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.
SINsister wrote:
-Thanks! I appreciate the ADD version!
Glad I could be of service
SINsister wrote:
-Dawkins doesn't have this knowledge, but neither does anyone else (theist, atheist, philosopher, madman, slob).
Yes, exactly.
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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?
markfiend wrote:
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/lolol.gif)
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?
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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."
markfiend wrote:
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.
markfiend wrote:
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."
markfiend wrote:
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?
markfiend wrote:
* 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.
markfiend wrote:
Yes, it makes sense, and in a lot of ways we could keep going back and forward over the same ground forever
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
The posts in this thread are getting longer and longer.
![Mr. Green ;D](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
Not that I mind, but I think my boss might if he catches me.
We should have our own subforum
markfiend wrote: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.
Dr. Moody wrote:
@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.
Dr. Moody wrote:
![We are not worthy! :notworthy:](./images/smilies/icon_notworthy.gif)
to both of you for one of the best discussions I've seen on here
Hey, thanks. We do what we can
![Cool 8)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)