Freethought & Rationalism Archive

luvluv · 07-30-2003, 04:19 PM

This essay impressed me when I read it, so I thought I would present it for you guys.

It was first published in the book Does God Exist which primarily featured a debate between J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielson. This essay was offered in support of Moreland's position, but it mostly develops a case for God's existence independant of anything Moreland had to say.

Much of the paper deals with countering arguments that Nielson made, so I have pasted over only the section dealing with Willard's actual argument. If anyone would like to read the entire essay (or if my cutting and pasting from the original article is a problem) you can see it here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=42

Also check out his articles on Christianity here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/chrislist.asp

And philsophy here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/phillist.asp

Now to the article. (WARNING: It's VERY long so you might want to print it out and read it at your leisure.)

Quote:

But does the case for the positive thesis fare any better? I believe it does, and along certain lines stated by Professor Moreland. However, the overall argument as I would develop it is not one which in one stroke, from one set of true premisses, purports to establish or render plausible the existence of Jehovah, understood by Christians to also be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and referred to in Islam as "Allah." Rather, the plausibility of theism, as I shall henceforth simply refer to it, emerges in three stages. These stages are not three separate arguments or "ways," each of which, supposedly, brings you to the same logical point. Three unsound arguments are not to be expected by their collective force to prove a conclusion which none can establish by themselves. Nor do the earlier stages establish conclusions which, in a straightforward manner, serve as premisses in the later stages. Instead, what is shown or evidentially supported in the earlier stages only determines a framework of possibilities within which the considerations of the later stages are carried on. For example, the first stage shows that there actually exists something which might be God in some more conventional sense.

What then, are the three stages? At this late date it is extremely hard to discuss the relevant issues without getting involved in many age-old entanglements that in fact have nothing to do with the case one is arguing. I shall, accordingly, avoid much of the traditional terminology in what follows and attempt to narrowly restrict myself to precisely those considerations upon which the evidence for theism, as I see it, depends. We begin with a demonstration that the physical or natural world recognized by common sense and the "natural" sciences is not the only type of thing in existence: that there concretely exists, or at least has existed, something radically different from it in respects to be discussed. By a "demonstration" I mean a logical structure of propositions where the premisses are true and logically imply or entail the conclusion when taken together.

****

The argument at stage one proceeds from the nature and the existence of the physical. Confusions, quibbles and philosophical exercises--pointless and otherwise--aside, it is true that there is a physical world, and we do know that this is true. Further--although the nature of that world may be, ultimately, a profound mystery, or turn out to have some deep kinship with what we call the mental or spiritual--there are some things about its general character which we also know to be true. One of these is as follows: However concrete physical reality is sectioned up, the result will be a state of affairs which owes its being to something other than itself.

This, I submit, is something which we know to be true of the general character of things in the physical world, and of course anyone should feel free to submit a case of a physical state of which this proposition is not true. Now it is, certainly, an extremely complex proposition, and, if we begin to take it apart, we will surely be led to many things we do not know and possibly do not even understand. But it has that in common with nearly all of the truths which we know best, both in ordinary life and in science. One of the things which I hope might be clear at this point in humanity's intellectual development is that degree of simplicity or complexity in an object has no automatic significance either for being or for knowledge. It should be equally clear that inability to say how we know something does not imply that we do not know it--although it is always appropriate to raise the question of the "how" whenever someone claims to know something, and some appropriate kind of explanation is usually required.

Now any general understanding of the dependencies of physical states would require something like Aristotle's well-known four "causes." Restricting ourselves to the temporal order, however, we find, among other things, that every physical state, no matter how inclusive, has a necessary condition in some specific type of state which immediately precedes it in time and is fully existent prior to the emergence of the state which it conditions. This means that for any given state, e.g. Voyager II being past Triton, all of the necessary conditions of that state must be over and done with at that state, or at the event of which the state is the ontic residue. The series of "efficient" causes, to speak with Aristotle, is completed for any given event or state that obtains. At the state in question, we are not waiting for any of these causes to happen, to come into being.

Moreover, this completed set of causes is highly structured in time and in ontic dependence, through relationships which are irreflexive, asymmetric and transitive. Thus, no physical state is temporally or ontically prior to itself, and if one, a, is prior to another, b, b is not prior to a. Further, if a is prior to b and b to c, then a is prior to c. This rigorous structure of the past is eternally fixed and specifies a framework within which every event of coming into existence and ceasing to exist finds it place. Most importantly for present interests, since the series of causes for any given state is completed, it not only exhibits a rigorous structure as indicated, but that structure also has a first term. That is, there is in it at least one "cause," one state of being, which does not derive its existence from something else. It is self-existent.

If this were not so, Voyager's passing Triton, or any other physical event or state, could not be realized, since that would require the actual completion of an infinite, i.e. incompletable, series of events. In simplest terms, its causes would never "get to" it. (As in a line of dominoes, if there is an infinite number of dominoes that must fall before dominoe x is struck, it will never be struck. The line of fallings will never get to it.) Since Voyager II is past Triton, there is a state of being upon which that state depends but which itself depends on nothing prior to it. Thus, concrete physical reality implicates a being radically different from itself: a being which, unlike any physical state, is self-existent.

This completes the demonstration in our first stage of theistic evidence. To sum up: The dependent character of all physical states, together with the completeness of the series of dependenencies underlying the existence of any given physical state, logically implies at least one self-existent, and therefore non-physical, state of being: a state of being, or an entity, radically different from those that make up the physical or "natural" world. It is demonstrably absurd that there should be a self-sufficient physical universe, if by that we mean an all-inclusive totality of entities and events of the familiar or scientific physical variety, and unless (like Spinoza) we are prepared to treat the universe itself as having an essentially different type of being from the physical:--which then just concedes our point.

It is common to hear, in response to this argument, the assertion that there just cannot be a self-existent being, but very uncommon to hear any very strong reason for the assertion. Professor Nielsen comments on the "incoherence" (once again) of a logically necessary individual, and I want to side with him in rejecting such a being. But I have said nothing in the above about a logically necessary being. Only that, relative to the character of the physical world, it is logically necessary that there be something the existence of which does not derive from other things. So far as my argument goes, there is no reason why this should have to be a being logically necessary in itself--although of course I recognize there has been a lot of discussion about such a being in the history of our subject, and I do not discount that discussion as wholly pointless.

A more serious and perhaps more "common sense" objection to my position, but one that is, I think, answerable, is contained in the child's question: "Mommy, where did God come from?" (He's just been told that God made trees and clouds, you know.) In our terminology: "Where did this self-existent being come from?" And the answer is that He (She, It) didn't come from anything because He didn't come at all.

One will have trouble with that answer only if they have already assimilated existence to physical existence. Then and only then does the perfectly general question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" make sense. Without that assimilation the answer is: "Why shouldn't there be?" And it turns out there is no good reason to suppose that everything that exists resembles physical existents in coming to be "from" something other than themselves. It should be pointed out that such a supposition, in any case, directly begs the question of God's existence. For you certainly could not know it to be true if the question of God's existence is yet to be decided. Efforts in the history of thought to tie the concept of being to that of the physical have proved resounding failures, it seems to me, although certain epistemological programs--e.g. "Science is restricted to the physical (to Physics and its derivatives), so 'knowledge' and therefore(!*?!) being is restricted to the physical"--are still widely favored. The lack of a conceptual connection between being and the possibility of knowledge continues to plague such programs, as it has most philosophers from Hume and Kant to our time.

One has, I think, to go through a conceptual turn-around in general ontology somewhat like the one Newton executed for physics. Aristotlian physics made motion problematic and rest unproblematic. The question then was: "Why is there motion (here, or there, or at all) rather than rest? Newton saw that motion was no more problematic than rest. What had to be explained was change: from motion to rest, or conversely. Similarly, in general ontology one has to understand that existence is, in general, no more problematic than non-existence. Existence isn't somehow "harder" or inherently less likely than non-existence.---Unless, once again, we are obsessed with physical existents, which, because of their specific nature as dependent beings, are admittedly always more or less hanging on by the skin of their teeth and inevitably tending toward disintegration. (Aristotle, in his theory of motion, seems to have been obsessed with "forced" motion, such as donkeys pulling carts and persons hauling water out of a well.)

In fact there are two interesting (by no means philosophically unproblematic) candidates other than God for the status of self-subsistent being, or something similar: Universals (Plato's "forms") and free human actions. With reference to universals the question of origin in time does not arise, since they--as distinct from their exemplifications--are not temporally located at all, and since they lack any sort of adjacency or contiguity with other entities which would make sense of their being "produced" by them. Free actions also, it has been argued, involve at least an element of self-subsistence, lacking in their nature as free actions a sufficient, but not (at least on some accounts) necessary conditions.

Finally, it will be objected by some that, though the series of causes for any physical state is finite, the first physical event or state in the series could have come into existence without a cause, could have, in short, originated "from nothing." Many discussions today seem to treat the "big bang" in this way, though of course that would make it totally unlike any other "bang" of which we have any knowledge. "Big bang" mysticism is primarily attractive, I think, just because "the bang" has stepped into a traditional role of God, which gives it a nimbus and seems to lift the normal questions we would ask about any physical event. That "bang" is often treated as if it were not quite or not just a physical event, as indeed it could not be. But what then could it be? Enter "scientific mysticism." And we must at least point out that a eternally self-subsistent being is no more improbable than a self-subsistent event emerging from no cause. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, "An egg which came from no bird is no more 'natural' than a bird which had existed from all eternity." (God in the Dock, p. 211)

Now I am prepared to grant Hume's point that there is no logical contradiction in the supposition that something could come into existence without a cause. This, however, does not entail that Locke was wrong in his claim that "man knows by an intuitive certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles." (Essay, Book IV, Chap. x) There are, after all, general laws about how every type of physical state comes about. If we keep clearly before our minds that any "something" which comes into existence (including a however big "bang") will always be a completely specific type of thing, then we see that for that "something" to originate from nothing would be to violate the system of law which governs the origination of things of its type. To suppose that an apple, for example, could come into existence without any prior states upon which it depends for its existence is to simply reject all the laws we know to hold true of apple production. They are no longer laws. And it is not a matter of discovering further conditions under which apple-laws apply, for the hypothesis is one of no conditions whatever. The counter-intuitiveness of this is, I imagine, what Locke is referring to, and I certainly agree with him if it is. But even if it were neither self-contradictory nor counter-intuitive to suppose that something originated without a cause, the probability of it relative to our data would be exactly zero. There is, so far as I know, not a single case of a physical state or event being observed or otherwise known to originate "from nothing." And if anyone has observed such an thing, I am sure that our leading scientific journals and societies would like very much to hear about it. In fact, the idea is an entirely ad hoc hypothesis whose only 'merit' is avoidance of admission of a self-subsistent being:--which it achieves precisely by claiming an entity of a type which in every other case is admitted to be dependent to be, "just this once," itself self-subsistent.

Something which originates from nothing is, precisely, self-subsistent. It is dependent on nothing and exists in its own right. The editors of the Time-Life book Cosmos (appearing in 1989) gravely remark that "...no one can say with certainty why the universe popped out of the void." (p. 13) They along with many sober cosmologists who ponder this question seem oblivious to the fact that in the nature of the case there can be no why for its "popping out," since it is precisely the void, the "empty," out from which it popped. There is nothing to be uncertain or uncertain about.

Of course there are many other points of interest and disagreement to be discussed with reference to my first stage argument. It doesn't prove that there is only one self-subsistent being. It doesn't show that the uncaused being or beings which lie at the foundation of the world causal series still exist--though, certainly, we would like to know of any reason, beyond the mere empty logical possibility, which might be offered for them ceasing to exist. (Admittedly, their not being dependent and contingent in the sense of physical states and events does not immediately imply inability to dissipate themselves in some fashion.) Finally, this argument does not show that the self-subsistent first cause is a person.

All of this I cheerfully grant. Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of the atheist's enterprise, we now have an ontologically haunted universe. It is haunted by unnerving possibilities. If I am right, there has got to be something more than the physical or "natural" universe: and something obviously quite different in character--though also essentially related to it, for from this "something more" the physical universe ultimately derives. If this is established, it is not clear to me that very much of a point is left to atheism, which in the contemporary world surely draws most of its motivation from a desire to tame or naturalize reality--all hope of which is now lost. (Again: If I am right.) Of course many important points about the exact character of this "more and different" aspect of the universe are still left to be determined. In particular, religion as a human institution, and certain kinds of God's, can be effectively attacked by the atheist. But the theist is concerned with this no less than the atheist, and perhaps even more so. Early Christians were sometimes called atheists by the Romans whose gods the Christians denied. Later Christians called Spinoza an atheist. And so forth. But I think there is an obvious sense in which the atheist in the current, standard philosophical understanding, can never feel comfortable in a universe which supplements the physical in the manner demonstrated by my first stage argument. The possibility of there being a god, even in the full theistic sense, has now become significantly more substantial. There is an ontological "space" for it to be realized which just would not be there in a strictly physical universe.

*****

The second stage in my development of the case for theism corresponds to what has traditionally been called the teleological argument, or the argument to design. The latter is the correct designation for what I take to be the essence of the point here. Many will be astonished at the suggestion that teleology actually has nothing at all essentially to do with the case, and has in fact only resulted in an incredible amount of confusion and arguing beside the point on both sides. Theists have, I believe, brought this upon themselves by fixing upon such striking cases of order as the human eye or the degree of inclination of the earth's axis in relation to the possibility of life on the planet. But--especially since the emergence of evolutionary theory--they in so doing open themselves up to massive and sophisticated, though often logically quite misguided, 'rebuttals', every case of which purports to show how the cases fixed upon by the theist at least could, with some degree of probability, have originated, come into existence, by a lawlike process from a pre-existing condition of the physical universe without assistance from what one recent practitioner of this routine smugly calls "a Great Spirit in the sky with a tidy mind and a sense of order" or "A blessed miracle of provident design." (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, New York: Norton and Co., 1986, pp. 43-44) The "rebutters" with almost no exceptions quite conveniently manage to forget that evolution, whether cosmic or biological, cannot--logically cannot!--be a theory of ultimate origins of existence or order, precisely because its operation presupposes the existence of certain entities with specific potential behaviors and an environment of some specific kind that operates upon those entities in some specifically ordered fashion. It is characteristic of the thoughtlessness and ignorance which plagues the discussion of these issues that Darwin's book On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection is often thought, by theists as well as anti-theists, to be an explanation of the origin of life and of living forms generally--when of course nothing was farther from Darwin's own mind. (I hasten to exempt all parties to the present discussion from any such misunderstanding!) Let us say quite generally state, then, that any sort of evolution of order of any kind will always presuppose pre-existing order and pre-existing entities governed by it. It follows as a simple matter of logic that not all order evolved. Given the physical world--however much of evolution it may or may not contain--there is or was some order in it which did not evolve. However it may have originated (if it originated), that order did not evolve. We come here upon a logically insurpassable limit to what evolution, however it may understood, can accomplish.

We should pause to notice that the order from which cosmic and biological evolution takes it rise must have been one of considerable power and complexity, since it provided the basis of, precisely, cosmic and biological evolution. Evolution itself is a process that exhibits order of stunning dimensions, diachronic as well as synchronic, especially if given the scope customary among anti-theists. That specific type of structure found in evolution did not itself come about through evolution, any more than, as Liebniz pointed out, the laws of mechanics were instituted by the laws of mechanics. It is important to take note of this, because some partisans of evolution hold before us the image of being without order as that from which being with order emerged. Thus we find Dawkins, in the book mentioned above, discussing the non-random arrangement of pebbles of various sizes on an ocean beach. Clearly the pebbles seem sorted and arranged. But, as he points out, this "arranging was really done by the blind forces of physics, in this case the action of waves. The waves....just energetically throw the pebbles around, and big pebbles and small pebbles respond differently to this treatment so they end up at different levels of the beach. A small amount of order has come out of disorder, and no mind planned it." (p. 43) Big-bang mysticism is, I find, usually accompanied by an "order out of chaos" mysticism.

After letting him enjoy a small moment of triumph, we can only say to this highly qualified scientist: "You gotta be kidding! No mind (directly) planned it, but nothing whatsoever 'has come out of disorder' in this case." The interaction of the waves and the pebbles in this case is a perfectly orderly process, even if our comprehension of that order can only be statistically expressed. Moreover, we know for sure that Dawkins himself knows this. What afflicts him at this point can be very simply described: He is in the grip of the romanticism of evolution as a sweeping ontological principle, bearing in itself the mystical vision of an ultimate Urgrund of chaos and nothingness of itself giving birth to the physical universe. --- Which is all very fine as an aesthetic approach to the cosmos, and vaguely comforting. But it has nothing at all to do with "evidence of...a universe without design," as the sub-title of his book suggests.

So at this second stage we have a challenge to offer the atheist similar to the one of the first stage. At the first stage we said that the probability, relative to our data, of something (in the physical universe, at least) originating from nothing was zero, and we invited the atheist to find one case of this actually happening, to raise the probability a bit above zero. Now we urge him to find one case of ordered being--or just being, for, whatever it is, it will certainly be ordered--originating from being without order.

Over against this challenge we point out that the force, the power to convince, which most people seem to feel in the face of the existing physical order surrounding us undoubtly comes from the simple fact that we all have experience--perhaps even a quite direct, first-hand experience--of order entering the physical world from minds--our minds as well as from that of others. Not as if the physical world were totally disordered before our plan or "design" surfaced there. Of course it is not. We have no experience of ex nihilo creation, and the second stage of theistic evidence does not aim to establish such creation. But, to go back to Paley's classical example of finding a watch in the wilderness, we clearly know that the order that is in a watch first presented itself to the human mind without being present in physical reality, and only because of that did it later emerge within the physical world. We know that locomotives, bridges, and a huge number of other things exist in the physical world because the "design" for them previously existed in a mind. Some person designed them. Only the kind of scepticism that gives philosophy a deservedly bad name can suggest otherwise. That is why if we stepped on an apparently uninhabited planet and discovered what, to all appearance, was a branch of the May Company or Sears--or even a coke bottle or a McDonald's hamburger wrapper--it would be both psychologically impossible as well as flatly irrational, in the light of our available data, to believe that they came into existence without a design and a mind 'containing' it. The extension of this conclusion to cover eyes, DNA structures and solar systems, by appropriate modifications of premisses, is only slightly less coercive.

That, surely, is why David Hume, in the "Introduction" to his The Natural History of Relgion, states that "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion." And he puts in the mouth of Philo, at the end of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the somewhat more modestly formulated conclusion "That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence." Now I am aware of the carefully weighted meaning which Hume assigned to these words, and, indeed, I accept them in that meaning as an adequate formulation of the results of my stage two. But it is necessary at the same time to insist that he really did mean what he did say in these two passages. (I take Philo to speak for him.) Hume was a minimal or stage-two theist. He believed that the physical universe rationally required a mind or mind-like being as its source, and for the reasons I have indicated above. His further views, to the effect that the world offers no rational support for the full-blown God of Christian theism, do not diminish this one bit.

We should occasionally think about the fact that all of the "great" philosophers--the ones which, up to very recently, all of the better graduate programs in philosophy thought you had to know something about before professional respectability could rest upon you (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, 'St. Occam', Descartes, Spinoza, Liebniz, Locke, Berkely, Kant and Hegel)--accepted either second stage theism or (Spinoza, Kant, Hegel) something stronger. Kant, who along with Hume is generally credited among professional philosophers with destroying any possibility of significant theistic evidences, said that "belief in a God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment that as there is little danger of my losing the latter, there is equally little cause for fear that the former can ever be taken from me." (Critique of Pure Reason, B 857) At the very least, he held, it is impossible to prove "that there is no such being and no such life." (B 858) His belief was that if the moral life is possible, there is "another world," the "intelligible world," which alone makes the moral life possible. And he indeed believed the moral life to be possible. So here is an argument which, to his own mind, secured the existence of a person-like transcendental being with its world. That it is in some sense a "moral argument" does not mean that it is not as logically serious as any other argument. Kant did not regard the moral world as nebulous or non-existence, in the contemporary manner.

Now I do not cite these great philosophers as authorities on the points here at issue, though it is about time that the actual role of authority in professional philosophy and in the intellectual world generally got a candid and thorough re-examination. ("There's a whole lot of faking going on.") It is just that the general impression that philosophers--especially the "real" ones--are explicit or closet atheists, needs occasionally to be brought over against certain historical facts. And the often suggested idea that, if Aristotle or Descartes or Locke had only lived today, they too would have been atheists needs to be faced with the challenge to point out exactly what it is that we now know or can do that would have modified the arguments upon which they based their theism. (I have even heard it suggested that these philosophers were just hypocrites, and only seemed to accept theism from fear of their society!)

So what do we have at the second stage of theistic evidence? We have established that not all order is evolved and that relative to our data there is a probability of zero that order should emerge from chaos or from nothing into the physical world. In addition, we have experience of order emerging from minds (our minds) into the physical world. Under the limited conditions of human existence, we know what this is like and that it does happen. Now what is the effect of all of this. Certainly no demonstration of God in the full theistic sense. But, similarly as with stage one, the possibility of there being such a God has become significantly more substantial. The existence of something significantly like him has been given some plausibility, and the theist may now invite the atheist to show why the self-existent, mind-like entity of minimal theism--the god of the philosophers, shall we call him--could not in reality be the same as the subject of praise and prayer and devotion in religion--the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." There is now a somewhat broader ontological "space" for the God of religion which would not be there in a universe without "design."

Once we are clear about this, we return to the more familiar cases associated with the "teleological" argument, some of which were discussed by Professor Moreland. The intricate cases of adaptive order found about us in the world are said by the atheist to have resulted from trillions of tiny increments of order. ("We do the difficult immediately," the US Marines say. "The impossible takes a little longer.") That is logically possible, once we free it, as discussed above, from the logical confusions and sweeping ontological pretensions which have encumbered the idea of evolution. On the other hand, once it becomes clear that order is not self-generating and could not all have originated from evolution, and in the light of the fact that order does, at least in some limited sense, upon some occasions actually enter the physical world from mind, we would want to know exactly why--given all of this--we should rule out some fairly direct role of "larger minds," shall we say, in the production of eyeballs and planetary orbits. And the theist, for her part, must take seriously the question of "how" such a role is to be conceptualized--lacking interesting responses to which the whole idea of "creation science" must remain as vacuous as it is today. That is a tough assignment. But it may be that human history, the realm of action and personality, more readily exhibits a direct role of larger minds in the course of worldly events. And that brings us to the third stage of theistic evidences, as I understand them.

******

In this third stage we look at the course of human events--historical, social and individual--within the context of a demonstrated extra-naturalism (stage one) and of a quite plausible cosmic intellectualism (stage two). Thus human life is to be interpreted within the ontological space of the actualities, with their attendant possibilities, hewn out in stages one and two. Further things which we know about some minds (ours) and their creations at least put us in position to face the atheist with an urgent "why not," and to test the basis of any knowledge claims she may make about cosmic minds in relation to human history and experience. We know, most importantly, that human minds standardly create for a purpose, and that they retain an active interest in, feel intimately invested in, what they create--and all the more so the greater the originality or "creativity" involved. Intervention in human affairs by God need not, as in Deism, be regarded as a sign of imperfection in the original creation. ("Another factory recall?") Creation might, after all, be an ongoing affair with God, including what is usually called "redemption" in the language of theology. Intervention appropriately conducted could plausibly be seen as a loving will to communicate and to help, or to secure the purposes in creation, which is at least not radically foreign even to personality as we know it under human conditions. And, given all the preceding, we would like to know why the same should not be true of cosmic intelligence--all the while unequivocally conceding that we have not demonstrated it to be true, or even strongly probable. While unexcluded possibilities do not imply truth or probability, they are nonetheless not irrelevant to rationality.

More important in our third stage than these rather speculative extensions of minimal theism toward a more full-blown personal God, is the examination of the actual course of human history and the actual contents of human experience to determine, as honestly and thoroughly as possible, what can and what cannot be understood in terms of "natural" events verifiable within objectively established methodologies of science. These methodologies are to be distinguished, as clearly as possible, from philosophical speculations about them, of course. But, to put it simply, we should always assume that particular events and experiences might be scientifically understood; and the theist should usually if not always give any benefit of any honest doubt to the naturalist in any particular question of fact (though, I think, not in matters of philosophical speculation). If there is anything to what the theist believes, we surely can afford to be generous.

But we must also be thorough, and we have every right to require the same of our atheist co-investigators and to ignore their objections if they refuse. Faith is not restricted to religious people, nor is blind prejudice and dogmatism. The atheist who can't be bothered to pay serious attention to the facts claimed for religious histories and religious experience is twin brother to the churchman who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because he already knew what was and was not to be seen. Of course the way is often paved for this in the life of the individual atheist by an equal prejudice and dogmatism on the theist side. Also the (hopefully) sound argumentation laid out in stages one and two above may have been dismissed because it was presented as proving the existence of the God of religion, when it obviously does no such thing. Thus the individual atheist may recognize no context of possibilities within which the miraculous events of religious history and the experiences of sainthood and the devout can be taken seriously for the purposes of knowledge.

So I completely agree with Professor Nielsen's comment, at the opening of his "Rebuttal," that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, even if he stood by and saw it happen, "wouldn't show there was an infinite intelligible being." He knows there are lots of weird things in the world, and, as he says, "It would be just a very strange happening." (So what else is new, in a universe where nothing bangs big and order 'congeals' out of chaos?) Jesus himself, according to the record, agrees with us on this matter. In the story he told of Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16), Dives asked Father Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers of their fate in Hades, saying that "if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!" But Abraham replied: "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead." (vss 30-31) (You can imagine the fine, witty actions and comments to be heard around the dinner table had Lazarus reappeared on the scene! Just think how Monty Python or Bill Cosby or Woody Allen would do it, and you've got it. Abraham didn't fall off the turnip truck.)

Jesus' approach to these matters was, I believe, expressed in his statement: "You believe in God, believe also in me." (John 14:2) That's the right order. The religious ideas, history and context back of His life as an Israelite, together with his own teaching and action and character, provided for those who absorbed themselves in them something close to a logical demonstration, not of the existence of Jehovah, which was never in question for them, but of His specific nature. And this is third stage work. It will have no epistemic weight whatsoever except within an appropriate historical context, or some other arrangement which for the individual settles the first and second stage questions. Of course occasionally some people will just be overwhelmed by a historical or personal event. But a philosophically thoughtful person will never be convinced, much less someone operating from prejudice--even if they decide that they "had better give in to God"--unless they have found some intellectual satisfaction on stage one and stage two issues, which clearly the Bible, for its part, presumes is quite accessible and important. (Psalm 19, Romans 1:19-20)

Historical events and individuals--real or imagined, rigorously reported or mythologically elaborated--do in fact provide the specific content for beliefs about the gods of religious devotion. But it is always a mistake--regretfully very common, I'm afraid--to simply place the weight of proving the existence of God upon them, although they may always serve as appropriate points of challenge to dogmatic unbelief, and although they in fact will lead some people to belief in God. It is the task of theistic evidences at stage three to subject these contents to appropriate rational tests to determine, so far as possible, the more specific nature of the mind-like causal ground of the physical universe. There is no reason whatsoever why recognized religious activities, such as prayer or ritual and meditative practices, should not serve along with rational analysis, experimentation and historical research to that end. In every domain, the subject matter ultimately must determine the suitability of the methods for its study.

My own conviction is that a properly worked out inference in terms of "the best explanation"--but "best" in the full light of the results of stages one and two--will show it quite plausible that some extra-natural mind or minds of, roughly, the full theistic variety are causally present in human events: that there is "a power working for righteousness," as Matthew Arnold called it, at work in human history and available for interaction with individuals under certain circumstances. The real force back of such a conclusion can never be felt in the abstract, but only comes from the patient, highly motivated examination and comparison of details, which simply can't be engaged in here--and, really, can't be done for another person. But, to nevertheless speak generally, the existence of the Jewish people and of the Christian Church, when one goes into the fine texture of the history, personalities, thought and experience which make them up, seems to me by far best explained by the existence of, roughly, the type of deity that Christians and Jews, among others, worship. I by no means suggest that God is responsible for everything in these traditions, nor do I restrict the action of God in history to them alone. Indeed, if he is the sort of being they themselves present him as, then he is present with and makes himself known to all peoples. Every religious culture and experience should be deeply respected, even if not adopted and even if regarded as mistaken in important respects. Christians above all should know of God's habit of turning up in the wrong company, where according to the official view he absolutely could not be. What further inferences are to be drawn from this is another matter: one which must be handled with the utmost care. But the partisan of one religion must extend the same generous openness and hopefulness to the practitioners of other religions as he would want them and the atheist to extent to himself. The rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," also extends to inquiry with others.

*******

I have attempted in these pages to clarify some points about the structure into which theistic evidences must be arranged if they are to be properly appreciated. Failure to understand the limitations and the interrelations of what I have called the "three stages" of theistic evidences seems to me a great hinderance both to philosophical treatment of the question of God's existence and to the individual's efforts to come to terms with what is, after all, a major issue in dealing with life. Given the very best possible exposition, theistic evidences never replace a choice as to what kind of universe we would have ours to be, and a personal adventure of trust, living beyond what we can absolutely know. Nevertheless, I believe that the structure of evidence outlined--in spite of its far too simple discussions of the nature of the physical, causation, order, etc.--indicates that the basic doctrine of God present in the historically developed theisms of the major world religions is most likely true and is certainly capable of being rationally accepted. With that much secured, and yet mindful of the vast amount we do not know about that God, we here give the last word to Philo (Hume), that: "...the most natural sentiment, which a well-disposed mind will feel on this occasion, is a longing desire and expectation, that heaven would be pleased to dissipate, at least alleviate, this profound ignorance, by affording some more particular revelation to mankind, and making discoveries of the nature, attributes, and operations of the divine object of our faith."

beastmaster · 07-30-2003, 06:21 PM

I'm curious what about this article impressed you, luvluv, since it is nothing but the old and tired ontological argument, Argument from Design, and a bizarre historical-teleological argument that he does not explain or develop (for lack of space?).

Onto Argument:

It may well be that causation describes the relations among phenomena *within* space-time. But it does not follow therefrom that causation is something that happens *to* space-time. Rather, because causation is bound by space and time, it is quite nonsensical to speak of a "cause" of space-time or of a causal agent existing "outside" space-time.

Willard ridicules the notion of "something coming from nothing." Maybe the editors of Time-Life books think that is what Big Bang cosmology is describing, but really it misses the mark. Rather, it is better to conceive of the Singularity as being the *limit* of space-time, much like the North Pole is the limit of northness. There is nothing North of the North Pole; one step beyond simply sends you South. Likewise, there is no cause "prior" to the Singularity; rather, at the Singularity, we have simply reached the "anterior" limit of space-time. "Something coming from nothing" misdescribes the Big Bang theory because there is neither "nothing" nor "something" outside space-time!

Argument from Design:

I am not sure what he means by "all order comes from order." I am not trying to be deliberately obtuse. It just seems that he is exploiting an ambiguity in the English language by using "order" in two different senses. It seems to me that order arises from constrained chaos. Now, maybe the "constraints" on chaos are a type of "order," but I think it's a different kind of "order" than the "order" expressed in phenomena.

In any event, none of this necessitates or makes more probable an intelligent designer behind those constraints. Any universe in which perceptive conscious beings (i.e., humans) exist will have some sort of order in it. Thus, order is absolutely inevitable and calls for no special explanation.

As for his argument that all the great philosophers (Plato, Locke, et al.) were theists, it is sufficient to point out that none of these philosophers were familiar with the remarkable confirmation of the theories of Charles Darwin witnessed in the 20th Century. The ID Argument had no credible competitior prior to Darwin, so it is unsurprising that any thinking pre-20th C. person would provisionally assent to some god-belief.

Argument #3:

What in the hell is he babbling on about here?

Quote:

My own conviction is that a properly worked out inference in terms of "the best explanation"--but "best" in the full light of the results of stages one and two--will show it quite plausible that some extra-natural mind or minds of, roughly, the full theistic variety are causally present in human events: that there is "a power working for righteousness," as Matthew Arnold called it, at work in human history and available for interaction with individuals under certain circumstances. The real force back of such a conclusion can never be felt in the abstract, but only comes from the patient, highly motivated examination and comparison of details, which simply can't be engaged in here--and, really, can't be done for another person. But, to nevertheless speak generally, the existence of the Jewish people and of the Christian Church, when one goes into the fine texture of the history, personalities, thought and experience which make them up, seems to me by far best explained by the existence of, roughly, the type of deity that Christians and Jews, among others, worship.

I am not sure what he is arguing. Is the existence of evil not sufficient to disprove the existence of a power working for righteousness? If not, what does "a power working for righteousness" mean?

Jobar · 07-30-2003, 07:28 PM

luvluv, as you are aware, I call myself an atheist/pantheist. I don't believe in any expressible God- but I *do* believe that order/chaos are poles of a unity, not utterly separate and dual.

Willard: This completes the demonstration in our first stage of theistic evidence. To sum up: The dependent character of all physical states, together with the completeness of the series of dependencies underlying the existence of any given physical state, logically implies at least one self-existent, and therefore non-physical, state of being: a state of being, or an entity, radically different from those that make up the physical or "natural" world. It is demonstrably absurd that there should be a self-sufficient physical universe, if by that we mean an all-inclusive totality of entities and events of the familiar or scientific physical variety, and unless (like Spinoza) we are prepared to treat the universe itself as having an essentially different type of being from the physical:--which then just concedes our point.

"concedes our point"? So Willard is arguing pantheism, huh? I've seen that sort of bait&switch attempted here many times, luvluv. It won't wash.

His 'second stage' is pure argument from design, and fails because there is no proof that any intelligence lies behind the natural processes which culminate in us, and the universe of observation. From inside the universe, things appear to be a result of the interaction of purely natural order and chaos; since we cannot see 'outside' the universe, we can simply say nothing concerning such an imaginary concept.

His 'third stage' sounds like "the Bible must be true because so
many people have believed in it!" Needless to say, that cuts no mustard here.

Thomas Metcalf · 07-30-2003, 07:46 PM

Originally posted by luvluv :

Quote:

This essay impressed me when I read it, so I thought I would present it for you guys.

Thanks for the presentation. Of course, I havea somet things to say about it. Right now I'll just say that this sort of presentation is never really taken seriously anymore. You have to have something new to bring to the table, because the traditional big three arguments have all been abandoned. Variations on them receive some attention, but in these forms they're pretty useless.

I'll just write my observations in order as I read.

Quote:

However concrete physical reality is sectioned up, the result will be a state of affairs which owes its being to something other than itself.

1. Meh. So physical reality owes its existence to something non-physical. This is a fact affirmed by hundreds of thousands of atheists.

2. This guy is really wordy. I don't like it. It's too continental. It makes me think he doesn't have anything to say.

Quote:

Only that, relative to the character of the physical world, it is logically necessary that there be something the existence of which does not derive from other things.

3. There's no such thing as being necessary relative to things. Either it's logically necessary or it isn't. And it's not logically necessary that there is a self-existent nonphysical being. It only appears that there is one in the actual world.

Quote:

To suppose that an apple, for example, could come into existence without any prior states upon which it depends for its existence is to simply reject all the laws we know to hold true of apple production. They are no longer laws.

4. Indeed, and it is accepted without question among cosmologists that the laws of the universe did not apply at the point of the big bang.

Quote:

There is, so far as I know, not a single case of a physical state or event being observed or otherwise known to originate "from nothing."

5. We should not expect to have observed any, because the mere fact that we're observing something means that "nothing" does not exist.

Quote:

Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of the atheist's enterprise, we now have an ontologically haunted universe.

6. Huh? What does it mean for haunting to take place ontologically? I'm sorry, but this is a really poor presentation. The atheist has given up absolutely nothing by saying that the universe depends upon something non-physical.

Quote:

Now we urge him to find one case of ordered being--or just being, for, whatever it is, it will certainly be ordered--originating from being without order.

7. The mere fact that it's orderly processes all the way back, if the author is correct, suggests that order comes from physical processes all the time. So we have considerable inductive weight against a supernatural designer. Further, it suggests that the universe tends toward orderly processes, so it should not be surprising that we ended up with a lot of them.

8. I have to agree with the other poster that the "third" stage is completely weak and convoluted. He really starts to look like a continental philosopher here, which is probably why he's not happy with the overwhelming prevalence in professional philosophy of skepticism about Christianity and analytic philosophy. He comes off looking (to philosophers at least) like a writer, and that's bad.

Wyrdsmyth · 07-31-2003, 08:31 AM

I don't see what you're so impressed by, luvluv. Man, is this guy a windbag. I mean, look at this paragraph:

What then, are the three stages? At this late date it is extremely hard to discuss the relevant issues without getting involved in many age-old entanglements that in fact have nothing to do with the case one is arguing. I shall, accordingly, avoid much of the traditional terminology in what follows and attempt to narrowly restrict myself to precisely those considerations upon which the evidence for theism, as I see it, depends. We begin with a demonstration that the physical or natural world recognized by common sense and the "natural" sciences is not the only type of thing in existence: that there concretely exists, or at least has existed, something radically different from it in respects to be discussed. By a "demonstration" I mean a logical structure of propositions where the premisses are true and logically imply or entail the conclusion when taken together.

He doesn't say anything in this entire paragraph! It's pure filler, like the stuff you put in hot dogs. I kept thinking "just get to the arguments already"... when he does, they're not anything new.

HRG · 07-31-2003, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv
This essay impressed me when I read it, so I thought I would present it for you guys.

It was first published in the book Does God Exist which primarily featured a debate between J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielson. This essay was offered in support of Moreland's position, but it mostly develops a case for God's existence independant of anything Moreland had to say.

Much of the paper deals with countering arguments that Nielson made, so I have pasted over only the section dealing with Willard's actual argument. If anyone would like to read the entire essay (or if my cutting and pasting from the original article is a problem) you can see it here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=42

Also check out his articles on Christianity here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/chrislist.asp

And philsophy here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/phillist.asp

Now to the article. (WARNING: It's VERY long so you might want to print it out and read it at your leisure.)

No argument I haven't seen before (and seen rebutted before). However, he certainly uses the maximum number of words.

It is interesting that Willard doesn't deal at all with the well-known counterarguments (e.g. the consistency of an infinite regress and the dissimilarity between Paley's watch and the organisms in his forest - just to give two examples). Either he is less familiar with the topic than the average participant on II or the CARM board; or he wants to "pull a fast one" on those which haven't seen the counterarguments.

Regards,
HRG.

"Man is the measure of everything" (Protagoras)

luvluv · 07-31-2003, 11:51 AM

Wow, tough crowd.

I'll respond to this more fully later, but what impressed me about Willard's presentation is the conservative nature of the case he presents.

He is not trying to establish any full blown proof such that God's existence will thenceforth be undeniable. He is trying to build a case for the justification of the theist based on simple philosophical principles that most people can agree on.

beastmaster, I think you're misconstruing his argument by trying to make it into the kalaam cosmological argument. His first stage is simply stated as the notion that every event or existent is dependant on it's existence by something which exists previous to itself. As he said, the Voyager sattelite could not be in the state of being "beyond Venus" unless Venus exists.

Your notion that a concept of a somehow "eternal" singularity doesn't diminish the point he was trying to make one bit: His point is that atheists turn to special pleading for the origin of the universe and simply state that just this one time a state of affairs is not dependant on a previously existing state of affairs.

But, you would say, the theist does the same thing. Agreed, but as Willard says (perhaps in the omitted portion of the argument, I'll check on that) the atheist makes this claim of a PHYSICAL reality which we are familiar with enough to say that we have absolutely no knowledge of, cannot conceive of the logic of, or point to a single example where an entity exists depending on nothing previous to it for it's existence.

In contrast, the theist may say, and it is consistent with the theology of Christianity to say, that spiritual reality may not be so dependant on previous conditions. Both are special pleading, but Willard seems to suggests that the theist's special pleading is more plausible, because the atheist is positing something that is nearly incoherent within our understanding of the world: that a purely physical state of affairs can have absolutely no prior conditions.

Similarly, his point on the second stage was that there not only is, but can be, no orderly state of affairs produced from absolute disorder. He actually has a good article on how this applies to biological evolution in his review of Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker here:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=52

The point is that even the "blind process of evolution" depends upon pre-existing order in the make-up and processes of genetic material. If evolutionary forces actually proceeded from ABSOLUTE chaos or disorder, evolution could hardly function as a science. His point was that as far back as one goes, a certain amount of order is presupposed in order to get any other kind of order. From an absolutely chaotic universe, one in which there are literally NO laws, nothing of any order would ever result. His point was that evolutionary ideas cannot get order out of the universe, and that this order must be explained. Again, the atheist here must resort to special pleading and assume that order is fundamental, and that the question "Why are there these natural laws instead of others?" is not legitimate.

Again, the theist also resorts to special pleading, but again Willard's case seems to be that this special pleading is more plausible because it does not apply to phyiscal reality which we know from experience to have no known cases where order emerges from NO ORDER WHATSOEVER. Willard states that for all we know, spiritual reality could be different, but from what we know physical reality cannot. (His stronger contention is that it is logically impossible that order can emerge from total non-order absent a mind in physical systems... he defends this contention in the Dawkins article.)

At any rate, I think the points he made weren't really intended to prove God's existence to anyone, but to show that there are good reasons for keeping the possibility alive. I think, for my own two cents, that it is ridiculous to expect anyone to be able to prove to you (as you sit passively, and expectantly) that God exists as a process of purely philosophical argument. I don't claim to be any philsopher by any stretch of the imagination, but that anyone who even has a moderate knoweldge of philosphical problems could keep as a reasonable expectation that ANYTHING can be proved conclusively solely through philosophical argument is mindblowing. That idea is the first idea that a serious study of philosophy should very quickly dispose of.

You frankly have no right to expect an undeniable proof of God's existence, one isn't coming and it isn't ever going to come. But if you are presented with arguments that make God's existence plausible, or even likely, you have the moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about them and to pursue them to there ends.

I say this because it seems that some of you feel justified with a passive posture toward's God existence, such that if no one bangs down your door and stuffs an irrefutable argument down your pie hole, you don't have any culpability in your nonbelief. But I maintain that, given that there are no sound proofs or disproofs of ANYTHING that a person may not reasonably deny, the expectation of utter rational undeniablity for theistic belief is unjustified. If there is a mildly rational and convincing case to be made for God's existence, even if it does not fully seal the deal, should make all of you AT LEAST agnostics in my view. I'm not saying that the above argument necessarily constitues such a case (it does in my view, but maybe you're different) but simply that God is under no obligation to blow your mind in order for you to believe in Him. You have some responsiblity to keep an open mind and keep searching.

Wyz_sub10 · 07-31-2003, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv
Wow, tough crowd.

Surprised? Next time, warm up the crowd with a few jokes. Maybe ask, "So...anyone here an aaaaatheist?!" (*Pause for hoots and hollers*)

Seriously, thanks for the pieces. Your contributions here are always valuable, and you are nothing if not engaging.

streamline · 07-31-2003, 12:53 PM

You frankly have no right to expect an undeniable proof of God's existence, one isn't coming and it isn't ever going to come. But if you are presented with arguments that make God's existence plausible, or even likely, you have the moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about them and to pursue them to there ends.

Hey, luvluv -- you know what? -- there is a non-corporeal, invisible, infinitely powerful, wise and loving unthing-yet-all-things-ground-of-all-being-all-seeing-just-being Being named Pepper that resides in the inflatable Powerpuff Girls kiddie pool in my neighbor's yard. The fact that you cannot 100% prove Pepper's non-existence thereby makes Pepper's existence plausible -- well, to me, anyway, and that goes for my friends on the block, too. And Mr. Willwords, who lives across the street, and has a degree in philosophy, so he is really smart. In fact, I dare say, given this fact, Pepper's existence might even be called likely, and certainly more likely than Her non-existence. I mean, to say that Pepper does NOT exist, just like you might say polka-dotted Unicorns don't exist, would be a bit rash, yes? And mean and arrogant, for that matter. Really -- how do you know, for certain, that Pepper isn't real? I believe in Pepper, and I think it funny that you cannot even prove for certain that Pepper doesn't exist. Maybe your case isn't as strong as you say it is! Or, as Mr. Willwords might say, it is your moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about Pepper, and to continue to pursue the evidence and arguments for Pepper.

Pepper and Her existence aside, it is from the untold numbers of theist camps that I most often hear the words "undeniable" and "God" being used in the same sentences. And, quite frankly, when faced with such grandiose rhetoric, I think I have every right to expect some undeniable proof to follow such assertions. To just now learn from you that it is NEVER coming.. ..well, I guess I have been wasting my time taking these various folks seriously. Hell, it is with this new knowledge that I can finally in good conscience stop having an open mind with this whole god-talk business. And to think I was spending so much of my precious time already allocated for the daily epistemic sifting through and weighting of truth claims on such pointless drivel! DAMMIT! I'm feeling so had at the moment, I'm tempted to say this whole God-as-Real project is downright immoral.

I say this because it seems that some of you feel justified with a passive posture toward's God existence, such that if no one bangs down your door and stuffs an irrefutable argument down your pie hole, you don't have any culpability in your nonbelief. But I maintain that, given that there are no sound proofs or disproofs of ANYTHING that a person may not reasonably deny, the expectation of utter rational undeniablity for theistic belief is unjustified. If there is a mildly rational and convincing case to be made for God's existence, even if it does not fully seal the deal, should make all of you AT LEAST agnostics in my view. I'm not saying that the above argument necessarily constitues such a case (it does in my view, but maybe you're different) but simply that God is under no obligation to blow your mind in order for you to believe in Him. You have some responsiblity to keep an open mind and keep searching.

Oh, so wait ... you are an agnostic then regarding Pepper? That's cool, cuz it will save me the time and possible legal repercussions of banging down your door and stuffing an irrefutable argument for Her existence down your pie hole.

Koyaanisqatsi · 07-31-2003, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv
Wow, tough crowd.

I'll respond to this more fully later, but what impressed me about Willard's presentation is the conservative nature of the case he presents.

But not, apparently, the arguments, since I must join the others and say, "What arguments?"

Quote:

MORE: He is not trying to establish any full blown proof such that God's existence will thenceforth be undeniable. He is trying to build a case for the justification of the theist based on simple philosophical principles that most people can agree on.

It would appear to me that he is buiding a case for the justification of the theist almost entirely because people agree on it and little else.

Quote:

MORE: beastmaster, I think you're misconstruing his argument by trying to make it into the kalaam cosmological argument. His first stage is simply stated as the notion that every event or existent is dependant on it's existence by something which exists previous to itself. As he said, the Voyager sattelite could not be in the state of being "beyond Venus" unless Venus exists.

Then this would also apply to a god. Merely asserting an uncaused cause does not remove this paradox; it contradicts it.

Quote:

MORE: Your notion that a concept of a somehow "eternal" singularity doesn't diminish the point he was trying to make one bit: His point is that atheists turn to special pleading for the origin of the universe and simply state that just this one time a state of affairs is not dependant on a previously existing state of affairs.

First of all, "atheists" don't "turn" to anything. Without the belief in a god or gods. When are you going to get that straight?

If you're referring to astrophysicists (who may or may not be atheist as well) and some theories regarding the Big Bang, then I suggest you take it up with them and their theories. There are other theories beside Big Bang primacy, such elements of the Loop Quantum Gravity theory and String Theory, not all adherents of which necessarily suscribe to BB primacy.

Regardless, the operative word, as always, is theory.

Quote:

MORE: But, you would say, the theist does the same thing.

I wouldn't

. I wouldn't in the slightest.

Quote:

MORE: Agreed, but as Willard says (perhaps in the omitted portion of the argument, I'll check on that) the atheist makes this claim of a PHYSICAL reality which we are familiar with enough to say that we have absolutely no knowledge of, cannot conceive of the logic of, or point to a single example where an entity exists depending on nothing previous to it for it's existence.

luvluv, I know you're an intelligent man, so why do you continue to make the same mistakes? That we have "absolutely no knowledge of" is not true; we just have incomplete knowledge of it. That we "cannot conceive of the logic" is also not true, given a more complete understanding. Again, the operative word is "theory."

As for the notion that we can't "point to a single example where an entitity exists depending on nothing previous to it for it's existence" is also not true. Particles do indeed appear to pop out of nothingness, with no currently traceable previous existence.

Which is to say, yet again, that our understanding of the "way things work" is merely incomplete. So what? That because we don't have absolute knowledge of the the "way things work," we, as atheists, can't declare or justify that we have no belief in a god or gods?

That is, quite literally, absurd.

Quote:

MORE: In contrast, the theist may say, and it is consistent with the theology of Christianity to say, that spiritual reality may not be so dependant on previous conditions. Both are special pleading, but Willard seems to suggests that the theist's special pleading is more plausible, because the atheist is positing something that is nearly incoherent within our understanding of the world: that a purely physical state of affairs can have absolutely no prior conditions.

Yet, that is precisely the claim of the theist and not the claim of either atheists or proponents of BB primacy. BB primacy does not necessarily state that there are "absolutely no prior conditions;" merely that all known conditions began from this singularity; a theory that is no longer dominant, but a theory nonetheless.

I know you know that theories are not inviolate, so why do you continue to force this strawman as if they were?

And exactly how do you breach this gap to assert that the theist's special pleading is "more plausible?" It posits a mystical fairy god king-like being that magically willed the entire universe into existence.

There is absolutely nothing plausible about that. Where in the universe do you see any evidence at all of matter being willed into existence?

At least scientists study what is around them in order to investigate how things work and form theories around what evidence there is; theists merely believe that a mystical fairy god king-like being magically willed it all into existence. They are in no substantive manner equal or even within the same ballpark, other than being--at the most--another theory, but of the weakest possible kind; one based on no evidence, no rational basis and no verifiable means of confirmation.

Quote:

MORE: Similarly, his point on the second stage was that there not only is, but can be, no orderly state of affairs produced from absolute disorder.

Well, then, I guess it's a good thing that no such thing as "absolute disorder" exists. Entropy merely states that systems break down into different systems. In a dynamic universe, for example, all that means is that "things change."

You've got to understand something. Science doesn't give a rat's ass about mythological mumbo-jumbo. It isn't out to "get" theology. There is no evil conspiracy set about by Satan. "It" isn't even a proper "it;" it's merely a tool of cognition; a process of analysis and confirmation to the best of our abilities with the information discovered.

Throught this course of critical analysis, it has demonstrated why more theologically minded analysis of events are ridiculous and by that I mean, progressively. There is no Sun god; no Rain god; no God of Love or War; the dead do not rise from their graves; Omnimax attributes are contradictory and logically unsound; etc., etc., etc. Which simply means that as humanity has grown more aware of their surroundings and how things work, the need for the simplicities of a god or gods to explain existence has vanished up to this one, final and highly complex point; the origin of the "spark" of life.

Which is why intelligent theists such as yourself get so backed into a corner on this one remaining obstacle, having long since abandoned just about 99.9% of every other element of traditional cult dogma. You no longer believe that "demons" cause sickness or that Satan factually exists or that burning bushes and donkeys and snakes speak (at least I hope you no longer believe such obvious mythological nonsense).

The only thing left after you've tossed all of that other garbage out the window (and quite rightly, too, of course) that you cling to is an irrational belief that the dead can rise (iff they are "god") and that "life" was willed into existence by a supernatural being of some kind, instead of it being an emergent quality of ever more complex systems.

Scientists are intent on trying to discover that answer (and the emergent theory is pretty much spot on as far as I can see), so just let them go about their business and you can cling to whatever wish-fulfillment fairy tales you like.

We atheists only get actively upset when you force these assinine beliefs on others.

Quote:

MORE: The point is that even the "blind process of evolution" depends upon pre-existing order in the make-up and processes of genetic material.

No, it doesn't in a dynamic universe, where genetic material either addapts or doesn't, depending upon the circumstances; where "order" is formed (or not formed) in dynamic stasis along with everything emergent from that stasis. For the last time, post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a fallacy; not an argument.

You are not allowed to look backwards at something and say, "after this, therefore because of this." That is false. Always.

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MORE: If evolutionary forces actually proceeded from ABSOLUTE chaos or disorder, evolution could hardly function as a science. His point was that as far back as one goes, a certain amount of order is presupposed in order to get any other kind of order.

Again, not in a dynamic system; where emergent qualities give rise to other emergent qualities, or are you forgetting that your body is entirely made out of chemicals, which in turn are made out of molecules which in turn are made out of quarks and leptons and all sorts of little thingies? Chemicals interact and form different variations because of the manner in which their molecules interact because of the manner in which energy interacts, etc.

Where did these molecules come from? Well, one theory is BB primacy; i.e., from a singularity. What put it there? Why assume personification? For all we know there are an infinite amount of BB's, expanding and collapsing and expanding and collapsing. Or not.

But considering the nature of theology and the tenets of most religions, it's fairly safe to conclude that mystical fairy god king-like beings did not magically will it into existence. What's more, erroneously concluding that one did will it all into existence does nothing more for our understanding than end it; stop it in its tracks.

There is absolutely no justifiable reason to conclude "goddidit" and thereby end the quest to find out what actually happened. There is, however, absolutely justifiable reasons to continue to search for an answer.

Just because it is incomplete, does not mean it should end. I'm sorry if science demonstrates your beliefs to be unsound, but then you knew that anyway! That's why they're called "beliefs" and not "facts."

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MORE: From an absolutely chaotic universe, one in which there are literally NO laws, nothing of any order would ever result.

First of all, you need to read up on Chaos theory. Secondly, "laws" are, likewise, dynamic. They emerge as the system grows.

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MORE: His point was that evolutionary ideas cannot get order out of the universe, and that this order must be explained.

False on both counts.

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MORE: Again, the atheist here must resort to special pleading and assume that order is fundamental, and that the question "Why are there these natural laws instead of others?" is not legitimate.

Again, we must not do anything at all. Without a belief in a god or gods. We don't have to have any answers to know that yours is not a legitimate one, especially since it does nothing to explain anything at all!

What caused the universe? A mystical fairy god king-like being magically willed it into existence.

Hardly a viable hypothesis with which to explain anything at all.

The reason we have the "laws" that we have is because they have been observed and confirmed; i.e., we called them "laws." If you knew anything about science or the scientific method then you would know that such "laws" are only from our own perspective, based on incomplete evidence and theoretical speculation, hence the need for continued examination; not just shutting everything down by saying, "mystical fairy god kings did it."

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MORE: Again, the theist also resorts to special pleading, but again Willard's case seems to be that this special pleading is more plausible because it does not apply to phyiscal reality which we know from experience to have no known cases where order emerges from NO ORDER WHATSOEVER.

False on so many levels it's just not worth getting into all over again. What is this "spiritual" quality that is being thrown up for comparison? What is the evidence? You can't throw up an unsubstantiated notion as a means to compare plausibility against a largely substantiated notion.

If the entire basis of this argument is, "which is more plausible," then no contest. Science wins due to its own dynamic system, if nothing else. Case closed.

Regardless, whether or not something is "more plausible," does not necessarily make that something "correct." You're comparing apples and oranges and saying, "we should all, therefore support the idea of mangoes."

Whatever this "spiritual" mysticism you seem to feel is equally substantiated with physical studies still would not necessarily equate with a god or gods.

Science is an open-ended cognitive tool of discovery; theology, for most, was closed two to five thousand years ago with some rock tablets and a crucified Rabbi.

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MORE: Willard states that for all we know, spiritual reality could be different, but from what we know physical reality cannot.

And his evidence for this "spiritual reality" is?

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MORE: (His stronger contention is that it is logically impossible that order can emerge from total non-order absent a mind in physical systems... he defends this contention in the Dawkins article.)

I see. So, without a mind (and not, presumably, a brain, but a "mind") in order to think of physicallity, there can be no physicallity. And does he, without contradicting the entire syllogism that supposedly led him to this assertion, present any coherent argument as to how a mind can exist without physicallity or pre-existing "laws?"

Last I checked, one needed a brain prior to having what we call "mind," yes?

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MORE: At any rate, I think the points he made weren't really intended to prove God's existence to anyone, but to show that there are good reasons for keeping the possibility alive.

No doubt. Too bad they aren't reasons, let alone "good" ones, considering they first assume that a god does exist.

As you pointed out, it's nothing but special pleading. The fact that one relies on special pleading and another may rely on special pleading, does not equate the two; nor does it mean that one is just as good as another, simply because they may both rely on special pleading.

Special pleading is not the goal; yet it's all theists have.

It's only a contest to theists.

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MORE: I think, for my own two cents, that it is ridiculous to expect anyone to be able to prove to you (as you sit passively, and expectantly) that God exists as a process of purely philosophical argument.

Agreed.

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MORE: I don't claim to be any philsopher by any stretch of the imagination, but that anyone who even has a moderate knoweldge of philosphical problems could keep as a reasonable expectation that ANYTHING can be proved conclusively solely through philosophical argument is mindblowing.

Lucky then that no one in the scientific community that I've ever heard of turns to philosophy for "conclusive proof."

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MORE: That idea is the first idea that a serious study of philosophy should very quickly dispose of.

Since it never contained it to begin with (except in theological circles, of course), it would be hard to "dispose" of it.

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MORE: You frankly have no right to expect an undeniable proof of God's existence, one isn't coming and it isn't ever going to come.

Since fictional beings don't factually exist, I for one won't expect it.

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MORE: But if you are presented with arguments that make God's existence plausible, or even likely, you have the moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about them and to pursue them to there ends.

All right, I'll bite. To what end? Let's say that you can provide a plausible argument for a god's existence (which you have not, by the way, so far done). A god exists and created everything.

Looks like the end to me. What is there left to "pursue?"

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MORE: I say this because it seems that some of you feel justified with a passive posture toward's God existence, such that if no one bangs down your door and stuffs an irrefutable argument down your pie hole, you don't have any culpability in your nonbelief.

"Culpability?" What do you mean?

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MORE: But I maintain that, given that there are no sound proofs or disproofs of ANYTHING that a person may not reasonably deny, the expectation of utter rational undeniablity for theistic belief is unjustified.

Not nearly as much as that twisted sentence.

I'm going to try this again just to see if it works for the eighteen billionth time: what evidence do you provide that would rationally support a theistic belief (pardon the pun)?

You keep raising the point of plausibility. What is plausible--without asking counter questions about anything else--about theistic belief? Regardless of what else may or may not be plausible in your eyes, what is plausible about a mystical fairy god king-like creature who magically willed the universe into existence?

Because it's more plausible to you than there not being one?

Wrong answer.

What is, specifically, plausible about a "god" creature willing the universe into existence? Or any intelligence at all creating matter ex nihilo by will alone?

It's not only implausible, it completely contradicts your entire polemic! Unless, of course, you can provide evidence of this "spiritual" realm that somehow exists without existence.

Plausibility works both ways. In order to claim one theory is more plausible than another, one must actually support one's theory in some compelling manner; a manner that would contravene the plausibility of the one in question, not just run along parallel with it.

If all you're doing is trying to say, "this is plausible on its on," then what is it you base this plausibility upon? So far, all you've done is to say, in essence, " I base my plausibility on the assertion that yours is implausible."

Bad show.

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MORE: If there is a mildly rational and convincing case to be made for God's existence, even if it does not fully seal the deal, should make all of you AT LEAST agnostics in my view.

Well, again, if you can provide a plausible reason why I should remain indifferent to the notion of a fictional character from ancient mythology factually existing without any compelling evidence, you let me know.

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MORE: I'm not saying that the above argument necessarily constitues such a case (it does in my view, but maybe you're different) but simply that God is under no obligation to blow your mind in order for you to believe in Him.

Not according to the Bible. The bible lists extremely powerful obligations for God to blow our minds in order for us to believe in "him;" number one, of course, being eternal damnation for disbelief; number two being that "he" allegedly killed himself as a sacrifice to himself in order to save all of us from himself. That's a mighty pointless parade if "he" is under no "obligation" to get us to believe in "him," wouldn't you agree?

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MORE: You have some responsiblity to keep an open mind and keep searching.

For what and to whom?

And speaking of an "open mind," how is it that yours is "open?" From what I see, yours is resolutely closed and was, apparently, some two thousand years ago.

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07-30-2003, 07:28 PM	#3
Jobar Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: secularcafe.org Posts: 9,525	luvluv, as you are aware, I call myself an atheist/pantheist. I don't believe in any expressible God- but I do believe that order/chaos are poles of a unity, not utterly separate and dual. Willard: This completes the demonstration in our first stage of theistic evidence. To sum up: The dependent character of all physical states, together with the completeness of the series of dependencies underlying the existence of any given physical state, logically implies at least one self-existent, and therefore non-physical, state of being: a state of being, or an entity, radically different from those that make up the physical or "natural" world. It is demonstrably absurd that there should be a self-sufficient physical universe, if by that we mean an all-inclusive totality of entities and events of the familiar or scientific physical variety, and unless (like Spinoza) we are prepared to treat the universe itself as having an essentially different type of being from the physical:--which then just concedes our point. "concedes our point"? So Willard is arguing pantheism, huh? I've seen that sort of bait&switch attempted here many times, luvluv. It won't wash. His 'second stage' is pure argument from design, and fails because there is no proof that any intelligence lies behind the natural processes which culminate in us, and the universe of observation. From inside the universe, things appear to be a result of the interaction of purely natural order and chaos; since we cannot see 'outside' the universe, we can simply say nothing concerning such an imaginary concept. His 'third stage' sounds like "the Bible must be true because so many people have believed in it!" Needless to say, that cuts no mustard here.

07-31-2003, 08:31 AM	#5
Wyrdsmyth Senior Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: Sarver, PA, USA Posts: 920	I don't see what you're so impressed by, luvluv. Man, is this guy a windbag. I mean, look at this paragraph: What then, are the three stages? At this late date it is extremely hard to discuss the relevant issues without getting involved in many age-old entanglements that in fact have nothing to do with the case one is arguing. I shall, accordingly, avoid much of the traditional terminology in what follows and attempt to narrowly restrict myself to precisely those considerations upon which the evidence for theism, as I see it, depends. We begin with a demonstration that the physical or natural world recognized by common sense and the "natural" sciences is not the only type of thing in existence: that there concretely exists, or at least has existed, something radically different from it in respects to be discussed. By a "demonstration" I mean a logical structure of propositions where the premisses are true and logically imply or entail the conclusion when taken together. He doesn't say anything in this entire paragraph! It's pure filler, like the stuff you put in hot dogs. I kept thinking "just get to the arguments already"... when he does, they're not anything new.

07-31-2003, 11:51 AM	#7
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Wow, tough crowd. I'll respond to this more fully later, but what impressed me about Willard's presentation is the conservative nature of the case he presents. He is not trying to establish any full blown proof such that God's existence will thenceforth be undeniable. He is trying to build a case for the justification of the theist based on simple philosophical principles that most people can agree on. beastmaster, I think you're misconstruing his argument by trying to make it into the kalaam cosmological argument. His first stage is simply stated as the notion that every event or existent is dependant on it's existence by something which exists previous to itself. As he said, the Voyager sattelite could not be in the state of being "beyond Venus" unless Venus exists. Your notion that a concept of a somehow "eternal" singularity doesn't diminish the point he was trying to make one bit: His point is that atheists turn to special pleading for the origin of the universe and simply state that just this one time a state of affairs is not dependant on a previously existing state of affairs. But, you would say, the theist does the same thing. Agreed, but as Willard says (perhaps in the omitted portion of the argument, I'll check on that) the atheist makes this claim of a PHYSICAL reality which we are familiar with enough to say that we have absolutely no knowledge of, cannot conceive of the logic of, or point to a single example where an entity exists depending on nothing previous to it for it's existence. In contrast, the theist may say, and it is consistent with the theology of Christianity to say, that spiritual reality may not be so dependant on previous conditions. Both are special pleading, but Willard seems to suggests that the theist's special pleading is more plausible, because the atheist is positing something that is nearly incoherent within our understanding of the world: that a purely physical state of affairs can have absolutely no prior conditions. Similarly, his point on the second stage was that there not only is, but can be, no orderly state of affairs produced from absolute disorder. He actually has a good article on how this applies to biological evolution in his review of Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker here: http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=52 The point is that even the "blind process of evolution" depends upon pre-existing order in the make-up and processes of genetic material. If evolutionary forces actually proceeded from ABSOLUTE chaos or disorder, evolution could hardly function as a science. His point was that as far back as one goes, a certain amount of order is presupposed in order to get any other kind of order. From an absolutely chaotic universe, one in which there are literally NO laws, nothing of any order would ever result. His point was that evolutionary ideas cannot get order out of the universe, and that this order must be explained. Again, the atheist here must resort to special pleading and assume that order is fundamental, and that the question "Why are there these natural laws instead of others?" is not legitimate. Again, the theist also resorts to special pleading, but again Willard's case seems to be that this special pleading is more plausible because it does not apply to phyiscal reality which we know from experience to have no known cases where order emerges from NO ORDER WHATSOEVER. Willard states that for all we know, spiritual reality could be different, but from what we know physical reality cannot. (His stronger contention is that it is logically impossible that order can emerge from total non-order absent a mind in physical systems... he defends this contention in the Dawkins article.) At any rate, I think the points he made weren't really intended to prove God's existence to anyone, but to show that there are good reasons for keeping the possibility alive. I think, for my own two cents, that it is ridiculous to expect anyone to be able to prove to you (as you sit passively, and expectantly) that God exists as a process of purely philosophical argument. I don't claim to be any philsopher by any stretch of the imagination, but that anyone who even has a moderate knoweldge of philosphical problems could keep as a reasonable expectation that ANYTHING can be proved conclusively solely through philosophical argument is mindblowing. That idea is the first idea that a serious study of philosophy should very quickly dispose of. You frankly have no right to expect an undeniable proof of God's existence, one isn't coming and it isn't ever going to come. But if you are presented with arguments that make God's existence plausible, or even likely, you have the moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about them and to pursue them to there ends. I say this because it seems that some of you feel justified with a passive posture toward's God existence, such that if no one bangs down your door and stuffs an irrefutable argument down your pie hole, you don't have any culpability in your nonbelief. But I maintain that, given that there are no sound proofs or disproofs of ANYTHING that a person may not reasonably deny, the expectation of utter rational undeniablity for theistic belief is unjustified. If there is a mildly rational and convincing case to be made for God's existence, even if it does not fully seal the deal, should make all of you AT LEAST agnostics in my view. I'm not saying that the above argument necessarily constitues such a case (it does in my view, but maybe you're different) but simply that God is under no obligation to blow your mind in order for you to believe in Him. You have some responsiblity to keep an open mind and keep searching.

07-31-2003, 12:53 PM	#9
streamline Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 77	You frankly have no right to expect an undeniable proof of God's existence, one isn't coming and it isn't ever going to come. But if you are presented with arguments that make God's existence plausible, or even likely, you have the moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about them and to pursue them to there ends. Hey, luvluv -- you know what? -- there is a non-corporeal, invisible, infinitely powerful, wise and loving unthing-yet-all-things-ground-of-all-being-all-seeing-just-being Being named Pepper that resides in the inflatable Powerpuff Girls kiddie pool in my neighbor's yard. The fact that you cannot 100% prove Pepper's non-existence thereby makes Pepper's existence plausible -- well, to me, anyway, and that goes for my friends on the block, too. And Mr. Willwords, who lives across the street, and has a degree in philosophy, so he is really smart. In fact, I dare say, given this fact, Pepper's existence might even be called likely, and certainly more likely than Her non-existence. I mean, to say that Pepper does NOT exist, just like you might say polka-dotted Unicorns don't exist, would be a bit rash, yes? And mean and arrogant, for that matter. Really -- how do you know, for certain, that Pepper isn't real? I believe in Pepper, and I think it funny that you cannot even prove for certain that Pepper doesn't exist. Maybe your case isn't as strong as you say it is! Or, as Mr. Willwords might say, it is your moral and epistemological duty to keep an open mind about Pepper, and to continue to pursue the evidence and arguments for Pepper. Pepper and Her existence aside, it is from the untold numbers of theist camps that I most often hear the words "undeniable" and "God" being used in the same sentences. And, quite frankly, when faced with such grandiose rhetoric, I think I have every right to expect some undeniable proof to follow such assertions. To just now learn from you that it is NEVER coming.. ..well, I guess I have been wasting my time taking these various folks seriously. Hell, it is with this new knowledge that I can finally in good conscience stop having an open mind with this whole god-talk business. And to think I was spending so much of my precious time already allocated for the daily epistemic sifting through and weighting of truth claims on such pointless drivel! DAMMIT! I'm feeling so had at the moment, I'm tempted to say this whole God-as-Real project is downright immoral. I say this because it seems that some of you feel justified with a passive posture toward's God existence, such that if no one bangs down your door and stuffs an irrefutable argument down your pie hole, you don't have any culpability in your nonbelief. But I maintain that, given that there are no sound proofs or disproofs of ANYTHING that a person may not reasonably deny, the expectation of utter rational undeniablity for theistic belief is unjustified. If there is a mildly rational and convincing case to be made for God's existence, even if it does not fully seal the deal, should make all of you AT LEAST agnostics in my view. I'm not saying that the above argument necessarily constitues such a case (it does in my view, but maybe you're different) but simply that God is under no obligation to blow your mind in order for you to believe in Him. You have some responsiblity to keep an open mind and keep searching. Oh, so wait ... you are an agnostic then regarding Pepper? That's cool, cuz it will save me the time and possible legal repercussions of banging down your door and stuffing an irrefutable argument for Her existence down your pie hole.

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