Saturday, November 17, 2012

Space elephants! Space elephants!

 Can you prove there is no god?

From the point of view of argument, it seems like a big mistake to take on the task of disproving the existence of God. After all, if someone is making the claim that there is a God, then the burden of proof is on them. Also, I don't think it's possible to disprove the existence of God any more than it is possible to prove it.

Still, there are very many people who believe in God, and so we atheists are often in the position of explaining why we don't think that a god of some particular description is at all likely or possible. The inevitable response from the theist is that my argument doesn't apply, because God is some sort of special exception.

Take, for instance, the claim that God is a person. Most Christians, at least, are committed to this claim. (Worse, they are committed to the claim that God is three persons, though only one being, something that seems incoherent on the face of it, and even sillier when they say in addition that God is "simple". But let's not go there....) What is a person, though? We usually think of a person as a being possessed of  intelligence, capable of thinking and reacting in complex ways. But God is supposed to be somehow outside of time, so she can't react to anything. Nor can she have thoughts in the sense we do: a succession of mental states that relate to a person's situation at a particular time.

And what is intelligence but the ability to process information in complex ways? But God, being omniscient, can never receive any new information, and, being outside of time, cannot process anything: a process is something that takes place over time.

So how does the theist respond to these challenges? Ed Feser has helpfully given examples in some recent posts.  He agrees that God canot have the same sort of consciousness as we do:

There’s nothing it’s “like” to be God if we mean by that a certain kind of stream of thoughts and conscious experiences, like ours but (say) more vivid and encompassing a perceptual awareness of every part of the world at once.
But, he says, God's intelligence is "analogous" to ours.

OK, sure - if by "analogous" you mean "utterly and completely different from." God doesn't have perceptions, or mental images, or thoughts, or emotions, God can't gain new knowledge of anything, or change Her mind. God is, in fact, incapable of pretty much everything we associate with personhood.

So is God less than a person? Of course not!

Similarly, to say that it is a mistake to try to grasp the divine intellect by modeling it on our thought processes does not entail that God is less than “personal” in the sense that we are personal (as contrasted with impersonal objects and forces like stones and gravity).  Rather, God is more than personal, in that everyday sense of “personal.” His intellect is not inferior to our conscious thought processes (as a stone, gravity, or even the unconscious informational states of a computer are to that extent inferior to our conscious states) but on the contrary beyond and higher than them, just as divine power is beyond and higher than the relatively trivial capacities in created things that we characterize as “powers.” 
Oh, I see: our poor human personhood is but a pale shadow of Her perfect Personhood.

The only thing that can be said about arguments like these is that they are so clearly born of desperation, so clearly instances of equivocation and special pleading, that they hardly require a response. Any more than the Purple Plutonian Pachyderm.

18 comments:


  1. @Prof Oerter

    Seriously?

    >The only thing that can be said about arguments like these is that they are so clearly born of desperation...

    I see Prof Oerter you are still smarting from that spanking Feser gave you a while back from your incompetent set of arguments from physics (& other category mistakes) trying in vain to disprove "whatever is moved is moved by another" and falling flat.

    http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/06/oerter-on-motion-and-first-mover.html

    Your response here in short is "I don't have a professional understanding of philosophy or classic philosophical terms so I will substitute ignorant mockery to rational philosophical analysis!"

    How does this fundie Gnu Atheist response here make you any different from the Fundie Young Earth Creationist who responses to Evolution with cracks like "Monkeys only give birth to other monkeys! How can a human be born of a Monkey?"?

    Yeh learn about natural selection buddy! As for you Robert take some time and actually learn the Thomistic doctrine of analogy & stop writing silly nonsense like this "OK, sure - if by "analogous" you mean "utterly and completely different from." [FYI that is the concept of equivocal comparison not analigous] God doesn't have perceptions, or mental images, or thoughts, or emotions, God can't gain new knowledge of anything, or change Her mind. God is, in fact, incapable of pretty much everything we associate with personhood."END QUOTE

    http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/the-new-philistinism

    http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-are-some-physicists-so-bad-at.html

    I am disappointed. I know you are better than this.

    >From the point of view of argument, it seems like a big mistake to take on the task of disproving the existence of God. After all, if someone is making the claim that there is a God, then the burden of proof is on them. Also, I don't think it's possible to disprove the existence of God any more than it is possible to prove it.

    Only for people like you who philosophically are anti-realists, reductionists materialists, empiricists & Positivists and hold those views unconsciously & reflexively as the default metaphysical view rather then positively defend them using actual philosophy.

    God is not an empirical question but a philosophical one.

    Get over it & learn to argue philosophically.

    >so clearly instances of equivocation and special pleading, that they hardly require a response.

    Rather an Atheist philosopher could respond but a lazy Atheist Physicist who is philosophically ignorant and doesn't wish to move beyond that might find mockery a substitute to argument.

    I am very disappointed in you Robert. Your better than this.

    Very disappointed.

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  2. Ben, I love having you comment on my posts, because you keep me honest. You don't let me get away with sloppy thinking and you often point me toward interesting theistic writings.

    Every once in a while, though, you drop one of these word-bombs that is full of invective and makes no substantive argument. I can only conclude that you have no actual response to make.

    I'm glad to know that your belief in God has nothing to do with any kind of evidence. That helps me understand your viewpoint much better. As a scientist, I require evidence, not just a philosophical argument, before I accept something as fact.

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    1. I thank you for your praise of me Dr. Oerter but my critique stands.

      >Every once in a while, though, you drop one of these word-bombs that is full of invective and makes no substantive argument. I can only conclude that you have no actual response to make.

      Rather I am complaining that is what you are doing here! You have made no argument indeed you even said "that they hardly require a response."

      So where is your argument? At least with the argument from motion you made an attempt however feeble.

      >I'm glad to know that your belief in God has nothing to do with any kind of evidence.

      Beg the question much? I do believe in evidence. Philosophical evidence.

      >As a scientist, I require evidence, not just a philosophical argument, before I accept something as fact.

      In short you are a philosophical positivist. A viewpoint AG Flew at the height of his Atheism during the 50's abandoned as incoherent and self-referential.

      I could see myself losing faith from some earth shattering tragedy in my life (in addition to all the others that have already happened) but knowing what I know I would still look down my noise at your Positivist beliefs.

      Blinded by Scientism:
      http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1174/

      Recovering Sight after Scientism:
      http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1184/

      Science & Philosophy are the key to natural knowledge not science alone.

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  3. >The inevitable response from the theist is that my argument doesn't apply, because God is some sort of special exception.

    I may not be a PhD but I am smart enough to realizes the Philosophical arguments one might advance against an Atheist who holds too Positivism or Materialism don't mean much to a Platonic Atheist.

    If I could solidly & philosophically refute every known Cosmological Argument that has ever been I also realize a Pantheist(whose concept of God doesn't require God be a creator or separate from the Universe) would yawn at me just like the Platonic Atheist would toward my anti-materialist & anti-positivists polemics.

    If anybody is commiting the fallacies of equivocation and special pleading it's you Prof Oerter.

    Your the one who is treating all concepts of God as the same & complaining because you will have to do actual homework to refute specific versions of them in any manner that is credible.

    You Rip off of Russell's teapot argument is a great polemic for Paley's post enlightenment, mechanistic isolani "god" but Thomists yawn at you.

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  4. >God can't gain new knowledge of anything, or change Her mind.

    Duh! If God could gain new knowledge that knowledge would have to be a thing that originates & exists outside Himself & thus He could not be Existence Itself originating all existent things.

    >God is, in fact, incapable of pretty much everything we associate with personhood.

    A Brian Davies said "The Divine Nature can't ride a bike". God is not unequivocally compared to creatures nor whole equivocally but analogously compared to them.

    Ya missed that part in TLS?

    Ya killing me Professor.

    Killing me.

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  5. >And what is intelligence but the ability to process information in complex ways?

    I love how you go to Webster's dictionary but ignore Feser's explanation of Intelligence in the AT tradition given in the very posts you link too.

    Let's try this.

    Webster defines "a string" as "A cord usually made of fiber, used for fastening, tying, or lacing."

    Ergo STRING THEORY must be a theory in Physics that postulates the Cosmos at the fundamental level must be made up of cords of fiber. Which is silly because are we to believe atoms are made up of fiber? I thought fiber was made of atoms?

    The only thing that can be said about arguments like these is that they are so clearly born of desperation, so clearly instances of equivocation and special pleading, that they hardly require a response.END

    The above analogy is how your original post reads to me & why I am so annoyed.

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  6. Doc - thnx for the link (Feser's Divine Intellect post) and u 2, BY, for the other links. I checked Guiness to see if they recorded which blog posts had the most number of comments (500 on Feser's post) - but alas, no.

    I do agree with BY that you selected a definition of intelligence convenient to your argument - your Webster link includes another one: "the basic eternal quality of divine Mind" - not that Feser would accept that definition either - but at least it doesn't include anything about processing new information.

    On the other hand, while I was reading / perusing all the comments about Aquinas' meaning of analogies I was also watching Ken Burns' documentary Dust Bowl on PBS. I don't see much divine intellect, or human intellect, in that ecological disaster, if that helps any with the evidence issue.

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    1. >I don't see much divine intellect, or human intellect, in that ecological disaster, if that helps any with the evidence issue.

      I reject theodicy because as a Thomist I reject the idea that God as He is defined classically can coherently seen as a moral agent who has duties and obligations to us.

      I also reject the concept of "the Best of all possible worlds".

      http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/boapw.html

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    2. Ben: I haven't yet looked at the link, but will. Meantime, if God is the sustainer of the universe (and therefore the sustainer of humans) and if he is not a moral agent with duties to us (as considered in the Book of Job), then what is the essence of God's relationship to humans, if any, under the Thomist view?

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    3. >What is the essence of God's relationship to humans, if any, under the Thomist view?

      That is an ambiguous question. What do you mean by this?

      Clarify please.

      Thanks in advance.

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    4. Ben: my clarification of the question ended up below; I meant for it to be here.

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  7. The human condition is puzzling. I usually turn to music whenever I let my mind dwell too long on what exists one light year past the last photon trying desperately to escape the confines of this universe. But humor also helps restore balance. Try, for example, Pascal's Wagering by Kevin Guilfoile. Without balance, I can't ride my Harley.

    And as to the human condition, here is a little piece I wrote regarding the rate at which random conditions add up. Tracking one of the concepts Guilfoile touches on, if randomness or free will exists and God is omniscient, then she indeed has a lot to keep track of.

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  8. To clarify: The topic of the post is the nature of the personhood of God. Oerter raised the issue of intellect and I raised the problem of evil. Assuming arguendo that God in his personhood does not process new information (the divine mind is not changeable or divisible) and is not responsible for evil (the divine mind is not a moral agent towards man), then what does God do towards man as a Person or in his Personhood?

    How would a Thomist describe God's relationship with humans? For example, is God aware of each human?

    Hope that makes my question more concrete.

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  9. >Hope that makes my question more concrete.

    Sadly no but I am going to try and wing it anyway so that maybe you can give me more clarity as I attempt to answer what I think you might mean.

    First you need to look at Aquinas doctrine of analogy. God is not a person unequivocally compared to a human person.

    http://faculty.cua.edu/hoffmann/courses/308_1078/308_analogy.pdf

    http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/Course/Philosophy/winter09pdf/Aquinas%20and%20Analogy.pdf

    http://aquinasetc.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/on-analogy/

    >How would a Thomist describe God's relationship with humans? For example, is God aware of each human?

    Why would He not be aware of each human? It doesn't logically follow just because God is Ineffable to us we are Ineffable to Him.

    Are you asking if God Loves us? Well to Love in the Aristotelian/Thomistic sense is to will the good for something. God by definition willed we should exist. Existence/Being is via the doctrine of the Transcendentals is convertible with Goodness. Thus by merely willing(& causing) us to exist God has expressed love for us and has willed and given goodness to us. He did not have to do any of this & of course He has willed more goods for us then these.

    All of God's good acts towards us are by definition acts of Supererogation(which I am defining in the loss sense of doing more good then is required of you according to duty).
    God who cannot (given His Nature defined classically) be coherently conceived of as a Moral Agent thus He can't have any duties towards us never the less this would mean any Good He does us is beyond what He is required to do for us.

    God is metaphysically and ontologically Good. He is the Principle of being & as such is the source of all goodness. But He is not morally good in the unequivocal sense that a human moral agent is good. But that doesn't mean He isn't in some sense good like a moral agent.

    For more on the subject read THE REALITY OF GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL by Brian Davies.

    Indeed anything by Brian Davies is good and you will learn a lot of classic philosophy.

    I hope this answers you.

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    1. OTOH I am an intellective being but if I form a relationship with an Animal the animal might not be able to comprehend or relate to me on the intellective level but it might perceive me as another thought more dominate animal. I can relate to it on it's limited level.

      In a like manner God is an Ineffable & Transcendent but there is little reason why God can't relate to us on our level and thus appear to be a person like us even thought God is not like us except by way of analogy.

      To flesh out this analogy. I might anthropomorphize my pets reading human behavior into them even thought they are not objectively human. thought I create that image of them in my mind. God Divines us with Grace via Theosis. But it is not a subjective thing in the Divine Mind but an objective reality He creates with Grace for us to transcend our limited state.

      I hope this also helps. I am getting a little mystical here & not so philosophical but there you have it.

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    2. Thnx for the effort - will review - also, will be gone awhile - I am trying to grasp the Thomist conception of the personal nature of God as opposed to, say, the deist conception of God, or, for that matter, any of the underlying physical forces in the Universe, beyond of course the mere statement that God created and sustains those forces. That is, what makes God personal while the physical forces are impersonal? Now gravity is a physical force with an empirically detectable effect on our bodies (but presumably not on our thoughts), while my communicative exchanges with you and Prof Oerter are interactions with empirically detectable effects on our thoughts (but presumably not on our bodies - except indirectly perhaps). Now, are you saying that when "God Divines us with Grace via Theosis" (which creates an objective reality "for us to transcend our limited state"), that that process or event is analogous to our person to person communicative interactions which effect our essential beings (my term) and therefore are not like the effects that the force of gravity has indiscriminately on our bodies? Sorry, I realize that's a mouthful. Still, that is what my question (prompted by this post), is trying to get at. What distinguishes a Thomist personal God from the impersonal physical forces of nature?

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    1. >I am trying to grasp the Thomist conception of the personal nature of God...

      Which in the end means nothing more then that God has Intellect and Will. He Knows and He Does (in a sense analogous to how you and I do) vs a rolling rock. However since God is incomprehensible and Ineffable we can't know what the substantial form of His Intelligence & Will is like. But via philosophical argument we may infer He has it.

      >What distinguishes a Thomist personal God from the impersonal physical forces of nature?

      Why is this hard?

      What distinguishes Me or You from an impersonal physical force of nature? If I choose/will to pick up a rock (& moved by my will to action do it) how is that different then a rock falling down a hill?

      God is analogously comparable to Me & You rather then the Rock falling down the hill.

      >Now, are you saying that when "God Divines us with Grace via Theosis"

      I drawing an analogy between how our relation to animals (a higher being with a lower one) is like our relation to God. We can't ultimately relate to God on our end but God can on his end.

      We will talk more later. Cheers.

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