Here's a dare. All the world's religion god versus my god which am going to pull out of my a55 just now. I can conjure up a god far superior than any god of any of the world's religion. Here is my god:
My god will disintegrate the corpus of anyone who is about to rape a human being with age of zero to 10.
There. I can add more. But even with just that one, my god is far ahead in the race for the best god.
Pip Santos wrote:
"Here's my take on god's revelation. Someone with a PhD in mathematics and physics would have conveyed a revelation vastly more profound than any of revelations in any of the world's religions. The world's religions' revelation depict gods so fickle and irrelevant. The god who laid out the mathematical backbone of quantum mechanics cannot be a god who demand gathering sticks on a sabbath should be stoned to death. Or a child who curses his parent be put to death. Or declare a jihad on infidels. These are irrational actions. And a god who is infinitely wise cannot afford to reveal himself in such a laughable ridiculous manner."
My reply:
Have you spent any time or effort into actually exploring and educating yourself in how these "Hard Sayings" and related Biblical "difficulties" have been addressed, answered and resolved by the earliest Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church a well as theologians throughout Church history? Furthermore, your assertion that someone with a PhD in physics and/or mathematics would convey something more profound than can be found in Revelation is ridiculous and outrageous...as if the formulation of a mathematical model to describe an observed feature of our physical universe is somehow more profound or more important than the Economy of Salvation.
To quote a wise Cardinal...Sacred Scripture (Divine Revelation) tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the Heavens go. Furthermore, your entire argument is undermined by the the following Christians who not only had PhDs, but were either founding fathers or pioneers of Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Theory, Relativistic Physics, Cosmology and Particle Physics :
Max Planck -- Nobel Prize winner
Werner Heisenberg -- Nobel Prize winner
Max Born -- Nobel Prize winner
Arthur Eddington
Fr. George Lemaitre -- Should have won a Nobel Prize
Robert Millikan -- Nobel Prize winner
Arthur Compton -- Nobel Prize winner
E. T. Whittaker -- Copley Medal winner Mathematical Physics
Pascual Jordan
Not to mention many of the greatest mathematicians of history:
Kurt Gödel -- Perhaps the greatest mathematician of the 20th Century
Georg Cantor
Bernhard Riemann
Augustin Louis Cauchy
Blaise Pascal
Oh, and some guys named Gauss, Euler, Leibniz, Newton, etc., etc.
I think Ahmed did much better in his discussion of the rationalist proof. Feser's argument in favor of the principle of sufficient reason, that its denial results in radical skepticism (which I believe he borrows from Alexander Pruss), was quickly shot down by Ahmed. Common-sense gets by, as Ahmed noted, on a principle sufficiently weaker than the claim that literally everything that is the case must have a reason why it is the case. One may not be able to distinguish non-arbitrarily why we should use the principle in scientific inquiry and common-sense explanations, however, this doesn't result in skepticism. It simply notes on can only arbitrarily distinguish the practices. This, of course, is Feser's own belief and I think one is perfectly rational in holding that initial events, such as the beginning of time and space itself, are significantly different than all non-initial events occurring thereafter. If one accepts this line-of-thought, one has what I take to be a reasonable case for using the principle in scientific, everyday explanations and not metaphysical ones. Every possible explanation of an event or entity we encounter is a non-initial event. Absolutely nothing in experience can be a proper analogy for the coming-to-be of time and space itself. The universe simply cannot be analogized. And so, I think Ahmed is right to note that skepticism can be defeated by a principle significantly weaker than the principle of sufficient reason and moreover, he is justified in believing it. Contra Feser, there are all sorts of non-arbitrary ways to sketch out a principle including common-sense explanations and excluding metaphysical ones. The philosopher Graham Oppy, like me, has argued in favor of a principle in which all non-initial events can be explained, but the initial ones themselves are brute. The philosopher Wes Morriston has argued for a very similar principle, in which all temporal-spatial events have explanations but the instantiation of time and space itself is justifiably treated as brute. Kant has a very interesting view on the principle of sufficient reason. Kant argued the principle is constitutive of our knowledge of things, but may not hold external to our knowledge of things. Feser vulgarly engages with Kant in "The Last Superstition" and argues that Kant's view isn't worth taking seriously because it relies on antiquated metaphysics. I practically died because of the irony. Even if Feser thinks we can rule out the Kantian view by fiat, he certainly hasn't given reason to show why other contemporary philosophers are mistaken in their restricted principles of explanation. He may say they're arbitrary, but I beg to differ. He may say that the only reason they accept them is because they don't want to affirm God's existence, as he did on Shapiro's show. This, of course, is not a serious objection and one can just as easily accuse him of doing similar. He likes to disparage Dawkins and Co. for engaging in crude psychoanalyzes of religious folk. It is simply ironic that he is not above doing similar.
continued....
Both world and universe are concrete entities, but the faculty of thinking, and of thinking reasonably and rationally, is not among their known properties. Saying the world is "irrational" or "reasonable" are, at best, false statements or, at worst, nonsensical statements. Ahmed is right to note that Feser's argument begs the question, although I agree with Feser, that Ahmed's explanation wasn't the most clear. What Ahmed meant when he accused Feser of begging-the-question is that Feser uses the word "intelligible" as synonymous with "not terminating in a brute fact". And so, if reality terminates in a brute fact, it is "unintelligible". This conception of intelligible, of course, begs-the-question or, at the very least, is arbitrary. When an atheist argues the universe is, at least for the most part, intelligible, they do not mean that there is a reason why there is something rather than nothing. Mackie and Russell, who Feser aims the nomological regress argument at (here, Ahmed as well), were simply not speaking of intelligibility in the sense that Feser does. What the atheist is arguing is that there are a class of questions that are unanswerable. In this class, the reason why there is a physical universe at all is included. This question, of course, isn't answerable at the lower-level, so in some trivial sense, Feser is correct. The question "why is there something rather than nothing" admits to no explanation; whether it be at the higher level or lower level. Feser, as I understand him, takes this to mean that nothing can be explained, in some ultimate sense. This, of course, begs the question against the atheist whose notion of "explanation" doesn't even include the question of why there is something rather than nothing or why this, rather than that. That question, of course, is beyond the scope of explanation and — in all likelihood — has no explanation.
I wish Ahmed would have pushed Feser for an explanation of God's intentions. What explains God's choice to create this universe, rather than some other universe. Was it something in God's nature. Does it follow from God's necessarily existent nature that he would create creatures, such as ourselves? If it does, Feser undermines the principle of the argument that the universe is contingent. If God exists necessarily and God's creation of the universe follows necessarily from his nature, then the universe is no longer contingent. If God's choice in creating the universe was necessitated by his nature, the universe existing had to happen, and couldn’t have not happened. This contradicts the assumption that universe exists only contingently, which was the reason advanced for supposing that there is genuine advantage in postulating God. If God wasn't constrained by his nature in creating the universe, then his choice in creating it was free (as Aquinas believed). On this view, there is nothing which explains why he made this world rather than another, or rather than none at all. On this world, the existence of the universe is indeed contingent, but also without explanation. This contradicts Feser's initial assumption that the principle of sufficient reason is true. Moreover, it shows that Feser's notion of explanation is simply impossible to meet, whether or not there's a God. If God's intentions explain the universe and God's intentions must be contingent and inexplicable, lest the universe be contingent (contradicting the initial assumption of the argument and likely some of the doctrines of Christianity), then there is some sense in which the regress terminates in some brute higher level-explanation. This, following Feser's logic, entails that the universe is completely unintelligible. This is clearly absurd and I think, like Ahmed suggested, requires us to look a bit more carefully into Feser's notion of intelligible. It isn't the operations of the physical laws that are left unintelligible, rather it is the physical laws instantiation . Of course, for this to be problematic, as Ahmed noted, Feser would have to beg-the-question. Why is an explanation as to why the laws themselves were instantiated require an explanation. If we limit the scope of explanation to the operations of the laws and the properties of the laws, without contradicting ourselves, we can accept the instantiation of the laws are brute and admit to no explanation, higher or lower. This, of course, violates the PSR, but Feser has failed to persuade us in accepting the PSR; as Ahmed shows, there are plenty of principles of explanation that are much weaker than the PSR and account for common-sense. This is clearly the case and Feser is better off arguing that, while this is true, such principles require us to arbitrarily demarcate what is and is not explicable. This assumption, as we saw, can easily be countered. We saw how a philosopher, such as Graham Oppy has gave us a perfectly reasonable restricted principle of explanation, as does Wes Morriston. Kant also gave one, albeit more controversial. We then saw how theism has its own brute facts. God's intentions must be accepted as brute and contingent, else the universe will no longer be contingent. If God's choice was constrained by something, not only is God not free, but the existence of the universe had to happen and couldn’t have not happened. Hence, God's intentions must be accepted as non-necessary and therefore, not self-explanatory, brute, and contingent. This not only violates the PSR, giving us no reason to prefer theistic unexplained contingency instead of atheistic unexplained contingency, but also undermines Feser's entire theory of explanation, in which, there can be no unexplained contingencies in higher-level explanations for lower-level explanations to be intelligible. We saw that this only is reasonable if we beg-the-question, smuggling in assumptions on what constitutes an explanation (hint: it is not having a reason why this rather than that or 'why something rather than nothing?'; we want to explain the operation of laws, not the instantiation of laws; we want to explain the properties of objects, not why objects exist rather than no objects at all; such explanations, are neither necessary nor available, God or no God).
I don't know if I'd say Ahmed won — he failed to pressure Feser on the important points and pressed Feser on unimportant points — but Feser surely didn't "school" him and, overall, I think Ahmed's performance was much more impressive. Some of Feser's arguments were shockingly bad, such as his argument for the PSR from skepticism. I'd like to see these two debate again sometime; perhaps on the immateriality of thought and mind or on miracles; both topics Feser and Ahmed disagree on and have written about.
I have a collection of essays in honor of Elanore Stump — one of the great living Thomists — on my desk and its contributors consist of the people Feser's community accuses of not understanding the doctrines of Thomism. Even more damning is the fact that the notable atheists of the 21st century (ex. Jack Smart, Graham Oppy, and Michael Tooley) all have very papers (one having a full-length book) engaging with the Thomistic arguments and doctrines delivered by some of the great living Thomists, including Haldane, (once again) Stump, and Kretzmann. There goes the thesis that Thomism is misunderstood by contemporary philosophers of religion.
The thought that Thomism is somehow neglected by contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophy as-a-whole is a myth. Not only is it a myth, but it is a quite perverse myth, as you see in Feser's community, it encourages anti-intellectualism. The critical reception of Thomism is much more nuanced than merely a supposed early modern and contemporary analytic misunderstanding. The central doctrines of Thomism were under sustained critique from the very outset from Albertists, Augustinians, and Latin Averroists, which is why its often joked that Feser's thesis that Thomism was simply misunderstood by moderns before it is met with plausible objections contributes to a lack of literacy in medieval philosophy as much as anyone other person woefully ignorant of philosophical developments in the medieval period, as we'd simply have to ignore all of medieval philosophy (aside, of course, from Thomas) in order to entertain such a notion. Contrary to Feser's teaching, Dennett and Dawkins weren't the first to be suspicious of various doctrines Thomism. Thomism was already met by systematic criticisms from Augustinian and Aristotelian quarters during the thirteenth century, a series of criticisms from Scotist and nominalist traditions through the fourteenth century, and critiques from humanist and Platonist traditions through the fifteenth century. Anti-Thomistic philosophy was a prevalent feature already of medieval thought, and anti-scholastic thought broadly was prevalent already in the early fifteenth century. Feser's thesis that all the medieval world was united under Thomism until that heretic-who-happens-to-be-a-Christian, Descartes, came along is quite ridiculous and is held in disdain by serious medieval scholars who eschew Feser's ridiculous radical orthodoxy conception of philosophical development (many scholars of medieval philosophy, for instance, Hankey and Hedley, devoting full-length books to deconstructing this facile narrative).
And David Hume? Seriously? Does anybody minimally involved in the philosophy of religion, whether theist or not, still wastes their time with any of what the guy wrote? I though that proto-positivist self-defeating ship had sailed a long time ago."
If you do not believe in God certain things cannot be permitted, and i suppose vice-versa. But of course God, to preserve free will, must keep the argument in perfect equilibrium- and one must, ultimately, choose! I do think however that atheists struggle rather more than theists to admit (which seems plain as a post to me) that their desire is mixed with their reasoning: why is that?
You do not have to search very far to find reasons for why I-for eg- would wish there to be a god. But why would people wish there not to be one?
This is often why (internet) atheists [not you] assume they are simply more intelligent than others- well, what else could explain their choice?
I wonder if you accept the point i made about our amor-propre (if you like) being much too much caught up in this subject to be at all impartial?
I also take note with you assuming concepts do not exist. Concepts do not exist physically, but can be proven with logic and reason to exist transcendentally in the Kantian sense.
>You do realize you are arguing that reality itself isn't real and is merely a useful fiction.
Wrong. I argued that "rationality" is not a property one can attribute to sets. The world is not rational or irrational; rationality is only a term that can be predicated to faculties of thinking, not the world sets. I am a willing to say quite a few things about the world. I am not willing to say, however, that it is "rational". That is like attributing moral qualities to snowflakes; it's a category mistake.
>You fundamentally don't believe in truth at all, and so any invocation of the non existence or binary statement upon anything becomes fictitious, as it undermines your initial argument that there is no God (an affirmation relating to a binary truth statement).
Once again, you're mistaken. I'm committed to a coherence theory of truth and moreover, I see no issues with the principle of bivalence.
> Also given your name I assume you are a jew, which is not surprising given your vitriol and preposterous arrogance. What is it about you "people" and your hatred towards the divine?
Judaism is a theistic religion, so I'm not sure why you'd accuse Jews of being anti-divinity. Moreover, I am not Jewish. I am Protestant in background and non-religious in practice.
>If real is merely a conceptual set containing all real things, and is in fact an imaginary thing with no sense or basis, how can you then invoke the non existence or existence of something without reference to said set?
Once again, you are mistaking what I am saying. I am saying "intelligence" is not a property one can attribute to reality. Presumably, you don't think attributing moral purposes to non-moral creatures, such as fish is appropriate. Similarly, I'm arguing rationality is a property one can attribute to faculties of thinking, not sets of things. This isn't denying that there is a set, any more than denying numbers have moral properties is denying numbers.
>Your argument contradicts itself, you invoke the non existence of something while denying the existence of anything real as merely a useful mental invention. This is having your cake and eating it too tier levels of cognitive dissonance. "As all sets, it lacks of independent existence, it is a fiction" So you believe in an independent existence, as you stated an "is" in the Buddhist fashion of the word of reality simply "being".
What the hell are you talking about? I've not arguing for skepticism about the external world. Rather, I'm arguing attributing properties of rationality to the world is mistaken, as its either anthropomorphism or Hegelianism.
>Existence must necessarily be real, and must necessarily be true.
This is wholly vague. What do you mean by "existence must be necessarily real?". Are you arguing that existence is a first-level property or that existence should be seen as a predicate. If you are, , philosophers from Kant to Quine and beyond have argued that 'existence' is not a real first-order predicate, inter alia because the assumption that it is leads to paradoxes and absurdities. If you mean something else, then it is quite obscurantist.
>I also take note with you assuming concepts do not exist. Concepts do not exist physically, but can be proven with logic and reason to exist transcendentally in the Kantian sense.
I've not argued for any theory of universals, let alone conceptualism (or its falsity...I'm sure sure what you think I'm arguing for). Rather, I noted "rationality" is simply not a term that can be predicated to the universe. This isn't a rejection of realism. It is a rejection of Hegelian statements such as "reality is rational". The word "reality" is simply a concept that describes all real entities; that is, the system of all events; the universe, as the system of all things. I'm not saying there are no entities. That is absurd. I am noting that statements such as "reality is reasonable" are false, as reality is the set of all existent things and events and sets do not think, so reality cannot be rational. Both world and universe are concrete entities, but the faculty of thinking, and of thinking reasonably and rationally, is not among their known properties. I hope I clarified what I was saying. You simply are misinterpreting me. The concept reality is exhausted by objects and events.
I didn't say anything about Arif's desire- i know nothing about him.
But since you bring it up, yes atheists very often say how much they would like there to be a God- but what stops them then? what is implied in that allegedly forlorn desire? that they are courageosly submitting to the evidence- and so on. ie pride
thinking, and of thinking reasonably and rationally, is not among their
known properties."
I would amend this. You define "reality" as a concept that describes all real entities – agreed. These real entities obviously exist. --> The words "the world" and "the universe" are (basically) synonymous with "reality," alternately meaning something like "the sum of all objects." All this just clarifications, not disagreeing.
But: "The faculty of thinking, and of thinking reasonably and rationally, is not among their known properties." The problem is that the human organism (us) is itself a real entity within the class of real entities (whether you call it 'the universe' or 'nature' or what have you). And the human organism does have this faculty among its (literally) known properties. There's at least one class of entity, within the set of real entities called "the universe" or "nature," for which rationality is in fact a known property.
It strikes me the core point at issue, in the best a/theistic arguments, is the source of the intellectual faculty in nature, both as a subject (creatures that know, not simply 'see,' intellectual things) and as an object (intelligible things that are known to the intellect, not simply seen to the eyes – like the intellectual content of this sentence). If we removed the word "God" and pretended we never heard of such a thing, the fundamental debate would remain in force.
When people say "nature is rational" this seems to me part of what they're getting at, however imprecisely. The other part involves the organization, of objects in nature, from disparate parts that do something, into co-dependent but united wholes that do something else (i.e., our analogies of the cell as "a factory") –– we habitually call this as logical order –– which is a related issue involving a separate class of objects in nature from ourselves. The basic crisis for classical theism, if I'm reasoning right, is the hypothesis that the first principle of the intellectual (primarily ourselves, as creatures) and organizational attributes in nature (which I don't think are distinct) is something 'ignorant,' literally not-knowing, as opposed to something that 'knows and organizes' which would imply the object we label God.
That hypothesis, if valid, dismantles every possible conception of God. It also does, as a sort of collateral damage, undermine (and very possibly destroy) our trust in our own rational faculties. But, obviously, the validity of this hypothesis is the essential point at issue.
This isn't a formal objection to what you've said, more than anything I'm clarifying my own thought process via writing.
>But: "The faculty of thinking, and of thinking reasonably and rationally, is not among their known properties." The problem is that the human organism (us) is itself a real entity within the class of real entities (whether you call it 'the universe' or 'nature' or what have you). And the human organism does have this faculty among its (literally) known properties. There's at least one class of entity, within the set of real entities called "the universe" or "nature," for which rationality is in fact a known property.
Of course, but inferring anything from this is anthropomorphizing. It is similar to saying if humans are moral agents, the universe is moral agents. The term "moral agent" is simply inappropriate to attribute to anything other than rational animals. Similarly, the term "rationality" is only attributable to faculties of rationality, not sets of entities.
>When people say "nature is rational" this seems to me part of what they're getting at, however imprecisely. The other part involves the organization, of objects in nature, from disparate parts that do something, into co-dependent but united wholes that do something else (i.e., our analogies of the cell as "a factory") –– we habitually call this as logical order –– which is a related issue involving a separate class of objects in nature from ourselves. The basic crisis for classical theism, if I'm reasoning right, is the hypothesis that the first principle of the intellectual (primarily ourselves, as creatures) and organizational attributes in nature (which I don't think are distinct) is something 'ignorant,' literally not-knowing, as opposed to something that 'knows and organizes' which would imply the object we label God.
I'm not sure I follow...are you sketching out a constituent ontology in which we infer God from the existence of contingent individuals on the basis that they lack a capacity to complete their existence? If you are, I'll simply note that I reject any sort of constituent ontology of existence, and instead, adopt the Humean point that no impressions which are genuinely two are inseparable and that ideas to which they give rise can never be inseparable. Since the idea of existence is inseparable from every idea, it cannot after all be really different from any of the ideas it accompanies. Another way this could be interpreted is as a teleological argument; we infer theism on the basis that acting according to ends is unintelligible unless there is an intellect outside the natural order. If this is the argument, then I'd say it is irrelevant to cosmological arguments, but still interesting. Interesting, but beyond the scope of relevance.
>That hypothesis, if valid, dismantles every possible conception of God. It also does, as a sort of collateral damage, undermine (and very possibly destroy) our trust in our own rational faculties. But, obviously, the validity of this hypothesis is the essential point at issue.
Well, I'm not going to call it invalid, but I will say that it isn't relevant to the cosmological argument. It seems to be a physico-theological proof from the transcendental fact of lawfulness in nature, which of course, is interesting, but irrelevant to the argument from contingency.
after all be really different from any of the ideas it accompanies." <--- This by the way is very well said and I'll keep it in mind in the future.
I wish all subjects (science, social science, religion, history, physical ed, etc.) were all taught together!
I don't think anyone can disprove or prove God exists, beyond a reasonable doubt, but I think it is meant to be this way. God wants people to "choose" to follow or seek Him! If we knew beyond a reasonable doubt that God exists, then what choice would there be, and this is the beauty and the bane of it all!
Ive read Edd Fesers the last superstition and his latest book 5 proofs and find the arguments very compelling once fully understood.
Its also interesting to note that Aristotelian metaphysics appears to resolve many problems found in quantum physics
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