What is Philosophy?
Is it “unintelligible answers to insoluble problems”? (Henry Adams)
Is a philosopher “a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there”? (Lord Bowen)
Is philosophy “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing”? (Ambrose Bierce)
In a recent post a comment was made about how nice it was to have three trained philosophers engaged in making comments.
But is anyone else even paying attention? Does what these trained philosophers say even matter?
Isn’t it true that:
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” (William James)
“one cannot conceive of anything so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.” (Rene Descartes)
“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” (Bertrand Russell)
Philosopher: “someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about but makes it sound like it’s your fault.”
Can any of our trained philosophers even offer a defense of philosophy beyond “it pays the bills”?
More specifically, what is the value of philosophy for an atheist?
[Changed Ambrose Pierce to Ambrose Bierce. HT: keiths]
This is true. And I suppose I like the idea of before time time had no meaning, what’s more north then the north pole etc etc. As such I simply don’t see a problem. Before we had no understanding of the universe and “time” had a different meaning. Now we know there is no direction of time in physics and these questions of “before” and “cause” are somewhat more nuanced then they were when “let there be light!” was the best we had, which was perfect for the times of course.
If we are in fact inside a black hole that’s good evidence for the idea that universes are mechanisms for breeding black holes. I like that idea.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2013-05-04-did-universe-evolve-make-black-holes
That’s very cool. Thanks!
fifth,
You don’t think first-order logic is rigorous or interesting? Or quantum mechanics?
You have a lot to learn, fifth.
fifth:
Well, you had thanked Neil for his “neighborhood policing”. He wanted to show that he was worthy of your gratitude by protecting you from yourself.
What would we do without him?
This goes back to my running debate with Erik about the difference between formal and natural languages. The liar’s paradox is a semantic paradox, and can be formulated in any natural language. But Goedel’s incompleteness theorem uses a version of the liar’s paradox to make a point about the syntactical structure of any formal system sufficiently rich to capture arithmetic.
Interestingly, the Goedel result does not show that arithmetic is incomplete. What is shows, rather, is this: for any formal system rich enough to capture arithmetic, one cannot prove the completeness of that system by using that system. By contrast, the completeness proof for first-order logic is a proof within first-order logic.
Actually time is irrelevant to Cosmological Arguments the Greeks thought the universe was eternal after all. Just because something did not have a beginning does not mean it’s not caused.
For instance if the universe is just one of many universes in a universe producing system that selects for black hole producing universes the un-caused first cause is the universe spawning system itself.
An impersonal universe spawning system is not Yahweh but it is “God” at least as far as Cosmological Arguments go.
peace
I agree that a big part of the problem is the confounding of formal and natural languages. I just think that in general it’s not my side of the fence that is doing the confounding.
peace
I think it is time you show us your definitions for ‘God’ and ‘god’. Preferably ones that don’t make the proofs of their (non)existence tautological.
And you would worship that system would you?
Of course not I’m a Christian.
That is why I’m not a particular fan of these types of arguments. You could be completely convinced of the validity of the Cosmological argument and still reject most every thing that I find worthy of worship.
On the other hand it is important to recognize that everyone has a (G)od of some sort even if it’s an impersonal evolutionary system so CA have some value in this regard.
In general when a person says they are an atheist what they really mean is they reject their own straw man understanding of the Christian God. It is usually the buzzkill with the white beard.
peace
According to Webster a god is : a spirit or being that has great power, strength, knowledge, etc., and that can affect nature and the lives of people : one of various spirits or beings worshipped in some religions
From here http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/god
On the other hand The God of the Cosmological argument is defined right in the argument itself. This God is simply the un-caused first cause
My God Yahweh is different than both these things He is “defined” here among other places
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/bc1644.htm
Quote:
That God is of himself, that is, neither from another, nor of another, nor by another, nor for another But is a Spirit, who as his being is of himself, so he gives being, moving, and preservation to all other things, being in himself eternal, most holy, every way infinite in greatness, wisdom, power, justice, goodness, truth, etc. In this God-head, there is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; being every one of them one and the same God; and therefore not divided, but distinguished one from another by their several properties; the Father being from himself, the Son of the Father from everlasting, the holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.
end quote:
Hope that helps
peace
Bullshit.
More bullshit.
You have just lost all credibility, with these ridiculous claims.
Dang Neil Rickert,
looks like I might have touched a nerve 😉
No offense was intended I’m just giving my humble opinion.
peace
Maybe a Bob Dylan song will help to ease the tension
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC3cvaZV6mI
😉
peace
I don’t think it was so much a ” nerve” as a frustration with the idea that atheists have simply rejected a strawman. Maybe some people are atheists just because they haven’t read fancy enough theology but I’ve yet to meet one, and I spent long enough talking to atheists before I joined them.
The buzz kill guy is a problem for some variants of theistic morality but I think atheists are perfectly capable of distinguish ing between baby and bathwater.
More to the point, if the cosmological argument is that people call “God” the answer to the first mover question, that just raises the question as to why on earth we should assign to the referent of that signifier any of the other properties usually asserted as attributes of God
fifthmonarchyman,
Nah, I’m an equal-opportunities rejector. None of them float my boat, in the likeliness-of-existing stakes.
Actually no. The only person you are capable of speaking for is yourself. So please shut that arrogance back in it’s box.
Is that right? Well, often I find when people say they are Christians they are thinking of Jesus as a white guy who looks like Christian Bale who speaks English. They they usually think that Jesus has the same racial bias as them and is also a conservative who likes guns.
But do tell, what is the “real” Christian God that if I understood I’d believe in?
Go on, fucking proselytise to this atheist who is not really an atheist who is simply rejecting my own straw man understanding of the Christian God.
Dare you.
And what about atheists in Muslim countries? They rejecting the Christian God also?
It’s just that ignorant Christians repeat this apologetics nonsense far too often.
How about treating other people with respect, instead of with insults.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts — in this case, facts about what other people believe.
Not really. I am still not clear why the UCFC must be labelled ‘God’. Why not call it ‘Universe’, for example?
fG
Note that you have defined “God” above so that only a very precise entity can fit the bill. To wit:
But now you make pretty much everything anybody believes in, even evolutionary theory as a “God.” Now that really IS equivocation. I mean, I believe the Principle of Non-Contradiction is true, and, in a sense, fundamental. But I think you’ll have to agree that such a commitment does not require my believe in a Father, Son or Holy Spirit, any of which even a little good, never mind infinitely so.
I admit that Plantinga has some arguments to the contrary here, but (i) you haven’t made them; and (ii) they’re no good.
As best I can tell so far, there are really two different arguments in the Thomistic story — the Argument from Causation and the Argument from Design. (The first through fourth ways are different ways of conceptualizing the Argument from Causation, because if you think about causation as Aristotelians do, there are different aspects to it.)
The Argument from Causation tells us that there must be an absolute, uncaused being that continually upholds or preserves in existence all contingent beings. The absolute being is the reason why contingent beings do not randomly, arbitrarily lapse into non-being.
The Argument from Design tells us what the absolute, uncaused being must be like: it must be something like a Person, with intelligence and will. This is because contingent beings are ordered in highly intricate ways, and it is impossible that chance and necessity can generate order. (Note that the order here needn’t be biological complexity per se — the order of galactic rotation or crystal formation are also relevant.) Our ability to discover the universe as intelligible requires a ground for the intelligibility of the universe, and only a rational being — a Person — can be that ground.
So we have two different arguments — an argument as to why there must be an absolute being, necessarily existing, and which continually maintains the existence of all contingent things from moment to moment, and an argument as to why the absolute being must have certain characteristics that only persons can have.
The Argument from Causation, by itself, gives us a universe, a multiverse, or a pantheistic God like that of Spinoza. We need the Argument from Design to close off those possibilities and establish anything at all like classical theism.
(In fact, I suspect that Spinoza understood the structure here quite well — after all, he endorses the Argument from Causation quite nicely and criticizes the Argument from Design with a vengeance.)
“Everyone” has some sort of god? I call bullshit. The charitable interpretation of this assertion is that you are employing some sort of private re-definition of the word ‘god’ which rescues it from being the flat-out lie it bloody well would be if you were using the common conception of “god”.
“Straw man”? Yyyyeah. Right. Tell you what, Fifth, old bean: Why don’t you talk to any of the millions of your fellow Xtians who subscribe to what you call the “buzzkill with a white beard” concept of god, tell them that the god they believe in is a “straw man”, and report back to us with their reaction?
fifthmonarchyman,
You need to talk to more atheists. I grew up in a Congregationalist church. I’m quite familiar with their claims.
I lack belief in gods because I have never seen any objective, empirical evidence for anything that remotely meets the common definitions of that word. I’ve also never seen a rigorous operational definition of such an entity.
You owe Neil a genuine apology for this.
Your apology should take the form of “I’m sorry, Neil Rickert, that I chose to take an unjustified poke at you. I see that I was wrong and I will try to do better in our future interactions.”
If you wish, you may add something like “That was really unchristian of me.”
Please do be a better christian, fifthmonarchyman.
hotshoe_,
Applause.
It’s hard — perhaps impossible — to live up to the teachings of Jesus. But if Christians would at least try, it would be a better world.
Patrick, to fifth:
Indeed. Off the top of my head, you, Lizzie, petrushka, hotshoe, and I are all ex-Christians who know what Christians believe — and have rejected it.
It is fifth who is fighting a straw man, not us.
I have not been a believer as an adult, but I consider my ethics and morality to be consistent with anyone in my extended family who is a serious churchgoer.
Which is why it is really stupid and offensive for theists to tell me what I think or believe or how I behave. I am every bit as capable of having mystical thoughts, epiphanies, awe and such as the most fervent believer. I just don’t think they have any intellectual content or significance.
KN, thanks for explaining that in terms even I can understand. Not that I find these arguments particularly persuasive. Isn’t the Argument from Causation firmly based on induction, with all the problems that brings? And the Argument from Design has some weaknesses that, I think, have led directly to the existence of this very website, if nothing else!
Personally, I get irritated by all the mumbo-jumbo. What does it actually mean to say that God ‘sustains’ or ‘upholds’ all ‘contingent beings’? What is it that He actually does? Why can’t the Universe, with its existing structured regularities and laws that we have come to understand so much better since the time of Aquinas, not uphold itself and all that is in it?
The claim that only a rational being can be the ground for the intelligibility of the Universe is, as far as I can see, just another claim without much justification. Besides, I am not all that convinced that we will ever be able to fully understand the Universe, making the argument moot!
fG
Wow
I guess lots of folks here have the same nerve. 😉
Listen Guys I’m not really interested in trying to persuade you of a fact that is taken as self evident in my world view.
I’m sorry that my simple observation caused you all so much distress . I have no problem if you disagree with me on these things in fact I would expect it.
I am however a little confused how I can be seen to be unChristian when I’m just respectively calling it like I see it. That is what Christians are commanded to do after all.
quote:
Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?
(Gal 4:16)
end quote:
It’s these sorts of things that lead me to believe that many of you have rejected a strawman instead of actual Christianity.
Any way
I only got involved in this thread to see if anyone from that side would correct keiths understanding of the Cosmological Argument.
I’ll happily bow out now in the interest of deference to the natives.
carry on
peace
Have you thought about whether that might suggest a problem with your world view.
I doubt that anyone is actually distressed. Rather, we are surprised to discover how completely out of touch with reality you are. We expect that sort of nonsense in apologetics, but not in ordinary discussion.
I don’t think so; I think it is a rigorous argument based on what must be the case if (a) there are contingent beings and (b) an infinite regress of contingent beings, one being the cause of the other, is absurd. It is obvious that there are contingent beings, if one is not a Spinozist. I confess that I share the “intuition” that an infinite regress of contingent causes is absurd, but I don’t fully understand myself why this intuition is justified.
Well, not quite. As Erik correctly noted in a different thread, Aquinas’s Argument from Design (the Fifth Way) is intended as demonstration, with very strong modal force — it is about what must be and cannot be the case. Paley’s Argument from Design is an inference to the best explanation, and it’s that latter version which evolved (heh!) into Intelligent Design “Theory”. But this means that Aquinas’s version could be correct even if Paley’s is not.
I think that this is a difficult question, and a very interesting one. I don’t have an answer, but here’s what I think an answer might look like.
If something is contingent, then it can either exist or not exist. But if something comes into existence or out of existence, there has to be a reason why that thing comes into existence or passes out of existence. If beings popped in and out of existence all the time, without any reason, then we would live in a fundamentally absurd reality (and we ourselves would be absurd). But in order for there to be a reason why things come and out of existence, there must be something with the right sort of causal power to make things come and out of existence. And not only that — this being’s causal activity is also the reason why various contingent entities don’t just randomly cease to be at any moment. This is true for all contingent beings, at every scale of time and space, from quarks to superclusters and everything between and beyond. In other words, God is the reason/cause of why anything is at all.
Firstly, the claim isn’t that we do or even can fully understand the universe — the claim is that it is intelligible, that some parts of it can be partially understood. Even acknowledging that there is any understanding of reality at all concedes the point to the Argument from Design.
I do think that one can blunt part of the force of the Argument from Design is to say that the universe is replete with emergent complexities, and that we ourselves are one of them. The universe is intelligible to us because the intellect is a part of the whole, and so shares in its underlying structure. The intellect is a part of the whole because the intellect is part of the organism-environment relation, and the organism-environment relation itself emerges from the deeper laws of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamical systems under the right initial conditions.
We are a part of the universe through which the universe discovers itself.
That said, we can still — in the grip of the principle of sufficient reason – ask, “why is the case that the universe has the structures and laws necessary and sufficient for generating intelligent beings that can inquire into its structures and laws?”
At this point, I think there are only two options: either reject the PSR, or accept that God exists. I chose the former, because I treat the PSR as a methodological imperative for successful inquiry, rather than as an ontological doctrine. If the Big Bang was a singularity, then the universe is informationally closed. That means that there are no physically possible measurements that can be taken outside of the universe as a whole. And that means in turn that no claim about why the universe is as it is can be empirically verified, and so there is no physically possible successful inquiry as to why it exists.
Put otherwise: if the Big Bang is a singularity, then the universe is a brute (physical) fact.
The reason why Erik and I are arguing over how to understand the PSR in our little debate is because we both understand that this is the heart of the entire matter, at the deepest philosophical level: is the PSR a methodological prescription for guiding successful inquiry (as I think) or is the PSR a description of how reality is (as he thinks)? (An alternative might be to reject the PSR entirely, which is basically the same as ceasing to be a rational being.)
Seems somewhat better than worshiping a ceiling fan.
fifthmonarchyman was responding to a comment by OMagain to which Neil took offense in a rather discourteous manner.
I disagree with KN here though. You all are entitled to your own facts.
petrushka,
I agree wholeheartedly with your first sentence. The second I’m not so sure about. My wife dragged me kicking and screaming (well, technically she tricked me, but I would have kicked and screamed) to my first meditation workshop. After the second hour I was hooked. It’s amazing what some deep breathing and mindfulness can do. My brain is now one of my favorite toys.
The results do have significance to me. My communication with my family has improved, I’ve let go of a lot of anger, I’m more patient, and I’m learning compassion. Despite the fact that many of these techniques came out of Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi traditions, they work just fine without the theistic baggage.
Better not get caught saying that at UD.
They’ll skin you for heresy.
I thought fifth’s remark was wrong, inconsistent with something he’d posted not long before, and maybe even silly, but I have to admit I was kind of surprised at how touchy people were about it.
I think, btw, that Gregory would fervently disagree with fifth’s remark. He certainly doesn’t take believing in science or logic or good grooming as tantamount to being a religious person with a different “God.” I think he’d say that it was much more along the lines of pathetic USAtheism.
🙂
walto,
I didn’t find it made me “touchy” (although I like a hug as much as the next guy). It was simply wrong.
There is a species of theist that simply can’t understand that there really are people who don’t share their beliefs. I find that interesting.
That’s exactly what I was trying to get across in my book on meditation–that one can (and maybe even ought to) try to get the benefits without buying any of the bullshit. You might like it, Patrick–although as I’ve said, I think I’d write it a bit differently now.
I recall reading somewhere that four of the five ways each employed a different one of the four Aristotelian causes. Material cause, formal cause, efficient case and final cause. The third and fourth are pretty easy to assign to their corresponding “way” but the others I’d have to think about. Maybe I’ll come across that again given the nature of some of the current discussions.
ETA: btw, very nice post there. And the following one you made.
I didn’t mean to suggest that EVERYONE was touchy about it, but certainly a few people got pissed off. It was both wrong and kind of knowing/above the fray. That kind of stuff is does make people mad. It makes ME mad, anyhow (even though I know I’ve been guilty of that attitude myself on occasion).
I’m surprised you haven’t challenged his characterization of “meaning is use.” Putnam had something to say about that in Pragmatism.
walto,
A friend of mine passed on this highly advanced guided meditation to me over the weekend: https://youtu.be/92i5m3tV5XY Not for beginners!
Exactly. And all too often critics of the design argument engage only with the Paley style arguments, as if the other did not exist, and then dismiss all teleological arguments as if they had all been answered.
Right. It’s not necessarily that they need to have a reason to go out of existence, but a reason why they don’t, since they obviously can and do [empirical fact].
I don’t think “touchy” is the right word.
It’s a stupid cliche that too many theists believe.
I don’t go around saying that theists believe in sky fairies. I prefer to treat them with respect. Theists should do the same to non-theists, and especially at a site where we are supposed to assume that people are arguing in good faith.
If you honestly think that I believe in sky fairies it would be disrespectful not to tell me so if I asked.
That is just my opinion please don’t take it the wrong way
peace
That’s one way of taking advantage of the “you’re entitled to your own facts” rule.
Mung,
The point is that it is unnecessarily offensive to belittle their religion in that way.