Anthony Kenny (1931-2026)
2 days ago
Showing posts with label apologetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apologetics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
who created God, with some help from the ontological argument
A common question skeptics pose to theists is 'if God created the world then who (or what) created God?'.
The question itself rests upon a philosophical principle we usually take for granted in everyday life, namely Leibniz's Principle of Sufficent Reason (or PSR for short). The PSR can come in several different versions but essentially states that whatever exists has some kind of explanation for its existence. Some philosophers have denied the PSR and instead have opted for what they call 'brute facts' i.e. some things just don't need any explanation for their existence and just exist without one.
My initial response to this is simply to ask why is it that anyone should think God needs an explanation for His existence? The reason most people think this is because they confuse God's type of existence as being in the same category as that of the rest of the universe's type of existence. By this I mean (to use some philosophical terminology here) most people assume that God has 'contingent' existence i.e. His existence is in need of some kind of explanation, the way the rest of physical reality requires such an explanation. Indeed, it seems obvious to us that things such as tables, chairs, people, planets etc. have satisfactory explanations as to where they came from. Even the entire universe itself seems to be subject to such a possible explanation (though it's not quite as obvious as the other entities just named what that explanation may be). This is because we intuitively recognize that such objects as tables, chairs, people and even the universe itself are merely contingent in their existence. Contingent existence simply means that such things might not have existed i.e. this chair I'm sitting on might never have come into being if the carpenter who made it had instead decided not to do so. Or even I myself might never have existed if my parents hadn't of met, got married and procreated. We also seem to intuitively recognize that even the universe itself might not have existed - we seem to be able to imagine (or at least have some kind of intuition) that nothing at all could have 'existed' instead of what we now experience. This is the definition of contingent existence - the possibility of a thing's being different or of it's not existing at all.
By contrast 'Necessary' existence is the kind of existence a thing has when it could not fail to exist or be any different from what it is. Here such mathematical propositions as '2+2=4' are considered to be 'necessarily' true, because the answer cannot be any different from the one it is i.e. '4'. There is no logically possible world in which the answer to '2+2' is '5'. This is the definition of 'necessary' – something which cannot be otherwise. Notice here that such a necessary truth has no reason for its explanation, it just is so in virtue of its nature or its definition. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (as well as many philosophers today) thought that things such as numbers, propositions, sets and the 'forms' of concrete existence exist abstractly i.e. beyond the spatio-temporal world. Such abstract existents, if they exist at all, must exist necessarily i.e. cannot not exist.
There is some philosophical debate as to whether or not there are necessarily existent things such as numbers, sets, forms etc. but the actual formulation of necessary existence is well understood and if such things do exist they must exist necessarily. And, again, this entials that such things need no explanation for their existence – they simply exist by the very necessity of their own nature.
Now back to the question of who (or what) created God. Once again this skeptical question seems to presuppose that God, much like objects in the universe, has contingent existence and, thus, needs some kind of explanation for why He exists. But why can God not have necessary existence instead?
Indeed it actually seems obvious that if God exist then He must exist necessarily (and thus require no explanation for His existence). This can be seen from a variation of the famous ontological argument of St. Anselm. In this argument Anselm asks us to imagine the 'greatest conceivable being' (which we use the term 'God' for short) with all the attributes we would usually associate with such a being i.e. omniscience, omnipotence etc.etc. He then goes on to suggest that if such a being existed, but existed only in our imagination and not in reality, then it would not be as perfect as a being which has exactly those same qualities and yet existed in reality instead (as opposed to only in our imaginations). Now there are problems with this argument, famously made by Immanuel Kant i.e. that Anselm treats existence as a predicate or property of a thing when it is not. But, more recently, there have been forms of the ontological argument that use both necessary and contingent existence (called 'modal' ontological arguments). Essentially it seems that, upon reflection, it's obvious that the greatest conceivable being (or 'God') would have to have necessary existence as opposed to just contingent existence, because necessary existence is a 'greater' or more perfect form of existence that merely contingent existence, which is less perfect. So a being with all the properties of a perfect or greatest conceivable being (i.e. omnipotence, omniscience etc.etc.) and yet had only contingent existence is less perfect than a being with the same properties and necessary existence. Which means that if there is such a perfect being it must have necessary as opposed to contingent existence.
In effect what this means is that if God exists then He exists necessarily (i.e. He cannot not exist). This essentially entails that because of His necessary existence the question 'who created God' is just moot. If God has necessary existence then He needs no explanation for His existence - He exists necessarily in the same way abstract objects like numbers, sets etc. do or the way '2+2=4' is necessarily true and needs no explanation for why it is so. It is true by definition or true in virtue of its very nature.
This may seem like word games to many people, but its essential to realize that the reason most people ask such a question in the first place is because they assume that God has contingent existence. When we realize that to be the greatest conceivable being or most perfect being (which is basically the definition of 'God') such a being must have necessary and not contingent existence, we also realize that a question such as 'who created God' actually makes no sense.
Perhaps the skeptic can switch tracks here and claim, instead, that the universe itself exists necessarily - thus dispensing with the need for God's necessary existence. For reasons I haven't got time to go into almost no philosopher today (or perhaps ever, with the possible exception of David Hume) really believes that the universe has that type of existence - most accept that it is simply contingent (thought some have claimed it as a brute fact ala Bertrand Russell).
Note that this above argument doesn't prove that God exists, just that if He does exist then He exists necessarily (and if He doesn't exist, He likewise necessarily does not exist). And if God exists necessarily then He has no need of an explanation for His existence – it is true in virtue of His nature alone.
The question itself rests upon a philosophical principle we usually take for granted in everyday life, namely Leibniz's Principle of Sufficent Reason (or PSR for short). The PSR can come in several different versions but essentially states that whatever exists has some kind of explanation for its existence. Some philosophers have denied the PSR and instead have opted for what they call 'brute facts' i.e. some things just don't need any explanation for their existence and just exist without one.
My initial response to this is simply to ask why is it that anyone should think God needs an explanation for His existence? The reason most people think this is because they confuse God's type of existence as being in the same category as that of the rest of the universe's type of existence. By this I mean (to use some philosophical terminology here) most people assume that God has 'contingent' existence i.e. His existence is in need of some kind of explanation, the way the rest of physical reality requires such an explanation. Indeed, it seems obvious to us that things such as tables, chairs, people, planets etc. have satisfactory explanations as to where they came from. Even the entire universe itself seems to be subject to such a possible explanation (though it's not quite as obvious as the other entities just named what that explanation may be). This is because we intuitively recognize that such objects as tables, chairs, people and even the universe itself are merely contingent in their existence. Contingent existence simply means that such things might not have existed i.e. this chair I'm sitting on might never have come into being if the carpenter who made it had instead decided not to do so. Or even I myself might never have existed if my parents hadn't of met, got married and procreated. We also seem to intuitively recognize that even the universe itself might not have existed - we seem to be able to imagine (or at least have some kind of intuition) that nothing at all could have 'existed' instead of what we now experience. This is the definition of contingent existence - the possibility of a thing's being different or of it's not existing at all.
By contrast 'Necessary' existence is the kind of existence a thing has when it could not fail to exist or be any different from what it is. Here such mathematical propositions as '2+2=4' are considered to be 'necessarily' true, because the answer cannot be any different from the one it is i.e. '4'. There is no logically possible world in which the answer to '2+2' is '5'. This is the definition of 'necessary' – something which cannot be otherwise. Notice here that such a necessary truth has no reason for its explanation, it just is so in virtue of its nature or its definition. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (as well as many philosophers today) thought that things such as numbers, propositions, sets and the 'forms' of concrete existence exist abstractly i.e. beyond the spatio-temporal world. Such abstract existents, if they exist at all, must exist necessarily i.e. cannot not exist.
There is some philosophical debate as to whether or not there are necessarily existent things such as numbers, sets, forms etc. but the actual formulation of necessary existence is well understood and if such things do exist they must exist necessarily. And, again, this entials that such things need no explanation for their existence – they simply exist by the very necessity of their own nature.
Now back to the question of who (or what) created God. Once again this skeptical question seems to presuppose that God, much like objects in the universe, has contingent existence and, thus, needs some kind of explanation for why He exists. But why can God not have necessary existence instead?
Indeed it actually seems obvious that if God exist then He must exist necessarily (and thus require no explanation for His existence). This can be seen from a variation of the famous ontological argument of St. Anselm. In this argument Anselm asks us to imagine the 'greatest conceivable being' (which we use the term 'God' for short) with all the attributes we would usually associate with such a being i.e. omniscience, omnipotence etc.etc. He then goes on to suggest that if such a being existed, but existed only in our imagination and not in reality, then it would not be as perfect as a being which has exactly those same qualities and yet existed in reality instead (as opposed to only in our imaginations). Now there are problems with this argument, famously made by Immanuel Kant i.e. that Anselm treats existence as a predicate or property of a thing when it is not. But, more recently, there have been forms of the ontological argument that use both necessary and contingent existence (called 'modal' ontological arguments). Essentially it seems that, upon reflection, it's obvious that the greatest conceivable being (or 'God') would have to have necessary existence as opposed to just contingent existence, because necessary existence is a 'greater' or more perfect form of existence that merely contingent existence, which is less perfect. So a being with all the properties of a perfect or greatest conceivable being (i.e. omnipotence, omniscience etc.etc.) and yet had only contingent existence is less perfect than a being with the same properties and necessary existence. Which means that if there is such a perfect being it must have necessary as opposed to contingent existence.
In effect what this means is that if God exists then He exists necessarily (i.e. He cannot not exist). This essentially entails that because of His necessary existence the question 'who created God' is just moot. If God has necessary existence then He needs no explanation for His existence - He exists necessarily in the same way abstract objects like numbers, sets etc. do or the way '2+2=4' is necessarily true and needs no explanation for why it is so. It is true by definition or true in virtue of its very nature.
This may seem like word games to many people, but its essential to realize that the reason most people ask such a question in the first place is because they assume that God has contingent existence. When we realize that to be the greatest conceivable being or most perfect being (which is basically the definition of 'God') such a being must have necessary and not contingent existence, we also realize that a question such as 'who created God' actually makes no sense.
Perhaps the skeptic can switch tracks here and claim, instead, that the universe itself exists necessarily - thus dispensing with the need for God's necessary existence. For reasons I haven't got time to go into almost no philosopher today (or perhaps ever, with the possible exception of David Hume) really believes that the universe has that type of existence - most accept that it is simply contingent (thought some have claimed it as a brute fact ala Bertrand Russell).
Note that this above argument doesn't prove that God exists, just that if He does exist then He exists necessarily (and if He doesn't exist, He likewise necessarily does not exist). And if God exists necessarily then He has no need of an explanation for His existence – it is true in virtue of His nature alone.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
notes from w.l. craig's seminar on middle knowledge
MOLINISM - BILL CRAIG
God's hypothetical knowledge.. like Dickens' Christmas Carol where the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come shows him visions of both his death & Tiny Tim's death and, horrified, he asks the Spirit whether or not these are shadows of things that definately are to come or may only possibly come.. Craig says these visions are not just mere possibilities (cos anything is possible and Scrooge neednt worry about just anything) nor was the Spirit showing him what will definately happen, because at the end of the story Tiny Tim does not die.. so what the Spirit was showing Scrooge was a kind of hypothetical knowledge - what would happen if Scrooge did not repent and Scrooge does repent so these things do not happen. the question, then, is does God have this kind of hypothetical knowledge of what would be the case if something else were to be the case? Another case in popular culture is from the classic movie A Wonderful Life where the angel shows Jimmy Stewart what the world would of been like if hed never been born - you find the world would have been vastly different without him being born. Does God know that - does He have that kind of knowledge?
This is a controversial question. It would be hard to prove just from the Bible alone God has this kind of knowledge - tho a good case can be made according to Craig. Some theologians would say no He doesnt - He knows everything that could happen and everything that will happen, yet He doesnt have knowledge of what would happen if such & such was the case. therefore the question 'if God knew the world would be so messed up as it is why didnt he create it in another way?' gets these theologians off the hook. the answer for them is He didnt know it would turn out this way - that if He were to place Adam & Eve in the Garden they would fall into sin, there would be a World War II etc.
on other hand Craig thinks there are powerful theological reasons to say God has this kind of knowledge.. Gen. 15:20 is the most powerful passage for God's sovereignty over human history.. God seemed to know here that if the brothers were to sell Joseph into slavery that Joseph would then rise to power in Egypt & so be in a position to rescue his family when famine hit Israel.. they meant it for evil & God meant it for good & so brought it to pass.. this isnt also isolated incident in the OT - in OT there is a very strong sense of divine sovereignty & providence such that God is always in control - God isnt caught by surpise by the way things turn out but its a part of God's planning.. see Acts 4 - the apostles say everyone conspired against Jesus to do whatever His (God's) will & plan was to take place. so it wasnt an accident of history what happened to Jesus - it was the plan of God, to use likes of Herod & Pilate - God knew what Pilate would freely do if confronted with Jesus on trial & same with Herod etc.
What makes these examples remarkable (Joseph & Crucifixion) is that these concern sinful acts of human beings, so God couldnt have brought them about directly, unless we are willing to make God the author of sin. we cant say it was God who brought the wills of Joseph's brothers to do this heinous act & same with Pilate/Herod etc. so what this suggests is that God has this hypothetical knowledge explained above i.e. what these free agents would freely do in any circumstances He might place them in, so by placing those agents in those circumstances God knew exactly what they would do & thereby everything came about by his sovereign plan. on this view this means everything that happens in the world is known by God & is in a sense decreed by Him. but here we need to distinguish between God's DIRECT will & his PERMISSIVE will. everything in universe happens according to will of God but actions which are good are in God's direct will but evil actions are only in God's permissive will. so take Judas' betrayl - God's will is always that Judas would do the right thing (his primary will) - to make the moral choice. but knowing what Judas would freely do in those circumstances God allows/permits Judas to betray Jesus & He uses that sinful act to bring about Jesus' deliverance to the Romans.. similarly with Pilate's free decision to send Jesus to the cross & therefore bring about salvation for mankind via the crucifixion..
so through his directive will or permissive will everything that happens in universe is result of will of God, not accident.. He knew what every free creature would do under any set of circumstance He might place them in, so by placing certain persons in certain circumstances God can bring it about that his ends are ultimately achieved in human history, but through the free agency of human beings, so that you see this hypothetical knowledge provides the key to unlocking the mystery to this whole conondrum of divine sovereignty and human freedom.. many have puzzled how God can be sovereign & yet human beings be free - this hypothetical knowledge provides such a key to the puzzle..
this type of hypothetical knowledge is known as Middle Knowledge.. this is abit of a silly term for it being inbetween God's knowledge of what could be and what will be, and this inbetween is His knowledge of what would be.. to take an example He sees that if he had made Pierre to be one of the twelve disciple Pierre wouldnt of done very well - so knowing that He decided not to create him as one of the twelve.. that would illustrate God knowing what would happen if someone was put in certain circumstances & therefore deciding not to do it and, as a result, God does not know that Pierre will do these things as one of the disciples of Jesus. So there is a difference between things that could happen, would happen (under certain circumstances) & will happen..
now this kind of providence over human history is unimaginably complex.. just think what God would have to calculate in order to bring about a single event in human history i.e. the Allied victory at D-Day.. He would have to get in place an Eisenhower, a Hitler, all the various soldiers, British Empire, Third Reich etc. and since those also depend upon free decisions i.e. the exact time/place Churchill's parents would engage in secual intercourse so the right sperm-egg would produce a Winston Churchill - when you think of this its incomprehensible - ONLY an infinite mind could have this kind of providential control over history.. but God is omniscient - He knows an infinite number of truths & if He has this hypothetical knowledge, He not only has knowledge about all truths that will or could happen, He also has knowledge of an infinite number of truths of what would happen under certain circumstances.. so this knowledge, if true, redounds to the glory & majesty of God - as Craig contemplates it he finds himself awestruck & overwhelmed & expands his vision of God's perfection & majesty to think that His omniscience would be this great to encompass the providential planning of a world of free creatures to arrive at His purposes without abusing their freedom.. for that reason Craig thinks God does have this kind of knowledge.. it also illuminates Biblical texts..
question from audience about if God knew Joseph's brothers would sell him into slavery if put in certain circumstances & God then decreed to put them in such circumstances how does it then excuse God from causing such an evil act? Craig says the circumstances are freedom-permitting circumstances and they don't determine the choice - they're causally indeterminative circumstances & cos the circumstances dont determine the choice the agent is completely free to do or not do the action & therefore God is not causally determining them to do it & therefore its the agent who is responsible.. as stated earlier in any circumstances we find ourselves in God's primary will is we also do good/moral i.e. don't sell Joseph into slavery, but He knew they wouldn't.. an illustration on a human level to make the point clear - the FBI often conduct sting operations against criminals were they use this sort of hypothetical reasoning i.e. set up a circumstance where they try to sell/buy drugs from/to someone they suspect & so theyll set up a circumstance where that person is confronted with such an opportunity & when that person does so the FBI arrests them.. what these people always say is 'it was entrapment, i was trapped, they made me do it by putting me in that circumstance' - but the courts rule it was not entrapment - the person freely chose to do this is those circumstances & therefore they are culpable & can be prosecuted for the crime.. this illustrates it is not God who is author/responsible for sin of these people - they are freedom permitting circumstances, God wills they do the right thing under those circumstances & the fact they choose evil in those circumstances is entirely their free choice & they are culpable for it..
Craig thinks we all have this kind of hypothetical knowledge - Craig's wife knows if he were offered a plate of cookies or plate of liver & onions he would choose the second because he likes that and hates the first - God has this but just with absolute certainty..
how does God have this kind of knowledge? there are several models of divine foreknowledge of the future - one is that God has perceptual knowledge (i.e. looks & sees what is going to happen in future - thats a real problem), but Craig thinks its more a kind of conceptual understanding - He has the essential property of knowing only & all truths and, therefore, He just has knowledge of the future in virtue of knowing only & all truths and the idea of how He comes about it doesnt actually arise - its like asking how can God be omnipotent: how can He do everything it is logically possible to do? can't answer they're just essential attributes of God. So if there are truths about how people would freely behave under certain circumstances then, as an omniscient being, God would simply have to know these things as an essential property of His..
applied to theories of inspiration.. how could God inspire an inerrant scripture in such a way that it wouldn't reduce to mere dictation? the way would be if God knew what the authors of scripture would freely write under the circumstances in which they were placed.. that solution presupposes this doctrine - middle knowledge.. suppose God has high premium on inerrant scripture for mankind, maybe He'd have to permit all kinds of things to get Paul or John in the right circumstances where they would freely write this inerrant revelation of God - circumstances which might cause all other kinds of evils/sufferings in world, permitted in view of an inerrant scripture being produced - some evils which ripples we might be feeling today.. we have no idea what kind of things needs to achieve by permitting these kinds of evils/sufferings in the world.. perhaps its by no means obvious God can achieve the things in history He wishes to achieve without a World War II or a Holocaust.. if God wanted to get to goal A it seems fair to say He would do so in a way which minimized gratuitous suffering..
why did God then create a messed up world & not a better one? maybe cos God's options were limited - given He wanted free creatures & not puppets, it may be that they would of messed up any world that God could of created.. so that in any world that is feasible for God to create with free creatures in it, its possible that they would have sinned & messed up that world.. so its possible there isnt any world available to God that has this much good without also this much evil.. God's will may be that they do the right thing in any circumstance but nevertheless if they freely will to sin God permits them to do so but, in providence, He has selected a world which is more good than evil & results in His ends being achieved - a multitude of people in Heaven of every tribe, tongue & nation..
God's hypothetical knowledge.. like Dickens' Christmas Carol where the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come shows him visions of both his death & Tiny Tim's death and, horrified, he asks the Spirit whether or not these are shadows of things that definately are to come or may only possibly come.. Craig says these visions are not just mere possibilities (cos anything is possible and Scrooge neednt worry about just anything) nor was the Spirit showing him what will definately happen, because at the end of the story Tiny Tim does not die.. so what the Spirit was showing Scrooge was a kind of hypothetical knowledge - what would happen if Scrooge did not repent and Scrooge does repent so these things do not happen. the question, then, is does God have this kind of hypothetical knowledge of what would be the case if something else were to be the case? Another case in popular culture is from the classic movie A Wonderful Life where the angel shows Jimmy Stewart what the world would of been like if hed never been born - you find the world would have been vastly different without him being born. Does God know that - does He have that kind of knowledge?
This is a controversial question. It would be hard to prove just from the Bible alone God has this kind of knowledge - tho a good case can be made according to Craig. Some theologians would say no He doesnt - He knows everything that could happen and everything that will happen, yet He doesnt have knowledge of what would happen if such & such was the case. therefore the question 'if God knew the world would be so messed up as it is why didnt he create it in another way?' gets these theologians off the hook. the answer for them is He didnt know it would turn out this way - that if He were to place Adam & Eve in the Garden they would fall into sin, there would be a World War II etc.
on other hand Craig thinks there are powerful theological reasons to say God has this kind of knowledge.. Gen. 15:20 is the most powerful passage for God's sovereignty over human history.. God seemed to know here that if the brothers were to sell Joseph into slavery that Joseph would then rise to power in Egypt & so be in a position to rescue his family when famine hit Israel.. they meant it for evil & God meant it for good & so brought it to pass.. this isnt also isolated incident in the OT - in OT there is a very strong sense of divine sovereignty & providence such that God is always in control - God isnt caught by surpise by the way things turn out but its a part of God's planning.. see Acts 4 - the apostles say everyone conspired against Jesus to do whatever His (God's) will & plan was to take place. so it wasnt an accident of history what happened to Jesus - it was the plan of God, to use likes of Herod & Pilate - God knew what Pilate would freely do if confronted with Jesus on trial & same with Herod etc.
What makes these examples remarkable (Joseph & Crucifixion) is that these concern sinful acts of human beings, so God couldnt have brought them about directly, unless we are willing to make God the author of sin. we cant say it was God who brought the wills of Joseph's brothers to do this heinous act & same with Pilate/Herod etc. so what this suggests is that God has this hypothetical knowledge explained above i.e. what these free agents would freely do in any circumstances He might place them in, so by placing those agents in those circumstances God knew exactly what they would do & thereby everything came about by his sovereign plan. on this view this means everything that happens in the world is known by God & is in a sense decreed by Him. but here we need to distinguish between God's DIRECT will & his PERMISSIVE will. everything in universe happens according to will of God but actions which are good are in God's direct will but evil actions are only in God's permissive will. so take Judas' betrayl - God's will is always that Judas would do the right thing (his primary will) - to make the moral choice. but knowing what Judas would freely do in those circumstances God allows/permits Judas to betray Jesus & He uses that sinful act to bring about Jesus' deliverance to the Romans.. similarly with Pilate's free decision to send Jesus to the cross & therefore bring about salvation for mankind via the crucifixion..
so through his directive will or permissive will everything that happens in universe is result of will of God, not accident.. He knew what every free creature would do under any set of circumstance He might place them in, so by placing certain persons in certain circumstances God can bring it about that his ends are ultimately achieved in human history, but through the free agency of human beings, so that you see this hypothetical knowledge provides the key to unlocking the mystery to this whole conondrum of divine sovereignty and human freedom.. many have puzzled how God can be sovereign & yet human beings be free - this hypothetical knowledge provides such a key to the puzzle..
this type of hypothetical knowledge is known as Middle Knowledge.. this is abit of a silly term for it being inbetween God's knowledge of what could be and what will be, and this inbetween is His knowledge of what would be.. to take an example He sees that if he had made Pierre to be one of the twelve disciple Pierre wouldnt of done very well - so knowing that He decided not to create him as one of the twelve.. that would illustrate God knowing what would happen if someone was put in certain circumstances & therefore deciding not to do it and, as a result, God does not know that Pierre will do these things as one of the disciples of Jesus. So there is a difference between things that could happen, would happen (under certain circumstances) & will happen..
now this kind of providence over human history is unimaginably complex.. just think what God would have to calculate in order to bring about a single event in human history i.e. the Allied victory at D-Day.. He would have to get in place an Eisenhower, a Hitler, all the various soldiers, British Empire, Third Reich etc. and since those also depend upon free decisions i.e. the exact time/place Churchill's parents would engage in secual intercourse so the right sperm-egg would produce a Winston Churchill - when you think of this its incomprehensible - ONLY an infinite mind could have this kind of providential control over history.. but God is omniscient - He knows an infinite number of truths & if He has this hypothetical knowledge, He not only has knowledge about all truths that will or could happen, He also has knowledge of an infinite number of truths of what would happen under certain circumstances.. so this knowledge, if true, redounds to the glory & majesty of God - as Craig contemplates it he finds himself awestruck & overwhelmed & expands his vision of God's perfection & majesty to think that His omniscience would be this great to encompass the providential planning of a world of free creatures to arrive at His purposes without abusing their freedom.. for that reason Craig thinks God does have this kind of knowledge.. it also illuminates Biblical texts..
question from audience about if God knew Joseph's brothers would sell him into slavery if put in certain circumstances & God then decreed to put them in such circumstances how does it then excuse God from causing such an evil act? Craig says the circumstances are freedom-permitting circumstances and they don't determine the choice - they're causally indeterminative circumstances & cos the circumstances dont determine the choice the agent is completely free to do or not do the action & therefore God is not causally determining them to do it & therefore its the agent who is responsible.. as stated earlier in any circumstances we find ourselves in God's primary will is we also do good/moral i.e. don't sell Joseph into slavery, but He knew they wouldn't.. an illustration on a human level to make the point clear - the FBI often conduct sting operations against criminals were they use this sort of hypothetical reasoning i.e. set up a circumstance where they try to sell/buy drugs from/to someone they suspect & so theyll set up a circumstance where that person is confronted with such an opportunity & when that person does so the FBI arrests them.. what these people always say is 'it was entrapment, i was trapped, they made me do it by putting me in that circumstance' - but the courts rule it was not entrapment - the person freely chose to do this is those circumstances & therefore they are culpable & can be prosecuted for the crime.. this illustrates it is not God who is author/responsible for sin of these people - they are freedom permitting circumstances, God wills they do the right thing under those circumstances & the fact they choose evil in those circumstances is entirely their free choice & they are culpable for it..
Craig thinks we all have this kind of hypothetical knowledge - Craig's wife knows if he were offered a plate of cookies or plate of liver & onions he would choose the second because he likes that and hates the first - God has this but just with absolute certainty..
how does God have this kind of knowledge? there are several models of divine foreknowledge of the future - one is that God has perceptual knowledge (i.e. looks & sees what is going to happen in future - thats a real problem), but Craig thinks its more a kind of conceptual understanding - He has the essential property of knowing only & all truths and, therefore, He just has knowledge of the future in virtue of knowing only & all truths and the idea of how He comes about it doesnt actually arise - its like asking how can God be omnipotent: how can He do everything it is logically possible to do? can't answer they're just essential attributes of God. So if there are truths about how people would freely behave under certain circumstances then, as an omniscient being, God would simply have to know these things as an essential property of His..
applied to theories of inspiration.. how could God inspire an inerrant scripture in such a way that it wouldn't reduce to mere dictation? the way would be if God knew what the authors of scripture would freely write under the circumstances in which they were placed.. that solution presupposes this doctrine - middle knowledge.. suppose God has high premium on inerrant scripture for mankind, maybe He'd have to permit all kinds of things to get Paul or John in the right circumstances where they would freely write this inerrant revelation of God - circumstances which might cause all other kinds of evils/sufferings in world, permitted in view of an inerrant scripture being produced - some evils which ripples we might be feeling today.. we have no idea what kind of things needs to achieve by permitting these kinds of evils/sufferings in the world.. perhaps its by no means obvious God can achieve the things in history He wishes to achieve without a World War II or a Holocaust.. if God wanted to get to goal A it seems fair to say He would do so in a way which minimized gratuitous suffering..
why did God then create a messed up world & not a better one? maybe cos God's options were limited - given He wanted free creatures & not puppets, it may be that they would of messed up any world that God could of created.. so that in any world that is feasible for God to create with free creatures in it, its possible that they would have sinned & messed up that world.. so its possible there isnt any world available to God that has this much good without also this much evil.. God's will may be that they do the right thing in any circumstance but nevertheless if they freely will to sin God permits them to do so but, in providence, He has selected a world which is more good than evil & results in His ends being achieved - a multitude of people in Heaven of every tribe, tongue & nation..
Sunday, 14 June 2009
mcgrath lectures notes
Alister McGrath Lecture Notes on some of Dawkins' ideas
Some of Dawkins' criticisms of religion:
1. if youre a real scientist that immediately impels you towards atheism
2. religion makes assertions that are grounded in faith, the sciences, on the other hand, are all about proving things to be so - so there is a tension between religion (i.e. about believing things that cannot be proven ) and the sciences (i.e. about rigorous, evidence based belief)
3. belief in God is not actually rational - it is produced by several possible mechanisms (i.e. the meme/virus of the mind) i.e. in some way another wise healthy mind is 'infected' by this idea of God & that leads to all kinds of complications - in the late 1990's this was certainly a very common thing to say
4. religion offers an impoverished view of the world i.e. believing in God leads you to view the world in a way that is less intellectually and aesthetically satisfying than if you do not believe in God
5. religion leads to evil
mcgrath wants to answer all of these points
before that a disclaimer..
a perpetuatual historical myth in particular that Dawkins holds to:
1. science & religion are locked into mortal kombat and only one of them will survive (which will inevitably be science, beating its superstitious alternatives) [someone like historian of science Ron Numbers will question this stereotype and will say there has never been a time when science & religion have been thus pitted against each other - they occasionally have their tensions & convergences - but it is always a nuanced & complex relationship, so to describe it as a consistent battle is simply misguided]
mcgrath's answers to the above points:
1. does science lead to atheism? dawkins thinks so, and he criticizes such scientists as physicist Freeman Dyson who, at some points, are positive about religion.. but why should science lead to atheism? surveys say about 40 percent of scientists believe in God, 20 percent are agnostics and 40 percent are atheists.. so Dawkins' conclusions do not fit the actual empirical data - if it is some kind of superhighway to atheism to be a scientist then why are so many scientists religious believers? for dawkins either these people are mad, bad, deluded or being deceitful for all kinds of significant purposes..
for McGrath an obvious point is that there appears to be no obvious reason why science leads to atheism, if it leads to anything at all - McGrath thinks it leads, if anything, to agnosticism: ie the evidence is not good enough to allow us to reach a secure decision one way or the other.
a basic problem with Dawkins here really has to do with the scientific method itself. nature is open to multiple interpretations - it can be interpreted atheistically, agnostically, theistically etc. but nature itself comples/constrains you to adopt none of those - it is maleable, its consistent with all but leads to none.. Huxley in the 1880's said that science was agnostic in that it puts aside theological claims, as well as anti-theological claims.. more recently Stephen Jay Gould, an atheist biologist-popularizer, did not derive his atheism from science and was completely adamant that science did not impel anyone towards atheism at all.. in a 1992 article he said: 'to say it for all my colleagues and for the umpeenth millionth time, science simply cannot by its legitimate methods ajudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm it nor deny it, we simply cannot comment on it as scientists.' he then named every evolutionary biologist he could think of from the nineteenth century and onwards and put them both into two piles, both of which were about the same size. the conclusion he drew was that either half my colleagues are stupid or Darwinism is compatible with religious beliefs and equally compatible with atheism. so hes saying it can be interpreted both ways but in itself and of itself it does not require either.
so McGrath's question to Dawkins in why this insistence that science leads to atheism? they do for some people, yes, but that they should do for all is a rather dogmatic judgement.
2. relationship between faith & evidence. Dawkins argues that faith is the great cop out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. McGrath, however, stopped being an atheist cos he felt it simply could not be reconciled with the evidence he saw around him in the world - does that mean he had not been thinking very hard? Dawkins says faith is not allowed to justify itself by arguments, but has Dawkins read Plantinga, Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Swinburne etc.? it seems like he could not have to make such a statement. he is right, however, that unthinking faith is an embarrasment, but he seems to be saying that if you believe in God you've never used your brain at all - but surely that is a presumptious conclusion that needs to be challenged.
can God's existence be proved? McGrath would say no, if by proof you mean shown with absolute certainty as for example i could prove Godel's theorem. but equally can God's existence be disporved? if you read the reviews for The God Delusion you can say alot of people dont think it is one of his best books. so the answer really is no, it cannot be disproved either - believing or disbelieving in God is a judgement of faith, it goes beyond the available evidence and we all do this all the time with many other things: its not a real problem. Dawkins seems to think everything needs to be absolutely proved and, as a result, ends up in some difficult situations. so whether or not God's existence can be proved is a stalemate.
are there limits to what science can prove? Dawkins argues science proves things with certainty and anything worth knowing can be proved by science and anything else i.e. belief in God is just delusion. we can find this view also in Russell: 'whatever knowledge is attainable must be attained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover, mankind can never know'. but in contrast Peter Medawar, nobel prize winner, in his book The Limits of Science says the inability of science to answer child-like questions like 'how did everything begin, what are we here for, what is the point of life?' etc. show its limits. hes not criticizing the sciences at all, just saying they are superb in their sphere of operation, the problems only begin when scientists start extrapolating to other areas, answering questions which really science cannot answer at all.
3. is God a virus or a meme?
Dawkins greatest impact upon popular culture has been through this concept of the meme - the meme is a cultural replicator paralleling the gene in genetics. he asks us to imagine here memes 'leaping from brain to brain', a powerful visual image of a process called 'immitation'. his basic argument is that people believe in God not because there is a God & not because theyve given it long & careful rational thought but because something has leapt into their minds, this meme. it has a very high survival value, is very adaptive/successful and simply takes people over. the argument goes that this 'God meme' is what sustains belief in God in an age when science has made belief in that God simply untenable. an interesting idea that has been discussed alot. but the judgement of most is that the meme is not a particuarly helpful idea at all.
Dawkins has done an enormous amount to popularize the concept. we find the idea back in The Selfish Gene and is applied immediately to a religious concept back in 1976 where he talks of the 'God meme' and he develops this in subsequent writings.
four problems for memes:
i. theres a serious question about whether cultural evolution be though of as even Darwinian at all. or does evolutionary biology have any particular value in relation to the history of ideas?
ii. there is no direct experimental evidence for the existence of memes itself.
iii. the case for the existence of the meme, from 1976 up until now, rests upon an analogy.with the gene. but the analogy proves incapable of bearing the weight dawkins wishes to put upon it.
iv. gene has to be proposed to explain what we observe, with the meme the observational data can be explained perfectly well without the need for invoking the meme at all.
each point in more depth.
i. is cultural development/evolution Darwinian? back in 1978 McGrath found Dawkins' idea of meme immensely intriguing and far more satisfactory and scientifically rigorous that any of the models in the humanities about the history of ideas. some difficulties emerged in looking at cultural history i.e. one in the Italian Reneissance. here is a classic case of cultural evolution - a reappropriation of the past, a redirection/remoulding - taking old ideas/values & giving them a new lease of life. but that reappropriation of the past was deliberate, intentional & planned - those who were concerned to advance the Renaissance were quite clear that they were doing it deliberately and the difficulty here is that this points to Lamarckian, rather than Darwinian, conception of evolution if it points to anything at all. but more likely it simply means evolutionary biology has not much relevance to cultural development at all.
ii. do means actually exist? Dawkins talks about this is his preface to Susan Blackmore's book The Meme Machine (1999), here he very honestly lays out some problems for the hypothesis i.e. what are memes made of? where do they reside? memes havent found a Watson or a Crick. genes are to be found in precise locations of chromosomes, memes presumably exist in brains & we have even less chance of seeing one than we have of seeing the gene - though there have been neurobiological conjections of what they might look like. the real point here is there is no compelling evidence to believe in these things at all.
genes can be seen, their transmission patterns can be studied under rigorous empirical conditions, what may have started off as hypothetical constructs inferred from systematic ovservation ended up by being observed themselves. the problem is memes are hypothetical constructs inferred from observation and it turns out they are unobservable and, in McGrath's view, serve little explanatory purpose.
iii. biological evolution requries a replicator we now know exists called the gene, so by analogy cultural evolution also requires a replicator which is hypothesized to be the meme. analogy is always somewhat lose in terms of its thinking. but these arguments are dangerous - think of 19th century physics, sound was known to have to move through a medium and wasnt light analogous to sound & so didnt light need a medium to travel through also? this lead to the long & abortive search for the luminous aether began and ended very quickly. an analogy may seem to exist but it does require to be verified.
Simon Conway Morris states in Life's Solution, p.324: 'memes are trivial, to be banished by simple mental exercises. in any wider context they are hopelessly if not hilariously simplistic. to conjure up memes not only reveals a strange indecision of thought but, as O'Hair has remarked, if memes really existed they would ultimately deny the reality of reflective thought.
the real difficulty as Martin Gardner is that a meme is so broadly defined by its proponents that it is a fairly useless concept - whatever can be explained by memes can be explained in other, perhaps more economical ways. this point leads to the fourth criticism:
iv. there are other models available from economics and anthropology which offer explanations of cultural evolution much more successfully than memes.
Dawkins then goes onto saying that God is a virus of the mind.
Virus used also in an analogical sense - belief in God is like a virus being spread from one individual to another. Virus here is obviously a word with highly negative connotations. BUT, again, real viruses can be seen and Dawkins' hypothetical virus of the mind has never been seen - an obvious problem. in the real world virus' are not known simply by symptoms or patterns of diffusion, but by being detectable/subjected to rigorous empirical investigation and their genetic structure being characterized. In contrast God, or anything, as a virus of the mind, again, is hypothetical - posited by a questionable analogical argument rather than direct observation.
it appears here with both that Dawkins leaves himself open to the suggestion that there is an atheism virus or an atheism meme as much as there is a God meme or God virus.
4. does religion impoversih our view of the universe? does the theist look at the world in a less exciting way than if we look at it without God?
in Unweaving the Rainbow he writes:
'the universe is genuinely mysterious, grand, beautiful, awe-inspiring but the kinds of view of the universe that religious people have embraced have been puny, pathetic & measely in comparison. the universe presented by organized religions is a poky, medieval universe & extremely limited.'
this idea also recurrs in The God Delusion.
in response Dawkins simply asserts this & doesnt argue the point. a Christian has at least a good a reading of nature as Dawkins does. first point we see something beautiful (ie a scene of natural beauty) and your heart misses a leap - before you understand what it is you know that experience - we all have it: Dawkins, McGrath & everyone - but what does believing/not believing in God have to do with it? secondly there is a sense of wonder at the theoretical representation of nature, in other words the theories/equations/mathematics that describes nature so well - but again why does believing in God stop you having this sense of wonder at theory? surely atheist & theist alike can have it. thirdly if youre a Christian you see nature not simply as nature but as God's creation that in someway reflects the beauty/glory of God (see Psalm 19) - so an added motivation to study nature is that by engaging in God's works you are learning more about God Himself and this has been a driving force for many scientists/scientific studies throughout history of science.
5. religion is a bad thing. McGrath thinks Dawkins is right to say religion has caused a huge number of problems. think of 9/11 - religious element involved in that. 9/11 for Dawkins was a catalyst for writing The God Delusion. Robert Pape (whose conclusion here we could argue with - which, as an aside, personally i probably would) has looked at suicide bombing and said that religion is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for suicide bombing - he says its oppressed people groups who feel they have to large army to fight against a greater power that may be occupying their land/territory. but there is a debate about this and McGrath thinks Dawkins takes a complex debate and simplifies it into one issue only - it is more complicated than that though.
religion has done bad things but McGrath says so has atheism in the 20th century - but in God Delusion Dawkins denies this. but how can we deny this? in 1919-1941 95% of soviet churches were dynamited or bulldozed, the same number of soviet priests were liquidated. religion on its own or atheism on its own dont cause us to do bad things but perhaps theres just something about human nature itself that causes us to do both great and dreadful things..
an example McGrath studied chemistry at Oxford, there he read a book by man & wife Feser & Feser - Feser the man did alot of work to help haemopheliacs - and his work shows that science has the capacity to transform man for the better - but its not quite that simple.. in 1942 he also invented napalm, which killed hundreds of thousands of people in World War II.. do we conclude science is evil from that? maybe, but maybe its just there is a shadow side to all of us and we need to recognize that and work to eliminate it..
one of the things that troubles McGrath about Dawkins' book The God Delusion is that, in a 400 page book, refuses to acknowledge religion has done anything positive - even one thing at all Michael Shermer, president of the American Skeptics Society, on the other hand has admitted that though he may not like religion overall it has done a huge amount of good in peoples lives. so Dawkins doesnt seem to want to confront the evidence honestly, despite his rhetoric about considering evidence.
the real issue for McGrath is extremism and the issue is how to minimize extremism in our society.
also Dawkins is clear science has no methods for deciding what is ethical - most scientists would agree.. but if it cant tell us what is right & wrong what does? an acknowledgment to the limits of science maybe.. but a question arising from this is how do we tell religion is bad empirically? this has become object of intense study in last 15 years - what objective measures can we use to show this? maybe something like general levels of wellbeings & longevity - studies which have been done.. it is an ongoing field of research still happening, but looking at the evidence - in 100 peer-reviewed researchers looking at this question, the pattern emerged that 79 of those studies reported at least one positive correlation between religious involvement & well being.. 20 showed a mixed pattern (or no pattern) and only 1 found a negative association between religion & wellbeing.. this doesnt prove God exists - but surely if Dawkins is right about religion being a bad thing these figures should be the other way around.. Dawkins is aware of this &, in The God Delusion, he has an inadequate discussion of this - he says religion may not necessarily be bad for you but that doesnt prove its right..
Dawkins argues that if religion would be eliminated then the world would be liberated from all the conflicts we have had recently.. but what about the French Revolution? 1792 a french woman is being beheaded on guillotine, she sees the statue of liberty in the distance, points to it and says 'liberty, what crimes are committed in your name'.. the point she was making was that basically the French had elevated liberty to the place of God and if you kick God out you put something else in His place - its all about transcendentalization.. we take something and make it as if it were God & sacred i.e. citizenship, race, tribe, liberty etc. can all take this role.. humanity has been very good at taking divisions and making theoretical justifications for them - that wont change even if religion were to be eradicated.
Some of Dawkins' criticisms of religion:
1. if youre a real scientist that immediately impels you towards atheism
2. religion makes assertions that are grounded in faith, the sciences, on the other hand, are all about proving things to be so - so there is a tension between religion (i.e. about believing things that cannot be proven ) and the sciences (i.e. about rigorous, evidence based belief)
3. belief in God is not actually rational - it is produced by several possible mechanisms (i.e. the meme/virus of the mind) i.e. in some way another wise healthy mind is 'infected' by this idea of God & that leads to all kinds of complications - in the late 1990's this was certainly a very common thing to say
4. religion offers an impoverished view of the world i.e. believing in God leads you to view the world in a way that is less intellectually and aesthetically satisfying than if you do not believe in God
5. religion leads to evil
mcgrath wants to answer all of these points
before that a disclaimer..
a perpetuatual historical myth in particular that Dawkins holds to:
1. science & religion are locked into mortal kombat and only one of them will survive (which will inevitably be science, beating its superstitious alternatives) [someone like historian of science Ron Numbers will question this stereotype and will say there has never been a time when science & religion have been thus pitted against each other - they occasionally have their tensions & convergences - but it is always a nuanced & complex relationship, so to describe it as a consistent battle is simply misguided]
mcgrath's answers to the above points:
1. does science lead to atheism? dawkins thinks so, and he criticizes such scientists as physicist Freeman Dyson who, at some points, are positive about religion.. but why should science lead to atheism? surveys say about 40 percent of scientists believe in God, 20 percent are agnostics and 40 percent are atheists.. so Dawkins' conclusions do not fit the actual empirical data - if it is some kind of superhighway to atheism to be a scientist then why are so many scientists religious believers? for dawkins either these people are mad, bad, deluded or being deceitful for all kinds of significant purposes..
for McGrath an obvious point is that there appears to be no obvious reason why science leads to atheism, if it leads to anything at all - McGrath thinks it leads, if anything, to agnosticism: ie the evidence is not good enough to allow us to reach a secure decision one way or the other.
a basic problem with Dawkins here really has to do with the scientific method itself. nature is open to multiple interpretations - it can be interpreted atheistically, agnostically, theistically etc. but nature itself comples/constrains you to adopt none of those - it is maleable, its consistent with all but leads to none.. Huxley in the 1880's said that science was agnostic in that it puts aside theological claims, as well as anti-theological claims.. more recently Stephen Jay Gould, an atheist biologist-popularizer, did not derive his atheism from science and was completely adamant that science did not impel anyone towards atheism at all.. in a 1992 article he said: 'to say it for all my colleagues and for the umpeenth millionth time, science simply cannot by its legitimate methods ajudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm it nor deny it, we simply cannot comment on it as scientists.' he then named every evolutionary biologist he could think of from the nineteenth century and onwards and put them both into two piles, both of which were about the same size. the conclusion he drew was that either half my colleagues are stupid or Darwinism is compatible with religious beliefs and equally compatible with atheism. so hes saying it can be interpreted both ways but in itself and of itself it does not require either.
so McGrath's question to Dawkins in why this insistence that science leads to atheism? they do for some people, yes, but that they should do for all is a rather dogmatic judgement.
2. relationship between faith & evidence. Dawkins argues that faith is the great cop out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. McGrath, however, stopped being an atheist cos he felt it simply could not be reconciled with the evidence he saw around him in the world - does that mean he had not been thinking very hard? Dawkins says faith is not allowed to justify itself by arguments, but has Dawkins read Plantinga, Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Swinburne etc.? it seems like he could not have to make such a statement. he is right, however, that unthinking faith is an embarrasment, but he seems to be saying that if you believe in God you've never used your brain at all - but surely that is a presumptious conclusion that needs to be challenged.
can God's existence be proved? McGrath would say no, if by proof you mean shown with absolute certainty as for example i could prove Godel's theorem. but equally can God's existence be disporved? if you read the reviews for The God Delusion you can say alot of people dont think it is one of his best books. so the answer really is no, it cannot be disproved either - believing or disbelieving in God is a judgement of faith, it goes beyond the available evidence and we all do this all the time with many other things: its not a real problem. Dawkins seems to think everything needs to be absolutely proved and, as a result, ends up in some difficult situations. so whether or not God's existence can be proved is a stalemate.
are there limits to what science can prove? Dawkins argues science proves things with certainty and anything worth knowing can be proved by science and anything else i.e. belief in God is just delusion. we can find this view also in Russell: 'whatever knowledge is attainable must be attained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover, mankind can never know'. but in contrast Peter Medawar, nobel prize winner, in his book The Limits of Science says the inability of science to answer child-like questions like 'how did everything begin, what are we here for, what is the point of life?' etc. show its limits. hes not criticizing the sciences at all, just saying they are superb in their sphere of operation, the problems only begin when scientists start extrapolating to other areas, answering questions which really science cannot answer at all.
3. is God a virus or a meme?
Dawkins greatest impact upon popular culture has been through this concept of the meme - the meme is a cultural replicator paralleling the gene in genetics. he asks us to imagine here memes 'leaping from brain to brain', a powerful visual image of a process called 'immitation'. his basic argument is that people believe in God not because there is a God & not because theyve given it long & careful rational thought but because something has leapt into their minds, this meme. it has a very high survival value, is very adaptive/successful and simply takes people over. the argument goes that this 'God meme' is what sustains belief in God in an age when science has made belief in that God simply untenable. an interesting idea that has been discussed alot. but the judgement of most is that the meme is not a particuarly helpful idea at all.
Dawkins has done an enormous amount to popularize the concept. we find the idea back in The Selfish Gene and is applied immediately to a religious concept back in 1976 where he talks of the 'God meme' and he develops this in subsequent writings.
four problems for memes:
i. theres a serious question about whether cultural evolution be though of as even Darwinian at all. or does evolutionary biology have any particular value in relation to the history of ideas?
ii. there is no direct experimental evidence for the existence of memes itself.
iii. the case for the existence of the meme, from 1976 up until now, rests upon an analogy.with the gene. but the analogy proves incapable of bearing the weight dawkins wishes to put upon it.
iv. gene has to be proposed to explain what we observe, with the meme the observational data can be explained perfectly well without the need for invoking the meme at all.
each point in more depth.
i. is cultural development/evolution Darwinian? back in 1978 McGrath found Dawkins' idea of meme immensely intriguing and far more satisfactory and scientifically rigorous that any of the models in the humanities about the history of ideas. some difficulties emerged in looking at cultural history i.e. one in the Italian Reneissance. here is a classic case of cultural evolution - a reappropriation of the past, a redirection/remoulding - taking old ideas/values & giving them a new lease of life. but that reappropriation of the past was deliberate, intentional & planned - those who were concerned to advance the Renaissance were quite clear that they were doing it deliberately and the difficulty here is that this points to Lamarckian, rather than Darwinian, conception of evolution if it points to anything at all. but more likely it simply means evolutionary biology has not much relevance to cultural development at all.
ii. do means actually exist? Dawkins talks about this is his preface to Susan Blackmore's book The Meme Machine (1999), here he very honestly lays out some problems for the hypothesis i.e. what are memes made of? where do they reside? memes havent found a Watson or a Crick. genes are to be found in precise locations of chromosomes, memes presumably exist in brains & we have even less chance of seeing one than we have of seeing the gene - though there have been neurobiological conjections of what they might look like. the real point here is there is no compelling evidence to believe in these things at all.
genes can be seen, their transmission patterns can be studied under rigorous empirical conditions, what may have started off as hypothetical constructs inferred from systematic ovservation ended up by being observed themselves. the problem is memes are hypothetical constructs inferred from observation and it turns out they are unobservable and, in McGrath's view, serve little explanatory purpose.
iii. biological evolution requries a replicator we now know exists called the gene, so by analogy cultural evolution also requires a replicator which is hypothesized to be the meme. analogy is always somewhat lose in terms of its thinking. but these arguments are dangerous - think of 19th century physics, sound was known to have to move through a medium and wasnt light analogous to sound & so didnt light need a medium to travel through also? this lead to the long & abortive search for the luminous aether began and ended very quickly. an analogy may seem to exist but it does require to be verified.
Simon Conway Morris states in Life's Solution, p.324: 'memes are trivial, to be banished by simple mental exercises. in any wider context they are hopelessly if not hilariously simplistic. to conjure up memes not only reveals a strange indecision of thought but, as O'Hair has remarked, if memes really existed they would ultimately deny the reality of reflective thought.
the real difficulty as Martin Gardner is that a meme is so broadly defined by its proponents that it is a fairly useless concept - whatever can be explained by memes can be explained in other, perhaps more economical ways. this point leads to the fourth criticism:
iv. there are other models available from economics and anthropology which offer explanations of cultural evolution much more successfully than memes.
Dawkins then goes onto saying that God is a virus of the mind.
Virus used also in an analogical sense - belief in God is like a virus being spread from one individual to another. Virus here is obviously a word with highly negative connotations. BUT, again, real viruses can be seen and Dawkins' hypothetical virus of the mind has never been seen - an obvious problem. in the real world virus' are not known simply by symptoms or patterns of diffusion, but by being detectable/subjected to rigorous empirical investigation and their genetic structure being characterized. In contrast God, or anything, as a virus of the mind, again, is hypothetical - posited by a questionable analogical argument rather than direct observation.
it appears here with both that Dawkins leaves himself open to the suggestion that there is an atheism virus or an atheism meme as much as there is a God meme or God virus.
4. does religion impoversih our view of the universe? does the theist look at the world in a less exciting way than if we look at it without God?
in Unweaving the Rainbow he writes:
'the universe is genuinely mysterious, grand, beautiful, awe-inspiring but the kinds of view of the universe that religious people have embraced have been puny, pathetic & measely in comparison. the universe presented by organized religions is a poky, medieval universe & extremely limited.'
this idea also recurrs in The God Delusion.
in response Dawkins simply asserts this & doesnt argue the point. a Christian has at least a good a reading of nature as Dawkins does. first point we see something beautiful (ie a scene of natural beauty) and your heart misses a leap - before you understand what it is you know that experience - we all have it: Dawkins, McGrath & everyone - but what does believing/not believing in God have to do with it? secondly there is a sense of wonder at the theoretical representation of nature, in other words the theories/equations/mathematics that describes nature so well - but again why does believing in God stop you having this sense of wonder at theory? surely atheist & theist alike can have it. thirdly if youre a Christian you see nature not simply as nature but as God's creation that in someway reflects the beauty/glory of God (see Psalm 19) - so an added motivation to study nature is that by engaging in God's works you are learning more about God Himself and this has been a driving force for many scientists/scientific studies throughout history of science.
5. religion is a bad thing. McGrath thinks Dawkins is right to say religion has caused a huge number of problems. think of 9/11 - religious element involved in that. 9/11 for Dawkins was a catalyst for writing The God Delusion. Robert Pape (whose conclusion here we could argue with - which, as an aside, personally i probably would) has looked at suicide bombing and said that religion is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for suicide bombing - he says its oppressed people groups who feel they have to large army to fight against a greater power that may be occupying their land/territory. but there is a debate about this and McGrath thinks Dawkins takes a complex debate and simplifies it into one issue only - it is more complicated than that though.
religion has done bad things but McGrath says so has atheism in the 20th century - but in God Delusion Dawkins denies this. but how can we deny this? in 1919-1941 95% of soviet churches were dynamited or bulldozed, the same number of soviet priests were liquidated. religion on its own or atheism on its own dont cause us to do bad things but perhaps theres just something about human nature itself that causes us to do both great and dreadful things..
an example McGrath studied chemistry at Oxford, there he read a book by man & wife Feser & Feser - Feser the man did alot of work to help haemopheliacs - and his work shows that science has the capacity to transform man for the better - but its not quite that simple.. in 1942 he also invented napalm, which killed hundreds of thousands of people in World War II.. do we conclude science is evil from that? maybe, but maybe its just there is a shadow side to all of us and we need to recognize that and work to eliminate it..
one of the things that troubles McGrath about Dawkins' book The God Delusion is that, in a 400 page book, refuses to acknowledge religion has done anything positive - even one thing at all Michael Shermer, president of the American Skeptics Society, on the other hand has admitted that though he may not like religion overall it has done a huge amount of good in peoples lives. so Dawkins doesnt seem to want to confront the evidence honestly, despite his rhetoric about considering evidence.
the real issue for McGrath is extremism and the issue is how to minimize extremism in our society.
also Dawkins is clear science has no methods for deciding what is ethical - most scientists would agree.. but if it cant tell us what is right & wrong what does? an acknowledgment to the limits of science maybe.. but a question arising from this is how do we tell religion is bad empirically? this has become object of intense study in last 15 years - what objective measures can we use to show this? maybe something like general levels of wellbeings & longevity - studies which have been done.. it is an ongoing field of research still happening, but looking at the evidence - in 100 peer-reviewed researchers looking at this question, the pattern emerged that 79 of those studies reported at least one positive correlation between religious involvement & well being.. 20 showed a mixed pattern (or no pattern) and only 1 found a negative association between religion & wellbeing.. this doesnt prove God exists - but surely if Dawkins is right about religion being a bad thing these figures should be the other way around.. Dawkins is aware of this &, in The God Delusion, he has an inadequate discussion of this - he says religion may not necessarily be bad for you but that doesnt prove its right..
Dawkins argues that if religion would be eliminated then the world would be liberated from all the conflicts we have had recently.. but what about the French Revolution? 1792 a french woman is being beheaded on guillotine, she sees the statue of liberty in the distance, points to it and says 'liberty, what crimes are committed in your name'.. the point she was making was that basically the French had elevated liberty to the place of God and if you kick God out you put something else in His place - its all about transcendentalization.. we take something and make it as if it were God & sacred i.e. citizenship, race, tribe, liberty etc. can all take this role.. humanity has been very good at taking divisions and making theoretical justifications for them - that wont change even if religion were to be eradicated.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
C.S. Lewis, Naturalism & Idealism
After spending a good part of the past two years studying Idealism in one form or another (Kant, Hegel etc.), here are a couple of article i've read recently:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/04/its-just-so-obvious.html
http://www.stanford.edu/group/ww1/spring2000/Glenn/Lewis.htm
Edward Feser's piece is about how at the turn of the last (20th) century Idealism in some form was considered in academia as fairly obvious - so obvious, in fact, that no real argument was needed to be given for its truth.. interestingly Feser then goes on to compare this dogmatic attitude to present day naturalism - most academic philosophers (and academics in general) would today take the same stance: naturalism is so obvious it doesn't even need to be argued for anymore..
The second article is about C.S. Lewis' intellectual journey from atheism to theism, a significant part of which was his adherence to the Absolute Idealism of Hegel (and before that Berkeley and Plato), as a kind of stop-gap between the two worldviews.. it's interesting to note that Lewis was educated around the time that Feser is referring to in which Idealism was just 'taken for granted' as a worldview.. after studying Kant and Hegel myself, despite how impressive they are intellectually, i've found it extremely hard to see how anyone could really take their views seriously (and obviously most don't anymore, due to naturalism being the reigning academic paradigm)..
Interesting stuff.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/04/its-just-so-obvious.html
http://www.stanford.edu/group/ww1/spring2000/Glenn/Lewis.htm
Edward Feser's piece is about how at the turn of the last (20th) century Idealism in some form was considered in academia as fairly obvious - so obvious, in fact, that no real argument was needed to be given for its truth.. interestingly Feser then goes on to compare this dogmatic attitude to present day naturalism - most academic philosophers (and academics in general) would today take the same stance: naturalism is so obvious it doesn't even need to be argued for anymore..
The second article is about C.S. Lewis' intellectual journey from atheism to theism, a significant part of which was his adherence to the Absolute Idealism of Hegel (and before that Berkeley and Plato), as a kind of stop-gap between the two worldviews.. it's interesting to note that Lewis was educated around the time that Feser is referring to in which Idealism was just 'taken for granted' as a worldview.. after studying Kant and Hegel myself, despite how impressive they are intellectually, i've found it extremely hard to see how anyone could really take their views seriously (and obviously most don't anymore, due to naturalism being the reigning academic paradigm)..
Interesting stuff.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
A.N. Wilson reverts to theism
Famous ex-theist and now, it seems, ex-atheist A.N. Wilson explains his return to faith here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/conversion-experience-atheism
I remember reading Wilson's highly negative biography of C.S. Lewis about 10 or so years ago.. as a youngster who was obsessed with Tolkien, Lewis & all things Inklings and without much critical apparatus I don't think I really grasped how atrociously bad the biography was.. but, as Victor Reppert remarks on Dangerous Idea, hopefully now he'll rethink some of it..
http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/conversion-experience-atheism
I remember reading Wilson's highly negative biography of C.S. Lewis about 10 or so years ago.. as a youngster who was obsessed with Tolkien, Lewis & all things Inklings and without much critical apparatus I don't think I really grasped how atrociously bad the biography was.. but, as Victor Reppert remarks on Dangerous Idea, hopefully now he'll rethink some of it..
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Monday, 3 November 2008
the psychological relevance of logical laws
In his excellent little book C.S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea Victor Reppert outlines several different versions of the 'argument from reason' against physicalism. Besides some of the more well known ones, such as the problem of mental causation and Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (see here for a Plantinga lecture outline on the topic), there's an interesting one to do with the psychological relevance of logical laws. In essence what Reppert argues is that rational inference involves employment of the laws of logic, something which the physicalist cannot give an account for. These logical laws aren't physical (they pertain across all possible worlds, including ones with no physical objects) and they tell us what must be true in every possible world (i.e. the law of noncontradiction holds in all possible worlds). If this is the case then it appears one who accepts the laws of logic (which has to be done if you're to rationally infer one belief from another) must then accept some kind of non-physical, non-spatial, non-temporal abstract entities (at the very least some kind of Platonic forms).
It also has to be assumed we know these laws. But the physicalist can only accept some kind of causal interaction between the brain and the objects of its knowledge. If this is the case then the laws of logic must be physical (or how else can the brain causally interact with them?). But this can't be the case if these laws are, as already argued, non-physical, non-spatial, non-temporal entities. As Reppert points out some philosophers have given this kind of argument as to why we should be non-realists about numbers - we cannot be causally connected to them in a physical way either (numbers are prime examples of abstract objects). If we take this argument and apply it to the laws of logic neither should we be realists about them. But if we are going to contend that the laws of logic do not exist the glaring problem is, as Aristotle pointed out millennia ago, we cannot coherently assert that this is so without presupposing the laws we're trying to deny the existence of (i.e. the law of noncontradiction). So, to quote Reppert: "philosophical naturalism undermines the laws that are presupposed in the very assertion of philosophical naturalism."
More on this later.
It also has to be assumed we know these laws. But the physicalist can only accept some kind of causal interaction between the brain and the objects of its knowledge. If this is the case then the laws of logic must be physical (or how else can the brain causally interact with them?). But this can't be the case if these laws are, as already argued, non-physical, non-spatial, non-temporal entities. As Reppert points out some philosophers have given this kind of argument as to why we should be non-realists about numbers - we cannot be causally connected to them in a physical way either (numbers are prime examples of abstract objects). If we take this argument and apply it to the laws of logic neither should we be realists about them. But if we are going to contend that the laws of logic do not exist the glaring problem is, as Aristotle pointed out millennia ago, we cannot coherently assert that this is so without presupposing the laws we're trying to deny the existence of (i.e. the law of noncontradiction). So, to quote Reppert: "philosophical naturalism undermines the laws that are presupposed in the very assertion of philosophical naturalism."
Thursday, 30 October 2008
kripke's modal argument for (substance?) dualism
Im going to outline Saul Kripke's modal argument for a dualism of the mind and body. I've just started reading his famous book Naming & Necessity (based on a series of lectures he gave in the 1970's) for university, so perhaps all of the details I'm about to relay aren't one hundred percent accurate, but this is the general gist of what I think he's getting at.
His argument comes at the end of the book and it relies on the theory of names he'd already developed earlier on in the first chapter which, due to space, im not going to go into in any great detail. Essentially before Kripke (Frege & Russell being the two most prominent proponents) names were thought to be synonymous with a (cluster of) descriptions - for example 'Aristotle' would have been synonymous with 'teacher of Alexander the Great, student of Plato, writer of the Metaphysics etc.'. If this is the case then names are 'non-rigid' designators (to use Kripke's terminology) - the name 'Aristotle' thus considered in another possible world may not apply to the man who it actually designates in this the actual world, because in some other world Aristotle may have done none of the things he is famous for doing in this world. In some other possible world 'Aristotle' may pick out a totally different person who does all of the things Aristotle in this world is known for doing. For Kripke, however, proper names like 'Aristotle' turn out to be 'rigid' designators - they pick out the same person in all possible worlds, which means they aren't shorthand for a cluster of properties after all. Without going over his arguments as to why (I'll perhaps save them for a later blog), it also turns out that not only are proper names rigid designators, but also 'natural kind' terms are rigid designators - terms like 'gold', 'water', 'tiger' etc. pick out the same kind of thing in every world in which that thing exists.
The upshot of all this is that theoretical identity statements become necessary (they hold across all possible worlds in which those entities exist). So, for example, if 'lightning' and 'electrical discharge' pick out the same thing in this world (i.e. lightning just is an electrical discharge) then, necessarily, they pick out the same thing in every possible world - there cannot be a possible world in which lightning isn't an electrical discharge. Maybe in another world there is something like lightning which isn't an electrical discharge: something that has similair effects and a similair look to lightning, yet it just wouldn't be lightning. Why? Because, again, if the terms 'lightning' and 'electrical discharge' are 'rigid-designators', picking out the same thing in all worlds, and they are identical in at least one world then they must be identical in every world.
So how does all this relate to the contemporary mind-body problem? Well, the mind-body identity thesis is a form of materialism that holds that mental sensations just are physical brain processes. For example pain just literally is a c-fiber firing in the brain somewhere - it isn't anything over and above the physical process, it is identical with it in the same way lightning and electrical discharge or water and h20 are the same entity. So if the natural kind terms 'pain' and 'c-fiber' pick out the same thing in this world then necessarily pain must be a c-fiber firing in every possible world there is pain. This seems a strong claim, but the identity theorist may be willing to say this is just how it is. Kripke's argument against this conclusion is simply that we can conceive of a world in which there was a c-fiber firing without the corresponding feeling of pain (and vice versa, a pain with no c-fiber firing). The identity theorist may wish to explain this away by appealing to something like heat being identical to molecular motion. In some other world we can imagine the feeling of heat that we have now identified with molecular motion not existing - perhaps we have evolved in such a way that we can't feel this heat 'qualia' (sensation). In this case, though, it would appear we could still detect heat through detecting molecular motion. So the actual qualitative feeling of heat becomes a 'non-rigid' designator we use to pick out the phenomena of heat in this world - it is an 'accidental' property of heat (not necessary/essential to its nature of being heat), while its being molecular motion is essential to it. This means that if there were no molecular motion then there would be no heat, but the converse doesn't hold - if we (or any other observer) cannot experience the qualitative feel of heat there still could be heat if there was the required molecular motion occuring in that world. Kripke, however, thinks we cannot do a similair thing with pain and c-fiber firings. The felt quality of pain isn't something accidental to its being pain in the same way the felt quality of heat is accidental to it's being heat - if there is no felt quality of pain, yet a c-fiber still fires, we are compelled to say that it's not pain. In essence what is being said is that when we think of pain we don't think of a c-fiber firing as being something essential to it while its raw felt quality is something accidental to it's nature in the same way we see molecular motion being essential to heat while its felt quality is accidental. In that world where there is a c-fiber firing with no corresponding pain qualia and molecular motion with no corresponding heat qualia it appears we would be forced to draw two different conclusions: firstly that there is no pain in that world and secondly that there is still heat there.
Because the identity theorist cannot account for the above the identity theory of the mind and body is false and the mind really is distinct from anything physical. The identity theorist may reply that despite appearances it really isn't possible that a pain could be anything other than a c-fiber firing - which brings us into an area explored by the likes of David Chalmers and Stephen Yablo on whether sheer conceivability entails possibility (for a future post methinks).
Simple eh?
His argument comes at the end of the book and it relies on the theory of names he'd already developed earlier on in the first chapter which, due to space, im not going to go into in any great detail. Essentially before Kripke (Frege & Russell being the two most prominent proponents) names were thought to be synonymous with a (cluster of) descriptions - for example 'Aristotle' would have been synonymous with 'teacher of Alexander the Great, student of Plato, writer of the Metaphysics etc.'. If this is the case then names are 'non-rigid' designators (to use Kripke's terminology) - the name 'Aristotle' thus considered in another possible world may not apply to the man who it actually designates in this the actual world, because in some other world Aristotle may have done none of the things he is famous for doing in this world. In some other possible world 'Aristotle' may pick out a totally different person who does all of the things Aristotle in this world is known for doing. For Kripke, however, proper names like 'Aristotle' turn out to be 'rigid' designators - they pick out the same person in all possible worlds, which means they aren't shorthand for a cluster of properties after all. Without going over his arguments as to why (I'll perhaps save them for a later blog), it also turns out that not only are proper names rigid designators, but also 'natural kind' terms are rigid designators - terms like 'gold', 'water', 'tiger' etc. pick out the same kind of thing in every world in which that thing exists.
The upshot of all this is that theoretical identity statements become necessary (they hold across all possible worlds in which those entities exist). So, for example, if 'lightning' and 'electrical discharge' pick out the same thing in this world (i.e. lightning just is an electrical discharge) then, necessarily, they pick out the same thing in every possible world - there cannot be a possible world in which lightning isn't an electrical discharge. Maybe in another world there is something like lightning which isn't an electrical discharge: something that has similair effects and a similair look to lightning, yet it just wouldn't be lightning. Why? Because, again, if the terms 'lightning' and 'electrical discharge' are 'rigid-designators', picking out the same thing in all worlds, and they are identical in at least one world then they must be identical in every world.
So how does all this relate to the contemporary mind-body problem? Well, the mind-body identity thesis is a form of materialism that holds that mental sensations just are physical brain processes. For example pain just literally is a c-fiber firing in the brain somewhere - it isn't anything over and above the physical process, it is identical with it in the same way lightning and electrical discharge or water and h20 are the same entity. So if the natural kind terms 'pain' and 'c-fiber' pick out the same thing in this world then necessarily pain must be a c-fiber firing in every possible world there is pain. This seems a strong claim, but the identity theorist may be willing to say this is just how it is. Kripke's argument against this conclusion is simply that we can conceive of a world in which there was a c-fiber firing without the corresponding feeling of pain (and vice versa, a pain with no c-fiber firing). The identity theorist may wish to explain this away by appealing to something like heat being identical to molecular motion. In some other world we can imagine the feeling of heat that we have now identified with molecular motion not existing - perhaps we have evolved in such a way that we can't feel this heat 'qualia' (sensation). In this case, though, it would appear we could still detect heat through detecting molecular motion. So the actual qualitative feeling of heat becomes a 'non-rigid' designator we use to pick out the phenomena of heat in this world - it is an 'accidental' property of heat (not necessary/essential to its nature of being heat), while its being molecular motion is essential to it. This means that if there were no molecular motion then there would be no heat, but the converse doesn't hold - if we (or any other observer) cannot experience the qualitative feel of heat there still could be heat if there was the required molecular motion occuring in that world. Kripke, however, thinks we cannot do a similair thing with pain and c-fiber firings. The felt quality of pain isn't something accidental to its being pain in the same way the felt quality of heat is accidental to it's being heat - if there is no felt quality of pain, yet a c-fiber still fires, we are compelled to say that it's not pain. In essence what is being said is that when we think of pain we don't think of a c-fiber firing as being something essential to it while its raw felt quality is something accidental to it's nature in the same way we see molecular motion being essential to heat while its felt quality is accidental. In that world where there is a c-fiber firing with no corresponding pain qualia and molecular motion with no corresponding heat qualia it appears we would be forced to draw two different conclusions: firstly that there is no pain in that world and secondly that there is still heat there.
Because the identity theorist cannot account for the above the identity theory of the mind and body is false and the mind really is distinct from anything physical. The identity theorist may reply that despite appearances it really isn't possible that a pain could be anything other than a c-fiber firing - which brings us into an area explored by the likes of David Chalmers and Stephen Yablo on whether sheer conceivability entails possibility (for a future post methinks).
Simple eh?
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