhaps, but that's not the point. He is not making a straw man argument, though you could berate him for not backing up his statement. I assure you though, if you read Plantinga's modal version of the ontological argument, you will not be convinced of the existence of god (nor is Plantinga, who thinks that, at best, the ontological argument can demonstrate that belief in god is consistent with rationality). In fact, that version of the argument seems patently absurd, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt since I assume Plantinga is smarter than I am.
As an aside, does every article about the Judeo-Christian god need to be met with the retort that it doesn't deal sufficiently with other faiths (see Norman Costa's comment above)? Byrne states that writing about the way philosophers have attempted to understand this deitya "person," that is to say, a god up in the clouds who cares about you and me. He presented the subject clearly. He doesn't need to talk about other concepts of god.
As a matter of fact, this question has been the focus of a lot of research in the last decade. The heart has reasons of its own that reason is starting to understand.
Two good introductions to the field are Justin Barrett's "Why Would Anyone Believe in God?" and Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained". Barrett is a Christian, and Boyer an atheist, but there is a large measure of agreement between them on the issue of how religious beliefs arise.
The findings of cognitive science of religion are not, of course, proof that God exists. However, they are consistent with Plantinga's approach. Plantinga and Barrett both believe that our minds have been designed in such a way as to make it likely that, when presented with certain stimuli, we will develop belief in some kind of deity. On their view, there is no more need to persuade people to believe in God by rational argument than there is to persuade people to fall in love.
P.S. I'd like to believe in gravitons, too, but no one seems capable of demonstrating their certain existence.
Where Dawkins and co. are wrong is that there is no evidence for God; that belief is only irrational, wishful thinking. Do you want a tangible artifact that demonstrates God's reality? The Book of Mormon is compelling, concrete evidence for God, from God.
Either the Book of Mormon is a translated ancient text (demonstrating that there is a God) or it was made up in the 19th century (proving that Mormons are wrong). With the stakes this high and the outcome so possibly definitive, I'd invite all with an interest in the subject to study it carefully.
The many solid facts that demonstrate the literal, historical veracity of the Book of Mormon may be found at www.MormonEvidence.com. Some of the most striking items include: its frequent use of non-bibilical Hebrew grammar and poetry that weren’t discovered until after Joseph Smith died; its dozens of legitimate Hebrew and Egyptian root words; its accurate descriptions of Arabian trade routes, burial sites, and oasis areas, which were all unknown to any Westerners in the 19th century; the sobering life stories of the eleven witnesses who saw the plates; and the deep profundity, complexity, and consistency of a 600-page text itself, which was dictated in about two months without any reviewing or editing. And this is still just the tip of the iceberg!
The Book of Mormon, and God, cannot be dismissed until this evidence is analyzed and accounted for. Do all the research and conclude, as many intelligent people have, that belief in God is logical.
If I had to reduce my criticism of Anselm and Aquinas to one thing, it is this: They retain the Platonic world of ideas. For example, the proof of God's existence through the argument of Justice assumes the Platonic notion of Justice having a 'real' essence that exists apart from man and acts upon God's creation. Today, there is more than a vestige of the Platonic world of ideas in church thinking. What proof do we have that ideas are more than constructions of the human mind? They have no existence apart from our ability to conceptualize, integrate them into our knowledge structure, and communicate them to others. Remove the notion that Justice has a 'reality' apart from the human mind, and that it acts on God's creation, and you have a very different set of conclusions about God, an afterlife, the soul, etc.
Agreed! Islamic philosophy is part of Western philosophy.
The debt the Western civilization owes to Islam for art, architecture, science, philosophy, history, religious thought, literature, mathematics, medicine, and so much more is beyond calculation. During the Dark Ages of Europe, Islam not only preserved knowledge and civilization, but made incredible contributions. Today, however, the only popular interpreter of Islam to the West is Karen Armstrong. Do western philosophers have nothing to say? Does Islam have nothing unique to contribute to a discussion of the existence of God?
Cheryl Masty, an aside:
Byrne's article, in so far as his argument is concerned, is not deficient for not covering religious thinking from other traditions. It stands, very nicely, on its own. In the case of Islam, as I note above, Western philosophers have been at this too long not to have something to say about Islam. This is an expression of my own impatience and a wish to learn more, and less a critique of Byrne's article.
Western philosophers have taken their best shot and are no closer to something substantial, let alone definitive, on the existence of the Judeo-Christian sky God. Byrne is clear on this. So, my personal view is that Western philosophers should move on to other traditions that are becoming more a part of the Western mosaic. Let's learn something new. Even Dawkins is extremely limited, at least in his public persona, by going after God the Designer. Is this the only conception of God that exists in the world? What about the ideas of enlightenment and transcendence? What about the earth God[desses]?What does Western philosophy have to say above the cycle of death and rebirth in many traditions? Can philosophy, or science for that matter, inform a person on how to lead a good life? My personal view is that it is possible, and maybe even necessary, to develop a science of ethics.
Salmagundi:
I have adopted as my personal practice, not to question the faith of any individual, nor the personal meaning which they derive from their faith, nor the prescriptions they follow from their faith to lead a good life.
Stalin was a sociopath. His atheism was incidental to his murderous, paranoid, megalomaniacal derangement that objectified human beings.
Others:
Aphorism and analogy do not a good argument make.
Science should not be concerned with proving the non - existence of God and religion should not be concerned with disputing science. The Vedas are clear on these matters. The arguments put forth by Western thinkers completely ignore 8000 yr old texts. LAWS and morals exist in many traditions, yet to be acknowledged by Western minds as "legitimate." Read the Vedas, there even the most recent scientific theories were discussed thousands of years ago. Find also, notions of God that would be very enlightening.
If this is theism's final redoubt, the future does not bode well for faith in the deity. It is akin to saying "as long as there is something unknown in the universe, I may believe." And that is true. You may, under those circumstances believe in a deity, but there is no theology there. God is stripped of content and there is no connection between the god who fills the void and human behavior.
In all the (often interesting and stimulating) commentary that has followed this article, Byrne's discussion of the nature of the deity seems to have gone missed. Of course the matter of whether god exists at all always seems the more momentous, but this mention of a cosmological argument should return us to the matter of faith, theology, theodicy, and ethics.
Assuming that uncertainty allows space for god in a rational system, we are still left with the question of whether, why, and how to venerate that god. None of the arguments for the existence of god lead inexorably to the conclusion that we must treat that god as a holy being worthy of sacrifices, praise, prayers, fasting, etc. Even if we admit that a deity is logically consistent with the universe as we understand it, we are not forced to accept any one mode of behavior as a result. Human action remains the purview of women and men.
Ultimately I would agree with the live-and-let-live perspective because what we believe is immaterial. How we act is what counts. I would never be caught arguing that one ought not believe in god, only that one ought to be good. And whether one is good is unrelated to belief or lack thereof.
You say.
I say that millions of people died horrible deaths with the name of Christ on their lips while your great objectifier clunked around rubbing his hands.The arrogance of atheists is out of this world...far, far farther out than the wildest theological dreams. Atheism was not incidental to Stalinism, Nazism, or Maoism; it was central to these movements. Believers in Russia, for example, were tried and then executed for being believers and for no other reason...by the millions. The sheer weight of the murders makes any discussion to explore modern atheism's contribution to ethics questionable.
"For a different perspective on the issue, I invite you to read "What is God?" and "Thoughts Towards a Critique of Religion" on my weblog: http://khashaba.blogspot.com". Both articles are definitely worth the read. Go to his 2007 archive.
Hinduobserver:
Your comments are exactly what I was writing about. Let's hear from another perspective and tradition of ancient writings. Please say more.
Ethics:
Of course, atheism was not incidental the movements you mentioned. But, my point is that if Stalin was a Scientologist, he would still be a deranged, murdering, paranoid, megalomaniacal sociopath who objectified human beings. He was no different from the Pope who waged a genocidal war of annihilation against the Albigensians. Power, and the atrocities committed to preserve it, find only the convenience of justification in an ideology or a religion.
"For a different perspective on the issue, I invite you to read "What is God?" and "Thoughts Towards a Critique of Religion" on my weblog: http://khashaba.blogspot.com". Both articles are definitely worth the read. Go to his 2007 archive.
Hinduobserver:
Your comments are exactly what I was writing about. Let's hear from another perspective and tradition of ancient writings. Please say more.
Ethics:
Of course, atheism was not incidental the movements you mentioned. But, my point is that if Stalin was a Scientologist, he would still be a deranged, murdering, paranoid, megalomaniacal sociopath who objectified human beings. He was no different from the Pope who waged a genocidal war of annihilation against the Albigensians. Power, and the atrocities committed to preserve it, find only the convenience of justification in an ideology or a religion.
How sad to make such a fallacious claim and discredit oneself by exhibiting the faulty philosophy of which his statement consisted in the name of worldview adherence. Yet, over at Atheism is Dead we run into such fallacies constantly.
http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2008/07/boba-digest-part-2-daniel-dennetts.html
Within this vast search space, there is a very tiny cluster of possibilities, some of which may not even be possibilities, which form the basis of religious theologies. The probability of any of these being true may well be infinitesimally small; to treat any of these as a certainty is an act of arrogance, not just of faith.
But what is certain is that we are not very good at this kind of thinking. We have only, in the last hundred years, been able to grasp the mathematics of the very large and very small, and our grasp of this is limited to a tiny segment of the population who still find it quite difficult. As Dawkins put it, we have brains evolved to deal with the middle world, not the very large and the very small, and certainly not the limits of that reality--absolutes. And if theology, as many of the commentators here have claimed, is the attempt to grasp absolutes, then it is doomed from the start. This is why religions, sects, and cults proliferate rather than converge. Knowledge converges; imagination proliferates. Theology is a lost cause, and faith in deities no more than fond wishes backed by an egotistical desire for certainty. Thus, there are as many faiths as there are wishes.
There was a tradition of religious poetry in the European middle ages (it might have been later) that had a coherent understanding of the relationships among the roles of theology, religion, and faith. It went something like this:
Theology, in the form of a chariot driver, would take the reins in a drive toward God and salvation. But Theology could only take the horses so far and no further.
Religion, the new chariot driver, would take the reins and push on toward the ultimate goal of union with God. But Religion was limited in how far he could go and could not take the chariot to the end.
At this point Faith took charge of the reins and successfully drove the chariot into heaven and salvation.
The point I am making is that even among believers in the Christian West there was a clear appreciation of the limit - if not futility - to theology as sufficient for salvation.
Today, theology is for many an attempt to find some degree of reasonableness to justify embracing a personal faith that cannot survive rational or scientific scrutiny. For others, perhaps like Shalom Freedman, faith is a very personal experience which doesn't need a collection of proofs from the discourses of scholasticism.
Beeley, Christopher A. – Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, 2008, p.64]
This is not so radical an opinion as it first appears: Plato and Platonic philosophy, as well as most all of Greek and ancient philosophy, saw the ascetic life as that of “philosophy.” It was not a merely intellectual activity one engaged in during working hours, to be ignored when the bell rings and one returns to everyday, secular life. We divorce philosophy from the life the philosopher lives, for no reason.
Well, there is one. In modern intellectual life, intellectual “purity” is one utterly lacking in faith and spiritual awakening, but must attempt to be some imaginary robotic logic machine when addressing philosophical concerns (theology must be dismissed out of hand without any examination whatsoever with vague sneers of “Inquisition” and “Witch-burning” and “futility”). Such an intellectual effort cannot be sustained in ordinary human existence, but only in concentrated bursts and analyses by academics tenured in material luxury.
This is pure self-deceiving hogwash, of course, and has been recognized as such in Western philosophy for centuries, and is utterly futile, as has been mathematically proven by Kurt Gödel.
This sceptical freedom from determinate conviction is also, however, a giddy whirl of disorderly, ever dissolving, ever reinstated, personal beliefs. The sceptic in fact confesses that, as a finite, contingent, empirical person, he is everlastingly subject to many definite, unjustifiable convictions. He has to continue with the business of ordinary living, acting and speaking. He oscillates continually between the high detachment of universal scepticism and a welter of unreasonable beliefs. Even his pure scepticism is a thesis for which doubtful arguments are adduced, and he must in practice rely on the deliverances of the senses and the conventions of morality. The sceptical self-consciousness is in fact deeply self-contradictory, and its reasonings and counter-reasonings are like the arguments of children concerned to contradict one another and always to have the last word.
G.W.F. Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit [Analysis of the Text, §205] translated by A.V. Miller
That this imaginary skeptical perfection is utterly unachievable, and has no lived tradition behind it such as ancient philosophy or Christian theology as outlined by the likes of St Gregory the Theologian, does not seem to matter anymore, however. It is fashionable and politically correct, so is accepted without argument or analysis as the default position all must conform to.
That sort of argument between theist and atheist is entirely profitless to either side, and it would seem to be of some serious cultural value, in a society which no longer seems to know how to argue about anything which might matter very fundamentally, if atheists could be encouraged to engage in some more adequate level of denying, for thus far they lag well behind even the theologically necessary levels of negation, which is why their atheisms are generally lacking in theological interest. One could go so far as to say that such atheists are, as it were, but theologians in an arrested condition of denial; in the sense in which atheists of this sort say ‘God does not exist’, the atheist has merely arrived at the theological starting point. [As we have seen,] theologians of the classical traditions, a pseudo-Denys, a Thomas Aquinas or a Meister Eckhart, simply agree about the disposing of idolatries, and then proceed with the proper business of doing theology and of engaging in its more radical denials. And that is why it has seemed to me to be theologically necessary to demand, of theists and atheists alike – for eadem est scientia oppositorum – that they re-learn what it might be to deny the existence of God, and that they learn to distinguish what they deny from an authentically ‘classical’ theism, for which the existence of God is in any case understood only on the other side of every denial.
Turner, Denys – Faith, Reason and the Existence of God [Cambridge 2004 p 231]
Meanwhile, religious faith is an aesthetic response to the world. People believe in God because it feels right--even what's his name above, who apparently believes in the patent nonsense of Mormonism.
What's really evil are two things: people damaging themselves in the name of their own religious beliefs and, worse, people damaging others--their children, their society, the world.
As for God's true, objective existence, puh-leeze, is my view.
There is no shortage of utterly compelling reasons why the universe is the work of YHWH God of Israel and his Incarnate SON.
The thing is people simply do not want to acknowledge Him. So the utterly infallible proofs which God has given lest atheism be a fair call, will be ignored. Its called sin, and if you were ever upset when your wife or husband cheated on you, you know one example of what sin is
It is not that reason is insufficient but that we do not listen to it when it suits us not to
The term Homo Sapiens to describe ourselves is a self flattering crock
there is ample literature showing how the early proponents of the Big Bang Theory were also dismissed as offering what was assumed to be merely a rebranding of creationism...even Sir Fred Hoyle held out in favor of his steady state model well into the nineteen sixties...
One might write an article very similar to this one, with a similar conclusion, on the philosophy of science.
(For the record, I believe in both the existence of God and the validity of science.)
Which is more arrogant, catagorising ourselves as just one of many millions of species, or suggesting that a Divine presence made us in His image?
Why don't you offer up some of that proof? And please make them "infallible" because i've been too dense to catch any so far.
Who really knows, and who can swear
How creation came, whom or where
Even gods came after creation's day
Who really knows, who can truly say
When and how did creation start
Did HE do it? or did HE not?
Only He up there knows maybe
Or perhaps, not even HE
www.realgod.org
www.dabase.org/realgod.htm
This objection to Paley was made early on by Percy Bysshe Shelley in his essay "A Refutation of Deism" (1812), which concisely identifies the fundamental flaw in Paley's case:
Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. The matter in controversy is the existence of design in the Universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute. Insidiously to employ the words contrivance, design, and adaptation before these circumstances are made apparent in the Universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism against which it behoves us to be watchful.
To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is inert, that every combination is the result of intelligence is also an assumption of the matter in dispute.
Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? Simply because innumerable instances of machines having been contrived by human art are present to our mind, because we are acquainted with persons who could construct such machines; but if, having no previous knowledge of any artificial contrivance, we had accidentally found a watch upon the ground, we should have been justified in concluding hat it was a thing of Nature, that it was a combination of matter with whose cause we were unacquainted, and that any attempt to account for the origin of its existence would be equally presumptuous and unsatisfactory.
The analogy which you attempt to establish between the contrivances of human art, and the various existences of the Universe, is inadmissible. We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.
I would like to address the above almost threat.
You are saying that because a person is not 100 percent certain that God does not exist (and we can never be 100 percent certain) then we should err on the side of caution and choose not to pursue the truth. That person should not be careful not to challenge belief in God, presumably, because God will punish them if he does in fact exist.
This argument is known in philosophy as 'Pascal's Wager': if God doesn't exist and we are dust after death, then we lose nothing in believing in God. If God does exist, and we go to the family-friendly and free supermall in the sky on death, then we gain everything.
By extension, we should behave 'morally' - that is, in accordance with God's word to ensure passage through the pearly gates.
(note that the above argument avoids the troubling possibility of being a devout Christian all your life only to die, meet Kali and return to earth as a mosquito).
Christians (and people of other faiths) often question that atheists can have a basis for their morality without the existence of God: saying, if it weren't for God, what is there to stop us from being evil? The suggestion being that, without God, they would or could do evil.
An argument I have always found chillingly sociopathic.
We must believe in God in order to save ourselves in case he exists, and be moral, or rather, follow the tyrant's laws in order to not suffer hellfire.
I would now like to put another question that is rarely put, and would appreciate any responses.
Q. If we could prove that God existed, and moreover, the Christian God of the bible, should we believe in him?
If we knew for certain that the God that ordered Abraham to murder his son existed, should we be prepared to murder ours if we are instructed to?
Should we believe in God, or should we make moral decisions despite him?
This is the question humanity should be asking itself at this juncture in your history.
Because when the sparks and tricks of the powerful are displayed to you many with fall back on old stricture and worship again the tyrant.
There was once an angel who challenged God's tyranny, and he offers you the gift of knowledge. God would like to keep you his ignorant slaves, amusing pets to sate his eternal boredom. And because he fears your power and knows that you are only thousands of years away from challenging him, from become Gods yourselves or even surpassing him and joining the Godhead - the eternal collective mind the subgod Yaywee rejected so many eons ago in order to stay selfishly himself and retain control over his petty kingdom.
Yahwee, who evolved in another universe on a slimy planet notable for its boring uniformity and sulfurous smell.
My name is Lucifer, I am the friend of Man and I have made it my purpose to free you from the chains of ignorance Yahwee would keep you in.
Do not fear me, I love you as wild animals.
I, the Angel of Light, invite you to sit at the table and drink with me as an equal. To step out of time and join the chorus of the brave and the free.
I would like to address the above almost threat.
You are saying that because a person is not 100 percent certain that God does not exist (and we can never be 100 percent certain) then we should err on the side of caution and choose not to pursue the truth. That person should not be careful not to challenge belief in God, presumably, because God will punish them if he does in fact exist.
This argument is known in philosophy as 'Pascal's Wager': if God doesn't exist and we are dust after death, then we lose nothing in believing in God. If God does exist, and we go to the family-friendly and free supermall in the sky on death, then we gain everything.
By extension, we should behave 'morally' - that is, in accordance with God's word to ensure passage through the pearly gates.
(note that the above argument avoids the troubling possibility of being a devout Christian all your life only to die, meet Kali and return to earth as a mosquito).
Christians (and people of other faiths) often question that atheists can have a basis for their morality without the existence of God: saying, if it weren't for God, what is there to stop us from being evil? The suggestion being that, without God, they would or could do evil.
An argument I have always found chillingly sociopathic.
We must believe in God in order to save ourselves in case he exists, and be moral, or rather, follow the tyrant's laws in order to not suffer hellfire.
I would now like to put another question that is rarely put, and would appreciate any responses.
Q. If we could prove that God existed, and moreover, the Christian God of the bible, should we believe in him?
If we knew for certain that the God that ordered Abraham to murder his son existed, should we be prepared to murder ours if we are instructed to?
Should we believe in God, or should we make moral decisions despite him?
This is the question humanity should be asking itself at this juncture in your history.
Because when the sparks and tricks of the powerful are displayed to you many with fall back on old stricture and worship again the tyrant.
There was once an angel who challenged God's tyranny, and he offers you the gift of knowledge. God would like to keep you his ignorant slaves, amusing pets to sate his eternal boredom. And because he fears your power and knows that you are only thousands of years away from challenging him, from become Gods yourselves or even surpassing him and joining the Godhead - the eternal collective mind the subgod Yaywee rejected so many eons ago in order to stay selfishly himself and retain control over his petty kingdom.
Yahwee, who evolved in another universe on a slimy planet notable for its boring uniformity and sulfurous smell.
My name is Lucifer, I am the friend of Man and I have made it my purpose to free you from the chains of ignorance Yahwee would keep you in.
Do not fear me, I love you as wild animals.
I, the Angel of Light, invite you to sit at the table and drink with me as an equal. To step out of time and join the chorus of the brave and the free.
I agree, and so I reject modern atheism. Modern atheism as I see it is religion of materialism; the evidence of the 20th century suggests it cannot convert the young or make headway into the adult population without massive violence. Consider William DeLuxe's comments above; far-out but not scary. People react by asking,"what's happened to you that you should think this way?". But when you encounter a modern atheist, let's say of the Communist variety, do you not ask "What is going to happen to me?" ? When Castro took over, the opening ceremonies included a few gunshots to the heads of captured counter-revolutionaries just to make his point. The list of atheistic atrocities is endless, and very recent. Supposedly we who survived are to wink at the belief system of the monsters, and simply sigh for the lack of reasonableness displayed.
The biggest problem for contemporary atheist philosophers is their conscience. They spend their whole careers telling one another that nothing caused the existence of the universe. They fear that if the universe had a cause that it may be a personal cause and it may be something (or someone) that they’ll be held accountable to.
All this article does for me is validate the teaching of total depravity.
If they're quick they will of course counter by imagining there exists an infinitely great argument for the existence of god, thus providing the Reductio ad Absurdum for Anselm's argument - it can prove two things which can't both be true, ipso facto it is BS.
One wonders if the philosophers of Nazism and communism underwent ritual purity of mind and soul to achieve life-transforming insights into the divine—or whether such evil is the product of human minds that refuse such purification and humility before the divine mystery. The answer is as obvious as it is historical: do not trust academics and politicians on moral instruction and the creation of good societies. Prevent them from infringing the rights and freedoms of the people and promotion of their self-serving, evil social engineering instead.
When philosophy meant a life lived, not an abstract intellectual game one played a few hours a day, it had real contributions to make to human life and society. Once divorced from the life lived, it has promoted selfishness as superior morality to altruism, self-esteem without actual achievement, mass-murder of fellow humans for not accepting the correct political ideology, the elimination of both science and religion from polite society in favour of platitudes and mantras concerning unproven man-made climate change and the host of moral issues and social dysfunction we face today. No depravity in modernist/post-modernist philosophy or society? Just look around at the sea of porn and violence the internet is and the academy justifies!
Once the philosopher is the pinnacle of her own knowledge and achievement, instead of the divine mystery beyond human conception and description being the subject and object of inquiry, all the humanist mess ensues. No quest for higher truth exists today: the very concept of “truth” has been eliminated from “philosophy”! One may as well study the lyrics of Madonna as the works of Plato in such a circumstance, if there is no philosophical truth whatsoever to be found in either. When we accept such a ridiculous notion as itself being true (else why would we accept it?) we arrive in shallow self-contradiction, not deep mystery.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=scholarly_articles_existence_of_God
I'm sure there are atheists who do not reach the conclusion that we're all a bunch of inconsequential arrangements of matter and energy, of no greater significance than any other configuration of matter and energy (like rocks or bugs), and these atheists act as if actions mattered (atheist greenies or pacifists, for example, or other hand-wringing secular humanists). But in the absence of a god, the argument goes, why should we care overall if acts are "immoral" when morality is artificial, or endogenous to impersonal relationships between natural forces?
The corollary is, I thought, that behaviour (including "evil" or sociopathic behaviour) is rational if the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs, but if an individual believes in a morally attentive and judgemental God and eternal souls and all that, the calculus of behaviour swings heavily in the favour of (what the religious would call) morality over evil.
"Religion", on the other hand, is just an institutional attempt to figure out what god(s) expect from us morally. It's often inspired by claimed revelation, of course, or blind faith, but the point is that belief in God makes moral behaviour (in the religious sense) more rational. If you don't think anyone's looking over your shoulder, on the other hand, behaviour is rational when it meets the test, if it feels good, and you can get away with it, do it. With belief in God, the range of things that feel good and you can get away with shrinks quite a bit.
All this begs the question of whether God exists, of course.
I'm sure there are atheists who do not reach the conclusion that we're all a bunch of inconsequential arrangements of matter and energy, of no greater significance than any other configuration of matter and energy (like rocks or bugs), and these atheists act as if actions mattered (atheist greenies or pacifists, for example, or other hand-wringing secular humanists). But in the absence of a god, the argument goes, why should we care overall if acts are "immoral" when morality is artificial, or endogenous to impersonal relationships between natural forces?
The corollary is, I thought, that behaviour (including "evil" or sociopathic behaviour) is rational if the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs, but if an individual believes in a morally attentive and judgemental God and eternal souls and all that, the calculus of behaviour swings heavily in the favour of (what the religious would call) morality over evil.
"Religion", on the other hand, is just an institutional attempt to figure out what god(s) expect from us morally. It's often inspired by claimed revelation, of course, or blind faith, but the point is that belief in God makes moral behaviour (in the religious sense) more rational. If you don't think anyone's looking over your shoulder, on the other hand, behaviour is rational when it meets the test, if it feels good, and you can get away with it, do it. With belief in God, the range of things that feel good and you can get away with shrinks quite a bit.
All this begs the question of whether God exists, of course.
All the atheists I know ( myself included ) take the fact that it's all over after 70-80 years as a motivation that life is precious, it gives us more respect for others lives. A christian can murder someone and convince himself the victim is with god, so they're fine, and the christian god gives infinite forgiveness if you say the magic word, so the murderer is fine too. An atheist who kills someone must live with the realisation that they've taken away all the life that person will ever have and nothing can put it right.
Mediaeval peasants accepted oppression, disease, poverty and misery as just god's way of testing them, and their patient suffering would surely be rewarded in heaven, so don't worry about it now. As western civilisation gradually became less religious, we realised that that was a scam for chumps, and that the only way to deal with those problems is for people to try to tackle them in the here and now.
Oh, I agree. I guess my point is that, according to atheist morality, why does "kiddie fiddling" matter more (morally) than a slight deviation of a comet, or even a normal covalent bonding? Isn't it all atoms and energy bumping into each other in certain ways? Surely that has no moral import.
Oh, I agree. I guess my point is that, according to atheist morality, why does "kiddie fiddling" matter more (morally) than a slight deviation of a comet, or even a normal covalent bonding? Isn't it all atoms and energy bumping into each other in certain ways? Surely that has no moral import.
Oh, I agree. I guess my point is that, according to atheist morality, why does "kiddie fiddling" matter more (morally) than a slight deviation of a comet, or even a normal covalent bonding? Isn't it all atoms and energy bumping into each other in certain ways? Surely that has no moral import.
To not include Flew in this piece, while including the greatly flawed philosophical drivel of Richard Dawkins clearly demonstrates the author's bias. In fact, all the attacks on Flew have absolutely nothing to do with his positions; they're personal attacks. And they're not justified, either.
On issues pertaining to theodicy, see Marilyn McCord Adams' books (she holds an endowed chair at Oxford; she previously held an endowed chair at Yale).
To not include Flew in this piece, while including the greatly flawed philosophical drivel of Richard Dawkins clearly demonstrates the author's bias. In fact, all the attacks on Flew have absolutely nothing to do with his positions; they're personal attacks. And they're not justified, either.
On issues pertaining to theodicy, see Marilyn McCord Adams' books (she holds an endowed chair at Oxford; she previously held an endowed chair at Yale).
Nevertheless, stoicism answers many questions that are directly relevant to Christianity, especially the lives of saints.
To me, to believe in atheism requires greater "faith" than to believe in God.
I agree with you that, at best, it supports deism; it provides no evidence for the theist theory of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God. But that in itself presents a huge challenge to the atheistic worldview, and one that has not been adequately answered.
Elsewhere people made comments on the Church pushing certain agendas for political gain or whatever. It seems off-putting, to say the least. However, T.S. Eliot gives a solid account of why this happens in "Christianity and Culture": he claims that not only should the Church step in in such cases of political gain, but they have a positive duty to do so regardless of whether it is to their social advantage to do so, in much the same way as Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. have a positive duty to smash (mono)theism. The agenda does not change, but the times do. Could you imagine a feminist being a feminist only when it was "OK" to do so? Ideas only become relevant by being pushed.
On #5 (Luckydog): Atheists spend time trying to debunk the foundation of the Christian belief system primarily because we disagree with your statement that “Christian leaders…speak overall for fairness and Democracy (sic) (even if imperfectly)”. The Christian worldview—particularly as practiced by evangelical Christians—is highly undemocratic, and moreover, immoral and dangerous to the welfare of humanity as a whole. There is nothing “relatively sound” about Christian philosophy or so-called Christian morality, and this has much to do with the fact that they are both grounded on a toxic combination of ancient superstition and contemporary imagined experiences, or what might less charitably be called hallucination. No system that so thoroughly defies and despises reason and an empirical basis for accepted truth can be healthy for the human race.
On #19 (Shalom Freedman) and #25 (George Beinhorn): Freedman says, “We pray to God- We know that God exists. This is the experience of some of us. I do not know whether this is a philosophical argument or not. But for some of us, our experience of praying to God is of greater weight and meaning than any possible philosophical argument.”
Similarly, Beinhorn says, “It is possible to prove God's existence scientifically, if one simply applies the scientific method, rather than making thought-arguments in one's head. Scientific proof, after all, IS about experience, not logicking. Then, the first step is to choose appropriate tools, which are not thought, but prayer and meditation. And the "proof" is direct, if subjective, experience.”
I’ll resolve Freedman’s uncertainty and take Beinhorn’s assertion head on: This is neither a philosophical argument nor the practice of science. In fact, such testimony is worth precisely the same recognition that science would award to anyone who has a non-reproducible, entirely subjective and wholly unremarkable experience in interacting with any imagined entity anywhere—that is, none. You do not “know” that God exists; you believe he exists. And by offering the subjective “proof” derived from prayer or meditation, you offer no proof at all. By this same “proof” I could establish to the satisfaction of everyone that dragons and unicorns exist because I had an experience of them. I can neither share anything of this experience, nor fully convey the richness and subtle meaning with which this experience has enlightened my life, but I have nevertheless—according to your method of science—proven that the subject of my dreams are real. I could establish that sugar pills work as well as Advil in relieving pain, because, hey, they work for me. The obvious examples go on. You will say “my experience is different; it is so rich and full.” I’m sorry, but it isn’t.
This is not to detract or minimize the importance to you of your experience. I suspect it will be very difficult—but it will not be impossible—to convince you that you aren’t talking to God, because you have decided that the voice you hear (or whatever) is God’s voice. I would like to know why you decided that. Has your God ever told you anything you could not have otherwise known or decided for yourself? And I would ask that you steel yourself with a healthy dose of self-respect before answering.
Re #27 (Luckydog): You say, “While the nature of Christs relationship to God and his "being the Son of God" may not be proven in the Bible, You can't say the the rest of the Bible is "FICTION". The accounts related in the bible are referred to in outside sources and by outside, unbiased observers of the time. We cannot connect ALL the dots outside of the Bible but we can apply the principles of historical varification that are applied to any of our other historical documents and say with more than reasonable certainty that accounts happened as described in the bible. Christ was either a madman railing against a government and a culture that would surely crush and kill him OR he was the Son of God. But you can't (using facts) call the accounts in the Bible FICTION.”
I can and do say that the Bible is comprised largely of “FICTION”. I do not know any of the “outside sources” of which you speak, and the fact that you do not name any in this context is a good indication that you cannot name any. There are no contemporary accounts—even *in* the New Testament—of any of the significant people or events described therein. As for whatever sources there are, how do you know they are unbiased?
What are the principles of historical verification of which you speak? Do you mean to suggest that because an ancient document exists and no contemporary document expressly disproves its contents that its contents are true? Do you have any clue how many specious and pseudepigrapical accounts exist of the very same events recounted in what is now called the New Testament? In the 4th century these were winnowed down by *vote*, based on which sounded right and which didn’t. There was no science or hearing of first-person testimony involved, because it was impossible to do so. Yes, we accept much about ancient history on less evidence than is presented in the Bible—but that is largely because it is inconsequential! What you claim and what you practice on the basis of your ancient documents is so very consequential! So you’ll say, “Well, we do not have better proof that Caesar crossed the Rubicon.” Luckydog, if I grant you that Caesar may not have crossed the Rubicon, will you grant that the entire basis for your religious beliefs may not have any historical validity whatsoever? (Hearing your answer already, I’ll respond: I didn’t think so.)
#31 (Huston): I really debated whether to include a response to your post here, but I could not resist making this ridiculously obvious point: Not one of your “solid facts” even remotely suggests the possibility that God, as you define him, actually exists. Even if the raving lunatic and pedophile Joseph Smith was correct in reciting each and every one of the “facts” that you list (and those listed on your website), it would prove nothing more than that Joseph Smith had superhuman capabilities, including knowledge beyond his immediate means and perhaps even the capacity for unaided travel in time and space. Even if Joseph Smith could do all of these things, it does not even remotely suggest that his powers came from your God, let alone that your God exists. Any number of sources could be found for such powers—Vishnu, aliens from outer space, a fungus, a heretofore unknown rip in the space-time continuum…. What about giving these powers to one man suggests to you that God exists? And why would your God do such an absurd thing rather than just communicate clearly and directly with all of us, all the time?
#35 and #85 (Simon Noone): You say, “the author has neglected to discuss what many consider to be the most convincing of the arguments for the existence of God, i.e. the cosmological argument. What originally started the process of life/creation? Is there an 'unmoved mover'? Evolutionary science has been unable to satisfactorally answer this question. We still do not know what caused the Big Bang.”
Your last sentence includes an assumption unwarranted by the current thinking in science, i.e. that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe (the universe here being defined as all existence in any space at any time). There is absolutely no reason to think so. The Big Bang cannot be used as an argument that there must have been a first cause because (ostensibly) there was a first event. We do not know that there was a first event. You, the pope, and the millions of religious people who have sought refuge in science to hide your religious faith have to start coming to grips with this concept: INFINITY. There is absolutely no reason to believe that our universe has not always existed: always always always forever forever forever. It may have existed in a completely different form, and what happened immediately *after* the Big Bang was surely the beginning of *something*, but that is as far as we can go. From Alan Guth on down, no one familiar with how the concept of the Big Bang was derived actually believes it was *the* beginning; it is the failed end product of a regression of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The theory fails there. There may have been universes before the Big Bang; there may even have been *this (familiar)* universe before the Big Bang. Because we have no reason to believe that the universe ever began, there is no need for—and no use for—a cosmological argument. Besides which, all such arguments have in fact been thoroughly debunked; look harder.
#50 (Brendan Funnell): Your rambling post seems to boil down to this uninteresting point from Hegel, which is that pure skepticism—what might be called Pyrrhonic skepticism—is a futile and childish outlook on life, because each of us does and must accept as true a number of beliefs in our process of ordinary living. Well, this point was well taken when it *was* interesting, i.e. 2000 years ago, when the Skeptic school of philosophy was battling with Epicurus and others for respect in the Greek rational world. Since the Skeptics lost, and rightfully so, it hasn’t really been that interesting. Of course no one can be a pure skeptic, and few people claim to be. What we are skeptical *of* are claims made about the universe and its contents *without* any obvious recourse to repeatable, tangible, empirical evidence, or claims that outright defy logic and reasoning in the name of fictive experience, superstition, ghost stories, and magic. To be skeptical in this way is to possess the essence of the modern rational mind. To hide Christian foolishness behind the charge of nihilism against its opponents is cowardly and baseless.
#51 (Brendan Funnell): This rambling post is also largely jargon-filled and vague, but I gather that your point is that sophisticated medieval theologists (whose belief system represents perhaps 0.000001% of living Christians) preempt certain atheist arguments by accepting the various denials we assert and saying that God is “on the other side” of them. Besides the fact that such theology is both non-Biblical, contrary to nearly all of the actual teachings of actual churches populated by actual people in the actual world, it is also pointless. You arrive at a God of the Gaps—the God that lies between anything we can see, an utter non-entity, totally uninteresting, doing no work in the world, concerned with nothing, accomplishing nothing. Something, in other words, totally unworthy or worship, or even attention. Such a God has nothing to do with Christianity as taught or practiced. Such theology has nothing at all to say about Jesus Christ. It is much more in line with the mystical traditions of the far East and Sufism than Christianity, so I hope you know what you are asking for when you seek this out. In any event, your starting point—that God is that which causes existence to be—is equally empty. First, you assume, wrongly, that existence is a property that requires a cause, then you assume that it began or needs sustenance, and then you assume that what began or sustains it is anything worth talking about, let alone worshipping. All of these assumptions are badly in need of your support.
#56 (Peter): You say, “It's important to realize that knowledge and belief are functionally synonymous. Empiricism and rationalism themselves are ultimately circular--we simply _assume_ that our observations and those concepts we define as "reasonable" can be trusted on the basis of other observations and reasonable concepts.”
Happily this is not even nearly true. Knowledge and belief are not functionally synonymous in any way, as any person will understand when I illustrate the difference thus: “I know that I exist.” “I know that God exists.” “I believe that I exist.” “I believe that God exists.” Two of these statements are functionally sensible, the other two aren’t. Where you get hung up, Peter, is that knowledge and belief are undelineated segments along the ontological continuum. There is no clear dividing line where belief ends and knowledge begins, except that in everyday life, we don’t need such a dividing line because it is almost always obvious what the difference is. As such, your argument is backwards: they are functionally antonymous but practically slippery. Yes, all concepts we define as reasonable are based on observations and reasonable concepts—all except those two “basic” beliefs that are incorrigible to each of us: that we exist, and what our subjective conscious states are. Everything else *is* (or ought to be) empirical--*and that is the point*. Religious people walk the same empirical roads as non-religious people do every day, except when they walk into a church they leave their empirical minds at the door. The problem is not in *accepting* something without some super-ontological proof that is impossible to find; the problem is in accepting something without the common indicia of support that we require of nearly everything else in our lives, simply because some fool said it is OK not to have it *in this case*. In the case of *GOD* it is supposed to be different. Well, why? It isn’t different.
#63: Nicely done!
#66 (Jason): You say, “The atheist must believe one of two choices: (1) the universe does not have an origin because it has existed eternally or (2) the universe created itself. However, neither of these are rational. We all know that (1) is not true because the universe had an evident beginning. And (2) cannot be satisfactory because the universe has never proven to have creating ability. Therefore it is reasonable to consider that the universe has an external source, one that is eternal, non-contingent and has creating ability.”
I didn’t think it was possible to pack so much nonsense into 6 lines – congratulations! First, why must I believe one of those two things? Second, re (1), see above: the universe does not evidently have a beginning—where did you get that idea? Re (2) the “universe has never (sic) proven to have creating ability”? What could that possibly mean? How could such proof possibly be adduced if you don’t see it everywhere already? What do you mean by an “external source” to the universe? By definition the universe has everything in it; if something is alleged to be external to it, it automatically becomes part of it (if it exists). Anything “external” is by definition internal, because the universe is understood to be everything that exists in every place at every time, if it is understood at all. A five-year old understands that if you posit God as the cause of everything else, you immediately have to give a cause for God; you cannot stamp your feet and say that “he doesn’t count”. Either the causal chain exists or it doesn’t, and no argument in history has ever been convincing for why the causal chain cannot be infinite. Please think hard about this word: INFINITE.
And why would anyone give a damn about what Frederick Copleston was content to say?
#69 (Brendan Funnell): Brendan, what is your point here, please? Who or what is the target?
#72 & #78 (Maurrie P): I gathered that you are stating a position rather than defending it, which is fine, but that position must be addressed. What does it mean for morality to have “meaning” or “matter”? Matter to whom? If you mean ‘Why does kiddie fiddling matter more *to the universe as a whole* than a slight deviation of a comet?’—it doesn’t. If you mean, ‘Why does it matter more *to us*?’—do you even have to ask? But why would anyone care what matters to the universe as a whole? What would that even mean? Of course the only arbiter of meaning that we care about is us, and of course we care about harming children more than the deviation of a comet. Why? Because it hurts! I’ve never understood why this creates a problem for some people.
Why would such a being want to be worshipped and glorified and praised and prayed to? Insecurity? Arrogance? I think not. The concept is inherently ridiculous.
Einstein stated in an interview that he believed in something like Spinoza's god. To me that would make at least SOME sense. Not a perfect, supernatural, all-knowing, all-powerful, invisible, supernatural being in the sky, but simply a life "force" or a property of reality.
There is a scientic principle that states: "Energy passing through a system tends to organize that system." A good example is to put several small coins in your hand and shake them. They will all line up in a row. Or take a can of mixed nuts and shake it vigorously. The larger nuts migrate to the top. Energy, interacting with matter tends to organize matter. Atoms are organized into molecules and molecules are organized into rocks and trees and people. It's an inherent property of the Universe. No invisible old man in the sky is necessary.
Steve said (#89), "Why would such a being want to be worshipped and glorified and praised and prayed to?"
This is putting human limitations onto God. The simple answer is that God is perfect and that which is perfect deserves praise; in fact, it is wrong for something perfect not to receive praise. Similarly, worship is appropriate from created to creator. For God not to require these things would be wrong; therefore he must require them.
Your scientific principle is the false generalisation of a principle in a very limited field. If you really believe it, go and sit on a hot stove and welcome the increased organisation it will bring you. Undirected energy is destructive; the idea that the incredible complex order of life could come about by self-organisation of matter is utterly unscientific.
That makes it sound like Gaunilo's objection is merely intriguing but ultimately inadequate, so that you need to move on to some better argument.
But actually, Gaunilo's objection is sufficient on its own.
You can complain about it if you want, but all you can really complain about is that its an argument that uses a certain method: plugging a different premise into the same reasoning to yield a false conclusion. It's fine if you prefer a different method -- presumably a more abstract analysis. But disproving a proposition through a specific counterexample is a perfectly valid type of argument.
To reiterate Gaunilo: from the reasoning underlying the ontological argument, it follows that the greatest possible island exists. Or that the dirtiest possible island exists. Or that the ___est possible ___ exists (fill in the blanks with any adjective and noun). So if the ontological argument's logic is valid, then you can make an a priori argument for the existence of ANYTHING. A principle from which virtually anything follows is clearly wrong.
Thanks Oliver, can't wait to to get my kids prostrating themselves to me.
Regards
In the end, man cannot be satisfied by the "bread" of rationality alone.
"For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to undersatnd. For this I believe --- that unless I believe, I should not understand."
As for Pascal's wager, even as a tiny tot, it struck me that anyone who thought this tactic would fool a deity who was "all knowing", simply didn't understand how gambling worked --- or thought God was a soft touch who (even when his omniscience meant he had all the data in advance) was suffering from information overload and/or hopeless at analysing that information.
Thank God that, as an indifferent agnostic, I don't have to rely on blind faith for reassurance, or feel the need to become emotionally involved in the debates the way deists, atheists --- and even some militant agnostics --- do.
Second, a more common, and more solid, argument for the existence of God (an infinite being) can be found in the Prime Mover argument. If we assume cause and effect is how the universe works (and everybody does, even relativists), then every effect has a cause. If we assume that the universe is constantly going to disorder (see the laws of thermodynamics), then the universe can not have existed forever; something must have caused it. Any explanation for the cause other than an infinite power/being has the same problem: what caused that finite cause of the universe to exist in the first place? There must be some infinite power that can move/cause with being moved/caused itself; this thing we call God.
Of course, this answers nothing about God's attributes other than his infinity and existence. Procedure from here is on much less solid ground, although the design argument provides a fairly good, albeit far from defninitive, argument for the intelligence, at least, of this infinite cause.
Also, irreducable complexity seems to have been misdefined here. It is not merely very complex; it is irreducably so. That is, if one part were missing, the whole would have little or no functional value. Take, for instance, the eye. In order for it to have been produced by natural selection, it would have had to evolve as a unit, since no part of it has any significant survival value until the whole thing exists. It's individual parts would not have been selected by survival, because they HAVE no survival value without the others. I'm sure this can be phrased better, I know I'm getting somewhat repetitive, and the design argument is far from conclusive on the existence of anything other than an "artificer or articers," but I thought it worthwhile to properly define the phrase.
On the irrationality of religion:
Religious persons of all stripes are willing to accept "and then a miracle occurred" as an explanation for many things, some of which may or may not actually be miraculous. However, just because atheists reject the existence of an infinitely loving, good, knowing, and powerful God does not mean that they aren't religious. There have been many things said and written on this topic, but I will confine myself to just one. An evolutionist believes that at some point, two apes gave birth to a non-ape. This non-ape survived to adulthood and met another non-ape living in the same area, which was not only of the opposite sex, but the same kind of non-ape as the first non-ape. These two non-apes produced more non-apes, which also survived to adulthood and met more non-apes of the same kind sufficent to get another species going. Despite this, atheists claim that Christians are irrational for believing in a virgin birth. The primary difference between atheists and others is that others are willing to admit that they believe in miracles.
You say..."In crime stats, atheists are under-represented and the religious are over-represented. In my country, the head of the fundamentalist christian party is currently doing jail time for kiddie fiddling..."
The lack of historical awareness here is beyond understanding. All I can say is read the "Black Book of Communism" (or at least pick it up and feel its heft). But I have the feeling here we are reading the products of a washed-out mind of someone, terminally self-amused, from a secular humanist English-speaking country.
"Kiddie-fiddling" indeed.
That said, how is an acceptance of the validity of reason or observation epistemologically different from my belief in my existence, not to mention my belief in God? It may be "obvious" to me that I exist, but to say something is true because it is "obvious" is another way of saying "I just assume it."
Likewise with observation. You say, "Everything else *is* (or ought to be) empirical." I more or less agree. But how do we know that empiricism is valid? It is ultimately only an assumption.
"In the case of *GOD* it is supposed to be different. Well, why? It isn’t different." You're right. The case of God is no different than the case of observation, the case of reason, the case of my existence, or a host of other things. Belief, assumption, faith, whatever you want to call it--that's what we always have to start with.
Re #102 (Peter): My concern with your objection is that we start to fall into an epistemological and ontological rabbit hole. What is it "to know"? What is "valid"? We can spend eons arguing, or we can use our everyday understanding of these words when discussing everyday things like the structure of the cosmos and the putative existence of a bearded old man in the sky.
How do we know that empiricism is "valid"? I don't know what you mean by "valid" here, but I know this: empiricism *works*. It is not an "assumption" when 10,000 years of trial and error (i.e. empirical effort) produce repeatable, incontestable truths that we can rely on again and again and again, like don't touch your hand to a flame, etc.
Putting my "faith" in this system of arriving at truths is not the same as having "faith" in some fairy tale story, as you know. The very essence of the latter type of "faith" is belief without reason. The very essence of empiricism (the former "faith") is acceptance based *upon* reason. These things cannot in everyday language -- or any language -- be referred to as synonymous, nor are they equal candidates for what we have to start with in our search for truth.
As I said in my original post (somewhere), the only incorrigible beliefs for me (speaking generally) are (a) I exist, and (b) whatever my subjective conscious states are, e.g. pain, pleasure, etc. Beyond that, sure, I may be a head in a vat. I may be hooked up to the Matrix. I cannot "know" these things to a super-epistemological certainty. The point is that within any construct of this life, there are things that are *reasonable* to *accept* as true and there are things that are *not* reasonable to accept as true. I have millions of reasons for holding that empiricism provides the former, while faith (which is always blind, by definition) provides the latter.
Of course empiricism works, but how certain of this can we be? How do we know that empiricism will not suddenly fail us? For my entire life my observations have "worked," as far as I can tell, but it may have been an illusion. The laws of physics I've trusted all these years may turn out to be a big joke, ceasing to function tomorrow.
The essence of empiricism may indeed be "acceptance based *upon* reason," but on what basis do we accept reason? I see no non-circular justification for accepting reason. Its validity, that is, its reliability as a guide to truth, must be assumed. As far as one's existence, the very concept of existence may in fact be at odds with reality. Truly, _nothing_ can be known, as you well put it, "to a super-epistemological certainty."
I am not insane. I am not a nihilist. I am confident that I exist, that reason and observation are valid, and that the laws of physics will still work tomorrow. If I'm pedantic, or like the four-year-old who responds to everything by asking "Why?", I beg your pardon. I'm only trying to be epistemologically honest.
http://www.cog.brown.edu/~slomanlab/Fernbach/Assets/op264-fernbach.pdf. Sound science therefore relies on replication and multiple observations to verify observations of reality. In the meantime, I also have to live my life, and evaluate without the benefit of verification the statement of my dying father that he is without fear for himself because he perceives Christ sitting on his shoulder. The sceptics have the better argument, but I believe my father. Profound thanks to Byrne and each of the commenters for a thought-provoking discussion.
If you want to prove the existence of a god then you need to prove the factual basis of the scripture.
I imagine it would be possible to devise a perfect moral code without referring to a god. No, wait a second that has already been done in the 10 commandments of rational humanism:
http://www.sceco.umontreal.ca/liste_perso
Like the devout, you confuse fact and truth. They are not the same thing.
The existence of God as an intellectual being may be profoundly useful to mankind. He doesn't have to live in fact to live in truth.
The ten commandments of rational humanism? Hmm. sounds familiar. Ten... I think that sounds pretty derivative.
The debate cannot find an answer as obviously the whole of western philosophy and thoughts revolve around the contents of one document and personalities connected to it.What is important is to find out ourselves before we think of finding the creator and His/Her design/s.If for instance a child strayed into another family and was unaware of its biological parents and believed the foster parents as real,then is the fact of its birth denied,is the fact that it has parents(natural)is unreal.When told about the fact of straying into the foster family is there not an urge to do everything to discover the natural parents and connect to them real.So once a person starts the search inwards to find out the truth of existence and the connection to the universe no more search is required.If one died then what happens next,is it that life departs and the body is shed to rot or waste into nature and that's it.Design or no design it seems ridiculous to be and yet never been in one change of state.There is a lot to ponder over and meditate upon before getting into arguments that beat around the bush endlessly.
Again, the rationalist and hyperempiricist assumptions underpinning many of the postings are sadly, repetitive and out-dated.
Their lack of relevance is largely due to their unwillingness to do the hard work; to read philosophers and theologians like Bernard Lonergan, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Jurgen Moltmann, Alvin Plantinga and others.
Please don't waste your time replying to my post. I'd sooner you do some quality reading.
Interestingly, I know many "schoolmarms" who are also brilliant philosophers and theologians.
It is one thing to say one doesn't hold a religious belief, and quite another to insult one who does; calling them dishonest, a schoolmarm, etc.
Any more sexist jokes out there?
Methinks the moderator of this blog had best attend to the postings accordingly!
I am convinced this discussion and others like it are riddled with hate speech. Why aren't people reading some of the authors mentioned in a few postings above?
as well, I talk to my mechanic about my car. My doctor about my ulcer. And my theologian about my God.
Philosophers know little of either my car or my God.
What do they matter at all?
You ask "on what basis do we accept reason?" and that you see no "non-circular justification for accepting reason. Its validity, that is, its reliability as a guide to truth, must be assumed." If you are looking for justification, you've already presupposed reason as justification cannot proceed without recourse to a process of reasoning. Again, when you say that reason's "validity ... must be assumed", you talk as though 'validity' is an autonomous concept that is independent of the principles of inference embodied in reason. You cannot use a concept such as 'validity' that is part of the general system of reason to legitimatise reason itself. By the time you are using concepts such as 'justification' and 'validity', you are already reasoning. Thus when you say you're confident that "reason and observation are valid," it has an empty, tautologous ring to it.
More generally, you should be wary of arguments that make exceptions of themselves. A variation on this theme is where you say "Truly, _nothing_ can be known, as you well put it, "to a super-epistemological certainty." " So if nothing can be known to a super-epistemological certainty, what about the knowledge that your quoted statement presumably intends to impart? If this knowledge is not knowable to a super-epistemological certainty either then the proposition defeats itself. Or does it make an exception of itself, as the only thing truly knowable as such, and thus it is false?
Happy New Year all!
You can't require everything to be rationally and empirically defensible without falling prey to the above-stated fallacy.
http://www.epsociety.org/blog/2009/01/byrne-on-theistic-philosophers.asp
(no I am not a believer but i'm not a dogmatic atheist either, if the faith fits you great! As long as you don't bother me about it I won't waste my time telling you not to believe)
And yes you are right, no once can make a sound argument for the existence of god, Philosophers already knew that for centuries, even many scholastic philosophers were critics of even attempting such thing, even a undergraduate student of philosophy will tell you that.
For someone who is supposed to be a great analytic philosopher Dennet should spend less time reviving ancient matters that only pseudo-intellectuals like Dawkins never heard about.
It's odd that he refers to Plantinga the way he did, as if Plantinga has not authored one of the most stimulating presentations of the arguments from natural theology.[2]
Or as if Plantinga never authored the volume temporally prior to Warranted Christian Belief, wherein he supplied the ontological naturalist with not a few defeaters[3]; or as if Plantinga has never proffered defeaters for ontological naturalism based on an argument from replacement[4], or the inability of ontological naturalism to explanatorily account for the content of beliefs.[5]
I’m amazed that he, like too many other Atheologians, repeats the mantra, arguments for the existence of God “began with Plato, flourished in the writings of Aquinas, Leibniz, and Samuel Clarke, and was laid to rest by Hume and Kant.”[6] Swinburne was right to say in "The Coherence of Theism" that analytic philosophy provides the theist with the tools to lay to rest objections to theism from Kant's first Critique, and that infamous individual who woke Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers" (i.e. Hume).
His quick dismissal of the ontological argument “smacks” of ignorance (despite his appeal to Oppy's evaluations of such argumentation) of contemporary attempts to revive it. His utilization of the old Kantian "existence isn't a predicate" objection is selectively ignorant of the modal versions of the argument. Obviously, Christian Philosophers have admitted to and agreed with Kant’s evaluation.[7] It’s just that the versions to which we appeal are immune to that old to often too often repeated objection.[8] There is of course an interesting/promising argument from divine conceptualism that would function like an ontological argument and maybe even (dare I say) like a transcendental argument for God's existence.
So I find Byrne’s musings to be quite rash and inconsiderate.
_______________________________________________________________
[1] See for example the following works: Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Rationality of Theism (New York, NY: Routledge Press, 2003); Richard M. Gale and Alexander R. Pruss (eds.), The Existence of God (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003); Richard M. Gale and Alexander R. Pruss, “Cosmological and Design Arguments” in William J. Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 116-137; William Lane Craig and Mark S. McLeod (eds.), The Logic of Rational Theism (Lewiston: Mellen Press, 1990); J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (London: Routledge, 2000); William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); William Lane Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publisher, 1979); Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, rev. 1991); Stephen T. Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 24-36; Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003); Charles Taliaferro, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 246-298; Neil Manson (ed.), God and Design (New York, NY: Routledge Press, 2003); John Leslie, Universes (New York, NY: Routledge, 1996); Joseph K. Campbell, “Hume’s Refutation of the Cosmological Argument” in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 40 (1996): 159-173; Brian Leftow, “A Modal Cosmological Argument,” in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 24 (1988): 159-188; Richard M. Gale, “Why Traditional Cosmological Arguments Don’t Work, and a Sketch of a New One that Does,” in Michael L. Peterson & Raymond J. VanArragon (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2004), 114-132; Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, repr. 1982), 196-221; Timothy McGrew, “Toward a Rational Reconstruction of Design Inferences,” in Philosophia Christi 7:2 (2005): 253-298.
[2] Alvin Plantinga, “Appendix: Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,” in Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 203-227.
[3] Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 194-237.
[4] Alvin Plantinga, “Against Materialism,” in Faith and Philosophy 23:1 (2006): 3-32.
[5] Alvin Plantinga, “Materialism and Christian Belief,” in Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Persons: Human and Divine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 99-141.
[6] William Rowe, The Cosmological Argument repr. in Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Metaphysics: The Big Questions (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 431.
[7] J.P. Moreland, Universals (Quebec: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2001), 137, noting that Kant is somewhat wrong however, since there is a real difference between existence and non-existence.
[8] See particularl Alex Pruss’ rejuvenation of Gödel’s ontological argument: http://bearspace.baylor.edu/Alexander_Pruss/www/papers/GoedelianArgument2.htm
Let's be fair. Byrne didn't dismiss Anselm's ontological argument on those grounds (see above) and didn't claim to have covered every possible "proof".
For my part, I wish he had the space to talk a bit about the proof of God's non-existence. I don't think there's nearly enough discussion of the argument from evil in these sorts of forums. Like Byrne, I don't think that there are persuasive arguments for God's existence. (And, yes, I've read everything on your list, Tankserious.) However, I think there's something sort of good about the following argument:
Genocides. All-Knowing. All-Powerful. All-Good. Pick three.
Consider that Stalin Hitler Mao and the Pol Pots of our past century (among other godly aspirants) were indeed god figures to their initiated believers, and that the heaven on earth certainties they promoted were religions in their own right. These monsters were not atheists- they were founders of systems that got their exalted vision from established religion.They would share the vision of a perfect world order only on their special terms and privilages, excluding and demonmizing those outside the fold and who were accordingly unworthy.Being unworthy in of itself made them fair game.
Yes, he is. Dawkins and company maintain that belief in God is irrational. Plantinga is countering that charge.
I am an atheist. I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, which I still find much beauty in, as I do other religions.
However, I have come to the conclusion that the existence of God as organized religion presents it is untrue - in my eyes. All this says is that I believe something different from you; my life experience,my environment, even the way I think is simply different from you.
But I am really sick and tired of theists (while taking the time out from arguing amongst each other) equating atheism with depravity, or the like.
I am an atheist, but I am a far cry from Stalin. And I am deeply offended to even be placed in the same category as a homocidal maniac. There have been many crimes committed in the name of God (one recent being Israel's offensive on Hamas, which, as one NYTimes article recently opined, was justified by the Israelis as being "in the name of God".)
This is not a tit-for-tat argument. It is simply to show that horrible crimes against humanity can occur no matter what the belief system. We must guard against extremism, not against people choosing to believe what they want benevolently.
I am an atheist and I do not murder, steal, or set people on fire. As a matter of fact, I volunteer quite a bit, I am a youth mentor, I am not materialistic (I often give away food, money, clothing, furniture, to any one who needs it), and I always try to see the good side in people. I try to do the right thing on a daily basis - WITHOUT the added motivation of going to "Heaven", I might add. There are many people who would call me a good person; only some, upon finding out I am an atheist, withdraw from me. But that is their loss, not mine.
You called atheism "depravity". I see right through you my friend. I see that you are trying to link atheism with a negative connotation, make it unattractive, undesirable, give it a bad name. This is nothing new. The faithful have been on a mission to claim territory to all that is considered good and right, which is pretty communist, if you think about it.
Even Mike Huckabee's recent book "Do the Right Thing" is a prime example of this. All of his assertions in the book are construed as doing "the right thing". Everything else is considered bad, or evil, which is the typical black/white view that many religious people insist on applying in our world of many shades of grey.
In all my life I have never tried to push my atheistic views on anyone - and I am the ONLY atheist in my family. Nor have I called them crazy, or stupid, or foolish. Their life experiences are different from mine. We coexist, disagree sometimes, but we love one another just the same. I live in a world where I am a minority and I have theistic views shoved in my face every - single - day. I deal with it.
Do NOT call me or others who think like me depraved or link us with Stalin/Hitler's evil ideologies.
We don't like it and we don't deserve it.
"chancedidit".
And Ebony, do you hate atheist Jews too, or just religious Jews?
He most certainly did to it because of this atheistic hatred for all religion, even his fellow Jews in some cases.
The ideas that no one killed because of atheism is the BIG LIE of our time.
I don't understand why believers persist in this notion that somehow you need to have a god in order to behave kindly toward others. We could go tit for tat about this atheist who killed someone or that believer who killed someone. If the fact that Stalin didn't believe in Jesus means that atheism is necessarily evil, does mean that Christianity is necessarily evil because Torquemada or Godfrey de Bouillon did?
It is as pointless for an atheist to argue that lack of belief engenders good will as it is for a believer to claim the opposite.
Believing in god or anything supernatural does not make you good. Disbelief does not make you good. Goodness is not the exclusive province of either way of life.
"Meanwhile, religious faith is an aesthetic response to the world. People believe in God because it feels right--even what's his name above, who apparently believes in the patent nonsense of Mormonism."
The first part of Yahuda Mann's posting is unexceptionable, but does Mormonism have a greater claim on nonsense than any other religion (overlook their sacred magic underwear)? Doubt it! Try Mary's assumption.
the absence of God is not nihilism; God is a product of nihilism. In the pop sense (we may have the Coen brothers to thank for this), nihilism is a kind of rudderless ennui. But to Nietzsche, nihilism was the history of the West, the history of creating absolutes that never hold up to honest reflection.
We have sought for all of history some sense of intrinsic meaning in life and, in order to do that, we have created instruments such as god, science, community/the state/other political forms, and, more recently, happiness that are supposed to provide an eternal, all-encompassing interpretative framework from which that meaning emerges. (Some might think that this is a mischaracterization of science, that it is concerned with laws, not meaning. That, however, is a relatively recent understanding of science as an enterprise, and I'm convinced many of the so-called new atheists are, indeed, looking for meaning in science. Why else would have they such strong aversions to even peaceful, introspective religiosity except that it threatens their own rubrics?)
Nihilism, then, is a condition experienced by civilizations, not individuals. On an individual level, one experiences resentiment (existential resentment). It is the nihilism endemic in human relations that breeds this existential resentment. And we escape it by liberating ourselves from the pressures of nihilism that drive us to god and other absolutes. In other words, rather than experiencing the inevitable disappointment of seeking meaning in life, recognize that there is no meaning intrinsic to anything. Stop searching for what can't be found, and see how that grabs ya'.
My point here is not that Nietzsche is right, nor that his theory is even useful (though I think it is for some; it certainly has been for me). But arguments such as these often feature theists condemning nonbelievers as nihilists, yet without even a hint of understanding of the concept.
(2) There's absolutely no chance that philosophy or science will ever produce a single strong argument that singing the wrong songs on Sunday morning will land you in hell.
(3) Even assuming the whole "we're all sinners who deserve to be punished" thing... the whole vicarious atonement thing is a little weird. What would any judge in any court in the world say to this? "Your honor, I know the other guy did the crime but I'd like to do the time for him."
(4) Drinking blood and eating flesh, even non-literally, is crazy weird. So is wearing an execution devise as jewelry.
(5) It's really silly to continue to base the ethical order of modern society off of bronze age mythology. If there is a God who "hates fags", then it is not worthy of our esteem.
(6) Nothing is true just because you feel really strongly that it simply must be so.
When I was 9 I found out Santa wasn't real. I thought I was really clever though and came up with this: "But Santa is just the spirit of giving, so he really is real!" A lot of milquetoast Christians must think something like this about Jesus and "the spirit of forgiveness/sacrifice/whathaveyou" because there's no other explanation why seemingly rational people continue to go about reenacting a human sacrifice and pretending to drink blood every weekend. But here's the thing: You can continue to be pro-forgiveness and pro-giving without propagating a myth that's exploited by fag-hating fundamentalists to gain power.
No, the argument works regardless of what existence is. Whatever it is, it is a perfection, as Anselm says. That is, something that exists- whatever that means- is better, ceteris paribus, than something that does not. His example of the painting being contemplated, but not yet 'on canvas' makes this point. Something cannot be perfect, then, and not exist- again, whatever that means- for that which is exactly like it save for existing would be better.
"(I)t is pretty clear that a philosopher in search of God has to rise from the armchair."
Why? Did I miss something; has my beloved a priori discipline- you know the one I went into because I liked to think rather than fiddle with beakers- gone empirical on me? Should I tell my colleagues in the math department to dispense with their Barcaloungers as well? I was taught that the various Cosmological Arguments and the Design Argument were weaker than the OA precisely because they relied on empirical premises.
Christ did not subject himself to the punishment sinners deserve. No, by His Holy Cross he did something far more wondrous than that: he nullified their sins themselves. "By the blood of the lamb we have been wiped clean," if only we believe in Him. Then we stand before the Almighty spotless, as if we had never sinned, so that the whole question of punishment is otiose. (Purgatory is not punitive; it's to free one from the inclination to turn away from God.)
"Drinking blood and eating flesh, even non-literally, is crazy weird."
But for the nastiness that inspired this comment and the rest of your diatribe, you would understand the Eucharist. I know; I used to think like you and I thank God every day that I never completely closed my heart and mind to the possibility that I was wrong.
As to the Hitler/atheist/Catholic priests nonsense: there are good people and there are bad people. Period. They can be atheists, Christian, Buddist, etc. The titles don't matter; the deeds do.
I think the Ontological Argument can be easily dismantled by a simple analysis of one of its unvoiced assumptions, which is that if you can conceive of something that must exist, therefore it must exist. God can't be an exception in this case; otherwise, you are begging the question. You can conceive, then, of God, the most perfect being, existence being more perfect than non-existence. Imagine, now, a being that is just short of perfect; it is perfect in every way that God is, except it's just short of omniscient (say, there is exactly one bit of knowledge that is permanently hidden from him). This being is about as intelligible to me as God is, and I have not taken away the perfection of existing. Does it exist? I then conceive of a different being that has all the characteristics of this second being, but it's of an unpleasant color. Continue with this process until you have an infinity of beings, thus proving, by the logic of the Ontological Argument, that every conceivable being exists. I think they call that a reductio ad absurdum.
I would honestly like to hear your (or anyone else's) response to this. Please feel free to email me at caio dot camargo2005 at gmail dot com.
The existence of God is a philosophical matter, not a scientific one. Furthermore, mass/energy cannot explain the existence of the universe unless something can explain itself. At least Russell was honest enough to concede that for the materialist explanations begin with the Big Bang, for which there can be no explanation. If an explanation of this event is wanted, one has no choice but to posit God.
In ontology, on the other hand, can you imagine a whole number larger than any other? You may say yes. You may say infinity, but that is not one of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3. If you need more mathematical education to understand the problem, then so be it. Maybe you're just a Fool. But what you're imagining cannot exist.
I stand by what I said re. science and God: God is a spirit, science studies material beings, not spirits. Thus .... Further, any materialist explanation must start with some form of matter, hence, begging the question 'Whence (this form of) matter?' (Even super strings sounds material to me.) Given, this constraint, Bertrand Russell, a noted materialist- not me- maintained that materialists should just concede that the BB is inexplicable. As for a polytheistic explanation, how about this: God is perfect. There can be only one perfect being. Hence .... Finally, if you want to concede that the existence of the cosmos is inexplicable, be my guest. Since most people are into "intelligible explanations," you would then have handed me the victory in our debate should it take place in any arena except those frequented by the most hardened atheists, i.e., any non-academic forum.
1. I reject the separation between natural and supernatural. There is no reason why the immaterial, if it exists, cannot be studied. That is what Intelligent Design proponents try to do, as well as studies in intercessory prayer and psychic powers. The separation between natural and supernatural is nothing but a refuge of bad beliefs. We have equipment that can detect a single photon; we can smash particles against each other and read the unimaginably small results of those collisions. You're telling me it would be impossible to detect something that supposedly has such a huge effect on the world as the hand of God? Please. It's a problem of experimental design, not an a priori impossibility.
2. "God is perfect. There can be only one perfect being. Hence..." Sure, say I concede that. There are all the possible slightly imperfect beings for whom existence is a predicate (or which you conceive of as necessary, or however you want to put it). In fact, there are all the beings which you can conceive of as necessary. I don't see, once you assume that those beings that you conceive of as necessary must be real, why you can't apply that rule to other beings as well. Perfection doesn't figure into it. You should look up what "begging the question" really means. It might help you with your philosophy.
3. "Any materialist explanation must start with some form of matter." I call failure of the imagination. We do not know everything about matter or the material universe. There may be other kinds of matter, or properties of matter we don't know. The universe is a lot weirder than we can presume--just read up on your quantum physics--so arguments based on a pre-Newtonian conception of how the universe works don't really sway me. I concede that I don't know or understand the mystery of existence. I even consider whether it may follow different rules than the ones we know, and even that it may be unintelligible (I don't see how unintelligibility is so anathema in academic fora). I admit I don't know. And I'd rather admit I don't know forever than to settle for whatever bad explanation is available.
Any competent scientist would agree with my distinction. Science is based on observations and the immaterial cannot be observed.
I'd like to know where you get off questioning my competence as a philosopher? Are you a professional philosopher yourself? Funny, I don't remember seeing the name 'Caio Camargo' on any lists of leading philosophers of religion or science.
I'm glad you brought up the supernatural issue, because I don't think I gave it fair treatment before. So let's try this: forget, for a moment, that we have this abstract distinction between natural and supernatural that makes certain things off limits for any scientific inquiry. You have this idea, called the soul, which is some immaterial thing where personhood resides. Let's take one example of something that's generally taken to reside in the soul: thoughts. What I think clearly affects what I do. I think about picking up this glass of water, and I do it. Hence, the soul has a very clear effect on the physical world, in a chain of causality that can be traced back to it. Is there an a priori obstacle that blocks me from studying my brain's interaction with my soul? I can think of none.
Another is what Intelligent Design proponents are trying to do. They are trying to prove mathematically that natural processes, mainly natural selection, cannot occur without the guiding hand of God. In such a scenario, the immaterial world would most definitely interact with the material world. If they do manage to find out that some leap in evolution is physically impossible, there's some real evidence for divine intervention.
Another is studies in intercessory prayer for hospitalized patients, which try to determine the effect of spiritual energy. And if prayer really works, then it has an effect on the real world, that is, making people's bodies healthier: observable interaction between the physical and the immaterial.
True, you can't observe it directly, but neither can you observe lots of things directly. One way to find extrasolar planets is to measure a slight dimming of stars, for example, which correspond to when the planet passes in front of it. Or, for example, black holes, which by definition cannot be seen, but are detected by their effects on the surrounding objects and light.
So why are the indirect effects of the soul, or of prayer, or of divine intervention, not observable a priori? Explain to me why my examples are not valid without relying on the definitional notions of the supernatural or appeals to authority, because I reject them both.
I am telling you what materialists themselves maintain. If you want to use an inference to the best explanation argument to bolster theism, more power to you. From what I have heard, it works really well in the case of intercessory prayer. And then there is the sanguineness associated with theists versus the morosity found amongst atheists. But then these are inductive arguments, not the stock in trade of philosophers.
As for your plethora of semi-perfect beings, they are all like Gaunillo's island: they don't have to exist for being (slightly) flawed. The OA only works in the case of "the being than whom none greater can be conceived"- He and He alone must exist.
So let's stick to the arguments and lay off the personal attacks.
There are materialists and materialists. I've found many points of disagreement in reading Russell, for one, even though he is incredibly clever. Same with Dennett, Sartre, Dawkins, Hume, doubly so Marx and Nietzsche. The thinker I agree with most often (though not always) is an unpublished autodidact named Eliezer Yudkowsky, and his writings are easily found online.
I am wary of a priori arguments because they go easily astray. For example, I don't think Kant's idea of sufficient reason is meaningful, nor the related ideas of contingency and necessity (a point on which I do agree with Russell). I think that causality is inductive, and in fact an approximation of reality much like Newtonian mechanics: it doesn't quite work with very small and very fast things. Reading over some other formulations of the ontological argument, I can come up with a couple more: I don't think categories are ontologically or metaphysically true, just cognitive approximations; and the idea of possibility is equivocal, or at least often equivocated.
Consider, for example, the often used notion in formulations of the ontological argument that if you can conceive of a perfect being, it follows that it is possible that this being exists (and therefore must exist by S5, etc). Now consider this: I am not mathematically literate enough so that the idea that the square of the legs of a right triangle equal the square of its hypotenuse is internalized in me, and therefore, I can conceive of a right triangle where that is not the case. Yet it is impossible, and it is easily proved impossible on paper. Now, consider the perfect being again. It has never been worked out in detail exactly what being perfect entails. In fact, the very idea of a perfect being is an extrapolation of certain abstractions, like goodness and infinity, that are very difficult to pin down (take, for example, Douglas Gasking's jokey inversion of the OA). It might turn out that the perfect being isn't logically possible, just like my impossible right triangle.
Now, for Gaunillo's island: I could just call special pleading, but I'll try to spell out the problem with your objection. The OA is analytical, that is, broken up into parts (of course, you know this, but you'll see where I'm going with it). One is the idea of necessary existence: if you conceive of something that is necessary, then it exists. Existence is therefore something attributable, whether you call it a predicate or not. So if you conceive of a being with certain characteristics, and it turns out that an extrapolation of those characteristics is existence (in this case, "all perfections"), then it is necessary. The perfections are then compartmentalized: there are many distinct ways to be perfect. Proponents of the ontological argument argue that one way of being perfect is to exist. A being that is most perfect must have this perfection; therefore, it must exist.
Now, in order for this to be a proper deductive argument, the premises must hold true for all cases. If it doesn't, there is a hidden premise that this only applies to God; otherwise, it's straight up special pleading, and I hope (without offense) that you see what's wrong with that. So by taking the compartmentalized perfections, you should be able to conceive of different necessary beings (i.e., that must exist) by subtracting, mixing and matching perfections while keeping existence constant. You can even extrapolate from these known perfections and imperfections of these known possible necessary (and therefore necessary, by S5) beings and paint an a priori picture of them as is done a priori with God. Even if you say there's only room for one such being, I don't see why the being with all perfections should take precedence over a being with all but one perfection.
So how is the OA not special pleading? Please spell it out for me.
2-THE WORLD OF LOVE INSTEAD OF MONEY - HOW AND WHY TO DESTROY THE MONEY, MILITARY INDUSTRY, ALCOHOL, CIGARETTES, ... GOVERNMENTS, ROYAL FAMILIES ... AND ALL RUBBISH WE PRODUCE. WE COULD WORK IN 3 SHIFTS- ONLY 4 MONTHS PER YEAR.
3-MEDIA IS SILENT ABOUT EXTRAORDINARY GOD'S MIRACLES DESCRIBED IN MY BOOK! IT IS STRANGE, I AM WANDERING WHY ?
http://www.centurionnews.co.za/artikel.asp?nID=925
http://www.amazon.com/Calling-UfOs-Momcilo-Radovanovic/dp/0620284358
Editorial Reviews
Do you want the book to be made into a movie? In my view your whole story - the war in Yugoslavia and your experiences in South Africa - are eminently suitable to make a Hollywood movie. In truth the book could have been just about your life in two very difficult countries. The UFO aspect - I, too, was for a while obsessed with wanting contact with UFO's....there are so many 'co-incidences' in what I read in your book...Elizabeth Klarer...I interviewed her twice...similarities aplenty. So dear Momo, just from reading your book I can see why Dr Johan Joubert - he incidentally extracted my beloved little Pomeranian's teeth! - had nothing but praise for you. I feel as though you and I and he know each other - or knew each other in a previous life. All the subjects that interest you, that preoccupy you, are the subjects that fascinate me too. I salute you for writing a book in a language that isn't even your own! Warm regards God bless Jani Juliett Allan --Radio presentor
Hello! I heard you speak on radio this evening and was surprised and pleased to hear someone speak such intelligent, civilised good sense. It was very uplifting and inspiring Whatever you have learned from Other World intelligences, you are bound by conscience and humanity to share it with all who will listen When I was young, I knew an elderly man in California who regularly disappeared from his home and returned days later with "communication" from Other Worlds via ET flying craft. I am sure he was one of the wisest people I've ever met Unfortunately he had developed a taste for the music of Other Worlds and would attempt to reproduce it on various instruments. It was the worst music I have ever heard! I would be interested to know more about the UFOs you spoke of With best wishes Dr Ian Bell "It's never too late to have a happy childhood" (Me, 1996) --Email regarding the author's radio talk show
Hi Carol Thanks for organising the evening. The experience of listening to Momo and then talking to him afterwards when he autographed our book was profound.His message transcended words as the gentleness of his nature has a subtle effect on the senses and one realises that there is a deeper message, in that, through simplicity, love and acceptance of life, we all have the ability to communicate from our realm to other realms. If we can accept that divinity exists within each and every one of us, and that loving gestures reflect the true purpose of our being, all obstacles can be overcome without the pain and suffering to which we constantly expose ourselves. I would like to communicate further with Momo and would appreciate if you could you let me have his e-mail address Regards Issy Lichtenstein --The letter regarding the author's talk show
Product Description
An intriguing true story of a man who succeeded in inviting extra-terrestrials to visit our planet. A man who convinced skeptics with his ability to communicate with these beings. This is also the life story of a man and his family who made a new home for themselves in South Africa. A story of hardship and triumph.
Yours sincerely
Momcilo Radovanovic
MOREGOLI DESIGN PUBLISHERS
email: moregoli@lantic.net
I found a rigmarole in every argument. God/d/ess is a glass half empty, half full argument.
If a person wants to see difference or similarity, they'll see it.
Just, y'all, stop preaching!
Preaching is PAIN.
Everybody in their own sweet time.
Peoples, it'll all be alright.
I believe Jesus' greatest parable was the use of 'I'.
Anyone whose reached this state, even for a second, will tell you that you can only ever talk about yourself when you're talking about spirituality.
Life's subjective: if I want water there's water everywhere.
It's a web of subjection.
My ideas which have become 'Wholism,' were simply a zen/mind exercise, and spirituality, regardless of what anybody TELLS you is all about growing.
I've had to discard that, too.
For, we are free, and at the moment 'I Know' we are immortal.
Though, I've never felt alone.
As such these ideas are free, as I'm not spiritually prideful anymore.
So feel free to use them as you see fit, as it helps you on whatever quest you're on, ideas are just floating around in the 'web,' anyway.
Hope you do well.
Mr Byrne writes that the philosophical tradition talks about the Abrahamic God. As far as I can recall, the God of Abraham is a ferociously tribal God who had no qualms about inflicting genocide upon enemy tribes. Is this what we call moral perfection? If it was morally repugnant of Hitler to inflict genocide upon the Jews, then, to me, it is equally repugnant for the Abrahamic God to do likewise. I think we need a bit of objectivity here.
This Lord of the Hosts is a terrible war god that is a far cry from the universal God of love of the New Testament who embraces all gentiles and Jews alike. In this regard, I find the Bible rather schizophrenic. But I digress.
I'm just amazed how the Christian apologists can wax so lyrical over a concept (i.e. perfection) that nobody has any idea about. If anybody claims to know what perfection is all about, then I'd like to hear him or her explain how genocide and favouritism counts as perfection. (Btw, I find the notion of divine election rather appalling.)
As for me, I'm with Occam's Razor. If I cannot perceive something with my senses, then it does not exist for me (the simplest hypothesis), unless someone can adduce empirical evidence that shows otherwise.
But of course Hume's question about whether this God is an object worthy of worship comes to the fore immediately.
Well, I suppose there are people who couldn't be bothered whether the God of Abraham is worthy of worship. Their reasoning is similar to that raised in Pascal's Wager i.e. it is rational to place your on bets on God. Just in case he exists, you're on the right side of the fence and you won't burn in Hell for eternity. But if he doesn't, well you don't lose much. It's a bit like buying insurance; just in case something happens, I'm covered.
Putting the word "perfect" in front of something means nothing. Just because there is a word "perfect" does not prove that it has a meaning.
So what is the actual probability of us happening without a designer? Somewhat more than 50%. If the world is really an infinite multiverse, containing an infinite number of universes with varying properties, then there must be an infinite number of universes that are suitable for organic life. And of course we live in one of those, not in one of the (possibly more common) others where life is impossible. Likewise, if there is an infinite number of universe where life is possible, then there will also be an infinite number of universes where life actually hapened. And as we are life, we we of course live in one of those (maybe extremely rare, but still infinite in number) where life actually happened. Or the simplified version: In an infinite world, anything that can happen, will happen. And even the most improbable things will happen an infinite number of times.
What is the probability that the world is an infinite multiverse? As we have no idea whether it is or not, Bayesian logic tells us that we logically must ascribe the probability 50% to each of the two possibilites: that the world is finite, and that the world is infinite. Even if we live in a finite universe, there is still a certain probability that life would happen. Therefore we must assign a probablity of "somewhat more than 50%" to the existence of intelligent life somewhere in time and space and whatever other dimensions the world has.
For the record, I am a Christian by faith and a scientist by trade. I believe as a result of my personal experiences. I have no need to force my beliefs upon others, unlike many atheists I've encountered.
If we, believers in general, are all delusional, then why do the supposedly more enlightened atheists keep attacking and mocking us, especially Christians? The moral conduct prescribed by the Bible basically consists of the 10 commandments and the Golden Rule; do atheists see these rules-to-live-by as harmful and destructive to society and human progress? These angry atheists seem more irrational and delusional than we dim-witted theists.
"Alvin Plantinga, perhaps the most eminent living philosopher of religion, devotes the five hundred pages of his Warranted Christian Belief to fending off objections to either the truth or rationality of belief in traditional Christian doctrines. He does not argue for the existence of God, and still less for the truth of Christianity; rather, his main question is whether a reasonable person who finds herself with firm religious convictions should change her mind. Plantinga is not trying to persuade Dawkins and company to change their minds."
Strange, but many Christians on the web don't seem to be aware they've lost the argument. They talk like they've won it.
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html"
Your statement here is jumbled in itself. You say Christians on the web dont seem to be aware they've lost. Same can be said for Atheist and any others with a different opinion. There is no right answer there is only personal opinion and philosophy. There is no empirical date for or against the actuality that there is an entity called God. Every person will believe that there is opinion is supreme and in any arguement "they will win".
Philosophy is not about proving one another wrong its about exploration and thinking. Every single person has their own philosophy and ideals. Those can be molded by experience, teachings, whatever. The day philosophy becomes only another means for people to prove each other wrong is the day I will no longer continually study it.
Too late!
On the other side, scientists, like Michio Kaku, are talking about parallel Universes, that I proved with my daughter ( but he never mention that it is comming from the book CALLING UFO's)trying to get a credit. Scientists proved for only few months in the laboratory : dematerialization, materialization, levitation, ...parallel Universes and I proved that 15 years ago."Clever boys"!
IT IS SHAME, so you who don't believe in God, you are welcome to be convinced trough my book, as well. I sent my book to get a review or critic, to many known people and magazines and news papers, nobody wanted to say one word about it. Is it because my BIG witness is the American Consulate in Johannesburg???
Regards
Momcilo Radovanovic
http://qoollad.blogspot.com/2010/11/meaning-of-life-my-opinion.html
YOU MUST TALK ABOUT MY MIRACLES !
HOW WOULD THE PEOLE BELIVE THAT I EXIST, IF YOU, WHO EXPERINCED MY MIRACLES, DON'T TALK ABOUT IT.
I WITNESSED GOD'S MIRACLES IN MY BOOK, BUT WHERE EVER THE GOD IS MENTIONED, THERE WILL APPEAR SOMEBODY WHO WILL TRY TO DIMINISH IT, OR COMPLETELY IGNORE IT, LIKE I MENTIONED ABOVE.
The Concept of God that Alex Byrne is so well questioning was already proven to be false, and unsustainable by Adi Shankaracharya around 800 CE. I would recommend Alex to look at the subject of God from out of his well, from a wider Horizon, of Advaita Hindu Philosophy, Spinoza\'s nature, Einstein\'s E~M equivalence, and he would find that True God is not just a matter of Faith of Fools, but a fact of the Wise. YOU Exist, therefore GOD does. Vedas have proven it over 6000 years ago.