Happy Birthday Richard Dawkins

[nowayjose]

...which is curious in itself since Von's particular referential writing style and sampling of lyrics, lines of poetry and "stolen guitars" could be easily described as post-modernist, despite his modernist protestations.

I guess he tried post-modernism first, got bored of it, then turned modernist.

[6FeetOver]

Have I mentioned that labels p1ss me off? Hehehe...

[Dr. Moody]

Might also explain the lack of cover versions in the last few tours, if anything they revel in reinterpreting rock history in a postmodern, ironic, knowing way.

has always struck me as an existentialist and recovering christian/catholic, the love of a certain type of imagery and importance of the Word.

Funny how most of the worlds faithful are the same religion as their parents.

[6FeetOver]

@SinSister: You present yourself like some sort of super-being. Are there any other *super-powers* in you we mortals need to be aware of?

Just saw this now, oddly enough!

Uhhhh...I don't think I present myself as anything of the sort. But, if that's what you choose to ascribe to me...

[6FeetOver]

Science, for instance, says nothing about a purpose to life yet most people require a sense of some place to go.

What if, Nick, one particular day, everything you lived for on this earth was suddenly taken from you, in one fell swoop?

Life, as you've come to know it, is now over, forever. Your world has been torn asunder.

What would you do?


What would any of you do?

[eotunun]

What I did 10 1/2 years ago.
It happens to almost everyone in his lifetime that this happens. You are happy if you don´t have too much time for thinking then.

[markfiend]

For the g*d-botherers: what existed before g*d, then? And how did whatever that was come to be? And how did g*d come to be, for that matter?

Have fun with that, kiddies...

Funnily enough, this is one of Dawkins' central arguments; one of the most commonly used pro-god arguments is the argument from design. Obviously evolution (which is Dawkins' own speciality) explains the apparent design in life, but the apparent design of the universe (the "fine tuning" argument) as a whole is less easy to understand. Of course Douglas Adams had a great rejoinder to this problem: Imagine a sentient puddle. "How lucky am I," thinks the puddle, "that this hole in which I find myself is so perfectly attuned to my shape."

However, consider that if the universe was designed by some creator; the intelligent designers we know of (ourselves) are invariably far more complex, and in more need of explanation ourselves, than the designs we create. Must this not also be the case with a creator god? So rather than being the termination of an infinite regress as the prime cause argument makes him, god is the victim of one...

It's gonna be a busy as hell weekend, Mark, so don't think my silence means I'm dodgin you. My first thought though, is that based on what you're saying Dawkins isn't necessarily understanding the Thomist position correctly (fair enough, I don't think most so-called "Thomists" understand it rightly either). I'm not entirely sure how convincing Thomas finds those arguments either--classical and medieval writers tend to put the most important point in the central position, and I think Thomas recognizes that the strongest argument is the one he places centrally in his "Five Ways," namely the argument from the necessary ground of possible beings. I'd be curious to see what Dawkins says to that (I freely admit that I think it's the most misunderstood of Thomas's arguments), and dammit all, I ahve to go do other stuff right now.

That's fine, I've been away from the computer myself...

Strange, Dawkins doesn't seem to deal with the argument from the necessary ground of possible beings. He lists Aquinas' five arguments as:

• The Unmoved Mover
• The Uncaused Cause
• The Cosmological argument
  (These three are lumped together and dealt with by the infinite regress argument above)
• The Argument from Degree
• The Argument from design

Perhaps Dawkins has retitled the arguments?

[sultan2075]

It's gonna be a busy as hell weekend, Mark, so don't think my silence means I'm dodgin you. My first thought though, is that based on what you're saying Dawkins isn't necessarily understanding the Thomist position correctly (fair enough, I don't think most so-called "Thomists" understand it rightly either). I'm not entirely sure how convincing Thomas finds those arguments either--classical and medieval writers tend to put the most important point in the central position, and I think Thomas recognizes that the strongest argument is the one he places centrally in his "Five Ways," namely the argument from the necessary ground of possible beings. I'd be curious to see what Dawkins says to that (I freely admit that I think it's the most misunderstood of Thomas's arguments), and dammit all, I ahve to go do other stuff right now.

That's fine, I've been away from the computer myself...

Strange, Dawkins doesn't seem to deal with the argument from the necessary ground of possible beings. He lists Aquinas' five arguments as:

• The Unmoved Mover
• The Uncaused Cause
• The Cosmological argument
  (These three are lumped together and dealt with by the infinite regress argument above)
• The Argument from Degree
• The Argument from design

Perhaps Dawkins has retitled the arguments?

Aye, I'd say he has--most people mis-label the argument I have in mind as being a cosmological argument, but it's really not; that name stems from a misapprehension of what is at stake that probably stems from the modern/post-modern/positivist rejection of the possiblity of metaphysics. The first two arguments are structurally alike, and follow straight on Aristotelian metaphysics. The argument from degree is fairly weak, and the so-called argument from design is not, in fact, an argument from design. The central argument, the argument from possible beings and necessary beings argues from the nature of causal relationships, namely that if all there are, are contingent or possible beings (being owing their existence to something else, which are all we encounter in experience), then on an infinite (not sempeternal) span of time there would be in the past a time at which nothing existed. If that were the case (and all there were were possible beings), then nothing could exist now, which is absurd, therefore, if possible things exist, there must be some thing which exists necessarily. This is what many philosophers would call the ground of being, in other words, the necessary precondition for the possiblity of contingent or possible beings (beings who owe their existence to something else) is a being which does not owe its existence to anything else. This, then, is a being that is necessary rather than contingent. It's the ground or foundation for the existence of other beings, just as a foundation is the ground of a building, or the necessary precondition for the existence of a building.

As for the argument from design, I've always thought that it's not an accurate description of what Thomas is doing. What he's really doing is saying that there is regularity in nature, and that it appears o follow a rational order or law; however, he wouldn't go as far as maintaining a vulgar sort of intelligent design. Thomas's "God" is better understood as the ground of being, or, in the case of this argument, as the legislator of an eternal law (see the Treatise on Law section of the Summa), which governs material relationships in the cosmos--as an aside, this eternal law also provides for instincts and inclinations in animals as well as governing the way in which non-human matter interacts with the world. Thus, the natural law is simply rational or prudential analysis of the ends that our inclinations direct us toward. Regardless, I guess what I'm saying is that it's very easy for people like Dawkins to attack these arguments without delving into them. Thomas, for instance, turns out to have much more in common with Locke and Spinoza then he does with Calvin or Luther. If you read the Summa closely, it becomes clear that much of what Dawkins criticizes is very oversimplified versions of his arguments. Thomas is actually an incredibly complex thinker, and if Dawkins were to seriously engage him, he would not be able to dismiss him as quickly as you seem to indicate that he does.

It's like the metaphor of the emperor with no clothes that you linked to earlier: the whole probalem with that metaphor is that the nudity or lack thereof of the emperor is empirically verifiable, while the existence or lack thereof of God is not (as an aside, it also presupposes what it wants to prove, and thus fails on that score as well). At the end of the day, science has limits. The temptation, because of its vast success in its own field, is to apply it to questions that are not, strictly speaking, scientific, and this is what Dawkins does. It would be like me opining on the development of Homo Habilus on the basis of my reading of Heidegger. The tools one uses for phenomenological deconstructions of experience are not the tools one uses to discuss the physical evolution of man; this perhaps points to the other problem with the analogy. You don't need a lot of specialized knowledge to look at a man and say "he's nekkid!' or not. You do need a degree of specialized knowledge to read a philosophical or scientific text (for instance, what does Thomas mean by motion? It turns out he doesn't mean simple movement, and this turns out to be critical for understanding his arguments), imparting that specialized knowledge is what people like me are paid very little to do in classrooms.

Anyway, here's the Short Attention Span Version: Dawkins wants to claim knowledge ("God does not exist") that he cannot possibly have. Religious folk claim that God exists, but they don't claim that they know this reasonably (even Thomas says you can't know the Biblical God through reason), at least, the serious ones don't . Dawkins, at the end of the day, wants to pass off an opinion as knowledge, just as many Creationsists or ID'ers want to pass of their opinions as knowledge. He may dress it up with all sorts of fancy verbal prestidigitation, but when the cows come home, he's still asserting that his opinion on something he can't know either way is fact (which is, I suppose, very postmodern of him if he's aware that he's doing it). That's my major problem with him. Atheism is just as impossible to prove as theism is, yet he presents it as scientific fact, and implies that hose who don't agree with him are somehow lesser (sounds an awful lot like a fundamenalist to me). Another way to think about it: knowledge of the God's existence or lack thereof would require transcending the system of the cosmos, since a creator would, by definition, be separate from and outside of creation. The human mind does not seem to be capable of transcending the bounds of the cosmos or having total knowledge.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. I'm utterly exhausted and slacking off from doing any real work. Sorry it's so wordy. I guess I ought to get back to that work now....

[6FeetOver]

What I did 10 1/2 years ago.
It happens to almost everyone in his lifetime that this happens. You are happy if you don´t have too much time for thinking then.

I know, hon - my post wasn't in any way referring to you. You went through hell, and I'm very sorry that you and I both know, because of our own terrible circumstances, what the other is going through.


I wish I didn't have so much time to think about it. But I live in my head. And I have all of eternity, depending.

[6FeetOver]

Anyway, here's the Short Attention Span Version: Dawkins wants to claim knowledge ("God does not exist") that he cannot possibly have. Religious folk claim that God exists, but they don't claim that they know this reasonably (even Thomas says you can't know the Biblical God through reason), at least, the serious ones don't . Dawkins, at the end of the day, wants to pass off an opinion as knowledge, just as many Creationsists or ID'ers want to pass of their opinions as knowledge. He may dress it up with all sorts of fancy verbal prestidigitation, but when the cows come home, he's still asserting that his opinion on something he can't know either way is fact (which is, I suppose, very postmodern of him if he's aware that he's doing it). That's my major problem with him. Atheism is just as impossible to prove as theism is, yet he presents it as scientific fact, and implies that hose who don't agree with him are somehow lesser (sounds an awful lot like a fundamenalist to me). Another way to think about it: knowledge of the God's existence or lack thereof would require transcending the system of the cosmos, since a creator would, by definition, be separate from and outside of creation. The human mind does not seem to be capable of transcending the bounds of the cosmos or having total knowledge.

I don't know if any of this makes sense.

It makes a lot of sense, to me. That said:

-Thanks! I appreciate the ADD version!

-Dawkins doesn't have this knowledge, but neither does anyone else (theist, atheist, philosopher, madman, slob).

-Religious folk (at least, in my experience) often claim to know things quite *unreasonably*, hahaha! I have several family members like this. Fundy wackos. *Shudder*

-And that, in and of itself, p1sses me off to no end. I want to be able to transcend all of it - including my own existence.

[markfiend]

Aye, I'd say he has--most people mis-label the argument I have in mind as being a cosmological argument, but it's really not; that name stems from a misapprehension of what is at stake that probably stems from the modern/post-modern/positivist rejection of the possiblity of metaphysics. The first two arguments are structurally alike, and follow straight on Aristotelian metaphysics. The argument from degree is fairly weak, and the so-called argument from design is not, in fact, an argument from design. The central argument, the argument from possible beings and necessary beings argues from the nature of causal relationships, namely that if all there are, are contingent or possible beings (being owing their existence to something else, which are all we encounter in experience), then on an infinite (not sempeternal) span of time there would be in the past a time at which nothing existed. If that were the case (and all there were were possible beings), then nothing could exist now, which is absurd, therefore, if possible things exist, there must be some thing which exists necessarily. This is what many philosophers would call the ground of being, in other words, the necessary precondition for the possiblity of contingent or possible beings (beings who owe their existence to something else) is a being which does not owe its existence to anything else. This, then, is a being that is necessary rather than contingent. It's the ground or foundation for the existence of other beings, just as a foundation is the ground of a building, or the necessary precondition for the existence of a building.

OK, so it's an infinite regress argument? Why is god a "necessary being"? Is it not at least possible that the universe itself (or the Big Bang singularity, or an 11-dimensional 'brane) is a necessary being?

I suppose the problem could be stated as "why is there something rather than nothing"; an answer inspired by the anthropic principle (which Dawkins makes much use of) is that if there were nothing, we wouldn't be around to ask the question.

As for the argument from design, I've always thought that it's not an accurate description of what Thomas is doing. What he's really doing is saying that there is regularity in nature, and that it appears o follow a rational order or law; however, he wouldn't go as far as maintaining a vulgar sort of intelligent design. Thomas's "God" is better understood as the ground of being, or, in the case of this argument, as the legislator of an eternal law (see the Treatise on Law section of the Summa), which governs material relationships in the cosmos--as an aside, this eternal law also provides for instincts and inclinations in animals as well as governing the way in which non-human matter interacts with the world. Thus, the natural law is simply rational or prudential analysis of the ends that our inclinations direct us toward. Regardless, I guess what I'm saying is that it's very easy for people like Dawkins to attack these arguments without delving into them. Thomas, for instance, turns out to have much more in common with Locke and Spinoza then he does with Calvin or Luther. If you read the Summa closely, it becomes clear that much of what Dawkins criticizes is very oversimplified versions of his arguments. Thomas is actually an incredibly complex thinker, and if Dawkins were to seriously engage him, he would not be able to dismiss him as quickly as you seem to indicate that he does.

Right, OK, I'm obviously not as familiar with Aquinas as you obviously are, so it's hard for me to judge whether Dawkins treats him fairly or not. But that being said, it strikes me (and I think Dawkins), yet again, as an infinite regress argument, an attempt to explain the mysterious (we don't know why the fundamental laws of the universe are the way they are) by the even-more-mysterious. (Incidentally, instincts and inclinations in animals are properly understood to be the products of evolution rather than design, which usefully demolishes at least one plank of the platform.)

Actually, the scientist says "we don't know why the fundamental laws of the universe are the way they are yet but we're working on it." What is the theologian's answer to "why is God the way God is?" -- I've frequently heard that "the mysteries of God surpass understanding", indeed the "unknown purpose defence" to the Problem of Evil can be restated in precisely those words. Is that any more satisfying than "shut up, sit down, stop asking questions"?

It's like the metaphor of the emperor with no clothes that you linked to earlier: the whole probalem with that metaphor is that the nudity or lack thereof of the emperor is empirically verifiable, while the existence or lack thereof of God is not (as an aside, it also presupposes what it wants to prove, and thus fails on that score as well). At the end of the day, science has limits. The temptation, because of its vast success in its own field, is to apply it to questions that are not, strictly speaking, scientific, and this is what Dawkins does.

Well that's the point isn't it? If the existence of God is not empirically verifiable, then in what way can he be said to exist at all? Many, even most believers think that God answers prayers. This can only take place through some sort of interaction with the physical universe, which is in principle open to investigation by the scientific method. This is another of Dawkins' points; the theist is quite happy to assert "non-overlapping magisteria" (to borrow a phrase) between science and religion, without seeming to realise that as soon as religion makes a claim that has consequences in the real world, it is open to scientific scrutiny. And all scientific investigation so far done (including properly controlled studies on the efficacy of prayer for the sick) have found no evidence at all for any effect from any god on our universe.

Perhaps a god that does not interact at all with the physical universe does exist, but how does an inactive god differ from no god at all?

It would be like me opining on the development of Homo Habilus on the basis of my reading of Heidegger. The tools one uses for phenomenological deconstructions of experience are not the tools one uses to discuss the physical evolution of man; this perhaps points to the other problem with the analogy. You don't need a lot of specialized knowledge to look at a man and say "he's nekkid!' or not. You do need a degree of specialized knowledge to read a philosophical or scientific text (for instance, what does Thomas mean by motion? It turns out he doesn't mean simple movement, and this turns out to be critical for understanding his arguments), imparting that specialized knowledge is what people like me are paid very little to do in classrooms.

And you're trying to do it for free on here

Perhaps you're right; Dawkins doesn't seem to have a great deal of respect for theological thought. But I think that his view is that arguing about the number of angels that can dance on the end of a pin seems a little silly when you can't even demonstrate the angels exist in the first place.

Anyway, here's the Short Attention Span Version: Dawkins wants to claim knowledge ("God does not exist") that he cannot possibly have. Religious folk claim that God exists, but they don't claim that they know this reasonably (even Thomas says you can't know the Biblical God through reason), at least, the serious ones don't . Dawkins, at the end of the day, wants to pass off an opinion as knowledge, just as many Creationsists or ID'ers want to pass of their opinions as knowledge. He may dress it up with all sorts of fancy verbal prestidigitation, but when the cows come home, he's still asserting that his opinion on something he can't know either way is fact (which is, I suppose, very postmodern of him if he's aware that he's doing it). That's my major problem with him. Atheism is just as impossible to prove as theism is, yet he presents it as scientific fact, and implies that hose who don't agree with him are somehow lesser (sounds an awful lot like a fundamenalist to me). Another way to think about it: knowledge of the God's existence or lack thereof would require transcending the system of the cosmos, since a creator would, by definition, be separate from and outside of creation. The human mind does not seem to be capable of transcending the bounds of the cosmos or having total knowledge.

He deals with the fundamentalist charge in The God Delusion. The difference is that if any evidence were to be forthcoming Dawkins would be happy to change his mind. Whereas the fundamentalist theist believes despite evidence that directly contradicts their beliefs. (The obvious example is the Young Earth crowd, whose attitude to evidence seems to be to stick their fingers in their ears singing "la la la we can't hear you".)

I wonder whether the question of a creator "outside creation" is begging the question; don't we need to demonstrate that the universe has an "outside" at all (which seems difficult to say the least) before we can talk of transcending it?

Evidence, evidence, evidence, that's what Dawkins' argument boils down to. He is dissatisfied with the evidence and arguments raised in favour of god, pointing to more plausible natural explanations at every turn. And he points out that infinite regress arguments, far from helping the theist cause, are more of a problem for an infinite god than they are for the universe. ("Who designed the designer?")

Dawkins has another thrust in The God Delusion, which I don't think I've touched on before. The very fact that faith is seen to be a good thing from a religious context is possibly the single most enabling factor in the evils people do in the name of religion. I'm sure that the 19 men who hijacked those planes on September 11 did not believe that they were "evildoers"; in fact I'm sure that they saw themselves as Holy Martyrs, doing the work of Allah. To be sure, if one takes Osama Bin Laden at his word, (and I see no reason not to) that's how he sees himself. There are numerous videos of suicide bombers expressing similar sentiments before they go out and kill themselves and many around them.

Do you think it possible that if these poor people had not been infected with the idea that "it's good to believe what you're told by your elders without question"* that they could have been so manipulated into the insane violence they committed?

* Actually, Dawkins presents good evolutionary reasons why the susceptibility to this "meme" might have evolved; after all, children told "keep away from the river or you'll be eaten by crocodiles" are more likely to survive (given the existence of the crocodiles) if they obey. He also suggests other "memeplexes" that religions may exploit or subvert, for example, humans are likely to detect agency where none exists (Basil Fawlty thrashing his car "within an inch of its life" springs to mind) perhaps because it is safer to assume wrongly that a random shadow "wants" to eat us than it is to fail to detect a real tiger.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. I'm utterly exhausted and slacking off from doing any real work. Sorry it's so wordy. I guess I ought to get back to that work now....

Yes, it makes sense, and in a lot of ways we could keep going back and forward over the same ground forever The posts in this thread are getting longer and longer. Not that I mind, but I think my boss might if he catches me.

I just hope no-one else on this thread thinks I'm ignoring them.

[markfiend]

This necessary ground of being malarkey; does this bear any resemblance to the Transcendental Argument for God (hereafter TAG)?

====

TAG attempts to prove that only the Christian worldview can account for rational inquiry, and since both the Christian and the non-Christian engage in rational inquiry (this is the common ground), then if Christianity is the only worldview that can account for rational inquiry, then Christianity must be correct. You could say it this way...

• Prove A: The Christian worldview is veridical. (This amounts to the same thing as saying that the Christian God exists.)
  Step 1 Assume ~A: It is not the case that the Christian worldview is veridical.
  Step 2 ~A-->~B: If it is not the case that the Christian worldview is veridical, then it is not the case that rational inquiry is possible.
  Step 3 B: Rational inquiry is possible.
  Step 4 ~~A: Modus Tollens on 2 and 3.
  Step 5 A: The Christian worldview is veridical. Q.E.D.

====

There appears to be a fairly large sector of the Christian Apologetics publishing industry attempting to demonstrate that Step 2 holds.

[markfiend]

We touched on Hume's problem of induction before in this thread; and this is one of the bases for the TAG: the transcendent God is supposed to "account for" induction, the rules of logic, the uniformity of nature. (How, I don't really know why.)

This is me, rather than Dawkins now, but...

Hypothesis 1: Induction works
Observation: Induction has worked in the past
By induction: We are entitled to infer that induction will work in the future

I'm aware that this is circular, but without positing some "transcendental basis for certain knowledge" we can't really go any further. (Whence the TAG above). We just have to accept tentative knowledge and move on.

So with my tentative acceptance that induction works...

Hypothesis 2: Deductive logic works
Observation: Deductive logic has always worked in the past
By induction: We are entitled to infer that deductive logic will work in the future.

Hypothesis 3: There is uniformity in nature
(etc. as above)

From these bases we can build the scientific method, etc. etc.

Yes, we have some epistemological uncertainty at the roots of the system, but so what?

[Dr. Moody]

Having read all of the above I still dont think logic will get you there. The concept requires an intuitive response.
I really dont see anybody tying themselves in philosophical/theological knots then coming out the other side with anything other than the set of answers that most correspond to their own prejudices.

@Markfiend I hearby nominate you as official Heartland debating society leader seems you've been enjoying the research

@Sultan do you teach Epistemology ? are you a catholic ?

to both of you for one of the best discussions I've seen on here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apathetic_agnosticism

[6FeetOver]

Having read all of the above I still dont think logic will get you there. The concept requires an intuitive response.

What about those of us who, due to suspected neurological differences, only have logic at our disposal? I'd love to have been able to actively/effectively engage in the debate at hand, but I *can't* offer an intuitive response, because I don't have one to offer...

[Dr. Moody]

I meant that intuitively you simply do not believe in God you dont need logic to tell you, you just know it "a priori" (hope I'm using that term correctly philosophy police)

[boudicca]

one of the most commonly used pro-god arguments is the argument from design. Obviously evolution (which is Dawkins' own speciality) explains the apparent design in life, but the apparent design of the universe (the "fine tuning" argument) as a whole is less easy to understand. Of course Douglas Adams had a great rejoinder to this problem: Imagine a sentient puddle. "How lucky am I," thinks the puddle, "that this hole in which I find myself is so perfectly attuned to my shape."

I've never heard that one before. Brilliant!

[6FeetOver]

Hehehehe...

[canon docre]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apathetic_agnosticism

Thank you for pointing out. Didnt know there exists a definition. I can fully identify with Apatheism.

[nowayjose]

I'm not buying into the "no conflict between science and religion because religious propositions cannot be falsified." What one should consider here is that the non-falisifiability of purportedly intractable religious propositions is simply because of a rhetoric trick, a deliberate fuzziness in definitions, and not because of some inherent intractable property of religion itself. What theists claim to be evidence of some kind of advanced logics that science cannot handle is actually the banal concept that you cannot meaningfully derive propositions from an inconsistent axiom base. Religion cannot explain what science can't either. Science strives to explain all and everything imaginable and religion is simply a pseudo-science placeholder for those problems for which no rational solution yet exists but to which a lot of people want to have an answer now (even a potentially false one) because some imagined certitude will comfort them.

[sultan2075]

Checking in. Half dead from overwork, but checking in....I'll try and respond to everyone who had comments for me, but don't be offended if I miss someone.

-Thanks! I appreciate the ADD version!

Glad I could be of service

-Dawkins doesn't have this knowledge, but neither does anyone else (theist, atheist, philosopher, madman, slob).

Yes, exactly.

OK, so it's an infinite regress argument? Why is god a "necessary being"? Is it not at least possible that the universe itself (or the Big Bang singularity, or an 11-dimensional 'brane) is a necessary being?

It's not quite an infinite regress argument. He's suggesting that if all that there are are contingent beings, there is no reason for anything to exist. Since contingent things manifestly do exist, there must be something which is the necessary precondition for the existence of contingent beings, or the ground of being. His language is notable on this point, he says that men call this ground of being God, but in terms of the argument, there's no reason to anthropomorphize it, and strictly speaking, he doesn't (I'm going through parts of the Summa again now, and it seems that Thomas is up to something much more tricky and subtle than he's normally taken to be. I haven't figured out what it is, yet, but I do think that the usual way he's presented is not quite right). In the argument from possiblity and necessity he is suggesting that on the broadest level, all existent things cannot be contingent, for if that were the case, there would be no reason for any of them to exist. Thus, he's saying that the existence of contingent things necessarily entails something that exists as a matter of necessity, just as, say, the existence of a ceiling necessarily entails the existence of something to support that ceiling. It's important to note also that he's saying this is about as far as we can get with reason alone.

I suppose the problem could be stated as "why is there something rather than nothing"; an answer inspired by the anthropic principle (which Dawkins makes much use of) is that if there were nothing, we wouldn't be around to ask the question.

Sort of. That particular formulation comes later (Leibniz, I think?). Thomas isn't so much asking why there is something rather than nothing as he is inquiring into what the necessary preconditions are for the existence of certain kinds of things, namely, the contingent beings that we know through our experience.

Right, OK, I'm obviously not as familiar with Aquinas as you obviously are, so it's hard for me to judge whether Dawkins treats him fairly or not. But that being said, it strikes me (and I think Dawkins), yet again, as an infinite regress argument, an attempt to explain the mysterious (we don't know why the fundamental laws of the universe are the way they are) by the even-more-mysterious. (Incidentally, instincts and inclinations in animals are properly understood to be the products of evolution rather than design, which usefully demolishes at least one plank of the platform.)

Well, I think that the design argument that Dawkins attacks isn't quite the same argument that Thomas makes. As for your comment about instincts and inclinations being the products of evolution rather than design, I don't think Thomas would disagree--on his own principles (from his eternal law arguments, for instance) he would have to maintain that higher order functions such as instinct and inclination (and processes such as evolution) are the result of the fundamental ordering principles of the cosmos, for instance, the laws governing the interactions of subatomic particles.

Actually, the scientist says "we don't know why the fundamental laws of the universe are the way they are yet but we're working on it." What is the theologian's answer to "why is God the way God is?" -- I've frequently heard that "the mysteries of God surpass understanding", indeed the "unknown purpose defence" to the Problem of Evil can be restated in precisely those words. Is that any more satisfying than "shut up, sit down, stop asking questions"?

Does science even address the why? It seems that the scientific method is uniquely suited to determining the how, but the why, the actual reasons, if any, behind the fundamental laws, seem to be beyond the purview of science. When you start going after the why, you've sarted doing what Thomas calls natural theology, and you've abandoned the realm of the strictly empirical. As for the mysteries of God surpassing understanding, Thomas maintains that some aspects of the divine can be known through reason alone. Again, natural theology.

Well that's the point isn't it? If the existence of God is not empirically verifiable, then in what way can he be said to exist at all? Many, even most believers think that God answers prayers. This can only take place through some sort of interaction with the physical universe, which is in principle open to investigation by the scientific method. This is another of Dawkins' points; the theist is quite happy to assert "non-overlapping magisteria" (to borrow a phrase) between science and religion, without seeming to realise that as soon as religion makes a claim that has consequences in the real world, it is open to scientific scrutiny. And all scientific investigation so far done (including properly controlled studies on the efficacy of prayer for the sick) have found no evidence at all for any effect from any god on our universe.

Absence of evidence is not necessarilly evidence of an absence. If the existence of God is not empirically verifiable, that means that either side of the issue, either atheism or theism, is an act of will (or if you prefer, faith) rather than subject to knowledge. That alternative to that position would be to adopt the possiblity of metaphysics in the classical or medieval sense, whereby there is legitimate knowledge of the broadest categories of being gainable through the reflective intellect rather than through observation and experiment.

Perhaps a god that does not interact at all with the physical universe does exist, but how does an inactive god differ from no god at all?

Well, it depends on whether or not that god encompasses more than the ground of being, in other words, does such a god impart a moral order to the cosmos?

And you're trying to do it for free on here

I like it. My wife won't let me talk shop with her, and I'm far too busy these days for the marathon booze-and-bull sessions I used to have with my friends (fascinating and enlightening, but usually they usually leave one incapacitated for a few days)...so you bear the brunt, I guess?

Perhaps you're right; Dawkins doesn't seem to have a great deal of respect for theological thought. But I think that his view is that arguing about the number of angels that can dance on the end of a pin seems a little silly when you can't even demonstrate the angels exist in the first place.

That may be, but if he's going to try and refute a position, he ought to begin by trying to understand it; I do think he tends to deal with very surface level versions of what are actually very sophisticated arguments.

He deals with the fundamentalist charge in The God Delusion. The difference is that if any evidence were to be forthcoming Dawkins would be happy to change his mind. Whereas the fundamentalist theist believes despite evidence that directly contradicts their beliefs. (The obvious example is the Young Earth crowd, whose attitude to evidence seems to be to stick their fingers in their ears singing "la la la we can't hear you".)

While he may be willing to change his mind if evidence were forthcoming, I think his public behavior is just as bad as the religious fundamentalists; however, since I rather suspect that he would want scientific evidence, he has cut off entire realms of possible inquiry to himself (I mean philosophically, not religiously). I do think he makes a fundamental error in his assumptions about the scope of reason, and am inclined to think that his position is ultimately just as based on his own faith in it as that of the Young Earth crowd. Again, it's the logical positivism thing--at the end of the day it's rather unsupportable as a philosophic position, that's why it generally died out so quickly.

I wonder whether the question of a creator "outside creation" is begging the question; don't we need to demonstrate that the universe has an "outside" at all (which seems difficult to say the least) before we can talk of transcending it?

Yes, that is the problem. That's why thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and even Hediegger all take experience as the beginning of inquiry. What strikes me about Dawkins, is that he takes it as both the beginning and end, and his ignorance of the philosophical tradition puts him into a position whereby there are certain rather fundamental questions he simply has not considered--the biggest one being the question of the limits of reason, which would be the flip-side of the question you've raised. Hence the inscription on the temple at Delphi in ancient Greece: "Know Thyself."

Evidence, evidence, evidence, that's what Dawkins' argument boils down to. He is dissatisfied with the evidence and arguments raised in favour of god, pointing to more plausible natural explanations at every turn. And he points out that infinite regress arguments, far from helping the theist cause, are more of a problem for an infinite god than they are for the universe. ("Who designed the designer?")

Right, but the whole problem is that he leaps to the opposite conclusion, for which there is equally no evidence.

Dawkins has another thrust in The God Delusion, which I don't think I've touched on before. The very fact that faith is seen to be a good thing from a religious context is possibly the single most enabling factor in the evils people do in the name of religion. I'm sure that the 19 men who hijacked those planes on September 11 did not believe that they were "evildoers"; in fact I'm sure that they saw themselves as Holy Martyrs, doing the work of Allah. To be sure, if one takes Osama Bin Laden at his word, (and I see no reason not to) that's how he sees himself. There are numerous videos of suicide bombers expressing similar sentiments before they go out and kill themselves and many around them.

If Dawkins can't see the difference between a religion based on the Sermon on the Mount (however imperfectly those ideas might be implemented) and one based on evangelical militarism, then I can't help him. There is a qualitative difference between religious traditions, and I'm perfectly willing to admit that. It's not simply a question of belief, it's a question of what one believes in. "God told me to love my neighhbor as myself" is quite a bit different from "God told me to smite the unbeliever."

Do you think it possible that if these poor people had not been infected with the idea that "it's good to believe what you're told by your elders without question"* that they could have been so manipulated into the insane violence they committed?

I suppose it depends on what those elders are teaching, doesn't it?

* Actually, Dawkins presents good evolutionary reasons why the susceptibility to this "meme" might have evolved; after all, children told "keep away from the river or you'll be eaten by crocodiles" are more likely to survive (given the existence of the crocodiles) if they obey. He also suggests other "memeplexes" that religions may exploit or subvert, for example, humans are likely to detect agency where none exists (Basil Fawlty thrashing his car "within an inch of its life" springs to mind) perhaps because it is safer to assume wrongly that a random shadow "wants" to eat us than it is to fail to detect a real tiger.

There's not much new in that argument beyond the couching of it in evolutionary terms, at least the first part of it--it can be found in Plato and Aristotle, and even Thomas Aquinas grants "the gentiles" a certain amount of leeway insofar as their religious rites imparted socially beneficial or useful character traits.

Yes, it makes sense, and in a lot of ways we could keep going back and forward over the same ground forever The posts in this thread are getting longer and longer. Not that I mind, but I think my boss might if he catches me.

We should have our own subforum

This necessary ground of being malarkey; does this bear any resemblance to the Transcendental Argument for God (hereafter TAG)?

Oooooh, no, I don't think Thomas would want anything to do with the sort of argument you're describing.

@Sultan do you teach Epistemology ? are you a catholic ?

I teach philosophy, yes. Somewhere on this website is actually a list of courses I've taught. As for your second question, no, I'm not, I just think we can learn a great deal from people like Aquinas, Aristotle, Alfarabi, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and so on; however, I'm not that big a fan of the post-moderns.

to both of you for one of the best discussions I've seen on here

Hey, thanks. We do what we can

[markfiend]

It's not quite an infinite regress argument. He's suggesting that if all that there are are contingent beings, there is no reason for anything to exist. Since contingent things manifestly do exist, there must be something which is the necessary precondition for the existence of contingent beings, or the ground of being. His language is notable on this point, he says that men call this ground of being God, but in terms of the argument, there's no reason to anthropomorphize it, and strictly speaking, he doesn't (I'm going through parts of the Summa again now, and it seems that Thomas is up to something much more tricky and subtle than he's normally taken to be. I haven't figured out what it is, yet, but I do think that the usual way he's presented is not quite right). In the argument from possiblity and necessity he is suggesting that on the broadest level, all existent things cannot be contingent, for if that were the case, there would be no reason for any of them to exist. Thus, he's saying that the existence of contingent things necessarily entails something that exists as a matter of necessity, just as, say, the existence of a ceiling necessarily entails the existence of something to support that ceiling. It's important to note also that he's saying this is about as far as we can get with reason alone.

OK, I see, but the one "necessary being" could be the universe itself, the Big Bang singularity...

We get back to this idea of shifting between the sorts of Gods that theologians can defend and the sort of Gods that people actually believe in. Your average Christian-in-the-church doesn't believe in a necessary ground of contingent existence, s/he believes in a virgin birth, miracles, a resurrection, that are all on far shakier ground.

In other words, even if I concede the necessary ground argument, how do you jump from there to the Christian God?

Absence of evidence is not necessarilly evidence of an absence. If the existence of God is not empirically verifiable, that means that either side of the issue, either atheism or theism, is an act of will (or if you prefer, faith) rather than subject to knowledge. That alternative to that position would be to adopt the possiblity of metaphysics in the classical or medieval sense, whereby there is legitimate knowledge of the broadest categories of being gainable through the reflective intellect rather than through observation and experiment.

Perhaps a god that does not interact at all with the physical universe does exist, but how does an inactive god differ from no god at all?

Well, it depends on whether or not that god encompasses more than the ground of being, in other words, does such a god impart a moral order to the cosmos?

This is a problem in many ways. Is there an objective moral standard in some way "out there"? If it is external to God then He's bound to it as well, and whence the morality? If it is internal to him; God's own "moral nature", then isn't that equivalent to saying that morality is based solely on God's whim? (It's hard to avoid this conclusion from some of the nastier bits of the OT -- e.g. the conquest of Canaan (although its historicity is to say the least doubtful) involves some fairly hefty genocide at YHWH's command.)

I like it. My wife won't let me talk shop with her, and I'm far too busy these days for the marathon booze-and-bull sessions I used to have with my friends (fascinating and enlightening, but usually they usually leave one incapacitated for a few days)...so you bear the brunt, I guess?

I ain't complaining I enjoy being made to stretch the mental muscles from time to time.

...if [Dawkins] is going to try and refute a position, he ought to begin by trying to understand it; I do think he tends to deal with very surface level versions of what are actually very sophisticated arguments.

Well yes, but again, it's all very well defending the sophisticated arguments, but they're not what the average believer -- or even supposedly the current big cheeses -- actually believe:

Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope has said.

Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, Benedict XVI said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to “admit blame and promise to sin no more�, they risked “eternal damnation — the Inferno�.

Hell “really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more�, he said.

This is something quite different to the subtleties of Aquinas, no? And this is the crux of Dawkins' argument: that apologetic arguments are effectively "reverse straw-man" arguments of what the real religious people believe.

But I suppose that it's only to be expected that the elites of church thinkers are going to realise that their dogma is largely unsupportable, and so to have to construct this elaborate defence of their "indoor work with no heavy lifting"

He deals with the fundamentalist charge in The God Delusion. The difference is that if any evidence were to be forthcoming Dawkins would be happy to change his mind. Whereas the fundamentalist theist believes despite evidence that directly contradicts their beliefs. (The obvious example is the Young Earth crowd, whose attitude to evidence seems to be to stick their fingers in their ears singing "la la la we can't hear you".)

While he may be willing to change his mind if evidence were forthcoming, I think his public behavior is just as bad as the religious fundamentalists; however, since I rather suspect that he would want scientific evidence, he has cut off entire realms of possible inquiry to himself (I mean philosophically, not religiously). I do think he makes a fundamental error in his assumptions about the scope of reason, and am inclined to think that his position is ultimately just as based on his own faith in it as that of the Young Earth crowd. Again, it's the logical positivism thing--at the end of the day it's rather unsupportable as a philosophic position, that's why it generally died out so quickly.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I think I've given reasons why I don't think it's the same at all.

If Dawkins can't see the difference between a religion based on the Sermon on the Mount (however imperfectly those ideas might be implemented) and one based on evangelical militarism, then I can't help him. There is a qualitative difference between religious traditions, and I'm perfectly willing to admit that. It's not simply a question of belief, it's a question of what one believes in. "God told me to love my neighhbor as myself" is quite a bit different from "God told me to smite the unbeliever."

Ever heard of Westboro Baptist Church? "God told me that he hates fags." They claim to be as Christian as Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Any attempt to dissociate "our kind of Christians" just winds up in a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. It won't do I'm afraid. Have you not noticed the attempts to turn the USA into a Christian Theocracy? They're as bad (or worse, because better funded) as any of the "Mad Mullahs" in Saudi, Iran or Iraq.

This necessary ground of being malarkey; does this bear any resemblance to the Transcendental Argument for God (hereafter TAG)?

Oooooh, no, I don't think Thomas would want anything to do with the sort of argument you're describing.

Goody. This is what I was starting to go off on before when I mentioned presuppositional arguments; total nonsense IMO.

to both of you for one of the best discussions I've seen on here

Hey, thanks. We do what we can

indeed.

I'm not buying into the "no conflict between science and religion because religious propositions cannot be falsified." What one should consider here is that the non-falisifiability of purportedly intractable religious propositions is simply because of a rhetoric trick, a deliberate fuzziness in definitions, and not because of some inherent intractable property of religion itself. What theists claim to be evidence of some kind of advanced logics that science cannot handle is actually the banal concept that you cannot meaningfully derive propositions from an inconsistent axiom base. Religion cannot explain what science can't either. Science strives to explain all and everything imaginable and religion is simply a pseudo-science placeholder for those problems for which no rational solution yet exists but to which a lot of people want to have an answer now (even a potentially false one) because some imagined certitude will comfort them.

This is pretty much my position too.

one of the most commonly used pro-god arguments is the argument from design. Obviously evolution (which is Dawkins' own speciality) explains the apparent design in life, but the apparent design of the universe (the "fine tuning" argument) as a whole is less easy to understand. Of course Douglas Adams had a great rejoinder to this problem: Imagine a sentient puddle. "How lucky am I," thinks the puddle, "that this hole in which I find myself is so perfectly attuned to my shape."

I've never heard that one before. Brilliant!

I like it too.

[markfiend]

Benedict XVI denies "Limbo"

No, we're not just making this shît up as we go along...

[nowayjose]

No, we're not just making this shît up as we go along...

What kinda disconcerts me is the fact that apparently there are enough people believing in such things to make it worth writing a news article about...

[Dr. Moody]

Quite like the idea that limbo is gone away, where did it go ? How the f**k does he know anyway ? "oops just been on the phone to God, forgot to mention that Limbo is out this year, no more waiting people its either eternal joy or suffering from now on, we're streamlining, computers n all, waiting times drastically reduced". Horray