I found this interview on the Website of Brandon Vogt, a Catholic blogger and speaker who’s the Content Director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Allow me to quote from Vogt’s introduction:
A few months ago, a man named Dave Rubin reached out to us at Word on Fire to ask if Bishop Barron would be open to an interview. (Apparently lots of Dave’s Twitter followers suggested the idea.)
To be honest, we didn’t know much about Dave at the time. But after some Googling, we discovered he’s a well-known comedian and host of the super popular “Rubin Report”, a show that airs directly through YouTube. “The Rubin Report” has over 350,000 subscribers and 100 million views. It’s one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world…
Dave is an interesting guy. One website describes him as a “rising media star” and “the voice of liberals who were mugged by progressives.” It says he’s “a 39-year-old pro-choice, pro-pot, recently gay-married atheist with a strong allergy to organized religion.”
In other words, the anti-Bishop Barron…I encourage you to watch both parts of the interview. Bishop Barron did such a marvelous job. He was smart and eloquent, even when Dave pushed the discussion toward hot-button issues…
So, what do viewers think of this interview? Does anyone feel that the bishop made an interesting case for belief in God?
Does an explanation exist if there is no possible way for you to ever access it? How could you possibly know?
How can you say is it required in such a case? Required for who?
peace
What sort or evolution would be required to enable you to do this? How would you explain it?
peace
That’s why I said it depends on how we define “explanation”. In my opinion, the only useful sense of the term implies that it always make sense to look for or ask for explanations.
Does it make sense to ask for an explanation for that which can not be explained even in principle or is self-explained?
Can these concepts even exist in your worldview?
IOW
Can you not even conceive of something that is self-explained or something for which the explanation is forever beyond your capacity to access?
peace
Note that those are very different things. I can conceive the latter: the laws of physics, for example.
But I can’t conceive something for which it makes no sense to question what might explain it. To go back to the laws of physics and nature, if it makes sense to ask why these laws and not others? then I don’t see why I should accept that it doesn’t make sense to ask why this God and not another one? when considering such a useless entity as an explanation
I’m all for asking “why this God and not another?” that is a big part of what theology does.
What I don’t understand is asking what is the explanation for this self-explained entity?
Or
Demanding an explanation that you acknowledge is forever beyond your ability to access.
Can you explain why doing such a thing makes sense
peace
I hold “explanation” to a higher standard I guess. “Self-Explained” is no explanation at all IMO
It makes sense to ask what that explanation could be, even if it seems entirely out of reach and might remain out of reach forever
Not per the dictionary definition :disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
Lack of belief of existence and lack of belief of non existence
That was not your question
“How can you possibly rule(out) all of the possibilities even those that have not been thought of yet?”
Not ruling anything out. You on the other hand by virtue of your belief in a very particular version of God are ruling out all the other possibilities.
Ok, as far as I can tell it is not believing one way or the other, this leaves one open to all possibilities.
It does seem to be a question that answers itself in the asking.
Why is flushing money down the drain a poor savings strategy?
Comparative religions is not my specialty, but I’m not happy about applying a ‘lowest common denominator’ so broadly as to encompass all of the Abrahamic religions and also Hinduism. Be that as it may, let’s continue.
I disagree completely.
What you want to say here seems like, “if I need an explanation B for A, and I need an explanation for C for B, etc. insert regress, then without a way of terminating the regress, I haven’t really explained anything at all.”
That doesn’t make sense, because that’s not how explanations work.
Consider the kinetic theory of gases. The kinetic theory of gases explains the Boyle-Charles law, because the theory shows us why pressure, volume, and temperature are related as the law says they are. But the kinetic theory of gases doesn’t explain how putting more energy into a closed system causes an increase in average molecular velocity. To get an explanation of that, you probably need to go to the quantum level. (Though I’m not sure if there’s really a good theoretical bridge between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.)
But does that mean that, prior to discovery of quantum mechanics, we didn’t really have an explanation of the Boyle-Charles law? Does having an explanation of phenomenon A require an explanation of phenomenon B that explains phenomenon A?
I don’t see why.
There’s a suggestion here that there is no explanation at all unless there is a complete explanation of everything. And that just seems silly to me.
3./ Re pantheism: at first blush, it sounds like an attractive option. However, it founders on the awkward fact that there is absolutely nothing in our cosmos – neither its constituents (taken singly or together), nor its initial (or subsequent) conditions, nor its laws – which is self-explanatory. Not even the whole shebang is self-explanatory. We can easily conceive that there might have been no cosmos at all.
4./ One might ask what kind of activity or process could possibly qualify as self-explanatory. That’s a fair question. Bishop Barron prefers not to speculate, but I’ll have a go. Try as we might, we cannot conceive that there might have been no thought at all: that would be tantamount to conceiving of the absence of concepts. Thinking therefore seems to be an ineliminable feature of Reality. Thoughts can only come from a Mind. If there is a self-explanatory Reality, then, it would have to be a Mind of some sort.
For one thing, I think more work has to be done to trigger the kind of paradox that Berkeley is getting at when he makes a comparable argument.
The idea that we cannot conceive of the absence of thought is true insofar as there can’t be non-conceptual thoughts. We can’t conceptually articulate what the absence of conceptual articulation is. But I don’t see how that is supposed to show that thought is necessarily real.
Exactly. And this very idea seems to be the foundation of one of the most ubiquitous fallacious combos in IDC land: moving the goalposts + god-of-the-gaps. They will ask for an explanation, when you provide one, they’ll demand an explanation for whatever explains the original question. Rinse, repeat until a gap is found and the creo can walk away claiming victory.
Sure you are you are ruling out the existence of God,
If instead you wished to only affirm that you aren’t aware of the existence of any god you’d call yourself an agnostic.
I’m agnostic about the existence of unicorns but I’m a-explanation(ist) when it comes to unexplainable phenomena
Do you see the difference?
But that is not what you are doing, You are declaring that God does not exist that is what the A in atheist means.
quote:
1570s, from French athéiste (16c.), from Greek atheos “without god, denying the gods; abandoned of the gods; godless, ungodly,” from a- “without”+ theos “a god”
end quote
from here
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=atheist
Words have meanings and if you wanted to express that keep your options open you’d call yourself an agnostic
peace
We are not talking about it “seeming” to be out of reach we are talking about it “being” out of reach.
And it’s not that it might be out of reach but that it certainly is out of reach forever.
From your perspective is conceivable for an entity to exist for which there is no possible way for you to access it’s explanation?
peace
If something is out of reach, you can’t know whether it’s self explaining or not, therefore you can’t possibly know if it makes sense or not to ask for an explanation for that. I don’t care about your endless question begging so don’t even bother with that crap please.
IOW. It may make no sense to ask why the laws of physics are the way they are, because the question seems entirely out of reach for us, but for the same reason we can’t know whether there might be an explanation for those laws or not.
The thing is that believing you can solve the problem by defining things as self-explanatory is stupid and doesn’t explain anything
Isn’t that just a kind of platonism (or fictionalism, as I prefer). You assume it exists in some undefined sense, so as to allow you to talk about it, and perhaps talk about finding ways to test it.
That’s not what atheism is. Just as the word says, atheism means without (a-) belief in gods (theism). I covered this, and the difference between atheism and agnosticism, in a post here over three years ago.
There are some atheists who make the positive claim that no gods exist. Most in my experience do not. They simply lack belief, which is the one core characteristic shared by all atheists.
If the infinite regress ends at the Big Bang then why is that insufficient as an explanation?
I have no problem conceiving that there was no thought in the universe prior to the evolution of organisms with brains.
I think you are confounding two things
1) An entity that is explainable but forever out of my reach
2) A self explained entity.
Although both concepts are conceivable to me the Christian God is number 2.
Yahweh is self-explaining and at the same time accessible to us by revelation.
I’m asking you about number 1 only in order to get a handle on what is possible in your worldview.
again with the “may” and “seems”, I’m not asking about things for which the explanation may be out of reach. I’m asking about things where the explanation is certainly out of reach.
Can you even conceive of such a thing?
Perhaps.
I would say it’s not so much about assuming it exists but evaluating whether it’s possible that it exists. Agnosticism more than anything.
peace
bingo
peace
Are you saying that in the end there will always be a gap somewhere?
If so do you find that to be odd?
peace
And the answer is the same. How can anyone know that something that’s forever out of reach is explainable or not? We would never get to explain such a thing, but we also would have no way of knowing if such an explanation exists or not.
Gaps in our knowledge, sure
um, no
I haven’t watch any of the videos. No time. Rather no time to waste.
But, I can possibly predict what wasn’t said in the videos especially from the bishop.
Men and women with gay tendencies can be brought back to ordinary lifestyle according to their nature.
If it were you who your mother were about to abort, and you were the one who were given the consent to say yes or no to abort, what would you do?
Evolution is true and progresses even when two people of the same sex are doing it without any chances of survival or fitness improvement.
98% of catholic priests in Rome have been reported by the Panorama magazine as being gay.
God doesn’t love everybody.
Trump’s hair is fine and I don’t care if some call him Donald Tuck because of his hair-tuck.
So somethings will remain forever unexplained? Now perhaps we are getting somewhere.
Ok so in your world it would not be surprising for something to exist and yet it’s explanation to be forever beyond your access.
It necessarily follows then that god could exist (ie Be in reality) as an explanatory cause that stops the causal regress but for which no explanation is possible.
So now we have three distinct explanations for the universe to compare and contrast.
1) There exists an infinite regress of causes
2) The universe is caused by an entity that is real but has no explanation that we can access
3) The cause of the universe does not require a cause outside itself (ie is self caused)
See what a little deep thinking can do for you. 😉
peace
Entities that can cause themselves to pop into and out of existence would appear to me to be perversely anti-science.
fifthmonarchyman,
Or perhaps that’s the wrong way to go about thinking of origins
Who said anything about poping in an out of existence. Yahweh is not only self-caused he is necessary.
He does not pop into existence? Existence itself is contingent on his nature and choice.
It’s not that he is subject to science he is the entity that makes science possible.
peace
It is impossible rule out the existence an omnipotent, omniscient being. But the definition of atheist I provided does not require it to fit the definition. So your claim about atheists fails.
All that is required per the definition is a lack of belief of in God’s existence, no declarations are required.
Godless seems about right.
Actually no ,since agnosticism requires only certain kind of evidence to justify a belief.
A red Porsche in the driveway or waking up to find Trump being president was just a bad dream would justify my belief in a Good God
fmm,
Unlike of course the idea of god that theists have, which is without exception the exact same conception for all theists.
Oh, wait….
vjtorley, So, what do viewers think of this interview? Does anyone feel that the bishop made an interesting case for belief in God?
Not interesting, but okay. And the “gay atheist media star” was also okay, not particularly interesting, not even controversial in any way, not overly gay or atheist or a media star. Just an interviewer.
Lowest common denominator is different from essential similarity. Namely, the lowest common denominator doesn’t care if the commonality is essential and functional or not; it just notes what’s common, no matter how irrelevant the commonality.
When you know this distinction, then congratulations, you have passed the first theoretical hurdle to comparative analysis.
Conversely, lack of an explanation of the broadest kind(s) directly leads to the conclusion that we (those who lack such explanation) don’t know if God (that which is supposed to explain everything) exists, i.e. the result is agnosticism or ignosticism. It emphatically does not lead to the notion that God does not exist (i.e. atheism). Yet we see the latest notion asserted all the time, don’t we? Why is that, what do you think?
LMFAO
Erik, by contrast, is neither overly nor underly gay.
I call myself an agnostic, though in fact ‘ignostic’ is much closer to my considered view (see here).
zzzZZZz.
Completely incoherent and meaningless. Existence is a property of something. It either exists or not. That would be true of God too.
There isn’t such a thing as bare existence.
Do you ever tire of not making any sense? Fuck me, this is a complete waste of my time. Back to ignore with this moron.
Yeah, my bad. Atheism has evolved from atheism (“God does not exist”) through New Atheism (“God is evil and does not exist”) to Patrickatheism (“There is no evidence for God, where evidence is (un)defined by me and God shall not be defined by anyone”). Must be considerate to them all.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of a “first cause” per se, but I don’t understand why it must have intention/intelligence.
I’m ignostisexual.
Wait a minute
Aren’t you declaring yourself to be an atheist? Is not that declaration required for me to know that you consider yourself an atheist?
peace
That is why I don’t generally like these philosophical approaches to demonstrating Gods existence. You can play whack a mole with an atheist forever.
He can always grant your point then take one step to the left and you have to start all over. 😉
peace
You can never get them to change their mind about their religious beliefs. 🙂
Never claimed to be an atheist fifth.
I have a problem with first cause. It’s incoherent. In fact the billiard ball metaphor of causation is incoherent.
I fully agree that the billiard ball metaphor of causation is problematic. (But “incoherent” seems to be going a bit too far.) Nevertheless there could be arguments for a first cause even if, once we abandon the billiard ball metaphor, the first cause is not the domino that causes all the others to fall by causing itself to fall.
One thing that Torley gets right is that’s more helpful to think in terms of explanations than in terms of causes. Another point that needs to be stressed here is the distinction between contingency and necessity.
The line of thought being rehearsed here is something like this.
All beings exist either contingently or necessarily.
If a being exists contingently, then it possible for that being to have not existed.
Therefore, if a contingent being does exist, then there must be an explanation for why that contingent being exists.
The totality of all contingent beings is itself contingent.
But if all beings exist contingently, then there would be no explanation for why the totality of beings exists.
Therefore, if there is an explanation for why the totality of all contingent beings exists, then there must be at least one necessary being.
I’ve gone quickly through steps 4 and 5, but I think the basic intuition is reasonably clear.
Nice summary KN. And again, I don’t have a problem with that line of thinking per se, but I do wonder why the object of the equation is “beings” as opposed to “events”, “objects”, “molecules”, or any other noun. Why are “beings” either necessary or contingent, but not simply all “objects”?
In other words, why is intelligence/being implied to be built into the equation? Why is the equation not simply a neutral assessment of the implication that something had to exist?
Well, when your mallet is question begging and special pleading, then you aren’t going to hit anything. So yeah…keep whacking away there with that fallacious thinking of yours, Fifth…
I haven’t taken a step anywhere. I simply dismiss the obviously illogical aspects of any argument.
I chose to use “beings” because it’s the most non-committal term in English for the argument I was trying to make. “Beings” are just anything that exists. So objects, subjects, values, numbers, quarks, minds, etc are all “beings” if they exist at all.
I agree that there’s no good argument that establishes that “the necessary being” must be an intelligence, mind, person, etc.
In short, I don’t think that the argument from explanation suffices to show that God exists, if God is understood (as He is understood by Christians, Muslims, and Jews) as not just the necessary being but also as having at least some of the characteristics of a person or mind.