Transworldly Depraved

Has anyone thought of theism along these lines?

Theism might be thought of in terms of what is the most fundamental aspect of reality rather than in terms of whether or not we should add one more being to our ontology.

If we think of a hierarchy of causes with regard to the mind/brain problem we might think that minds are caused by mindless particles and fields of force and also realized in those mindless particles and fields of force. The brain is a system of mindless elementary particles and fields of force that gives rise to a center of consciousness and that center is realized in the system of neurons. So on the lower level we have mindless entities and at a higher level we have conscious beings.

The theist might think of God as the lowest possible level of being. Or as that on which everything depends. So the mindless particles and fields of force would be caused by and realized in God's activity.

This would be rather different than simply adding one more being to our ontology. It would not merely be a matter of saying that "the natural world exists plus there is one more being that is really powerful that we can call God."

Rather, one would be saying something about the "ground floor" of reality. The atheist must either not believe that the ground floor of reality is personal or believe that the ground floor of reality is impersonal. It seems that many naturalists believe that the fundamental particles and fields of force of physics constitutes the ground floor of reality. At any rate, no atheist can believe that at the bottom level of the hierarchy there is a personal being. This would amount to theism of some kind.

And the theist minimally believes that there is a personal being which exists unconditionally and independently of everything else and upon which everything else depends.

If impersonal facts can constitute the ground floor why can it not be the case that a personal fact or facts constitutes the ground floor? I am not claiming that there is in fact a god or that in fact a personal set of facts constitutes the ground floor of reality, but I do not find it any more odd than that electrons or any other fundamental particle might be at the ground floor (or any other impersonal object, process, or property).

Could it be argued that this form of theism is less likely than atheism? (Of course, if the answer is no that does not mean that theism conceived of in this manner is more likely than atheism.)

Scrutinizer

Hi Transworldly Depraved,

You've touched on the form of theism I hold to, and I know it's also held to by others on this board such as Kenny and Metacrock.

In fact, John Frame briefly mentions this in the book "Five Views on Apologetics", in which he sketches an apologetic based on whether the universe is fundamentally personal or impersonal, not whether there's just a big guy in the sky somewhere.

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

P.S. As I am going on holiday tomorrow, I will be unable to respond to any remarks on this post for about four weeks unless they are made within about half a day from now.

CodeMason

Please define "levels of being".

Transworldly Depraved

CodeMason:

There are two levels of being if one set of objects, events, properties or processes is caused by and/or realized in the other.

The example I gave was that conscious states and centers of consciousness (ie. mental states and selves, respectively) are caused by and realized in brain states.

Philosophers and scientists often speak of hierarchies of organization. This is basically what I mean.

bgponder

I posted this yesterday elsewhere and I think it applies here also.


Hey Y'all, Happy New Year,
This topic runs deep with me, so here you get to surmise that the cornbread guy is either a closet Neo-Catholic/self-styled mystic/pantheist who lost too many brain cells in the youthful discretions of the 70's, or is merely foolish.

I struggle with a mental symphysis for Catholic conceptions of God/existence, and whether the universe and existence itself is indeed conscious, for there can be no doubt that the universe contains the capacity for all consciousness. The current evidence we have of the structures necessary to facilitate consciousness indicate it as exclusively biological; yet biological life is derived from non-biological structures. We have our consciousness; "lesser" things of the animal kingdom have theirs; it seems that consciousness can be held in degrees according to the complexity of structure, with the strange side effect as we move toward the hive and the colony of the mass acting as one.

I am by no means suggesting that rocks, minerals, the elements of abiogenesis, the chemical elements or quarks necessarily entail the eventual rise of self awareness, but in our universe, in fact, it did, as far as we know.

Now indulge me a bit further before I am cut to pieces by Occam's razor, and my friend Brother Albert Cipriani, and allow that with an amorphous, only slight perceptual trick, that of defining "communication" as interaction, we do indeed communicate with existence each and every moment, to our singular and collective good or ill, (for in this scenario indifference does not and never has existed--everything matters) whether asleep or awake, extending ourselves to others or introspecting, biologically alive, or dead, and further, through the happenstance of the evolution of our species, biology itself, our planet, our sun, our galaxy, from the beginning of time through now and beyond, we have communicated and shall continue through our children, and all the changes to existence wrought by all the doing and non-doing--for existence itself, even though it could have been different without us and our communication, is in fact what it is, with us and our communication.

Now if God is Existence, then God speaks with us and we speak with God, singularly, selectively, and collectively, as we will, and as God wills.

**Sigh**

If only I could get past all those codified, contradictory, anthropomorphic, anachronistic things that make accepting my own intuitions so damned hard.

Anyway, that's my two cents, sorry if I bored anybody.

Peace Cornbread Happy New Year!! Barry

Transworldly Depraved

Scrutinizer:

Thanks for bringing to my attention the claims made by John Frame. I actually own the book Five Views on Apologetics and Frame's chapter is the only chapter I did not read. I did not read his chapter because I have some familiarity with presuppositionalism and I do not take them seriously. The responses by Craig and Clark pretty much sum up my objections, particularly the point about begging the question. Also, it seems to me that Reformed Epistemology is similar to presuppostionalism yet much more sophisticated and does not make the obvious mistakes that the latter does.

In addition, Frame tries to tie the personal ground floor of reality to the biblical god. He says "Of all the religions and philosophies of the world, only those influenced by the Bible are personalistic in this sense." He mentions hinduism and brahman but he ignores hindu monotheists such as Ramanuja. I am fairly sure that Ramanuja was not influenced by the Bible yet he seemed to believe in an ultimate personal being.

Lastly, he argues in a footnote "Some philosophical systems that have been called personalistic, such as those of Borden Bowne and Edgar S. Brightman, are not so on my definition, for in these systems God is finite and to that extent subordinate to other realities. In these systems, the personal is not truly ultimate." He tries to tie ultimacy to infinitude. It is not clear to me that ultimacy requires that that which is ultimate be infinite. But I could be wrong.

Anyway, thanks again.

CodeMason

So basically this is just Tillichism, God allegedly being the "ground of being". There are numerous problems I see with this:

• How can the "ground of being" be described as anything but existence or being itself?
• How can it posess any properties if all properties stem from it? If it can have properties, can you give a priori reasons why your chosen set of properties is true?
• If you can logically say the entity defined as God is the ground of being, what is to stop me from assuming the universe is the ground of being? If the universe can be the ground of being, doesn't this reopen the problem of ontological Occam's razor which you seeked to solve?
• Would this not mean God is the stem of all evil? If the ground of being has conscious will, wouldn't this make such a being a horrible monster? (ie. makes the problem of evil worse.)
• If the ground of being has conscious will, why don't we observe consciousness as a fundamental point of being? I believe one of the reasons people originally thought up theism is because the Universe seemed so impersonal to them (seeking out persons is a conscequence of being evolutionarily adapted for social interaction). This seeking out a being in nature itself hence created the idea of the being of nature, or God.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm getting sick of this point for now. I'm not a philosopher, so please excuse my ignorance.

Tercel

Well put (as usual) in the OP Transworldly Depraved. You would make a good Christian apologist you know - if you ever feel the nudge to swap sides, I'd be glad to have you.

Is the most fundamental aspect of reality personal or impersonal?
Well, I see it as difficult to conceive (perhaps impossible) of non-conscious substances somehow (magically) begetting something conscious. Whilst on the other hand it seems comparatively quite possible that something conscious could create something that was not conscious. (To paraphrase CS Lewis: the mind has the potential to create mathematical laws, and mindless matter follows such laws so it is no big leap to suggest that a mind was responsible for the laws as we observe them.)
But with such insights, which to me seem obvious from thinking about the nature of consciousness, I must conclude that nature is fundamentally conscious.

Just a slight quibble with
"and the theist minimally believes that there is a personal being which exists unconditionally and independently of everything else <strong>and upon which everything else depends.</strong>"
Does the theist necessarily have to believe the last? Could not a person believe all nature to be dualist to the very fundamentals and still be a theist?

Tercel

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

CodeMason

However, the minds we observe operate within those physical laws. So this reeks of infinite causal regress.

I see modern theists using consciousness as one of the last ditch attempts at the argument from design. Just because we haven't yet solved the riddle of consciousness and mind, the theists jump on the opportunity and declare it "inconceivable" that it could have come from non-mind. However, this is the same, tired argument that Paley used, only applied in this example to our brains instead of our eyes.

CodeMason

I just thought of two more objections to that C.S. Lewis quote.

• Our minds never "created" any mathematical laws. We merely discover them, based on our perceptions. So, following his logic, the next step would be God is an explorer, which makes no sense at all.
• Computers are what you would generally call "mindless". Yet they also have the ability to discover mathematical laws. With ofter far more efficiency than our conscious minds. Therefore, according to his logic, the next step would be non-mind created the laws.

Need I remind you that this is the same guy that came up with Lord/Liar/Lunatic?