In dishonor of the God Debate between Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron vs. Brian Sapient and “Kelly,” read the following debate: Fr. Copleston vs. Bertrand Russell: The Famous 1948 BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God.

It is a classic and shows the civility and good reasoning that should be employed in any debate. Favorite Russell quote:

C: Take the proposition “if there is a contingent being then there is a necessary being.” I consider that that proposition hypothetically expressed is a necessary proposition. If you are going to call every necessary proposition an analytic proposition, then — in order to avoid a dispute in terminology — I would agree to call it analytic, though I don’t consider it a tautological proposition. But the proposition is a necessary proposition only on the supposition that there is a contingent being. That there is a contingent being actually existing has to be discovered by experience, and the proposition that there is a contingent being is certainly not an analytic proposition, though once you know, I should maintain, that there is a contingent being, it follows of necessity that there is a necessary being.

R: The difficulty of this argument is that I don’t admit the idea of a necessary being and I don’t admit that there is any particular meaning in calling other beings “contingent.” These phrases don’t for me have a significance except within a logic that I reject.

While I am a Christian, I have never bought the argument from necessity.

Much has been made about the problem of Evil for theists. How can a good God allow evil? This is a problem, one that can be looked at in a variety of ways (see here and here). The problem of Evil is usually then seen as a proof for the non-existence of a good God. However, it is not just a problem for theists. Alan Rhoda, at Alanyzer, takes a brief look at the problem of Evil for atheists.

Alanyzer :: The problem of Evil is for everyone

1. Either (a) the atheist affirms that there is objective evil or (b) he affirms that there is none or (3) he remains agnostic on the matter.

2. If (a) then the atheist is committed to an objective standard of goodness, but whence does this standard of goodness come from?

3. If (b), then the atheist flies in the face of moral commonsense and gives up any objective basis for moral complaint.

4. If (c), then the atheist has the burden of explaining how it is possible that there be objective evil and also flies in the face of moral commonsense, which takes it as obvious that some things (e.g., torturing a baby for fun) are wrong.

Links:

• Theodicy at a glance : Religious Tolerance dot org :: Why do terrible things happen in the presence of God?
• The Problem of Evil for Atheists : Alanyzer :: The problem of Evil is for everyone
• The Problem of Evil for God : The Unsound Argument :: A Logical Impossibility
• The Problem of Evil for People : The Unsound Argument :: Rebellion

Augustine wrote On the Trinity around 419 C.E.. This was after the Church had established the doctrine of the Trinity and now people were trying to defend the doctrine against heretical formulations. Besides the common charge of tri-theism, the greatest challenge came from the formulation of the trinity as presented by Arius. This Arianism, not to be confused with the Indian and Nazi idea of Aryanism, was very concerned with the authority of the Father. Arius promoted this so far as to make the Son lesser than the Father in their essential natures. After all the Son was begotten; since He was begotten, He must have been created. As something created, there was a time before He was created. Augustine sought to dispel these claims and to show how each member of the trinity have the same essential natures and how the Trinity was a necessary configuration of God. He did this in an interesting manner.

Augustine starts out book eight On the Trinity by stating some simple postulates of the Trinity:

• the greatness of the father + the greatness of the son = the greatness of the hs.
• the greatness of the son + the greatness of the hs = the greatness of the father
• the greatness of the father + the greatness of the hs = the greatness of the son
• God is the greatest Love
• God is the greatest Word
• God is the greatest Knowledge.

It is at first odd that two parts of the trinity are not greater than the remaining part. To put it in mathematical terms Augustine maintains the following:

How can this be the case? While I don’t think he explicitly says this, but if we take p to equal ∞, or infinity then I think it can work:

Each aspect of God is infinite. But wait, if they are each infinite, then would they not be equal to each other? Yes. That is were Augustine demonstrates the idea that each member of the trinity shares the same nature.

Augustine then uses a argument from grammar to prove that God must have a triparte nature. He examines Love. In order to have love, there must be a lover, a loved, and the action of love. Since God is the very embodiment of love, and he loved himself, he must have the three natures. In order to be love, God must at the same time be the object, the subject and the verb. Restated:

1. God is the highest love
2. Love has three parts
3. ∴ God must have three parts

Augustine repeats this basic line of reasoning for the ideas of Word and Knowledge. Since each part of the equation is dependent on the other parts of the equation, no combination is greater than the remaining part and vice versa. Likewise, the distinctions between the parts are imbued in the very nature of Love, Word, Knowledge and God. In order for their to be the word (Jesus), there must be the speaking of the word (the Spirit) and the Speaker (the father). There is no before and after here. There is no speaker until there is the speaking and their is no word until the speech and or the speaker. In this sense, we can consider the word to be begotten from the speaker and at the same time co-eternal with it. This is how Augustine by-passed Arius’ charge that the son was created and therefore was lesser than the father.

Why is all of this such a big deal? Why does one have to have a correct view of God and therefore the Trinity? Augustine thought that in order to love something, one must know it. How can I love my wife if I do not know who she is? Likewise, if one does not know what God is really like, then one’s love is misplaced. Augustine says in chapter 4 of book eight, “But indisputably we must take care, lest the mind believing that which it does not see, feign to itself something which is not, and hope for and love that which is false.” In other words, if your view of God does not match the reality of God, you do not really love God and your faith is a false faith!

All of this begs the question of how one can know God. In looking around, I cannot see Him, much less observe his trinitarian nature. Augustine says we can. He draws off of the idea of imago dei, the idea that humans are made in the image of God. This, coupled with his Neoplatonism, led him to think that with the turning inward of the intellect, one could grasp the reality of God. We have a mind and we know our own mind. In order to do this, there must be a mind, the knowledge of the mind and the mind that the mind knows. This parallels God. It is this way that we can realize that as we have three parts, God also has three parts. We are a lower image of God’s true image. Augustine is quoted as saying, “As far as we know God, we are like God.” This process brings about mystical overtones. With enough introspection and prayer, one can get glimpses into the reality of God. These flashes are fleeting, however and soon we are brought back to the material world.

Yesterday I posted about wondering about Augustine’s ideas on God. This morning I read a post at Prosblogion about the impossibility of God being changeless and creating the world out of free will. Alan Rhoda frames the argument as follows: Can a Timeless God Freely Create?

1. God is absolutely immutable.
2. God has freely created.
3. A free act proceeds from a free decision from among several mutually exclusive possibilities.
4. Therefore, God made a free decision to create from among several mutually exclusive possibilities. (2,3)
5. A free decision from among several mutually exclusive possibilities involves a change of ‘intentional stance’ from regarding something as indeterminate (as one of several possibilities) to regarding it as determinate (as the chosen course of action).
6. Therefore, in freely created God undergoes a change in his intentional stance. (4,5)
7. Therefore, God has changed in some respect. (6)
8. Therefore, God is not absolutely immutable. (7)

The lynch-pin of the argument and one of critisms of a perfect and unchangeable God is number six. In excersizing free will, one is changed, whether or not that one is a person or God. Further more, I like what Rhoda hints at towards the end of the post, where he implies that does not employ mere logic in His excersie in free will. This point was first brought to my attention by Carmen Price, a philosophy doctoral student at Washinton University in her capstone paper at Columbia College: “The Necessity of Considering Motivations…”.

What are religions and philosophys that hold both one and two to do? Logically, I think that Rhodes has excluded the posibility of holding to both, so it seems to follow that one of them must be dumped or modified as to allow for the other. Which one takes priority over the other? I think that two takes the priority. Without it, one’s God is reduced to a being without free will, something along the lines of Aristotle’s Prime mover. Since the big three monotheistic faiths, Christianity, Islam, and Judeaism, all hold to a God that is active to varring degrees within It’s creation, this conclusion (Aristolte’s God) must be rejected. Instead it is better to either accept that God undergoes some sort of change in His interaction within time.

Cross posted at Theology for the Masses and Hundiejo.com

As part of my class on Augustine, I have to do a one-page relfection on the reading for that week. This week’s reading is books 1-5 of the Confessions. This was my reflection for this week.

An interesting topic that I would like to know more about Augustine’s worldview is his view of God. I do not want to inquire about the religious aspects of God. Augustine makes very clear in passages such as 1:11 that describe God’s holiness, goodness, mercy, and wisdom. Instead what I would pick Augustine’s brain about is the metaphysical aspects of God, such as his views on the problems of omnipresence, pantheism, free will, necessary simplicity and God’s relation to time.

Augustine at once maintains that God is separate from His creation and is present everywhere in it. Being everywhere would seem to imply that God pervades through everything. This idea of God pervading through everything sounds a lot like pantheism, which is impossible since Augustine says that God is separate from His creation. I am not sure how he would reconcile those two ideas.

From what I can tell, Augustine seems to have God being completely outside time, holding to “B Time”. This is into contrast to “A Time” where God is contained within the same time that His creation is in. One first encounters God relationship to time in 1:9, “You are before the beginning of the ages, and prior to everything that can be said to be `before’.” The phrase, “before the beginning of the ages”, puts God at least in sequential order to creation, but still allows for God to be within the realm of time. The last part of the sentence implies that God has existed before there was a time to speak of. If this is so, how is it possible for God to intervene within the realm of time?

Furthermore, Augustine seems to be very concerned with freewill as a necessary component of salvation and in the human condition. At the same time, God is very active within history and within each individual’s life. This is evidenced by the constant God’s prodding and positioning of things in his life that ultimately lead to Augustine’s conversion at Milan. If God is actively manipulating events, how can one say that they have chosen something of their own metaphysical free will?

Lastly, I wonder how Augustine would reply to the idea that in order to be perfect, God must be simple. In order to be simple He must be unchangeable. But if God does hear prayers and decides to act on them, then He must have changed His mind and as such is not simple and therefore not perfect.

Cross posted at the Theology for the Masses and Hundiejo.com

N.T. Wright gives three interesting lines of argument for thinking that perhaps, just perhaps we have cause to think that Jesus was indeed conceived while Mary was still a virgin. Wright does note that from a strictly historical standpoint, the issue cannot be resolved either way. However, there are some reasons to thing that it was possible. The following is a synopsis of what Wright espouses along these lines in chapter 11 of Two Visions of Jesus.

1. God is not wholly outside our universe, acting only on occasion to intervene in history. Instead, the Jewish God is very close and involved with our lives. Given this, it would be quite allowable for God to act in this way to usher in the climax of history, taking up His title of creator to bring “a new creation from the womb of the old“.
2. Isaiah 7:14 was never used in any Jewish tradition to support the idea of the messiah having a virgin birth. Matthew was the first. It would not make sense to incorporate a pagan idea (hero having a virgin birth, e.i. Alexander and Augustus) into a very Jewish story, unless it happened. Once it had occurred, then were the stories of Isaiah 7:14 looked at again with a new perspective.
3. If the early Christian community thought this happened, why did two very different stories take shape? If it were really a metaphor for something about Jesus, then it should have had a unified beginning, not the two separate cores that we see in Matthew and Luke. Once again, the stories of Matthew and Luke are very Jewish, and the virgin birth does not even matter that much to the story of Jesus. God could have easily used the child of Joseph and Mary as the messiah. In the stories of Matthew and Luke we have following progression of themes: “Jewish -> Pagan -> Jewish” the rest of the way. It does not make sense for the climax of the Jewish story to have a pagan introduction, unless it happened.

I am getting ready to start my first year of grad school at MU. In light of this, I wanted to give a sketch of my worldview, if not for the sole purpose of looking back and seeing how my ideas have changed over the years.

I believe in a dualism, with a basic structure materialism infused with something like Schopenhauer’s idea of will. Most of the universe is deterministic, but there are pockets of free will, i.e. the wills, the souls, the minds that are to a degree separate from the materialism and the determinism that follows. I am a Christian, so I think that there is a supreme will that is God.

I believe almost whole-heartedly the consensus of science. I try not to, but often sketch in a god-of-the-gaps into my religious/scientific worldview. For instance, I think that while there was a big bang, that God set the spark, or that while evolution has and is occurring, it is directed by God. While I think that there is a God and as the creator He has a connection to science, I am hesitant to say that he often divinely saves science from our lack of understanding. After all, we as a race are constantly improving our scientific worldview.

In the realm of metaphysics and religion, I am a Kantian(ish). I think that the world/universe/everything is divided into the noumenal and phenomenal. Because we are bound to our senses, we cannot enter into the noumenal realm to see what it is like. Only that which is already in the noumenal can venture into our phenomenal world and let us know what is going on behind the scenes. I think that part of us lies within the noumenal world, but that we cannot accurately sense that part of us. We can see the effects of the noumenal in the phenomenal world after the fact. I do have a sneaking suspicion that maybe some of the mystics are not crazy, but have had touches with that that is behind the curtain of our senses. However, I do recognize that unless there are supernatural occurances outside the visions or perhaps prophetic statements that come true, there is no way to verify those experiences.

I think the best way to describe reality is the Aviditie analogy. To put it shortly, God is a master computer programmer and the world is a gigantic software simulation.

Back to what I said above, I am whole-heartedly and unabashedly Christian, so I buy into that worldview, for the most part. With that said, I think that Christians could do well to look and listen to what the other religions have to say about things and incorporate that which makes sense into their own worldview. Examples of this is the Eastern (Hindu, Taoist, and Buddhist) view of interconnectedness, or Pratitya-samutpada (that is hard word to say, but I think I got it), and the idea of non-attachment. Now, this does not mean that one need to buy into the rest of the other religions, but just to not consider the source when evaluating ideas. We would not want to be guilty of the genetic fallacy would we? Of course not.

Ethically, I favor a literal ethical relativity where deontology determines what is right and wrong and consequentalism determines what is the most right behavior. It recognizes that there are sometimes no clean choices and that we have to decide between the choices in front of us.

The above is a sketch of the way I view the world. I don’t have a good, well explained and reasoned systematic approach to this, just a jumble of ideas that seem to work well in describing certain areas. We shall see how my ideas and views develop in the coming years.

The existence of God is very important to religious people. Well, I suppose that Buddhists do not really worry about proving the existence of God. If there is a God (or Gods, depending on your persuasion), we should be able to demonstrate the God’s existence. This demonstration if often the beginning point in the defense or attack of a person’s belief. If I am going to argue about what an ocean is like, all that I might say is meaningless if there is in fact, no ocean. There are several ways to go about doing this. The most common in the Western religious tradition are:

• the Cosmological Argument,
• the Ontological Argument,
• the Teleological Argument,
• the Argument from Religious Experience,
• the Argument from Miracles, and
• Pascal’s Wager.

There are scores of others, including Pruss’s argument from Altruism:”The Unsound Argument(�Altruism, Teleology and God� by A. R. Pruss Part I)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/altruism-and-teleology-i, but the above are the classic ones. There are some that say Pascal’s Wager is not really a proof of God’s existence, but an attempt to justify belief in the unproven. In the coming weeks I will be evaluating each.

Paper: Altruism, Teleology and God
Author: Alexandar R. Pruss

Summary

Because unlimited altruism is not biologically beneficial and yet humans see it as a desirable trait, there must be a non-scientific explanation for this. The best non-scientific explanation is that a god designed humans to be altruistic.

Part I will deal with the types of Teleology and the introduction of Altruism. Part II will deal with the application of Altruism to the types of Teleology.

Introduction

Pruss begins his paper by discussing a few of the arguments for the existence of God. First up is the ontological argument. It uses pure reason. An example of this is St. Anselm in the Proslogium.

Next up are the argument’s that use empirical observations. They are usually in the following structure:(quoted, but slightly paraphrased)

Common Empirical Arguments for God

1. There is a general fact about reality that cannot be explained in natural (i.e. non-supernatural) terms.
2. One argues that either the best or the only explanation includes the existence of God.
3. :. God exists.

Pruss goes on to say that there are two sorts of arguments from empirical observations, Cosmological arguments and Teleological arguments.

The Cosmological Arguments

Cosmological arguments are what he calls “prima facie value-neutral“, a mere fact, such as “there is order in the universe.”

Example: The Kalam cosmological argument:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. :. the universe must have a cause.

The nice thing about Cosmological arguments are that they lie outside the realm of science. As Pruss puts it, “science is unable to address the question, since scientific explanations are in terms of the activities of contingent beings. The draw back is, are there even answers to such questions?

The Teleological Argument

The opposite side of the coin are arguments from values, such as, “the universe is beautiful“. These design arguments are called Teleological arguments. Pruss notes that usually these arguments are in competition with science and other philosophical explanations to provide explanations. An example of this is “the constants in nature are fine-tuned for the existence of life.” Perhaps the most famous is Paley’s arguments about design in animals. He said that since limbs and other parts of animals serve specific functions, they must have had a designer.

The drawback to this approach is that science may one day explain the features without the aid of a supernatural designer. Paley’s arguments were stripped of their forcefulness by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolution explained in natural terms how life could have an appearance of design without there actually being a designer.

So to speak, evolution filled in the gaps that Paley’s God sat in. Alas there was no room in the argument for God anymore. This is where we get the term God-of-the-Gaps. Any argument that uses science’s inability to explain phenomena is called a God-of-the-Gaps argument. Thing is, science keeps figuring out all of it’s problems. This has proved to be rather embarrassing to theists over the years. In addition, in answer to the fine-tuning argument is that if it existed any other way, we would not be here to observe it. This is called the anthropoid principle.

Principled Cosmological/Teleological Arguments

Beyond arguments that rely on holes in science, there are what Pruss calls Principled Teleological Arguments. They are arguments that attempt to explain phenomena that are outside the realm of science. Science can only deal with “hows“, it does not concern itself with “whys” . Well, not after we stopped using Aristotle’s scientific approach to nature. For instance, when confronted with a rainbow, science can tell you how the image is created in your mind, detailing the process of refraction and image collection by the mind. What it cannot do it tell us why it is a beautiful sight. In order to show something is a principled argument, one needs to show how science cannot explain the phenomena and then provide the alternate explanation. Pruss says that it needs to be noted that there are other competing explanations, but these will be from theology or philosophy, not from science.

The Idea of Altruism

Pruss notes that humans exhibit altruism. He defines altruism as doing things for others without expecting to be repaid. He brings up three arguments to back this claim against those of the cynics that believe that all actions that seem altruistic have an ulterior motive. The first conjures up a stranger asking you for the time of day. Secondly, he brings up a study by Monroe, Barton, and Klingemann that details the motives of gentile holocaust rescuers and how they were not attached to selfish reasons. His last argument appeals to the rationality of altruism. Pruss maintains that an important step in the moral development of humans is to realize the unity of mankind. I am no different from you or her. We all have the same moral worth. Therefore, doing a good to you is like doing a good to myself.

Altruism: Doing something for another without thinking to be repaid.

Pruss then argues that Altuism is a trait of the human species that cannot have been a result of evolutionary mechanisms since there is no competitive advantage for the altuist, only the recipient of the altruism. So far this is only a God-of-the-Gaps argument. It only rules out Natural Selection as a cause of altuism. It does not eliminate other naturalistic explanations.

Part II of this notes serries will cover the application of the above notion of Altuism with the two types of teleological arguments from above.

I came across a very interesting article on Physics Web:”Physics Web”:http://physicsweb.org/ today. It was entitled Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts:”Physics Web(Subtle are Einstein’s Thoughts)”:http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/9/2/1?rss=2.0 and it was on the personal religion of Einstein. Yes, that was a pun and read on to find out why.

There are many quotes on religion from Einstein. Here is a sampling:”Stanford.edu(Einstein Quotes)”:http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html :

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