Arguments in philosophy rarely achieve the status of full proofs, arguments that begin from premises known to be true and advancing by impeccable logic to a philosophically significant conclusion. Anyone familiar with my book on the argument from reason realizes that I do not make that kind of a claim on behalf of my own arguments against naturalism. Most of us think that it is a good day's work for a philosopher to provide a cumulative-case role-player, something that might "break the tie" if someone is on the fence between two positions, and in combination with other reasons, might provide a good reason for, say, believing in God or not believing in God.
The argument from evil seems to have a different status, at least in many minds. Many advocates of the argument from evil suppose that that argument, unlike your typical theistic on atheistic argument, really can stand on its own as a disproof of the existence of God, showing that all who believe in God are just being irrational. Plantinga is widely credited by both theists and atheists with showing that the argument does not achieve this goal.
Yet, I get the impression from some people that they really think that the argument from evil is something more than a cumulative case role-player, and I do not think that this claim is defensible. I am unsure as to whether the argument from evil can successfully play a role as a cumulative-case role-player, but I do not think it can do more than this.
At least what is known is the logical argument from evil (as opposed to the evidential argument from evil) was supposed to do.
Would anyone like to argue that it really is stronger than your average cumulative-case role player? That, virtually alone of all philosophical arguments, and regardless of all other considerations both pro and con, really provides beyond a reasonable doubt that God does not exist.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Lewis and Anscombe on distinguishing "irrational" from "nonrational"
In my book and in my 1989 essay, "The Lewis-Anscombe Controversy: A Discussion of the Issues," I discussed Anscombe's insistence that Lewis distinguish between irrational causes and non-rational causes. Irrational causes would be things like being bitten by a black dog as a child gives you a complex and causes you to believe that all black dogs are dangerous. Nonrational causes are physical events or physical causes. Now interestingly enough, when I wrote a paper on Lewis on ethical subjectivism back in grad school I noticed this passage from Part I of The Abolition of Man:
Now the emotion, thus considered by itself, cannot be either in agreement or disagreement with Reason. It is irrational not as a paralogism is irrational, but as a physical event is irrational: it does not rise even to the dignity of error.
Now, in this passage doesn't Lewis draw the exact distinction on which Anscombe insisted? The only difference here is that Lewis distinguishes two senses of the term "irrational" instead of distinguishing between irrational and nonrational. But was Lewis's usage of the term "irrational" wrong? Going to a dictionary definition of "irrational" (see link below) I think not. Nevetheless, Lewis changed from "irrational" to "nonrational" to accomodate Anscombe's criticism.
This is the dictionary entry:
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source
ir‧ra‧tion‧al /ɪˈræʃənl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[i-rash-uh-nl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective 1. without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason.
2. without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.
3. not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.
4. not endowed with the faculty of reason: irrational animals.
5. Mathematics. a. (of a number) not capable of being expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers.
b. (of a function) not capable of being expressed exactly as a ratio of two polynomials.
6. Algebra. (of an equation) having an unknown under a radical sign or, alternately, with a fractional exponent.
7. Greek and Latin Prosody. a. of or pertaining to a substitution in the normal metrical pattern, esp. a long syllable for a short one.
b. noting a foot or meter containing such a substitution.
–noun 8. Mathematics. irrational number.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Origin: 1425–75; late ME < L irratiōnālis. See ir-2, rational]
—Related forms
ir‧ra‧tion‧al‧ly, adverb
ir‧ra‧tion‧al‧ness, noun
—Synonyms 3. unreasonable, ridiculous; insensate.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006
In writing about this in my 1989 paper "The Lewis-Anscombe Controversy: A Discussion of the Issues," I conceded Anscombe's point but argued that since scientific knowledge depends crucially on our having knowledge that is inferred from other things we know, the distinction hardly sinks Lewis's argument. But I should have gone futher. The dictionary definition clearly shows that the word "irrational" can be used in both senses. Therefore any claim that Anscombe exposed a blunder on Lewis's part is clearly incorrect.
I am grateful to Jim Slagle for pointing this out.
Now the emotion, thus considered by itself, cannot be either in agreement or disagreement with Reason. It is irrational not as a paralogism is irrational, but as a physical event is irrational: it does not rise even to the dignity of error.
Now, in this passage doesn't Lewis draw the exact distinction on which Anscombe insisted? The only difference here is that Lewis distinguishes two senses of the term "irrational" instead of distinguishing between irrational and nonrational. But was Lewis's usage of the term "irrational" wrong? Going to a dictionary definition of "irrational" (see link below) I think not. Nevetheless, Lewis changed from "irrational" to "nonrational" to accomodate Anscombe's criticism.
This is the dictionary entry:
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source
ir‧ra‧tion‧al /ɪˈræʃənl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[i-rash-uh-nl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective 1. without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason.
2. without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.
3. not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.
4. not endowed with the faculty of reason: irrational animals.
5. Mathematics. a. (of a number) not capable of being expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers.
b. (of a function) not capable of being expressed exactly as a ratio of two polynomials.
6. Algebra. (of an equation) having an unknown under a radical sign or, alternately, with a fractional exponent.
7. Greek and Latin Prosody. a. of or pertaining to a substitution in the normal metrical pattern, esp. a long syllable for a short one.
b. noting a foot or meter containing such a substitution.
–noun 8. Mathematics. irrational number.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Origin: 1425–75; late ME < L irratiōnālis. See ir-2, rational]
—Related forms
ir‧ra‧tion‧al‧ly, adverb
ir‧ra‧tion‧al‧ness, noun
—Synonyms 3. unreasonable, ridiculous; insensate.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006
In writing about this in my 1989 paper "The Lewis-Anscombe Controversy: A Discussion of the Issues," I conceded Anscombe's point but argued that since scientific knowledge depends crucially on our having knowledge that is inferred from other things we know, the distinction hardly sinks Lewis's argument. But I should have gone futher. The dictionary definition clearly shows that the word "irrational" can be used in both senses. Therefore any claim that Anscombe exposed a blunder on Lewis's part is clearly incorrect.
I am grateful to Jim Slagle for pointing this out.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
From Jarrod Cochran on Bush's exploitation of Christian faith
To those of my friends and family who voted for Bush because he is "A Christian President", then this article is a very sad "I told you so". To those of my friends who realized just what a liar this man is, we have the sad knowledge that we were right all along (I have always hoped and wished that I was wrong on this one). Here's the transcript from the Oct. 11, 2006 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Oblermann where he discusses the new book by a former White House employee that worked for Bush's Faith-Based Initiative Office. Below the article is the link to the actual MSNBC TV footage. I wish I could say "enjoy the article," but hopefully all of us will be grabbing for the Maalox and asking God to keep us from cursing under our breath.
- Jarrod
_________________________________________________
FAITH NOT WORKS
From the October 11, 2006 edition of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on MSNBC TV
George W. Bush, in a recent televised conference stated that, “The stakes couldn’t be any higher, as I said earlier, in the world in which we live. There are…there are…there are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives.”
He was talking, of course, about extreme elements using religion in Iraq. But an hour later, Mr. Bush posed with officials from the Southern Baptist Convention. It is described as the largest, most influential Evangelical denomination in a new book by the former number two man in Bush‘s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. The book, “Tempting Faith,” not out until Monday.
In our third story tonight, a COUNTDOWN exclusive, we‘ve obtained a copy and it is a devastating work. Author David Kuo‘s conservative Christian credentials are impeccable, his resume sprinkled with names like Bennett and Ashcroft.
Now as the Foley cover-up has many Evangelical Christians wondering whether the GOP is really in sync with their values, “Tempting Faith,” provides the answer: no way.
Kuo citing one example after another of a White House that repeatedly uses Evangelical Christians for their votes, while consistently giving them nothing in return, a White House which routinely speaks of the nation‘s most famous Evangelical leaders behind their backs with contempt and derision.
Furthermore, Faith-Based Initiatives were not only stiffed on one public promise after another by Mr. Bush, the office itself was eventually forced to answer an even higher calling, electing Republican politicians.
Kuo‘s bottom line: the Bush White House is playing millions of American Christians for suckers.
According to Kuo, Karl Rove’s office referred to Evangelical leaders as “the nuts.” Kuo says, “…national Christians leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous’, ‘out of control’, and ‘just plain goofy.’” So how does the Bush White House keep “the nuts” turning out in the polls? One way: Regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Roberson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.
Kuo says, “Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending…advice was solicited. That advice rarely went much further than the conference call…the true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy.”
They did get some things from the Bush White House. Like the National Day of Prayer. “Another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says. And “…passes to be in the crowd greeting the President” when he arrived on Air Force One, or “…tickets for a speech he was giving” in their hometown. “Little trinkets like cufflinks, or pens, or pads of paper…” were passed out like business cards. “Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were.” According to Kuo, “Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”
When cufflinks were not enough the White House played “the Jesus card”, reminding Christian leaders that quote, “They knew the President’s faith…” and begging for patience.
And the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives? According to Kuo, “White House staff didn’t want to have anything to do with the faith-based initiative because they didn’t understand it anymore than did Congressional Republicans….they didn’t lie awake at night trying to kill it. They simply didn’t care.”
Kuo relates one faith-based “promise” after another: billions of dollars in funding and tax credits going unfulfilled year after promise after year. He recounts one specific funding exchange with Mr. Bush:
Bush exclaimed, “Eight Billion in new dollars?” to which Kuo replied, “No sir. Eight Billion existing dollars for which groups will find it technically easier to apply. But faith-based groups have been getting that money for years.”
Bush’s response? “Eight Billion. That’s what we’ll tell them. Eight Billion in new funds for faith-based groups…”
Why bother lying? Kuo says, “The Faith-Based Initiative…had the potential to successfully evangelize more voters than any other.”
According to Kuo, the office spent much of its time on two missions. One: Trying and failing to prove Mr. Bush’s claim against regulatory bias against religious charities hiring who they wanted. Quoting Kuo, “Finding these examples became a huge priority.” But “religious groups had encountered very few instances of actual problems with their hiring practices…it really wasn’t that bad at all.”
Another mission: Lobbying the President to make good on his own promises. How? Kuo says they tried to prove their political value by turning the once bi-partisan Faith-Based Initiatives into a political operation. It wasn’t just discrimination against non-Christian Charities. One official who rated grant applications for the Compassion Capital Peer-Review Panel told Kuo, “When I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero. …A lot of us did.”
The office was also, literally, a tax-payer funded part of the Republican campaign machinery. “In 2002,” Kuo says, the office decided to hold “roundtable events for threatened incumbents with faith and community leaders…using the aura of our White House power to get a diverse group of faith and community leaders to a ‘non-partisan’ event discussing how best to help poor people in their area.”
White House Political Affairs Director, Ken Mehlman, “…loved the idea and gave us our marching orders. There were twenty targets. Including Saxby Chambliss in Georgia and John Shempkist in Illinois.”
Mehlman devised a cover-up for the operation. He told Kuo, “…it can’t come from the campaigns. That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We’ll take care of that by having our guys call the office to request the visit.”
Kuo explains, “This approach inoculated us against accusations that we were using religion and religious leaders to promote specific candidates.”
Those “roundtable discussions” were a hit. Republicans won 19 out of those 20 races. 76% of Religious Conservatives voted for Saxby Chambliss over the decorated war hero Max Cleland. And Bush’s 2004 victory in Ohio, that “was at least partially tied to the conferences [they] had launched [there] two years before.”
By that time, Kuo had left the White House concluding, “It was mocking the millions of faithful Christians who had put their trust and hope in the President and his administration. Bush knew his so-called Compassion Agenda was languishing and had no problem with that.”
If you would question Mr. Kuo’s credibility, then you should know that his former boss also quite the White House, complaining in his one public interview that “politics drove absolutely everything in the Bush Administration.”
There is more - much more - revealed, in "Tempting Faith": how Jack Kemp was tricked into sounding like a religious conservative without even knowing it; Jerry Falwell's astonishing behavior at the 9/11 day of rememberance; and considerably more, as our COUNTDOWN exclusive on "Tempting Faith" continues here, tomorrow night.
- Jarrod
_________________________________________________
FAITH NOT WORKS
From the October 11, 2006 edition of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on MSNBC TV
George W. Bush, in a recent televised conference stated that, “The stakes couldn’t be any higher, as I said earlier, in the world in which we live. There are…there are…there are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives.”
He was talking, of course, about extreme elements using religion in Iraq. But an hour later, Mr. Bush posed with officials from the Southern Baptist Convention. It is described as the largest, most influential Evangelical denomination in a new book by the former number two man in Bush‘s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. The book, “Tempting Faith,” not out until Monday.
In our third story tonight, a COUNTDOWN exclusive, we‘ve obtained a copy and it is a devastating work. Author David Kuo‘s conservative Christian credentials are impeccable, his resume sprinkled with names like Bennett and Ashcroft.
Now as the Foley cover-up has many Evangelical Christians wondering whether the GOP is really in sync with their values, “Tempting Faith,” provides the answer: no way.
Kuo citing one example after another of a White House that repeatedly uses Evangelical Christians for their votes, while consistently giving them nothing in return, a White House which routinely speaks of the nation‘s most famous Evangelical leaders behind their backs with contempt and derision.
Furthermore, Faith-Based Initiatives were not only stiffed on one public promise after another by Mr. Bush, the office itself was eventually forced to answer an even higher calling, electing Republican politicians.
Kuo‘s bottom line: the Bush White House is playing millions of American Christians for suckers.
According to Kuo, Karl Rove’s office referred to Evangelical leaders as “the nuts.” Kuo says, “…national Christians leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous’, ‘out of control’, and ‘just plain goofy.’” So how does the Bush White House keep “the nuts” turning out in the polls? One way: Regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Roberson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.
Kuo says, “Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending…advice was solicited. That advice rarely went much further than the conference call…the true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy.”
They did get some things from the Bush White House. Like the National Day of Prayer. “Another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says. And “…passes to be in the crowd greeting the President” when he arrived on Air Force One, or “…tickets for a speech he was giving” in their hometown. “Little trinkets like cufflinks, or pens, or pads of paper…” were passed out like business cards. “Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were.” According to Kuo, “Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”
When cufflinks were not enough the White House played “the Jesus card”, reminding Christian leaders that quote, “They knew the President’s faith…” and begging for patience.
And the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives? According to Kuo, “White House staff didn’t want to have anything to do with the faith-based initiative because they didn’t understand it anymore than did Congressional Republicans….they didn’t lie awake at night trying to kill it. They simply didn’t care.”
Kuo relates one faith-based “promise” after another: billions of dollars in funding and tax credits going unfulfilled year after promise after year. He recounts one specific funding exchange with Mr. Bush:
Bush exclaimed, “Eight Billion in new dollars?” to which Kuo replied, “No sir. Eight Billion existing dollars for which groups will find it technically easier to apply. But faith-based groups have been getting that money for years.”
Bush’s response? “Eight Billion. That’s what we’ll tell them. Eight Billion in new funds for faith-based groups…”
Why bother lying? Kuo says, “The Faith-Based Initiative…had the potential to successfully evangelize more voters than any other.”
According to Kuo, the office spent much of its time on two missions. One: Trying and failing to prove Mr. Bush’s claim against regulatory bias against religious charities hiring who they wanted. Quoting Kuo, “Finding these examples became a huge priority.” But “religious groups had encountered very few instances of actual problems with their hiring practices…it really wasn’t that bad at all.”
Another mission: Lobbying the President to make good on his own promises. How? Kuo says they tried to prove their political value by turning the once bi-partisan Faith-Based Initiatives into a political operation. It wasn’t just discrimination against non-Christian Charities. One official who rated grant applications for the Compassion Capital Peer-Review Panel told Kuo, “When I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero. …A lot of us did.”
The office was also, literally, a tax-payer funded part of the Republican campaign machinery. “In 2002,” Kuo says, the office decided to hold “roundtable events for threatened incumbents with faith and community leaders…using the aura of our White House power to get a diverse group of faith and community leaders to a ‘non-partisan’ event discussing how best to help poor people in their area.”
White House Political Affairs Director, Ken Mehlman, “…loved the idea and gave us our marching orders. There were twenty targets. Including Saxby Chambliss in Georgia and John Shempkist in Illinois.”
Mehlman devised a cover-up for the operation. He told Kuo, “…it can’t come from the campaigns. That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We’ll take care of that by having our guys call the office to request the visit.”
Kuo explains, “This approach inoculated us against accusations that we were using religion and religious leaders to promote specific candidates.”
Those “roundtable discussions” were a hit. Republicans won 19 out of those 20 races. 76% of Religious Conservatives voted for Saxby Chambliss over the decorated war hero Max Cleland. And Bush’s 2004 victory in Ohio, that “was at least partially tied to the conferences [they] had launched [there] two years before.”
By that time, Kuo had left the White House concluding, “It was mocking the millions of faithful Christians who had put their trust and hope in the President and his administration. Bush knew his so-called Compassion Agenda was languishing and had no problem with that.”
If you would question Mr. Kuo’s credibility, then you should know that his former boss also quite the White House, complaining in his one public interview that “politics drove absolutely everything in the Bush Administration.”
There is more - much more - revealed, in "Tempting Faith": how Jack Kemp was tricked into sounding like a religious conservative without even knowing it; Jerry Falwell's astonishing behavior at the 9/11 day of rememberance; and considerably more, as our COUNTDOWN exclusive on "Tempting Faith" continues here, tomorrow night.
Steve Lovell Responds to John Loftus
I've taken this from the comment line to its own line.
Loftus' response (linked above) to my paper and subsequent comments is interesting.
I have attempted to defend a position I call Divine Nature Theory (DNT) which I will try to summarise here. DNT seeks to avoid the Euthyphro dilemma by saying that God's commands are rooted in his nature. This is intended to make morality dependant on God without making it arbitrary.
Questions then arise about how we come to our knowledge of morality and how we know that God is good.
My view is that God gave us the gift of conscience, and that we can (in general) trust our conscience even if we don't know that it was given to us by God.
In this way we can use our conscience to form moral beliefs ... including ultimately the belief that God is good. Here I've been charged with accepting an objectionable circularity. I admit the circularity, I only deny that it's objectionable.
Loftus comments that he thinks "inherent circularity in trying to defend the DNT points to the non-existence of God."
I'm not sure what exactly comes under the word "defend" here. The circularity appears in offering a justification of our belief that God is good which includes a description of the where our conscience has come from any why it's reliable. This justification is one that I offer within DNT and is a defence in the negative sense of showing how moral knowledge is possible on DNT. It is not a defense in the sense of an argument for DNT. Of course if there were no "negative" defense then a positive one would be out of the question ... but that's a different point.
Anyway, Loftus goes on to quote my common response here, which is an analogy with the evolutionary account of our senses. It goes like this ...
“It might be helpful to consider the similarities of a non-moral case: trusting our senses. One theory of why we should trust our senses is that natural selection would have eliminated species whose senses weren't reliable. But why should we accept this theory? Because it's confirmed by scientific data? But that data comes to us through our senses! The justification is circular.”
What would Loftus say if to me "the inherent "inherent circularity in trying to defend evolution points to the truth of creationism."?
If Loftus thinks the circularity involved in DNT counts against it, then surely this circularity is equally damaging to evolution.
Loftus' response here is:
"But is this really an analogous case for our moral faculties? We are able to justify our senses pragmatically, but that’s all. They seem to help us live and work and play in our world. Can we trust our senses to tell us what is real? No."
So the case is apparently not analogus because we cannot have anything but a pragmatic confidence in our senses. Does Loftus think that we can have more confidence (and not of a pragmatic kind) in our moral beliefs than in our beliefs based on our senses? If so, this is surely a very unusual position for an atheist.
I don't really see what else Loftus can mean by saying that the two cases aren't analogous. But perhaps his problem is just that while the analogy is a good one it can't do the work I want it to.
Presumably it wont do the work I want it to because beliefs based on our senses are trusted only pragmatically but I'm trying to defend a higher form of confidence for our moral beliefs.
Now I am trying to defend a higher form of confidence for our moral beliefs than a mere pragmatic confidence, but if this is Loftus' view then he has really given the game away ... since it would follow that on his view we can only have (at best) a pragmatic confidence in our moral beliefs, in other words our moral beliefs would be those we can get away with espousing. This doesn't seem to be a good way of arguing that Atheism can ground an objective morality just as well as Theism.
But perhaps Loftus is more confident in his moral beliefs than in those based on his senses. If so, I'd like to know where he thinks our moral beliefs come from and how such moral confidence is possible in a world of scepticism about both God and our senses.
Loftus' response (linked above) to my paper and subsequent comments is interesting.
I have attempted to defend a position I call Divine Nature Theory (DNT) which I will try to summarise here. DNT seeks to avoid the Euthyphro dilemma by saying that God's commands are rooted in his nature. This is intended to make morality dependant on God without making it arbitrary.
Questions then arise about how we come to our knowledge of morality and how we know that God is good.
My view is that God gave us the gift of conscience, and that we can (in general) trust our conscience even if we don't know that it was given to us by God.
In this way we can use our conscience to form moral beliefs ... including ultimately the belief that God is good. Here I've been charged with accepting an objectionable circularity. I admit the circularity, I only deny that it's objectionable.
Loftus comments that he thinks "inherent circularity in trying to defend the DNT points to the non-existence of God."
I'm not sure what exactly comes under the word "defend" here. The circularity appears in offering a justification of our belief that God is good which includes a description of the where our conscience has come from any why it's reliable. This justification is one that I offer within DNT and is a defence in the negative sense of showing how moral knowledge is possible on DNT. It is not a defense in the sense of an argument for DNT. Of course if there were no "negative" defense then a positive one would be out of the question ... but that's a different point.
Anyway, Loftus goes on to quote my common response here, which is an analogy with the evolutionary account of our senses. It goes like this ...
“It might be helpful to consider the similarities of a non-moral case: trusting our senses. One theory of why we should trust our senses is that natural selection would have eliminated species whose senses weren't reliable. But why should we accept this theory? Because it's confirmed by scientific data? But that data comes to us through our senses! The justification is circular.”
What would Loftus say if to me "the inherent "inherent circularity in trying to defend evolution points to the truth of creationism."?
If Loftus thinks the circularity involved in DNT counts against it, then surely this circularity is equally damaging to evolution.
Loftus' response here is:
"But is this really an analogous case for our moral faculties? We are able to justify our senses pragmatically, but that’s all. They seem to help us live and work and play in our world. Can we trust our senses to tell us what is real? No."
So the case is apparently not analogus because we cannot have anything but a pragmatic confidence in our senses. Does Loftus think that we can have more confidence (and not of a pragmatic kind) in our moral beliefs than in our beliefs based on our senses? If so, this is surely a very unusual position for an atheist.
I don't really see what else Loftus can mean by saying that the two cases aren't analogous. But perhaps his problem is just that while the analogy is a good one it can't do the work I want it to.
Presumably it wont do the work I want it to because beliefs based on our senses are trusted only pragmatically but I'm trying to defend a higher form of confidence for our moral beliefs.
Now I am trying to defend a higher form of confidence for our moral beliefs than a mere pragmatic confidence, but if this is Loftus' view then he has really given the game away ... since it would follow that on his view we can only have (at best) a pragmatic confidence in our moral beliefs, in other words our moral beliefs would be those we can get away with espousing. This doesn't seem to be a good way of arguing that Atheism can ground an objective morality just as well as Theism.
But perhaps Loftus is more confident in his moral beliefs than in those based on his senses. If so, I'd like to know where he thinks our moral beliefs come from and how such moral confidence is possible in a world of scepticism about both God and our senses.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Loftus on theological differences
Loftus on the differing views Christians have of many theological issues: Either God was not clear in his revelation about these issues, or the Holy Spirit isn't doing his job in illuminating the truth of the Bible, or God doesn't care what Christians believe.
VR: I think God wants to appeal to our wills and not simply fill our minds with information, and this seems to be furthered by not making everything "settled" by this that or the other Scripture. Let's take everlasting punishment as an example. I am prepared to take seriously the perspective of Tom Talbott, who thinks that it's essential to believe that God wants all to be saved and thinks God will eventually pull it off, even in the face of human free will. At the same time, I believe that sin doesn't reverse itself, it is not a minor detail, and if left unchecked it damages our relationship to God and to every other creature. That being the case, my inclination is to go agnostic on the question of hell. I accept the doctrine of hell as a perfectly accurate account about what happens to people if sin persists, I believe in a loving God bound and determined to save all, I think the passages saying that only Christ can save are there for a reason, and no attempt to "resolve" the relevant issues prematurely will be adequate. God has, in my view, left pieces of the truth around, and for our own good has refused to tell us how they fit together.
VR: I think God wants to appeal to our wills and not simply fill our minds with information, and this seems to be furthered by not making everything "settled" by this that or the other Scripture. Let's take everlasting punishment as an example. I am prepared to take seriously the perspective of Tom Talbott, who thinks that it's essential to believe that God wants all to be saved and thinks God will eventually pull it off, even in the face of human free will. At the same time, I believe that sin doesn't reverse itself, it is not a minor detail, and if left unchecked it damages our relationship to God and to every other creature. That being the case, my inclination is to go agnostic on the question of hell. I accept the doctrine of hell as a perfectly accurate account about what happens to people if sin persists, I believe in a loving God bound and determined to save all, I think the passages saying that only Christ can save are there for a reason, and no attempt to "resolve" the relevant issues prematurely will be adequate. God has, in my view, left pieces of the truth around, and for our own good has refused to tell us how they fit together.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Infidelguy interview cancelled
The interview I was going to do with the Infidelguy was cancelled a couple of weeks back, and it looks as if we will no tbe able to reschedule. This is NOT my fault, but I do not feel it necessary to discuss any of the details beyond that.
More Aristotle Notes
I. Against Plato’s forms
A. The forms are useless, and double the number of things that need to be explained
B. Forms cannot explain change
C. Forms cannot be the essence of that which they are separated from
D. It is not clear what it means for particulars to “participate” in forms
E. Third man argument. If there is a relation between the form of a chair and a chair, then doesn’t there have to be form of that relations, and the a form for the relation to the relation, and then a form for the relation to the relation to the relation, and then form of the relation to the relation of the relation to the relation, etc. etc, etc.
II. Transcendent versus Immanent Forms
A. If all the chair were to disappear in a nuclear war, for Plato the form of Chairness would continue to be
B. If all the chair were to disappear in a nuclear war, for Aristotle, for form of Chairness would be gone as well
III. Substances: What is real is the sum total of all the substances in the world
A. Substances consist of a whatness and a thisness.
1. The whatness picks out the universal properties of a thing. It makes a thing the thing that it is. The whatness is identified with the substance’s form.
2. The thisness of a substance picks out its matter. Hence for Aristotle, a rock is not a purely material object, as you might have thought, but rather a combination of matter and form.
IV. Change. Aristotle’s philosophy, unlike Plato’s, has a theory that accounts for change. A change is a change from potentiality to actuality.
V. A change has four causes. Those causes are the material cause, what the thing is made of, the efficient cause, what brought it to be the way it is, the formal cause, what the thing is, and the final cause, which is its purpose.
A. The forms are useless, and double the number of things that need to be explained
B. Forms cannot explain change
C. Forms cannot be the essence of that which they are separated from
D. It is not clear what it means for particulars to “participate” in forms
E. Third man argument. If there is a relation between the form of a chair and a chair, then doesn’t there have to be form of that relations, and the a form for the relation to the relation, and then a form for the relation to the relation to the relation, and then form of the relation to the relation of the relation to the relation, etc. etc, etc.
II. Transcendent versus Immanent Forms
A. If all the chair were to disappear in a nuclear war, for Plato the form of Chairness would continue to be
B. If all the chair were to disappear in a nuclear war, for Aristotle, for form of Chairness would be gone as well
III. Substances: What is real is the sum total of all the substances in the world
A. Substances consist of a whatness and a thisness.
1. The whatness picks out the universal properties of a thing. It makes a thing the thing that it is. The whatness is identified with the substance’s form.
2. The thisness of a substance picks out its matter. Hence for Aristotle, a rock is not a purely material object, as you might have thought, but rather a combination of matter and form.
IV. Change. Aristotle’s philosophy, unlike Plato’s, has a theory that accounts for change. A change is a change from potentiality to actuality.
V. A change has four causes. Those causes are the material cause, what the thing is made of, the efficient cause, what brought it to be the way it is, the formal cause, what the thing is, and the final cause, which is its purpose.
Monday, October 09, 2006
LInk to a Dissertation Defending Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism
If you want to do some really hard philosophical work you might want to read the defense of Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism found in this doctoral dissertation, reference by J. D. Walters, and with some discussion between J. D. and Blue Devil Knight.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Gert Korthof reviews Francis Collins
An interesting review of Francis Collins and a critique of Collins' Lewis-style moral argument. The witch-burning stuff is interesting. Lewis had argued that we don't believe that there are witches, but if we did think there were witches, and could prove who they were, they would have to be regarded as the worst of criminals, deserving the worst punishment that state could dish out. If we mean by "witches" not practicioners of some nature religion, but rather persons who used powers derived from Satan to do harm to others, I would have to agree. Of course we no longer practice methods of execution that inflict as much pain as burning, and I believe Lewis would agree that that is an improvement, but his and (I take it) Collins's point stands--that witches in the sense above defined would have to be treated as the worst criminals, assuming we had real ones on our hands and knew it.
Chandler replies to Jason
Jason writes:
This being the case, I think Lewis is _not_ avoiding saying that the Being composed of three persons can also be legitimately spoken of in the personal singular, i.e. as a single person.
Yes, of course Jason is right. But then,if God is a person composed of three people, doesn't that make FOUR people?
Or is God just those three people, and not, in himself, ANOTHER person?
I think Lewis has got himself in trouble by thinking of God as something COMPOSED OF three people. Presumably Anselm and Co. would say that God isn't composed of ANYTHING - not even the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Hugh
VR: Saying the Godhead is composed of anything is, I think a heresy. I'll have to look at the relevant passage to see if it is meant in a way as to make a heretical reading plausible.
This being the case, I think Lewis is _not_ avoiding saying that the Being composed of three persons can also be legitimately spoken of in the personal singular, i.e. as a single person.
Yes, of course Jason is right. But then,if God is a person composed of three people, doesn't that make FOUR people?
Or is God just those three people, and not, in himself, ANOTHER person?
I think Lewis has got himself in trouble by thinking of God as something COMPOSED OF three people. Presumably Anselm and Co. would say that God isn't composed of ANYTHING - not even the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Hugh
VR: Saying the Godhead is composed of anything is, I think a heresy. I'll have to look at the relevant passage to see if it is meant in a way as to make a heretical reading plausible.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Some previous dialogue on the Euthyphro
Since the Euthyphro dilemma has reared its head in a discussion, I thought I would track back to some previous dialogue involving Steve Lovell on the subject.
Lecture notes on Aristotle
I. Aristotle’s Life
II. Relationship to his teacher Plato:
A. While Plato’s philosophy is idealistic, inspiring, otherworldly and perfectionist, Aristotle’s is realistic, scientific, this-worldly and pragmatic.
B. Styles are different largely in virtue of what has survived. Plato’s dialogues survived, Aristotle’s lecture notes survived.
C. Picture of the School of Athens: Plato points up (to the Forms), Aristotle point down (at the world of our experience).
D. For Plato the model for knowledge is mathematics. For Aristotle it’s biology. What’s the difference? Biology relies extensively on observation.
E. Example: Plato’s social/political philosophy defines an ideal society. He doesn’t care if it’s attainable, and even tells you how it will fall apart if it is achieved. Aristotle’s looks at actual societies to see which ones work the best. He surveys 158 constitutions and decides which ones work the best in what circumstances.
III. Theory of knowledge
A. All human beings by nature desire to know.
B. For Plato there can be no science (rational discourse) of particular things.
For Aristotle there can be, in fact knowledge begins with the study of particular things.
C. It is a mistake to study an abstract quality in isolation form concrete exemplifications.
D. Presupposes that language and thought are congruent to the structure of reality. How could we understand nature if there is no affinity between nature and our minds?
E. The ten categories
1. What is it?
2. How large is it?
3. What is it like?
4. How is it related?
5. Where is it?
6. When does it exist?
7. What position is it in?
8. What condition is it in?
9. What is it doing?
10. How is it acted upon?
Would Plato ask the questions that have been put into the ten categories?
F. The discovery of logic, the science of arguments. Aristotle discovered that you could distinguish the form of an argument from the content of the argument. Aristotle put statements into categories and show how you can determine, based on the structure of an argument, whether or not the argument is valid.
1. An argument is valid, just in case, on the assumption that the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. If an argument is valid, the internal logic of the argument is solid. The argument can only be challenged externally, but attacking the truth of the premises
2. Validity is a matter of logical form. A valid argument can be given in favor of a false conclusion, or even in favor of a stupid conclusion.
3. Other argument forms to not reliably get true conclusions if the premises are true. There are invalid arguments.
G. First principles
1. Aristotle maintained that there were certain fundamental principles in every discipline. Although some people would like to think they can, or should, prove everything they believe, Aristotle realized that you can demand proof for the premises every time proof is offered, and impose an infinite regress. Some things are so basic as not to require proof.
2. An example would be the law of noncontradiction in logic, the claim that a statement and its contradictory cannot both be true. The trouble here is that any argument for the law of noncontradiction is going to assume the law of noncontradiction, and thereby be open to charge of being a circular argument. However, if someone doesn’t believe in the law of noncon, Aristotle will ask “Are you really saying that?” If the person says they are making a statement, then Aristotle will say that the person has implicitly accepted the law of non-contradiction. If the person says “No, I’m not really saying that,” then Aristotle says “Well, if you aren’t really saying anything, then I really have nothing to respond to,” and treat the person as a cabbage.
II. Relationship to his teacher Plato:
A. While Plato’s philosophy is idealistic, inspiring, otherworldly and perfectionist, Aristotle’s is realistic, scientific, this-worldly and pragmatic.
B. Styles are different largely in virtue of what has survived. Plato’s dialogues survived, Aristotle’s lecture notes survived.
C. Picture of the School of Athens: Plato points up (to the Forms), Aristotle point down (at the world of our experience).
D. For Plato the model for knowledge is mathematics. For Aristotle it’s biology. What’s the difference? Biology relies extensively on observation.
E. Example: Plato’s social/political philosophy defines an ideal society. He doesn’t care if it’s attainable, and even tells you how it will fall apart if it is achieved. Aristotle’s looks at actual societies to see which ones work the best. He surveys 158 constitutions and decides which ones work the best in what circumstances.
III. Theory of knowledge
A. All human beings by nature desire to know.
B. For Plato there can be no science (rational discourse) of particular things.
For Aristotle there can be, in fact knowledge begins with the study of particular things.
C. It is a mistake to study an abstract quality in isolation form concrete exemplifications.
D. Presupposes that language and thought are congruent to the structure of reality. How could we understand nature if there is no affinity between nature and our minds?
E. The ten categories
1. What is it?
2. How large is it?
3. What is it like?
4. How is it related?
5. Where is it?
6. When does it exist?
7. What position is it in?
8. What condition is it in?
9. What is it doing?
10. How is it acted upon?
Would Plato ask the questions that have been put into the ten categories?
F. The discovery of logic, the science of arguments. Aristotle discovered that you could distinguish the form of an argument from the content of the argument. Aristotle put statements into categories and show how you can determine, based on the structure of an argument, whether or not the argument is valid.
1. An argument is valid, just in case, on the assumption that the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. If an argument is valid, the internal logic of the argument is solid. The argument can only be challenged externally, but attacking the truth of the premises
2. Validity is a matter of logical form. A valid argument can be given in favor of a false conclusion, or even in favor of a stupid conclusion.
3. Other argument forms to not reliably get true conclusions if the premises are true. There are invalid arguments.
G. First principles
1. Aristotle maintained that there were certain fundamental principles in every discipline. Although some people would like to think they can, or should, prove everything they believe, Aristotle realized that you can demand proof for the premises every time proof is offered, and impose an infinite regress. Some things are so basic as not to require proof.
2. An example would be the law of noncontradiction in logic, the claim that a statement and its contradictory cannot both be true. The trouble here is that any argument for the law of noncontradiction is going to assume the law of noncontradiction, and thereby be open to charge of being a circular argument. However, if someone doesn’t believe in the law of noncon, Aristotle will ask “Are you really saying that?” If the person says they are making a statement, then Aristotle will say that the person has implicitly accepted the law of non-contradiction. If the person says “No, I’m not really saying that,” then Aristotle says “Well, if you aren’t really saying anything, then I really have nothing to respond to,” and treat the person as a cabbage.
Poll on pedophilia-good news for congressional Republicans
This is a poll showing that 10% of Canadians see nothing wrong with pedophilia. And if relativism is true, hey. Who's to say what's really right or wrong?
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Clayton on evil
Clayton wrote: I've got the numbers:
(1) There has been at least one event e in the history of the world such that anyone who could have prevented e would be morally required to do so.
(2) God never fails to fulfill a moral requirement.
(3) If God existed, e wouldn't have occurred.
(C) God doesn't exist.
Logically, it seems good to me. Let 'e' be the gang rape and butchering of a helpless woman in Darfur. Or, substitute some other event if you like.
Such an event is one God would be morally required to prevent and yet it happened.My question is whether you think God is obligated to prevent all occurrences of this type. Logically, one would have to say yes. However, this would have the implication that anyone who wanted to do something like commit a gang rape would be prevented from doing so. I don't see how God could do that without creating the World of Clockwork Orange, in which humans are systematically prevented from carrying out wrong actions. I think God has an interest in creating a world in which there free responses by human beings are free to make choice and where there are normal consequences for those actions, even if that means allowing gang rapes in Darfur and unjust invasions of Iraq.
Pre-emptive strike against the hidden goods response:
(a) If there were such hidden goods that would show that all things considered it would be wrongful to intervene on her behalf, God created us as utter moral imbeciles. Such a claim seems flatly inconsistent with the idea that God created us as morally responsible agents.(b)
Not moral imbeciles. Well, human beings with limited information. We must act not knowing all the effects of our actions. It's different with God. (I suppose some Christians, committed to the doctrine of Total Depravity, would say that we think there is unnecessary evil in the world because we are moral imbeciles). We are, however, somewhat morally challenged compared to the Almighty.
If God created a world in which her enduring such an event is a necessary part of bringing about some e' that is the hidden good, intuitively, it sounds as if God is using a person as a mere means to an end. Very un-Kantian.
Who died and made Kant the morality god? More seriously, in a heavenly future life everyone desires the happiness of everyone else, and therefore the feeling that one's intense suffering played a role in someone's enhanced ability to enjoy eternal life would also enhance my eternal life.
(c) To say that God should have let this happen to her or endorse a theory knowing this is an implication of such a theory seems to low a lack of respect for our fellow persons.
Not, on my view, if you think clearly about what it would take to prevent not only this tragedy, but all others like it.
If we ever got our hands on a person who could have prevented such a thing but didn't, we'd have a hard time preventing a mob from lynching him.
People who make comments like this seem to forget that we are talking about a being who is running the universe. Guaranteeing the nonoccurrence of a tragedy has many, far-reaching implications, implications that we as humans only have as small grasp of.
I take it that you think the reason my argument fails is that you can knowingly say:
(*) God was right to allow that woman to be gang raped and butchered.
I say that that's false and not for epistemic reasons. Now, you say that I'm making an appeal to emotion. It may well stir the emotions. Here's a question that I think is significant. I think you cannot be a decent person and believe (*). Any decent person should find that claim quite beyond belief. You would think that if theism were true, God would not put us in a position whereby the claims we are rationally compelled to endorse insofar as we believe in God's existence make us less than morally decent people. That is a second sort of argument and one that is distinct from my first numbered one.
On the contrary, I think you can be a decent person and believe that God, before the foundation of the world, predestined some to everlasting heaven and the rest to everlasting hell. (Though sometimes I wonder how they pull it off). I don't see that this affects one iota my desire to alleviate suffering, or to act in compassionate ways. Mother Teresa was someone who believed, surely, that God had permitted the great sufferings of the people with whom she dealt, but she also believed that God wanted her to do all she could to decrease the suffering of those people. Just because I think God sometimes allows the human race to be scourged does not mean that I am raising my hand volunteering for the job of being the Scourge of God.
And, kudos to Clayton for meeting the terms of my challenge. I was starting to think that the argument from evil was just an emotional objection.
(1) There has been at least one event e in the history of the world such that anyone who could have prevented e would be morally required to do so.
(2) God never fails to fulfill a moral requirement.
(3) If God existed, e wouldn't have occurred.
(C) God doesn't exist.
Logically, it seems good to me. Let 'e' be the gang rape and butchering of a helpless woman in Darfur. Or, substitute some other event if you like.
Such an event is one God would be morally required to prevent and yet it happened.My question is whether you think God is obligated to prevent all occurrences of this type. Logically, one would have to say yes. However, this would have the implication that anyone who wanted to do something like commit a gang rape would be prevented from doing so. I don't see how God could do that without creating the World of Clockwork Orange, in which humans are systematically prevented from carrying out wrong actions. I think God has an interest in creating a world in which there free responses by human beings are free to make choice and where there are normal consequences for those actions, even if that means allowing gang rapes in Darfur and unjust invasions of Iraq.
Pre-emptive strike against the hidden goods response:
(a) If there were such hidden goods that would show that all things considered it would be wrongful to intervene on her behalf, God created us as utter moral imbeciles. Such a claim seems flatly inconsistent with the idea that God created us as morally responsible agents.(b)
Not moral imbeciles. Well, human beings with limited information. We must act not knowing all the effects of our actions. It's different with God. (I suppose some Christians, committed to the doctrine of Total Depravity, would say that we think there is unnecessary evil in the world because we are moral imbeciles). We are, however, somewhat morally challenged compared to the Almighty.
If God created a world in which her enduring such an event is a necessary part of bringing about some e' that is the hidden good, intuitively, it sounds as if God is using a person as a mere means to an end. Very un-Kantian.
Who died and made Kant the morality god? More seriously, in a heavenly future life everyone desires the happiness of everyone else, and therefore the feeling that one's intense suffering played a role in someone's enhanced ability to enjoy eternal life would also enhance my eternal life.
(c) To say that God should have let this happen to her or endorse a theory knowing this is an implication of such a theory seems to low a lack of respect for our fellow persons.
Not, on my view, if you think clearly about what it would take to prevent not only this tragedy, but all others like it.
If we ever got our hands on a person who could have prevented such a thing but didn't, we'd have a hard time preventing a mob from lynching him.
People who make comments like this seem to forget that we are talking about a being who is running the universe. Guaranteeing the nonoccurrence of a tragedy has many, far-reaching implications, implications that we as humans only have as small grasp of.
I take it that you think the reason my argument fails is that you can knowingly say:
(*) God was right to allow that woman to be gang raped and butchered.
I say that that's false and not for epistemic reasons. Now, you say that I'm making an appeal to emotion. It may well stir the emotions. Here's a question that I think is significant. I think you cannot be a decent person and believe (*). Any decent person should find that claim quite beyond belief. You would think that if theism were true, God would not put us in a position whereby the claims we are rationally compelled to endorse insofar as we believe in God's existence make us less than morally decent people. That is a second sort of argument and one that is distinct from my first numbered one.
On the contrary, I think you can be a decent person and believe that God, before the foundation of the world, predestined some to everlasting heaven and the rest to everlasting hell. (Though sometimes I wonder how they pull it off). I don't see that this affects one iota my desire to alleviate suffering, or to act in compassionate ways. Mother Teresa was someone who believed, surely, that God had permitted the great sufferings of the people with whom she dealt, but she also believed that God wanted her to do all she could to decrease the suffering of those people. Just because I think God sometimes allows the human race to be scourged does not mean that I am raising my hand volunteering for the job of being the Scourge of God.
And, kudos to Clayton for meeting the terms of my challenge. I was starting to think that the argument from evil was just an emotional objection.
The atheistic problem of pain
One thing I really don't get. Pain is supposed to be a big problem for the theist, and is hence supposed to be a reason to be a naturalist instead. (Most problem of evil atheists, so far as I can tell, are naturalists). So, they say, the distribution of pain and suffering in the world is not what you should expect with a good God but precisely what you should expect with no God. Really? In a godless, naturalistic world, the existence of pain or any other conscious state or quale is exactly what we should not expect. Of course, you can I suppose have organism with dispositions to behave in certain ways, but the actual internally experienced state of pain is a huge, hard problem for atheistic naturalism, a problem that I personally consider to be logically impossible to solve. Going from theism to atheism to solve the problem of pain is like going from the frying pan to the fire.
Lewis's Last Version of the Argument from Reason
The Discarded Image was published posthumously.
No Model yet devised has made a satisfactory unity between our actual experience of sensation or thought or emotion and any available account of the corporeal processes which they are held to involve. We experience, say, a chain of reasoning; thoughts, which are ‘about’ or ‘refer to’ something other than themselves, are linked together by the logical relation of grounds and consequents. Physiology resolves this into a sequence of cerebral events. But physical events, as such, cannot in any intelligible sense be said to be ‘about’ or to ‘refer to’ anything. And they must be linked to one another not as grounds and consequents but as causes and effects—a relation so irrelevant to the logical linkage that it is just as perfectly illustrated by the sequence of a maniac’s thoughts as by the sequence of a rational man’s.” C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1964), 165-6.
No Model yet devised has made a satisfactory unity between our actual experience of sensation or thought or emotion and any available account of the corporeal processes which they are held to involve. We experience, say, a chain of reasoning; thoughts, which are ‘about’ or ‘refer to’ something other than themselves, are linked together by the logical relation of grounds and consequents. Physiology resolves this into a sequence of cerebral events. But physical events, as such, cannot in any intelligible sense be said to be ‘about’ or to ‘refer to’ anything. And they must be linked to one another not as grounds and consequents but as causes and effects—a relation so irrelevant to the logical linkage that it is just as perfectly illustrated by the sequence of a maniac’s thoughts as by the sequence of a rational man’s.” C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1964), 165-6.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Chandler on Plantinga and Lewis on God
Plantinga and Lewis on God's Nature: I've looked at Plantinga's Does God Have a Nature. Plantinga's God is defiantly personal. He is "alive, knowledgeable, capable of action, powerful and good." [p. 92] [This is an interesting little book.] I now think that Lewis' God is personal too - but in a rather odd way. This is from Beyond Personality: "On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings - just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who don't live on that level can't imagine. In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we can't fully conceive a Being like that.." [p. 10] Lewis seems to avoid saying that the Being composed of three persons is itself a (single) person. (A cube is not a kind of square.) He does say that that Being is "something super-personal - something more than a person." [p. 10] I'm not quite sure where that leaves us. My present view is that Lewis is NOT in full accord with Anselm & Co on this matter. In any case, we all agree, I think, that, according to Lewis' God is non-temporal. In this he certainly departs from Plantinga. Hugh
Fred Freddoso, who is probably the top expert on the Thomistic doctrine of God, also has used Lewis's writings in his class. I wonder what he would say here. Lewis, rather famously, works the Flatland analogy to death.
Fred Freddoso, who is probably the top expert on the Thomistic doctrine of God, also has used Lewis's writings in his class. I wonder what he would say here. Lewis, rather famously, works the Flatland analogy to death.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Replies to comments on the problem of evil
Just keeping score: there's been 23 comments, many by defenders of the argument from evil, and 0 numbered-premise arguments. Do I have to get out William Rowe and Keith Parsons and Paul Draper and try to supply some of these myself?
VR: "OK, could you formulate these claims in a numbered-premise argument? "
Anon: Um, no. I'm not really interested in formulating a logical problem of evil argument. It is always possible to justify any amount of evil using a logical format. Pretty much speaking from the gut here.
VR (new): So you argument is an emotional, and not a logical argument, and you admit this?? Wow!
VR: "First we have to know what is meant by lifting a finger. On what grounds do we deny that God isn't doing plenty to keep things from being a whole lot worse than they are now?"
Anon: It all depends on what kind of God we are talking about here. If God is all-powerful and all-good, it is hard to understand why things are not much, much better than they are now. I.E., this world does not seem to me to be the type that an omnipowerful, omniscient, and omnibenevolent one would create.
VR: Here's where the numbered-premise argument would help. Are you contending that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being would make the best of all possible worlds? If that's what you're saying, then you've got to contend with the arguments of Alvin Plantinga and Robert Merrihew Adams, who say that this is a false premise.
Anon: When discussing this with Christian theists I often have the sense that there is a lack of imagination regarding the degree or amount of suffering that is taking place on earth every moment.
VR: And you think the authors of Scripture didn't know about how much suffering there was in the world? Just for starters, anaesthesia was centuries away from being invented. Do you think that Apostles, who founded Christianity, were naive about the amount of suffering? If you believe that, the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale for ten grand.
Carr: It is nice to know that there no guarentees of a suffering-free existence in Heaven.
Or at the least, such guarantees should be treated by Victor with the same scepticism that he would treat a guarantee by God that he will not create any further pathogens along the lines of HIV.
VR: What God has promised to those who have submitted their wills completely to God should not be used as a benchmark for what we should expect God to allow a rebellious human race to endure. Can we have done with this canard?
Carr: What would Jesus do if he saw cruelty and suffering and starvation and drought?
And then equate Jesus with God.
VR: I'm glad Carr is asking what Jesus would do. Maybe we can get him a leather bracelet to help him to remember that question at all times. Jesus alleviated suffering in accordance with his mission on earth. He didn't alleviate all the suffering he saw, surely.
Loftus: Vic, you ask, "Where do we draw the line?" That's like asking "which whisker is the one, such that when it's plucked, no longer leaves a beard?" It's perfectly reasonable to say what abeard it without that level of specification. So this line drawing argument does not apply to this particular world. This particular world has senseless suffering in it, and this is the world we're looking at to determine if a good God exists...not some other one.
VR: You *know* that the suffering is senseless? What you know is that it looks senseless to you, and maybe to me. And have you proved that a perfectly good God would eliminate all senseless suffering? Have you even read Adams' "Must God Create the Best?"
Anon, quoting me: "If it becomes obvious that God is relieving suffering in the world on a massive scale, doesn't human nature suggest that we will just let God get on with the business of relieving suffering and attend to other things? "
And this would be a bad thing, how?
VR: Because according to Christianity, this earth and everything in it, including all the human suffering we find there, lasts only a few centuries, while human character lasts forever. Something that alleviates our suffering at the cost of harming our character is not a bargain if Christians are right.
Refuting the argument from evil should not be this easy. I wonder what is going wrong.
VR: "OK, could you formulate these claims in a numbered-premise argument? "
Anon: Um, no. I'm not really interested in formulating a logical problem of evil argument. It is always possible to justify any amount of evil using a logical format. Pretty much speaking from the gut here.
VR (new): So you argument is an emotional, and not a logical argument, and you admit this?? Wow!
VR: "First we have to know what is meant by lifting a finger. On what grounds do we deny that God isn't doing plenty to keep things from being a whole lot worse than they are now?"
Anon: It all depends on what kind of God we are talking about here. If God is all-powerful and all-good, it is hard to understand why things are not much, much better than they are now. I.E., this world does not seem to me to be the type that an omnipowerful, omniscient, and omnibenevolent one would create.
VR: Here's where the numbered-premise argument would help. Are you contending that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being would make the best of all possible worlds? If that's what you're saying, then you've got to contend with the arguments of Alvin Plantinga and Robert Merrihew Adams, who say that this is a false premise.
Anon: When discussing this with Christian theists I often have the sense that there is a lack of imagination regarding the degree or amount of suffering that is taking place on earth every moment.
VR: And you think the authors of Scripture didn't know about how much suffering there was in the world? Just for starters, anaesthesia was centuries away from being invented. Do you think that Apostles, who founded Christianity, were naive about the amount of suffering? If you believe that, the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale for ten grand.
Carr: It is nice to know that there no guarentees of a suffering-free existence in Heaven.
Or at the least, such guarantees should be treated by Victor with the same scepticism that he would treat a guarantee by God that he will not create any further pathogens along the lines of HIV.
VR: What God has promised to those who have submitted their wills completely to God should not be used as a benchmark for what we should expect God to allow a rebellious human race to endure. Can we have done with this canard?
Carr: What would Jesus do if he saw cruelty and suffering and starvation and drought?
And then equate Jesus with God.
VR: I'm glad Carr is asking what Jesus would do. Maybe we can get him a leather bracelet to help him to remember that question at all times. Jesus alleviated suffering in accordance with his mission on earth. He didn't alleviate all the suffering he saw, surely.
Loftus: Vic, you ask, "Where do we draw the line?" That's like asking "which whisker is the one, such that when it's plucked, no longer leaves a beard?" It's perfectly reasonable to say what abeard it without that level of specification. So this line drawing argument does not apply to this particular world. This particular world has senseless suffering in it, and this is the world we're looking at to determine if a good God exists...not some other one.
VR: You *know* that the suffering is senseless? What you know is that it looks senseless to you, and maybe to me. And have you proved that a perfectly good God would eliminate all senseless suffering? Have you even read Adams' "Must God Create the Best?"
Anon, quoting me: "If it becomes obvious that God is relieving suffering in the world on a massive scale, doesn't human nature suggest that we will just let God get on with the business of relieving suffering and attend to other things? "
And this would be a bad thing, how?
VR: Because according to Christianity, this earth and everything in it, including all the human suffering we find there, lasts only a few centuries, while human character lasts forever. Something that alleviates our suffering at the cost of harming our character is not a bargain if Christians are right.
Refuting the argument from evil should not be this easy. I wonder what is going wrong.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Chandler's question of Lewis and the doctrine of God
In his helpful remarks, Jason writes:
JP: "It is true that Lewis claims that God transcends 'ordinary' personhood; although I don't think he would have put it quite the same way HC does (i.e. as far above as a rock or number is 'beneath' ordinary personhood.) The important thing though, is that Lewis very strenuously emphasized in such discussions (his MaPS chapter on pantheism being a good case in point) that we should not consider God's transcendence of ordinary personhood to mean something _less_ than what we would call person-ness. (Which is related to that whole trinitarian thing again, as I mentioned last time. {g})
HC: As I understand it, traditionally, when it was said that God is, or is 'in' three 'persons', the word 'persons' does not (or did not) mean that God is, or is in, three PEOPLE. Didn't it mean God is (to be viewed as, in some sense, three aspects - even perhaps three 'masks' (persona)?
VR: As I recall, that's a heresy, alternatively known as Sabellianism of Modalistic Monarchianism.
Anyway, Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas, believed that God was absolutely 'simple,' i.e. had no 'parts' of any kind. (This was, presumably, reconcilable, with the 'God in three persons' doctrine, as they understood it.)
It is, I believe, principally because of the 'simplicity' doctrine that these people held (although they wouldn't put it this way) that God could not be a 'person' in anything like the ordinary sense. 'People' (in the ordinary sense) have 'parts' (in various senses of the term). For instance, they have temporal parts, and various mental - psychological - faculties, they have memories and aspirations, they have reason and passions. They are 'entities' that have 'properties.' God, I think these people thought, is not like this.
Plantinga, as I understand it, strongly rejects this tradition. Norman Kretzmann, on the other hand, definitely accepted it. [See his Metaphysics of Theism]
Where does C. S. Lewis stand on this matter? I would really like to know. My IMPRESSION is that he was (really) on the side of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas - he accepted the absolute simplicity doctrine and all that it entails. But I am going on very little evidence, and may well be wrong.
Hugh
Lewis's exposition of the doctrine of the trinity is in book III of Mere Christianity. By and large he stayed away from issues like simplicity, which he thought were divisive.
These passages, from Miracles, might help some:
CSL: ". . . When [people] try to get rid of man-like, or, as they are called, 'anthropomorphic,' images, they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kinds. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says one, 'but I do believe in a great spiritual force.' What he has not noticed is that the word 'force' has let in all sorts of images about winds and tides and electricity and gravitation. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says another, 'but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves and works through us all' -not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly and royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid.
"A girl I knew was brought up by 'higher thinking' parents to regard God as perfect 'substance.' In later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity but we are mistaken. If a man watches his own mind, I believe he will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God, are, in his thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd than the manlike images aroused by Christian theology. For man, after all, is the highest of the things we meet in sensuous experience."
JP: "It is true that Lewis claims that God transcends 'ordinary' personhood; although I don't think he would have put it quite the same way HC does (i.e. as far above as a rock or number is 'beneath' ordinary personhood.) The important thing though, is that Lewis very strenuously emphasized in such discussions (his MaPS chapter on pantheism being a good case in point) that we should not consider God's transcendence of ordinary personhood to mean something _less_ than what we would call person-ness. (Which is related to that whole trinitarian thing again, as I mentioned last time. {g})
HC: As I understand it, traditionally, when it was said that God is, or is 'in' three 'persons', the word 'persons' does not (or did not) mean that God is, or is in, three PEOPLE. Didn't it mean God is (to be viewed as, in some sense, three aspects - even perhaps three 'masks' (persona)?
VR: As I recall, that's a heresy, alternatively known as Sabellianism of Modalistic Monarchianism.
Anyway, Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas, believed that God was absolutely 'simple,' i.e. had no 'parts' of any kind. (This was, presumably, reconcilable, with the 'God in three persons' doctrine, as they understood it.)
It is, I believe, principally because of the 'simplicity' doctrine that these people held (although they wouldn't put it this way) that God could not be a 'person' in anything like the ordinary sense. 'People' (in the ordinary sense) have 'parts' (in various senses of the term). For instance, they have temporal parts, and various mental - psychological - faculties, they have memories and aspirations, they have reason and passions. They are 'entities' that have 'properties.' God, I think these people thought, is not like this.
Plantinga, as I understand it, strongly rejects this tradition. Norman Kretzmann, on the other hand, definitely accepted it. [See his Metaphysics of Theism]
Where does C. S. Lewis stand on this matter? I would really like to know. My IMPRESSION is that he was (really) on the side of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas - he accepted the absolute simplicity doctrine and all that it entails. But I am going on very little evidence, and may well be wrong.
Hugh
Lewis's exposition of the doctrine of the trinity is in book III of Mere Christianity. By and large he stayed away from issues like simplicity, which he thought were divisive.
These passages, from Miracles, might help some:
CSL: ". . . When [people] try to get rid of man-like, or, as they are called, 'anthropomorphic,' images, they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kinds. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says one, 'but I do believe in a great spiritual force.' What he has not noticed is that the word 'force' has let in all sorts of images about winds and tides and electricity and gravitation. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says another, 'but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves and works through us all' -not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly and royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid.
"A girl I knew was brought up by 'higher thinking' parents to regard God as perfect 'substance.' In later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity but we are mistaken. If a man watches his own mind, I believe he will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God, are, in his thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd than the manlike images aroused by Christian theology. For man, after all, is the highest of the things we meet in sensuous experience."
Friday, September 29, 2006
Gareth McCaughan and the Problem of Evil
read Gareth's account of his own deconversion. Of courses, he and I
locked horns a couple of years ago on my book. Since that time I
started my blog, www.dangerousidea.blogspot.com, and haven't been here.
On my site I issued this challenge, and got devoted several posts to
it, mostly last summer. Here's the challenge I gave:
A Challenge to Advocates of the Argument from Evil
I'd like to make an methodological point in discussions of the problem
of evil, a part of the Plantingian legacy. If the theist begins by
offering explanations of the existence of evil, and the discussion
focuses on the adequacy of these explanations, the theist puts himself
at an unfair disadvantage. If I as a defender of the argument from
reason were to say that since we don't now have a detailed explanation
of the evolution of the brain, the argument from reason succeeds, I
would be rightly criticized. I would be accused of the God the the Gaps
fallacy. The same principle applies here to the argument from evil. The
correct procedure, it seems to me, is to ask the atheist to present
his/her argument against theism. Is it a logical argument, a
probabilistic argument, or some other kind of argument. Show me the
argument, let me see what the premises are and what the conclusion is.
Then an explanation, or a possible explanation, for evil might be
required. Or not, depending on the structure of the argument. So I'm
going to issue a challenge to atheists. Give me your version of the
argument from evil. Numbered premises please. And, of course, I want to be given some good reasons why I should
accept all the premises.
Here's what I am getting at. The argument from evil is supposed to have
a special pride of place amongst arguments concerning theism, both pro
and con. Every version of the argument from evil that I saw put on my
blog seemed to me to have questionable premises which
indicated to me that the argument was inadequate, even absent any throughgoing
across-the-board explanation for some particular evils, such as the
Asian tsunami in 2004. To make matters worse for the atheological
argument, the atheist has to appeal to some moral premise (A perfectly
good being eliminates evil as far as possible) which he must either
contend is objectively true (which in my view compromises naturalism)
or appeals to a value that all theists, or maybe all Christians accept.
Some people think that this sort of thing is true by definition, but I
am unpersauded of those claims.
Now I am not at all sure that a good version of the argument from evil
can't be developed that doesn't have some disconfirmatory impact on
theism. It's just a whole heck of a lot harder than it looks. I think
if you greet the problem of evil with the type of skepticism that I
have every right to expect that my own favorite argument will receive
from its critics, it proves to be overrated.
A good volume of essays on the evidential argument from evil came out
in the 90s, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder.
But I think the idea that the AFE is really powerful, unlike your
average theistic argument, or even just your average philosophical
argument (like Wittgenstein's private language argument), is generated
by the idea that somehow, if the theist can't explain all of human
suffering and give God's reason for permitting it, theism is thought to
be deficient.
A link to Gareth's deconversion story is here.
locked horns a couple of years ago on my book. Since that time I
started my blog, www.dangerousidea.blogspot.com, and haven't been here.
On my site I issued this challenge, and got devoted several posts to
it, mostly last summer. Here's the challenge I gave:
A Challenge to Advocates of the Argument from Evil
I'd like to make an methodological point in discussions of the problem
of evil, a part of the Plantingian legacy. If the theist begins by
offering explanations of the existence of evil, and the discussion
focuses on the adequacy of these explanations, the theist puts himself
at an unfair disadvantage. If I as a defender of the argument from
reason were to say that since we don't now have a detailed explanation
of the evolution of the brain, the argument from reason succeeds, I
would be rightly criticized. I would be accused of the God the the Gaps
fallacy. The same principle applies here to the argument from evil. The
correct procedure, it seems to me, is to ask the atheist to present
his/her argument against theism. Is it a logical argument, a
probabilistic argument, or some other kind of argument. Show me the
argument, let me see what the premises are and what the conclusion is.
Then an explanation, or a possible explanation, for evil might be
required. Or not, depending on the structure of the argument. So I'm
going to issue a challenge to atheists. Give me your version of the
argument from evil. Numbered premises please. And, of course, I want to be given some good reasons why I should
accept all the premises.
Here's what I am getting at. The argument from evil is supposed to have
a special pride of place amongst arguments concerning theism, both pro
and con. Every version of the argument from evil that I saw put on my
blog seemed to me to have questionable premises which
indicated to me that the argument was inadequate, even absent any throughgoing
across-the-board explanation for some particular evils, such as the
Asian tsunami in 2004. To make matters worse for the atheological
argument, the atheist has to appeal to some moral premise (A perfectly
good being eliminates evil as far as possible) which he must either
contend is objectively true (which in my view compromises naturalism)
or appeals to a value that all theists, or maybe all Christians accept.
Some people think that this sort of thing is true by definition, but I
am unpersauded of those claims.
Now I am not at all sure that a good version of the argument from evil
can't be developed that doesn't have some disconfirmatory impact on
theism. It's just a whole heck of a lot harder than it looks. I think
if you greet the problem of evil with the type of skepticism that I
have every right to expect that my own favorite argument will receive
from its critics, it proves to be overrated.
A good volume of essays on the evidential argument from evil came out
in the 90s, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder.
But I think the idea that the AFE is really powerful, unlike your
average theistic argument, or even just your average philosophical
argument (like Wittgenstein's private language argument), is generated
by the idea that somehow, if the theist can't explain all of human
suffering and give God's reason for permitting it, theism is thought to
be deficient.
A link to Gareth's deconversion story is here.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Presidential ambiguities
Ben Z. suggests that there is no ambiguity in the terms "sexual relations" and "is," while torture is really hard to define. I think in the case of sex and the case of torture there are unambiguous paradigm cases, and then there are ambiguous cases. As I showed in this previous post, there is an ambiguity related to the word "is." A critic of Clinton should not say that there are no ambiguities in the uses of these terms, what the critic should say, with some justification, is that he is using the ambiguity in the use of the term in general to mask the fact that in the relevant case, the ambiguity is nonexistent. But can't the same thing be said about Bush and the secret prisons?
A column by Ben Stein that undergirds what Socrates says about success
Ben Stein's Last Column... HT: Jarrod Cochran
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the US soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the US soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the US soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the US soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
I did not have torturous relations with that prisoner
So President Bush says that torture as defined by the Geneva Convention is a vague concept that is open to a variety of interpretations. Hm. I seem to recall another President using an argument of that form. As I recall, it was about the term "sexual relations." Or was it the word "is?"
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Chandler versus Monokroussos round 2
The Monokroussos Argument:
1. We ought to seek moral perfection.
2. Ought implies can.
3. Therefore, we can achieve moral perfection.
4. But this is possible only if there is a God (or something near enough).
Just for a start, the argument, as it stands, won't work. Given that we ought to seek moral perfection and that ought implies can, it does NOT follow that we can achieve moral perfection.
One can imagine some alchemist claiming that his students ought to seek the Philosopher's Stone. Ought implies can, so they CAN seek the stone; but it doesn't follow that the alchemist must think that his students can find the stone, or that it can be found, or even that it exists. Nor does it follow that any of these things are true.
Let's try this:
1. We ought to be morally perfect.
2. Ought implies can.
3. Therefore, we can achieve moral perfection.
4. But this is possible only if there is a God (or something near enough).
(5. Therefore, there really is a God (or something near enough)).
I think Kant accepts something like 1 and 2. But I don't think he holds that we (wicked sinners) can actually achieve moral perfection at any point in time (with or without God's help). At best, on his view, we are engaged in an infinite approximation process. Given this, perhaps we should modify 1. Let's say 'We ought to strive towards moral perfection.' But, of course, we CAN strive towards moral perfection whether or not there is a God - can't we?
Hugh
More on Monokroussos
Here is a nice quote from Kant:
."..our faith is not knowledge, and thank heaven it is not! For
divine wisdom is apparent in the very fact that WE DO NOT KNOW BUT
RATHER OUGHT TO BELIEVE THAT A GOD EXISTS. For suppose we could
attain to knowledge of God's existence through our experience or in
some other way (although the possibility of this knowledge cannot
immediately be thought); suppose further that we could really reach
as much certainty through this knowledge as we do in intuition; then
all morality would break down. In his every action the human being
would represent God to himself as a rewarder or avenger; this image
would force itself involuntarily on his soul, and his hope for reward
and fear of punishment would take the place of moral motives; the
human being WOULD BE VIRTUOUS FROM SENSIBLE IMPULSES."
[Kant, 28:1084, Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion.]
For Kant, a proof (even a 'moral proof') of God's existence would a
(paradoxical) moral disaster.
His moral argument is meant to lead us to certainty that God exists
based on 'moral faith.' The alleged 'proof' is proof that we ought to
adopt that faith - ought to believe in God. It is not, and is not
intended to be, a proof of God's existence. Or so it seems to me.
Hugh
VR: I think it has to be pointed out that the argument Monokroussos advanced is one that he attributes to Kant, not one that he himself endorses. But I would like to see Dennis's take on "denying knowledge to make room for faith," for which Kant is justly famous.
But I am also wondering what kind of ought implies can principle is at work here. I think Chandler is suggesting that a literal OIC principle is implausibly strong, so therefore Kant must have had in mind "Ought imples we can strive for it." And I'm wondering if that is faithful to Kant. Isn't it "We ought to be morally perfect, ought implies can, therefore the metaphysical conditions exist for us to eventuallly become morally perfect. Since this is going to require a God and an infinite lifetime to get it done, so be it. These things must exist." However, the status of the OIC principle needs to then be considered. Do we know this as a truth of theoretical reason? Is that principle, as Kant is construing it, knowable?
1. We ought to seek moral perfection.
2. Ought implies can.
3. Therefore, we can achieve moral perfection.
4. But this is possible only if there is a God (or something near enough).
Just for a start, the argument, as it stands, won't work. Given that we ought to seek moral perfection and that ought implies can, it does NOT follow that we can achieve moral perfection.
One can imagine some alchemist claiming that his students ought to seek the Philosopher's Stone. Ought implies can, so they CAN seek the stone; but it doesn't follow that the alchemist must think that his students can find the stone, or that it can be found, or even that it exists. Nor does it follow that any of these things are true.
Let's try this:
1. We ought to be morally perfect.
2. Ought implies can.
3. Therefore, we can achieve moral perfection.
4. But this is possible only if there is a God (or something near enough).
(5. Therefore, there really is a God (or something near enough)).
I think Kant accepts something like 1 and 2. But I don't think he holds that we (wicked sinners) can actually achieve moral perfection at any point in time (with or without God's help). At best, on his view, we are engaged in an infinite approximation process. Given this, perhaps we should modify 1. Let's say 'We ought to strive towards moral perfection.' But, of course, we CAN strive towards moral perfection whether or not there is a God - can't we?
Hugh
More on Monokroussos
Here is a nice quote from Kant:
."..our faith is not knowledge, and thank heaven it is not! For
divine wisdom is apparent in the very fact that WE DO NOT KNOW BUT
RATHER OUGHT TO BELIEVE THAT A GOD EXISTS. For suppose we could
attain to knowledge of God's existence through our experience or in
some other way (although the possibility of this knowledge cannot
immediately be thought); suppose further that we could really reach
as much certainty through this knowledge as we do in intuition; then
all morality would break down. In his every action the human being
would represent God to himself as a rewarder or avenger; this image
would force itself involuntarily on his soul, and his hope for reward
and fear of punishment would take the place of moral motives; the
human being WOULD BE VIRTUOUS FROM SENSIBLE IMPULSES."
[Kant, 28:1084, Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion.]
For Kant, a proof (even a 'moral proof') of God's existence would a
(paradoxical) moral disaster.
His moral argument is meant to lead us to certainty that God exists
based on 'moral faith.' The alleged 'proof' is proof that we ought to
adopt that faith - ought to believe in God. It is not, and is not
intended to be, a proof of God's existence. Or so it seems to me.
Hugh
VR: I think it has to be pointed out that the argument Monokroussos advanced is one that he attributes to Kant, not one that he himself endorses. But I would like to see Dennis's take on "denying knowledge to make room for faith," for which Kant is justly famous.
But I am also wondering what kind of ought implies can principle is at work here. I think Chandler is suggesting that a literal OIC principle is implausibly strong, so therefore Kant must have had in mind "Ought imples we can strive for it." And I'm wondering if that is faithful to Kant. Isn't it "We ought to be morally perfect, ought implies can, therefore the metaphysical conditions exist for us to eventuallly become morally perfect. Since this is going to require a God and an infinite lifetime to get it done, so be it. These things must exist." However, the status of the OIC principle needs to then be considered. Do we know this as a truth of theoretical reason? Is that principle, as Kant is construing it, knowable?
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Timeless at heart, or just up to date?
From C. S. Lewis's essay "Christian Apologetics" from God in the Dock p. 93-4.
Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow) in the particular language of our onw age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes ideas of our onw age and tricks the out in the traditional language of Christianity. Thus, for example, he may think about the Beveridge Report and talk about the coming of the Kingdom. The core of his thought is merely contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching must be timeless at heart and wear a modern dress.
How are we doing on this these days? Read this essay by Douglas Groothuis and see what you think.
Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow) in the particular language of our onw age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes ideas of our onw age and tricks the out in the traditional language of Christianity. Thus, for example, he may think about the Beveridge Report and talk about the coming of the Kingdom. The core of his thought is merely contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching must be timeless at heart and wear a modern dress.
How are we doing on this these days? Read this essay by Douglas Groothuis and see what you think.
More Chandler on Plantinga's God
HC: (to carry on the discussion)
By a 'person' I mean an entity that has beliefs, makes decisions,
remembers past events, has various feelings (misery, joy, etc.), and,
typically, has some notion of moral rightness and wrongness, sees the
point of jokes, can recognize beauty, etc. etc.
Anselm's God does not fit this description at all. Just for starters,
Anselm's God is non-temporal non-spacial, cannot feel misery (or joy,
I guess), etc. etc. In fact, 'He' is not even an individual 'entity'
(i.e. 'substance'), nor is 'He' a property, or relation.
Augustinian's God and Aquinas's God are, I think, like Anselm's God
in this regard. And, if I remember correctly, this is true of C. S.
Lewis too. According to my recollection, Lewis claims that God is as
far 'above' (ordinary) personhood as a rock, or a number, is
'beneath' it. Lewis' God is not a 'person' in any ordinary sense of
the term.
On the other hand, I have the impression that Plantinga's God IS
temporal -- (no?) has beliefs, makes decisions, hopes that things
will turn out well, is sometimes unhappy, etc. etc. In short, really
IS a 'person' in the ordinary sense of the term.
Have I got this right?
VR: I think the relevant work on this is Does God Have a Nature, which I don't have easy access to. Plantinga is not what would be called an "open theist," who thinks that God lacks comprehensive foreknowledge (Hasker's God, Time and Knowledge is the philosophical locus classicus for this) but I don't think his God is outside of time. Lewis, on the other hand, goes for the outside of time concept of God. I was surprised when I reread him a few month ago that this isn't primarily to solve the foreknowledge problem but also is used to explain how God can answer everyone's prayers at once. That struck me as puzzling: I would have thought a simple definition of "omnipotent" would have been sufficient.
His exposition of atemporalism is one of the things addressed on the Mere Christianity taped discussions that I linked to: the ones a few posts back that came from Mere Christianity and were found in the BBC vaults (see "link to Lewis's voice").
By a 'person' I mean an entity that has beliefs, makes decisions,
remembers past events, has various feelings (misery, joy, etc.), and,
typically, has some notion of moral rightness and wrongness, sees the
point of jokes, can recognize beauty, etc. etc.
Anselm's God does not fit this description at all. Just for starters,
Anselm's God is non-temporal non-spacial, cannot feel misery (or joy,
I guess), etc. etc. In fact, 'He' is not even an individual 'entity'
(i.e. 'substance'), nor is 'He' a property, or relation.
Augustinian's God and Aquinas's God are, I think, like Anselm's God
in this regard. And, if I remember correctly, this is true of C. S.
Lewis too. According to my recollection, Lewis claims that God is as
far 'above' (ordinary) personhood as a rock, or a number, is
'beneath' it. Lewis' God is not a 'person' in any ordinary sense of
the term.
On the other hand, I have the impression that Plantinga's God IS
temporal -- (no?) has beliefs, makes decisions, hopes that things
will turn out well, is sometimes unhappy, etc. etc. In short, really
IS a 'person' in the ordinary sense of the term.
Have I got this right?
VR: I think the relevant work on this is Does God Have a Nature, which I don't have easy access to. Plantinga is not what would be called an "open theist," who thinks that God lacks comprehensive foreknowledge (Hasker's God, Time and Knowledge is the philosophical locus classicus for this) but I don't think his God is outside of time. Lewis, on the other hand, goes for the outside of time concept of God. I was surprised when I reread him a few month ago that this isn't primarily to solve the foreknowledge problem but also is used to explain how God can answer everyone's prayers at once. That struck me as puzzling: I would have thought a simple definition of "omnipotent" would have been sufficient.
His exposition of atemporalism is one of the things addressed on the Mere Christianity taped discussions that I linked to: the ones a few posts back that came from Mere Christianity and were found in the BBC vaults (see "link to Lewis's voice").
Monday, September 25, 2006
Chandler on Plantinga on morality
Hugh Chandler writes:
In his recent sketch of his personal history Plantinga says:
> But naturalism cannot make room for that kind of normativity; that requires a divine lawgiver, one whose very nature it is to abhor wickedness.
For Plantinga, the 'main options' are naturalism (on the one hand) and personal-god type Theism (or, perhaps, that kind of Christianity) on the other. This is difficult for some of us to swallow. I believe the first sentence in the quotation is true. Real moral obligations, if there are such things, are irreducible and non-natural - and consequently, if believed in, force us outside naturalism. But what on earth leads Plantinga to think that belief in real moral obligations requires belief in a person-type God (as opposed to the traditional Catholic God, Anselm's God, Platonic Justice itself (so to speak), or even, perhaps, no God-like thing at all? Hugh
I think the Anselmian or Catholic God is probably personal enough; that God is at least personal enough to become incarnate in Christ. Demographically a lot of people gravitate toward either naturalism or theism, so it is understandable to treat these as the "main options." But one feature of Lewis's apologetics, one that doesn't get a whole lot of airplay these days, is that Lewis talks about alternatives like Absolute Idealism, Pantheism, and Bergsonian Creative Evolution, all of which have sort of fallen off the map in the present day discussion. These options are not recognizably naturalistic but neither are they theistic. Lewis became convinced of the arguments that he later defended against naturalism and became not a theist but an absolute idealist. Then he had to be persuaded by other considerations to become a theist.
Robert M. Adams in his essay on moral arguments for God (in The Virtue of Faith, Oxford 1987) gives some reasons why theism might be preferable to other sorts of non-naturalistic world-views in connection with moral arguments, so I will try to look that up.
There are still sure enough honest to goodness absolute idealists walking around these days, such as this guy, Dan Hutto.
In his recent sketch of his personal history Plantinga says:
> But naturalism cannot make room for that kind of normativity; that requires a divine lawgiver, one whose very nature it is to abhor wickedness.
For Plantinga, the 'main options' are naturalism (on the one hand) and personal-god type Theism (or, perhaps, that kind of Christianity) on the other. This is difficult for some of us to swallow. I believe the first sentence in the quotation is true. Real moral obligations, if there are such things, are irreducible and non-natural - and consequently, if believed in, force us outside naturalism. But what on earth leads Plantinga to think that belief in real moral obligations requires belief in a person-type God (as opposed to the traditional Catholic God, Anselm's God, Platonic Justice itself (so to speak), or even, perhaps, no God-like thing at all? Hugh
I think the Anselmian or Catholic God is probably personal enough; that God is at least personal enough to become incarnate in Christ. Demographically a lot of people gravitate toward either naturalism or theism, so it is understandable to treat these as the "main options." But one feature of Lewis's apologetics, one that doesn't get a whole lot of airplay these days, is that Lewis talks about alternatives like Absolute Idealism, Pantheism, and Bergsonian Creative Evolution, all of which have sort of fallen off the map in the present day discussion. These options are not recognizably naturalistic but neither are they theistic. Lewis became convinced of the arguments that he later defended against naturalism and became not a theist but an absolute idealist. Then he had to be persuaded by other considerations to become a theist.
Robert M. Adams in his essay on moral arguments for God (in The Virtue of Faith, Oxford 1987) gives some reasons why theism might be preferable to other sorts of non-naturalistic world-views in connection with moral arguments, so I will try to look that up.
There are still sure enough honest to goodness absolute idealists walking around these days, such as this guy, Dan Hutto.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Chandler replies to Monokroussos
Monokroussos: "A side point about HC's comment about Kant: it's false, taken unconditionally. While Kant denies the existence of good arguments from the realm of pure reason (leaving aside the antinomies, which are undermined by their counter-antinomies), he does think taking the moral stance transcendentally implies the existence of God."
Chandler: How can Reppert's 'taking the moral stance' imply that there really is a God? At best, it might imply that Reppert believes that there is a God.
As I understand it, Kant holds that 'taking the moral stance' requires BELIEF in God, faith that there is a God (or at least that God is possible), but it does not offer us (or Reppert) any proof that there is a God, or even (I think) any evidence that there is one.
Chandler: How can Reppert's 'taking the moral stance' imply that there really is a God? At best, it might imply that Reppert believes that there is a God.
As I understand it, Kant holds that 'taking the moral stance' requires BELIEF in God, faith that there is a God (or at least that God is possible), but it does not offer us (or Reppert) any proof that there is a God, or even (I think) any evidence that there is one.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Hugh Chandler responds to the puzzle about Puddlglum
In the passage you quote, Puddleglum doesn't say that he is going to BELIEVE that there is an Aslan, etc. or that he is going to have faith that there really IS grass, etc. He simply announces that he is going to live AS IF those things were real (whether they are or not).
I have often thought something similar. I mean that we ought to live as if there were a God -whether or not there really is one. Is that foolish?
Kant, as opposed to Puddleglum (apparently), urges us to BELIEVE in God, even though there is no good argument for the claim that there really is one.
HC
How does one, in practice living as if P is true while at the same time believing not-P?
I have often thought something similar. I mean that we ought to live as if there were a God -whether or not there really is one. Is that foolish?
Kant, as opposed to Puddleglum (apparently), urges us to BELIEVE in God, even though there is no good argument for the claim that there really is one.
HC
How does one, in practice living as if P is true while at the same time believing not-P?
Men, Rabbits and Marsh-wiggles: C. S. Lewis on pragmatic arguments
An interesting question that has concerned me of late is how Lewis viewed pragmatic arguments. Pragmatic arguments provide practical reasons for believing the theism or Christianity without in any way showing that Christianity is more likely to be true than its rivals. A good example would be Pascal's wager, or James' argument from the Will to Believe. I think Kant's moral argument fits into this category, as does one of Robert Merrihew Adams' arguments for theism from morality. The idea in Kant and Adams is that one should select theism or atheism because theism better supports the moral life than atheism. Steve Lovell's defense of the argument from desire seems to go down this road, and that is how this issue connects to some of the earlier posts.
Lewis in many places seems pretty cold to pragmatic arguments for religious belief. In responding the the quesiton "Can't you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?" Lewis says:
CSL: More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christiantiy is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of the *facts*--to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then you natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will wawnt to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. (C. S. Lewis, "Man or Rabbit," in God in the Dock, pp. 108-9.)
However, in the Silver Chair, we find Lewis putting this argument into the mouth of Puddleglum the Marsh-Wiggle.
"One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder... But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we *have* only dreamed, or made up, all these things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself...Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones....That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So...we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
SC Chapter 12, p. 633.
Now, isn't this a pragmatic argument of the type Lewis objected to in "Man or Rabbit?" How do we reconcile these passages/
Lewis in many places seems pretty cold to pragmatic arguments for religious belief. In responding the the quesiton "Can't you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?" Lewis says:
CSL: More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christiantiy is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of the *facts*--to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then you natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will wawnt to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. (C. S. Lewis, "Man or Rabbit," in God in the Dock, pp. 108-9.)
However, in the Silver Chair, we find Lewis putting this argument into the mouth of Puddleglum the Marsh-Wiggle.
"One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder... But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we *have* only dreamed, or made up, all these things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself...Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones....That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So...we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
SC Chapter 12, p. 633.
Now, isn't this a pragmatic argument of the type Lewis objected to in "Man or Rabbit?" How do we reconcile these passages/
Further (and final?) thoughts on the argument from desire
Of course, I would be very surprised if someone with entrenched naturalist convictions like BDK were to lose sleep over the argument from desire. I did a Bayesian calculation awhile ago in the combox about what the Bayesian AFD would do for someone whose prior for theism was 0.01 and the result was, well, pretty underwhelming. In spite of what a lot of people seem to assume, a surprisingly small percentage of Lewis's own apologetical writigns are about the existence of God, and when the existence of God does come up, I don't see Lewis using the AFD. It comes up in Lewis's treatment of hope in Mere Christianity and his treatment of Heaven in The Problem of Pain. The Weight of Glory was preached in a church. In Surprised by joy Lewis seems to have lost his faith in naturalism for reasons completely independent of Joy (his discussions with Owen Barfield seem to have caused that, based on a combination of the Argument from Reason and the Moral Argument). As a result, some Lewis students wonder whether there is an Argument from Desire in Lewis at all.
At the same time Lewis seems to have a good "in-house" argument for a desire for heaven on the part of Christians; a way of telling Christians how have trouble visualizing their future hope (and there are Christians in the predicament), that we have reason to believe that humans were really made for heaven. And Lewis did seem to think that the fact that his beliefs as a theist and a Christian made more sense of his "joy" experiences (which he certainly had and which were important to him) than his previous atheistic perspective. The fact that Joy "fits in" with his Christian perspective seemed in his mind to provide confirmation that the other lines of thought leading toward theism and ultimately Christianity were correct. Was he wrong in so thinking?
Hence my interest in developing this argument in Bayesian confirmationist terms, a suggestion first made by Thomas V. Morris in his critique of Beversluis's book, a critique that is reproduced in full in Richard Purtill's essay "Did C. S. Lewis Lose His Faith" in A Christian for All Christians.
I do think the arguments for reason and morality are more challenging to evolutionary naturalism than is the argument from desire.
At the same time Lewis seems to have a good "in-house" argument for a desire for heaven on the part of Christians; a way of telling Christians how have trouble visualizing their future hope (and there are Christians in the predicament), that we have reason to believe that humans were really made for heaven. And Lewis did seem to think that the fact that his beliefs as a theist and a Christian made more sense of his "joy" experiences (which he certainly had and which were important to him) than his previous atheistic perspective. The fact that Joy "fits in" with his Christian perspective seemed in his mind to provide confirmation that the other lines of thought leading toward theism and ultimately Christianity were correct. Was he wrong in so thinking?
Hence my interest in developing this argument in Bayesian confirmationist terms, a suggestion first made by Thomas V. Morris in his critique of Beversluis's book, a critique that is reproduced in full in Richard Purtill's essay "Did C. S. Lewis Lose His Faith" in A Christian for All Christians.
I do think the arguments for reason and morality are more challenging to evolutionary naturalism than is the argument from desire.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Coulter on Evolution
Well, I asked what Infidels had done in response to Ann Coulter on evolution. They finally came through.
Chandler on the God probability calculator
My dissertation advisor, in response to the Unwin probability calculator:
Ah, just as I suspected:
Someone reviewing the book writes:
Furthermore, the most difficult issue of all problems with the bayesian approach to probability, the initial a priori probability, he skips over facilely by declaring it to be 1/2. This may perhaps be better defended than any other number, but the explanation here is lacking.
Presumably that is his subjective prior probability for there being a God (of some particular sort? Or any sort that might be given that name?)
And what about there being 2 beings who,together, create and govern things? Does he count that as 'God' too? Or does that get assigned a different and distinct prior probability? How about 12 such beings?
For myself, the prior probability of there being a single 'personal' [Plantinga type] God is quite low, and, consequently, the bayesian reasoning doesn't get me anywhere near 50/50 for the existence of a personal God.
(You can post this on your discussion page if you want to.)
Hugh
VR: Of course, Chandler is ruining all the fun. To make matters more complicated, my guess is that Chandler's assessment of the sorts of evidence that is presented in Unwin's book has already helped to form his current antecedent probability for theism.
Another problem has to do with how arguments get weighted. In my book I turned Lewis's one argument into six. Did I thereby make his argument six times more powerful? Is inability to explain evil a more serious fault than inability to explain miracle claims (assuming that these inabilities do obtain, as the author suggests that it does)? I'll bet there aren't going to be a lot of problem of evil atheists who would agree to that. And then what miracle evidence are we counting. Good evidence that God delivered the Qu'ran in Arabic to Muhammad, if we had it, would I think diminish my probability for the claim that an omniscient, omnipotent, all-powerful God exists.
Still, I wonder what adjustments could be made to the calculator so that someone could do a Bayesian calculation on their own assessment of how likely it is that God exists. I'll stick with my initial claim that this is a pretty cool concept, however much it may need to be debugged.
Ah, just as I suspected:
Someone reviewing the book writes:
Furthermore, the most difficult issue of all problems with the bayesian approach to probability, the initial a priori probability, he skips over facilely by declaring it to be 1/2. This may perhaps be better defended than any other number, but the explanation here is lacking.
Presumably that is his subjective prior probability for there being a God (of some particular sort? Or any sort that might be given that name?)
And what about there being 2 beings who,together, create and govern things? Does he count that as 'God' too? Or does that get assigned a different and distinct prior probability? How about 12 such beings?
For myself, the prior probability of there being a single 'personal' [Plantinga type] God is quite low, and, consequently, the bayesian reasoning doesn't get me anywhere near 50/50 for the existence of a personal God.
(You can post this on your discussion page if you want to.)
Hugh
VR: Of course, Chandler is ruining all the fun. To make matters more complicated, my guess is that Chandler's assessment of the sorts of evidence that is presented in Unwin's book has already helped to form his current antecedent probability for theism.
Another problem has to do with how arguments get weighted. In my book I turned Lewis's one argument into six. Did I thereby make his argument six times more powerful? Is inability to explain evil a more serious fault than inability to explain miracle claims (assuming that these inabilities do obtain, as the author suggests that it does)? I'll bet there aren't going to be a lot of problem of evil atheists who would agree to that. And then what miracle evidence are we counting. Good evidence that God delivered the Qu'ran in Arabic to Muhammad, if we had it, would I think diminish my probability for the claim that an omniscient, omnipotent, all-powerful God exists.
Still, I wonder what adjustments could be made to the calculator so that someone could do a Bayesian calculation on their own assessment of how likely it is that God exists. I'll stick with my initial claim that this is a pretty cool concept, however much it may need to be debugged.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The Probability of God Calculator
I actually like this. But of course, I would include stuff like intentionality, truth, mental causation, the psychological relevance of logical laws, identity of a thinker through time, and the reliability of our rational faculties.
Plantinga on being unawed by secularist arguments
Also from Philosophers who Believe, from Plantinga's "A Christian Life Partly Lived, p. 53.
About his teacher from Calvin Harry Jellema, Plantinga wrote:
Clearly he (Jellema) was profoundly familiar iwth the doubts and objections and alternative ways of thought cast up by modernity; indeed he seemed to undertand them better than those who offered them. But (and this is what Ifound enormously impressive) he was totally unawed. What especially struck me then in what he said (partly because it put into words something I felt at Harvard but couldn't articulate) was much of the intellectual opposition to Christianity and theism was really a sort of intellectual imperialism with very little basis. Wea re told that humankind come of age has got beyond such primitive ways of thinking, that they are outmoded, or incompatible with a scientific mindset, or made irrelevant by the march of history or maybe by something else lurking in the neighborhood. (In the age of the wireless, Bultmann quaintly asks, who can accept them?) But why should a Christian believe any of these things? Are they more than mere claims?
About his teacher from Calvin Harry Jellema, Plantinga wrote:
Clearly he (Jellema) was profoundly familiar iwth the doubts and objections and alternative ways of thought cast up by modernity; indeed he seemed to undertand them better than those who offered them. But (and this is what Ifound enormously impressive) he was totally unawed. What especially struck me then in what he said (partly because it put into words something I felt at Harvard but couldn't articulate) was much of the intellectual opposition to Christianity and theism was really a sort of intellectual imperialism with very little basis. Wea re told that humankind come of age has got beyond such primitive ways of thinking, that they are outmoded, or incompatible with a scientific mindset, or made irrelevant by the march of history or maybe by something else lurking in the neighborhood. (In the age of the wireless, Bultmann quaintly asks, who can accept them?) But why should a Christian believe any of these things? Are they more than mere claims?
Chesterton's chapter on maniacs
This is the second chapter of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which is a personal favorite of mine, in spite of some not-so-nice comments about chessplayers.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Do you have to be gullible to be a humanist
It is interesting how people who are "from Missouri" when it comes to claims about God are amazingly gullible when it comes to their understanding of human nature. In fact, when it comes to human ambitions, they seem willing to buy bridges in California and New York and oceanfront property in Arizona. As George Strait sings:
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
From my front porch you can see the sea
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
If you'll buy that I'll throw the Golden Gate in free
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
From my front porch you can see the sea
I got some oceanfront property in Arizona
If you'll buy that I'll throw the Golden Gate in free
Passage from The Weight of Glory related to the argument from desire
“A man’s physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred in a sexless world.”
[CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1949)]
What's interesting here is two things. One is that one of the argument's most dramatic presentations is given in a sermon, presumable addressed to believers. In another place in the sermon he writes:
"Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need for the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. And yet it is a remarkable thing that such philosophies of Progress or Creative Evolution themselves bear reluctant witness to the truth that our real goal is elsewhere. When they want to convince you that earth is your home, notice how they set about it. They begin by trying to persuade you that earth can be made into heaven, thus giving a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is. Next, they tell you that this fortunate event is still a good way off in the future, thus giving a sop to your knowledge that the fatherland is not here and now. Finally, lest your longing for the transtemporal should awake and spoil the whole affair, they use any rhetoric that comes to hand to keep out of your mind the recollection that even if all the happiness they promised could come to man on earth, yet still each generation would lose it by death, including the last generation of all, and the whole story would be nothing, not even a story, for ever and ever. Hence all the nonsense that Mr. Shaw puts into the final speech of Lilith, and Bergson’s remark that the élan vital is capable of surmounting all obstacles, perhaps even death—as if we could believe that any social or biological development on this planet will delay the senility of the sun or reverse the second law of thermodynamics."
So Lewis thinks that not just philosophical naturalists, but Christians need to be persauded of their own desire for communion with God.
My second point is that the passage about falling in love arising in a sexless world, which is often left out of the quote, seems essential to his argument, since presumably even a naturalist, who think the watchmaker is blind, is still going to agree that this would be a very anomalous development.
[CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1949)]
What's interesting here is two things. One is that one of the argument's most dramatic presentations is given in a sermon, presumable addressed to believers. In another place in the sermon he writes:
"Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need for the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. And yet it is a remarkable thing that such philosophies of Progress or Creative Evolution themselves bear reluctant witness to the truth that our real goal is elsewhere. When they want to convince you that earth is your home, notice how they set about it. They begin by trying to persuade you that earth can be made into heaven, thus giving a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is. Next, they tell you that this fortunate event is still a good way off in the future, thus giving a sop to your knowledge that the fatherland is not here and now. Finally, lest your longing for the transtemporal should awake and spoil the whole affair, they use any rhetoric that comes to hand to keep out of your mind the recollection that even if all the happiness they promised could come to man on earth, yet still each generation would lose it by death, including the last generation of all, and the whole story would be nothing, not even a story, for ever and ever. Hence all the nonsense that Mr. Shaw puts into the final speech of Lilith, and Bergson’s remark that the élan vital is capable of surmounting all obstacles, perhaps even death—as if we could believe that any social or biological development on this planet will delay the senility of the sun or reverse the second law of thermodynamics."
So Lewis thinks that not just philosophical naturalists, but Christians need to be persauded of their own desire for communion with God.
My second point is that the passage about falling in love arising in a sexless world, which is often left out of the quote, seems essential to his argument, since presumably even a naturalist, who think the watchmaker is blind, is still going to agree that this would be a very anomalous development.
C. S. Lewis's Description of Rational Inference
Although C. S. Lewis criticized naturalism by arguing that it is inconsistent with the possibility of rational inference, he didn't give the kind of full description of rational inference that he gives in an essay entitled "Why I am Not a Pacifist," which contains no argument against naturalism at all. It is found in The Weight of Glory, p. 34.
"Now any concrete train of reasoning involves three elements: Firstly, there is the reception of facts to reason about. These facts are received either from our own senses, or from the report of other minds; that is, either experience or authority supplies us with our material. But each man’s experience is so limited that the second source is the more usual; of every hundred facts upon which to reason, ninety-nine depend on authority. Secondly, there is the direct, simple act of the mind perceiving self-evident truth, as when we see that if A and B both equal C, then they equal each other. This act I call intuition. Thirdly, there is an art or skill of arranging the facts so as to yield a series of such intuitions, which linked together produce, a proof of the truth of the propositions we are considering. This in a geometrical proof each step is seen by intuition, and to fail to see it is to be not a bad geometrician but an idiot. The skill comes in arranging the material into a series of intuitable “steps”. Failure to do this does not mean idiocy, but only lack of ingenuity or invention. Failure to follow it need not mean idiocy, but either inattention or a defect of memory which forbids us to hold all the intuitions together.”
The power of intuition, the second step, seems to be the most difficult to account for in naturalistic terms.
"Now any concrete train of reasoning involves three elements: Firstly, there is the reception of facts to reason about. These facts are received either from our own senses, or from the report of other minds; that is, either experience or authority supplies us with our material. But each man’s experience is so limited that the second source is the more usual; of every hundred facts upon which to reason, ninety-nine depend on authority. Secondly, there is the direct, simple act of the mind perceiving self-evident truth, as when we see that if A and B both equal C, then they equal each other. This act I call intuition. Thirdly, there is an art or skill of arranging the facts so as to yield a series of such intuitions, which linked together produce, a proof of the truth of the propositions we are considering. This in a geometrical proof each step is seen by intuition, and to fail to see it is to be not a bad geometrician but an idiot. The skill comes in arranging the material into a series of intuitable “steps”. Failure to do this does not mean idiocy, but only lack of ingenuity or invention. Failure to follow it need not mean idiocy, but either inattention or a defect of memory which forbids us to hold all the intuitions together.”
The power of intuition, the second step, seems to be the most difficult to account for in naturalistic terms.
Friday, September 15, 2006
I'm going to be on Infidelguy
I got a call from James Lazarus of the Infidelguy show, and they're going to have Reginald Finley interview me, at least if it goes as planned, on Wed. Sept. 27.
More notes on Inerrancy in Response to Steve Hays
My claim was twofold. First, the word "inerrancy" conjures up in the minds a kind of lead-footed literalism that would force us to accept Young Earth Creationism, etc. It would also, for example, force us into the hands of the universalists in response to such passages as "Every knee shall bow," etc. What any interpreter will do at that point is to supply "context" into which the passage fits. They will argue that the error emerges from reading the passage to narrowly and not adding in the context. (I want to point out that there is a danger that what we call "context" is simply the whole boatload of preconceived theology and Sunday School lessons that we brought to the text in the first place). So a "lead-footed" inerrancy proves too much, but a more sensible inerrancy might not in fact do enough work. Exactly what does it take to make out the claim that so-and-so is really making an error attribution to Scripture? Augustine is the classic example of someone who would if asked have affirmed "inerrancy" in a heartbeat, and yet developed a theory of origins that, if anything, looks more like Darwinian evolution than Young Earth Creationism. Was Gundry attributing error to Matthew when he analyzed it in terms of midrash? Is Pinnock an inerrantist or not.
The Chicago Statement, which has been touted as the locus classicus for inerrancy, seems to back away from drawing out all the hermeneutical implications that many advocates of the doctrine have defended. The book that spelled all this stuff out, ironically enough, is Pinnock's early book Biblical Revelation. There, he claims Ruth cannot be fictional, since for it to be fictional would be to attribute a deceitful literary form to Scripture. But there are plenty of people who would continue to use the word inerrancy who would deny that Pinnock drew all the correct consequences of inerrancy, including a guy by the name of Clark Pinnock.
I think everyone, including C. S. Lewis and myself, or Pinnock for that matter, who thinks of Scripture as special revelation, also accepts some version of the doctrine of inerrancy. I mean God can't be sitting up in heaven saying "Darn that guy I'm inspiring to write I Samuel. He's saying I wanted all the Amalekites killed!"
However, Steve seems to think that all beliefs on matters of faith should be determined simply on an analysis of what we find in the biblical text, without asking any further questions of whether that is plausible on other grounds, such as scientific ones. One must sign oneself to believe whatever we find through a grammatical analysis of Scripture.
But what I would say is that I don't accept the complete subordination of all other forms of knowledge to the knowledge gathered through bibical exegesis. We know that pi is 3.1416... not 3, there is good reason to believe in an ancient earth, and God has provided us with minds to discover some truths in methods that are not simple a matter of Bible study. Even if the Scripture is inerrant in some important way, Scripture readers and students are quite errant. We do have more knowledge and understanding which may conflict with a straightforward acceptance of actions attributed to God as good. No one should be expected to come to Scripture with a blank slate for a mind to be written upon by the text, and no one ever does. I know, about as well as I know anything, that an omnipotent being who condemns people to everlasting punishment who he could just as easily have saved without endangering anyone else's salvation is not a good being, much less a perfectly good being. So, a the end of all the verse wars about Calvinism, I'm just going to put my hand up in front of my face and do what William Rowe calls the G. E. Moore shift.
The Chicago Statement, which has been touted as the locus classicus for inerrancy, seems to back away from drawing out all the hermeneutical implications that many advocates of the doctrine have defended. The book that spelled all this stuff out, ironically enough, is Pinnock's early book Biblical Revelation. There, he claims Ruth cannot be fictional, since for it to be fictional would be to attribute a deceitful literary form to Scripture. But there are plenty of people who would continue to use the word inerrancy who would deny that Pinnock drew all the correct consequences of inerrancy, including a guy by the name of Clark Pinnock.
I think everyone, including C. S. Lewis and myself, or Pinnock for that matter, who thinks of Scripture as special revelation, also accepts some version of the doctrine of inerrancy. I mean God can't be sitting up in heaven saying "Darn that guy I'm inspiring to write I Samuel. He's saying I wanted all the Amalekites killed!"
However, Steve seems to think that all beliefs on matters of faith should be determined simply on an analysis of what we find in the biblical text, without asking any further questions of whether that is plausible on other grounds, such as scientific ones. One must sign oneself to believe whatever we find through a grammatical analysis of Scripture.
But what I would say is that I don't accept the complete subordination of all other forms of knowledge to the knowledge gathered through bibical exegesis. We know that pi is 3.1416... not 3, there is good reason to believe in an ancient earth, and God has provided us with minds to discover some truths in methods that are not simple a matter of Bible study. Even if the Scripture is inerrant in some important way, Scripture readers and students are quite errant. We do have more knowledge and understanding which may conflict with a straightforward acceptance of actions attributed to God as good. No one should be expected to come to Scripture with a blank slate for a mind to be written upon by the text, and no one ever does. I know, about as well as I know anything, that an omnipotent being who condemns people to everlasting punishment who he could just as easily have saved without endangering anyone else's salvation is not a good being, much less a perfectly good being. So, a the end of all the verse wars about Calvinism, I'm just going to put my hand up in front of my face and do what William Rowe calls the G. E. Moore shift.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Should Christians be psychoanalyzing atheists?
Paul Vitz does. Me? I'd just as soon all the psychological arguments cancel one another out.
A Revised and Expanded Edition of C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea
Would people like to see this?
Victor
Victor
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Lovell and the argument from desire
Steve Lovell wrote: Like many people, I think the difficult premise is "The world, including anything supernatural, is such that all natural desires can be satisfied" (or however we want to phrase it).
We could certainly substitute this with "Either life is absurd or the world is such that all natural desires can be satisfied".
Correctly read this is analytic. Of course the atheist may just shrug his shoulders and accept the absurdity ... but what about the agnostic?
I'd be interested in seeing anyone's justifications for the non-analytic versions of the premise.
VR: Steve: Nonbelivers are famous for being highly absurdity-tolerant; in fact our lack of absurdity-tolerance is often attributed to the baneful influence of Christian theism. Of course, there is a sort of Pascalian or pragmatic argument for accepting a world that is not absurd in this sense. But Lewis is famously lukewarm to apologetical arguments that give us a practical reason for being a Christian but don't really support the truth of theism.
The question is whether it is reasonable to suppose that, on an evolutionary scenario, we should expect the kind of desire-life that we actually do find. If the evolutionary scenario that the naturalist gives us is a scenario that makes the emergence of transcendent natural desires possible, answering the question "How possibly?", then a version of the AFD is still going to be a confirming argument. In order to completely stop the confirmatory impact of the argument, the naturalist is going have to argue that transcendent desire are as likely to arise in a naturalistic universe as in a theistic one, or else deny the phenomenology and say that we have no transcendent desires, as es does in the prior discussion. When I plugged my numbers into the Bayesian argument I assumed that there was a bit below a 50-50 likelihood that these desires would arise in an atheistic universe, and still the confirmation went through. The point is that if there is a God, then natural desires that are unfulfillable on earth is precisely what you should expect. We could predict this aspect of our experience from the point of view of theism, I seriously doubt that we can do this from the point of view of atheism, even if a halfway-decent-looking evolutionary explanation of how such desires could arise were forthcoming from the naturalist.
And by the way, confirmation in confirmation theory implies that something in our experience supports the conclusion, not that the conclusion is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. If this needs to be clarified, I suppose one could google "Bayesian confirmation theory" and something will come up that explains it.
We could certainly substitute this with "Either life is absurd or the world is such that all natural desires can be satisfied".
Correctly read this is analytic. Of course the atheist may just shrug his shoulders and accept the absurdity ... but what about the agnostic?
I'd be interested in seeing anyone's justifications for the non-analytic versions of the premise.
VR: Steve: Nonbelivers are famous for being highly absurdity-tolerant; in fact our lack of absurdity-tolerance is often attributed to the baneful influence of Christian theism. Of course, there is a sort of Pascalian or pragmatic argument for accepting a world that is not absurd in this sense. But Lewis is famously lukewarm to apologetical arguments that give us a practical reason for being a Christian but don't really support the truth of theism.
The question is whether it is reasonable to suppose that, on an evolutionary scenario, we should expect the kind of desire-life that we actually do find. If the evolutionary scenario that the naturalist gives us is a scenario that makes the emergence of transcendent natural desires possible, answering the question "How possibly?", then a version of the AFD is still going to be a confirming argument. In order to completely stop the confirmatory impact of the argument, the naturalist is going have to argue that transcendent desire are as likely to arise in a naturalistic universe as in a theistic one, or else deny the phenomenology and say that we have no transcendent desires, as es does in the prior discussion. When I plugged my numbers into the Bayesian argument I assumed that there was a bit below a 50-50 likelihood that these desires would arise in an atheistic universe, and still the confirmation went through. The point is that if there is a God, then natural desires that are unfulfillable on earth is precisely what you should expect. We could predict this aspect of our experience from the point of view of theism, I seriously doubt that we can do this from the point of view of atheism, even if a halfway-decent-looking evolutionary explanation of how such desires could arise were forthcoming from the naturalist.
And by the way, confirmation in confirmation theory implies that something in our experience supports the conclusion, not that the conclusion is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. If this needs to be clarified, I suppose one could google "Bayesian confirmation theory" and something will come up that explains it.
Would Kant have accepted the argument from desire?
Probably not, since he almost certainly would have regarded the desire as an inclination.
From Kant's Critique of Practical Reason:
*(2) In the Deutsches Museum, February, 1787, there is a dissertation by a very subtle and clear-headed man, the late Wizenmann, whose early death is to be lamented, in which he disputes the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is affected by it, much less can it contain a demand valid for everyone, and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of the wish. But in the present case we have a want of reason springing from an objective determining principle of the will, namely, the moral law, which necessarily binds every rational being, and therefore justifies him in assuming a priori in nature the conditions proper for it, and makes the latter inseparable from the complete practical use of reason It is a duty to realize the summum bonum to the utmost of our power, therefore it must be possible, consequently it is unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective possibility. The assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in connection with which alone it is valid. -
From Kant's Critique of Practical Reason:
*(2) In the Deutsches Museum, February, 1787, there is a dissertation by a very subtle and clear-headed man, the late Wizenmann, whose early death is to be lamented, in which he disputes the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is affected by it, much less can it contain a demand valid for everyone, and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of the wish. But in the present case we have a want of reason springing from an objective determining principle of the will, namely, the moral law, which necessarily binds every rational being, and therefore justifies him in assuming a priori in nature the conditions proper for it, and makes the latter inseparable from the complete practical use of reason It is a duty to realize the summum bonum to the utmost of our power, therefore it must be possible, consequently it is unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective possibility. The assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in connection with which alone it is valid. -
Can anybody win a verse war
Tom Talbott here argues that while there is prima facie support for Calvinism, Arminianism, and universalism, we should at least affirm that universalism is not patently heretical. It also raises some interesting questions about how, if we accept biblical authority, we go from the relevant Scriptures to our doctrinal conclusions.
Further notes on the argument from desire
What the argument does is point to desires within us that cannot be fulfilled in this world but may be fulfilled in a future life. It isn't a desire for God per se at all, it is just that it is doomed to permanent frustration if this is the only life and there is not God. A person might be strongly affected by this desire and at the same time say that an everalsting heavenly life is not appealing. C. S. Lewis himself described himself as the most reluctant convert in all England. The satisfaction of this desire within us comes at a price, we must admit that we are not the supreme beings, we must acknowledge the moral authority of our creator, we must submit to having our characters fundamentally altered in order to enjoy a life in heaven.
You have to admit that typical Christian descriptions of the future life are not especially appealing. Now Islamic accounts, that's another matter! But the Christian idea is that literal descriptions of heaven don't come anywhere near to capturing how good it is supposed to be, nor should we expect them to.
You have to admit that typical Christian descriptions of the future life are not especially appealing. Now Islamic accounts, that's another matter! But the Christian idea is that literal descriptions of heaven don't come anywhere near to capturing how good it is supposed to be, nor should we expect them to.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Pinnock's Journey
Clark Pinnock's name has been mentioned in the context of the discussion of inerrancy. Ironically, in an early book written in 1971, entitled Biblical Revelation, Pinnock not only defended inerrancy, but also explicitly drew out a number of hermeneutical implications for inerrancy. For example, if a work appears historic then it must be historic; the appearnce of historic status in a nonhistoric work would be a deceitful literary form that would be unworthy of inspired Scripture. It is ironic that the understanding of inerrancy that was used to try to get him out of the Evangelical Theololgical Society is precisely the one that he himself developed in his earlier book.
Struggling with the argument from desire
Here's the picture defenders of the argument from desire are trying to paint:
1) Natural desires with known earthly satisfactions: food, clothing, shelter, sex, safety, etc. Things that contribute to the Four F's (fighting, feeding, fleeing and reproducing).
2) Natural desires with no known earthly satisfaction: a desire we have trouble identifying in ordinary experience, but it turns out to be a desire for something eternal.
3) Artficial desires which are satisfied sometime somwhere (Red Sox world championship.
4) Artifical desire which are not satisfied. (Phoenix Suns world championship, permanent peace in the Middle East).
The idea here is that the desire for the eternal sticks out like a sore thumb. But does it? What about the desire for one's natural life to go on forever? What about the desire to be (or look) eternally 22? What about the fear of ghosts? Can the argument from desire be hit with Gaunilo-type objections.
The link below is to an excellent Argument from Desire resource page.
1) Natural desires with known earthly satisfactions: food, clothing, shelter, sex, safety, etc. Things that contribute to the Four F's (fighting, feeding, fleeing and reproducing).
2) Natural desires with no known earthly satisfaction: a desire we have trouble identifying in ordinary experience, but it turns out to be a desire for something eternal.
3) Artficial desires which are satisfied sometime somwhere (Red Sox world championship.
4) Artifical desire which are not satisfied. (Phoenix Suns world championship, permanent peace in the Middle East).
The idea here is that the desire for the eternal sticks out like a sore thumb. But does it? What about the desire for one's natural life to go on forever? What about the desire to be (or look) eternally 22? What about the fear of ghosts? Can the argument from desire be hit with Gaunilo-type objections.
The link below is to an excellent Argument from Desire resource page.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Applied Inerrancy
Apparently, the Evangelical Theological Society, at one point, excluded one of its members for failing to draw the proper implications from the doctrine of inerrancy. HT: Steve Hays.
Friday, September 08, 2006
The Francis Beckwith Story
From the Chronicle of Higher Education
PEER REVIEW
Baylor Professors Criticize Denial of Tenure to Conservative Colleague
STILL FIGHTING: An already divisive controversy over a tenure denial at Baylor University appears to be getting even uglier.
Last spring Francis J. Beckwith, 45, an associate professor of church-state studies, was denied tenure despite a long list of publications and a recent teaching honor. Some saw the professor as a casualty in a battle between conservatives and liberals at the Baptist university. Now Mr. Beckwith is alleging that the former chairman of his department, who resigned under a cloud, worked to undermine his tenure application.
Mr. Beckwith, who is appealing the tenure decision, is a conservative Christian who has often written on hot-button issues like gay marriage and abortion. He is also a fellow at the Discovery Institute, which promotes the intelligent- design movement. A legal scholar, Mr. Beckwith says that he is not a supporter of intelligent design but that teaching it in public schools is legally permissible.
It was Mr. Beckwith's teaching, not his scholarship, that was criticized in his tenure denial. He was accused of disregarding the curriculum and using the classroom to spread his Christian views — a charge he denies. Some of his colleagues were outraged by the university's decision. C. Stephen Evans, a professor of philosophy and humanities, says he will consider resigning if the decision is not reversed. Mr. Evans, who calls himself a liberal democrat, says Mr. Beckwith is being "railroaded for his conservative views, even though he clearly merits tenure on the basis of his scholarly work and teaching."
In a new twist, Mr. Beckwith alleges that the then-chairman of the church-state-studies department, Derek H. Davis, never provided him with its tenure guidelines and encouraged colleagues to vote against his tenure. Mr. Davis denies this.
Mr. Davis is involved in a controversy of his own. He resigned from the university at the end of the spring semester following allegations that he neglected to properly cite sources for two of his articles. In one case, Mr. Davis closely paraphrased passages from a 1986 book by Ronald L. Numbers, a professor of the history of science and of medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Davis acknowledges the improper citation, calling it "human error," not plagiarism. Mr. Numbers, who notified Baylor officials about the passages and later exchanged e-mail messages with Mr. Davis, says he is not satisfied with that explanation.
Mr. Davis says he was not forced to resign from Baylor but chose to do so after university officials discussed the allegations with him. "I resigned because I told people 'If you consider this a problem, then I will resign,'" he says. "They said they weren't sure if it was a problem or not." Mr. Davis is now dean of humanities at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, which is not affiliated with Baylor University.
Baylor's provost, J. Randall O'Brien, would not comment on the circumstances of Mr. Davis's resignation or on Mr. Beckwith's tenure case, citing privacy restrictions. He did say that he expected a decision on Mr. Beckwith's appeal this month. Thomas Bartlett
PEER REVIEW
Baylor Professors Criticize Denial of Tenure to Conservative Colleague
STILL FIGHTING: An already divisive controversy over a tenure denial at Baylor University appears to be getting even uglier.
Last spring Francis J. Beckwith, 45, an associate professor of church-state studies, was denied tenure despite a long list of publications and a recent teaching honor. Some saw the professor as a casualty in a battle between conservatives and liberals at the Baptist university. Now Mr. Beckwith is alleging that the former chairman of his department, who resigned under a cloud, worked to undermine his tenure application.
Mr. Beckwith, who is appealing the tenure decision, is a conservative Christian who has often written on hot-button issues like gay marriage and abortion. He is also a fellow at the Discovery Institute, which promotes the intelligent- design movement. A legal scholar, Mr. Beckwith says that he is not a supporter of intelligent design but that teaching it in public schools is legally permissible.
It was Mr. Beckwith's teaching, not his scholarship, that was criticized in his tenure denial. He was accused of disregarding the curriculum and using the classroom to spread his Christian views — a charge he denies. Some of his colleagues were outraged by the university's decision. C. Stephen Evans, a professor of philosophy and humanities, says he will consider resigning if the decision is not reversed. Mr. Evans, who calls himself a liberal democrat, says Mr. Beckwith is being "railroaded for his conservative views, even though he clearly merits tenure on the basis of his scholarly work and teaching."
In a new twist, Mr. Beckwith alleges that the then-chairman of the church-state-studies department, Derek H. Davis, never provided him with its tenure guidelines and encouraged colleagues to vote against his tenure. Mr. Davis denies this.
Mr. Davis is involved in a controversy of his own. He resigned from the university at the end of the spring semester following allegations that he neglected to properly cite sources for two of his articles. In one case, Mr. Davis closely paraphrased passages from a 1986 book by Ronald L. Numbers, a professor of the history of science and of medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Davis acknowledges the improper citation, calling it "human error," not plagiarism. Mr. Numbers, who notified Baylor officials about the passages and later exchanged e-mail messages with Mr. Davis, says he is not satisfied with that explanation.
Mr. Davis says he was not forced to resign from Baylor but chose to do so after university officials discussed the allegations with him. "I resigned because I told people 'If you consider this a problem, then I will resign,'" he says. "They said they weren't sure if it was a problem or not." Mr. Davis is now dean of humanities at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, which is not affiliated with Baylor University.
Baylor's provost, J. Randall O'Brien, would not comment on the circumstances of Mr. Davis's resignation or on Mr. Beckwith's tenure case, citing privacy restrictions. He did say that he expected a decision on Mr. Beckwith's appeal this month. Thomas Bartlett
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Ed Babinski, C. S. Lewis, and the Bible
This is a response to Ed Babinski, who accused C. S. Lewis of simply ignoring morally flawed passages in Scripture.
It's not that Christians like Lewis or myself want to ignore this stuff. In many cases, Lewis is the one that calls it to our attention. But of course if you believe that God is morally perfect, then something other than God must explain moral weaknesses in the text. We don't need smoke in his eyes to explain that. Lewis maintained that the idea of a cosmic sadist who created the world was incoherent. Not emotionally repugnant, he found it *logically incherent*. I chronicle his arguments in the first chapter of my book. So why would he accept an incoherent positon?
Do you believe that there is an evil God who inspired the Bible? If not, then you explain the moral flaws of Scripture in terms of the flawed moral perceptions of the human authors. And if you can do that, then why can't Lewis do the same thing?
Lewis wrote a chapter in Reflections on the Psalms entitled Scripture where he discussed his understanding of what it was for Scripture to be inspired. He for example read Ecclesiastes as the cold hard picture of man's life without God, and he maintained that it was something we needed to hear, even though it was far from being the full literal truth. In other words, things that by themselves are scientifically, historically, or morally incorrect my be, he thought, part of a broader truth that is inspired. What is by itself a blemish may be part of the moral and spiritual education of a barbaric people which conveys an important truth.
As for biblical inerrancy, I am not so much inclined to deny it as I am to be unclear on what it means. Consider the following.
Every word of the Bible is true.
Every sentence of the Bible is true.
Every verse of the Bible is true.
Every paragraph of the Bible is true.
Every chapter of the Bible is true.
Every book of the Bible is true.
The Bible is true as a whole.
The bearers of truth and falsity, as I understand it, are sentences. So it is logically possible for 2 to be true, but we know it isn't, because if it were, then the sentence "Ye shall surely not die," said by the serpent to Eve, would also be true, but it isn't. If however, what we mean by the inerrancy of Scripture is that everything in it participates in some wider truth that God intended to convey, then I have no problem with it, but then I don't see why, for example, this would exclude a fictionalist account of Ruth or Jonah, positions that are anathema to inerrantists. I am inclined to argue, for example, when it comes to Gen 1, that it intended to convey a monotheistic as opposed to a polytheistic story of origins to the Hebrew people. In other words, it should be read in contrast to the Enuma Elish, not the Origin of Species. Hence if you are a monotheist, it conveys the truth of monotheism as opposed to polytheism, and why should it be expected to be loaded up with science. That's not its job. The passage participated in the broad conveyance of truth without being narrowly true in every detail.
If you think there is something incoherent about Lewis's position, then you have to show me that a Christian ought to accept some version of narrow inerrancy (as opposed to the broad inerrancy that he actually adopted), which is coherent and somehow more consistent or more Christian than his own view. Perhaps some of my inerrantist brethren can help Babinski with this.
It's not that Christians like Lewis or myself want to ignore this stuff. In many cases, Lewis is the one that calls it to our attention. But of course if you believe that God is morally perfect, then something other than God must explain moral weaknesses in the text. We don't need smoke in his eyes to explain that. Lewis maintained that the idea of a cosmic sadist who created the world was incoherent. Not emotionally repugnant, he found it *logically incherent*. I chronicle his arguments in the first chapter of my book. So why would he accept an incoherent positon?
Do you believe that there is an evil God who inspired the Bible? If not, then you explain the moral flaws of Scripture in terms of the flawed moral perceptions of the human authors. And if you can do that, then why can't Lewis do the same thing?
Lewis wrote a chapter in Reflections on the Psalms entitled Scripture where he discussed his understanding of what it was for Scripture to be inspired. He for example read Ecclesiastes as the cold hard picture of man's life without God, and he maintained that it was something we needed to hear, even though it was far from being the full literal truth. In other words, things that by themselves are scientifically, historically, or morally incorrect my be, he thought, part of a broader truth that is inspired. What is by itself a blemish may be part of the moral and spiritual education of a barbaric people which conveys an important truth.
As for biblical inerrancy, I am not so much inclined to deny it as I am to be unclear on what it means. Consider the following.
Every word of the Bible is true.
Every sentence of the Bible is true.
Every verse of the Bible is true.
Every paragraph of the Bible is true.
Every chapter of the Bible is true.
Every book of the Bible is true.
The Bible is true as a whole.
The bearers of truth and falsity, as I understand it, are sentences. So it is logically possible for 2 to be true, but we know it isn't, because if it were, then the sentence "Ye shall surely not die," said by the serpent to Eve, would also be true, but it isn't. If however, what we mean by the inerrancy of Scripture is that everything in it participates in some wider truth that God intended to convey, then I have no problem with it, but then I don't see why, for example, this would exclude a fictionalist account of Ruth or Jonah, positions that are anathema to inerrantists. I am inclined to argue, for example, when it comes to Gen 1, that it intended to convey a monotheistic as opposed to a polytheistic story of origins to the Hebrew people. In other words, it should be read in contrast to the Enuma Elish, not the Origin of Species. Hence if you are a monotheist, it conveys the truth of monotheism as opposed to polytheism, and why should it be expected to be loaded up with science. That's not its job. The passage participated in the broad conveyance of truth without being narrowly true in every detail.
If you think there is something incoherent about Lewis's position, then you have to show me that a Christian ought to accept some version of narrow inerrancy (as opposed to the broad inerrancy that he actually adopted), which is coherent and somehow more consistent or more Christian than his own view. Perhaps some of my inerrantist brethren can help Babinski with this.
On Beer, dualism, and Hivemaker
I think Hivemaker's point is that whatever the "soul" might be, it hsa to be something that has a close relationship to the physical system we call the brain, so that what happens in the physical world is closely related to what happens in the nonphysical mind. This is something that dualist philosophers such as Hasker and Taliaferro agree on. It is necessary to tell something like the story HM refers to in accounting for how beer works.
At the same time, in asking how beer works, part of what we want accounted for is the slightly tipsy feeling we get if the beer we drink actually does work, and that introduces what Chalmers calls the "hard problem" of consciousness which is a persistent difficulty that bedevils physicalism. Simply calling a conscious state a brain state does not resolve the issue of physicalism. The question is how something that is physical can also have conscoius properties. Can something that we describe in third-person terms have first-person characteristics? How beer causes tipsy behavior is one thing, how it causes the inner state of tipsiness is another
Sometimes these points are used as quick and easy "refutations" of dualism, and I consider such quick and easy refutations to be fallacious. Some of us who have responded to all of this have thought that this is what you were up to. Apparently not, however.
At the same time, in asking how beer works, part of what we want accounted for is the slightly tipsy feeling we get if the beer we drink actually does work, and that introduces what Chalmers calls the "hard problem" of consciousness which is a persistent difficulty that bedevils physicalism. Simply calling a conscious state a brain state does not resolve the issue of physicalism. The question is how something that is physical can also have conscoius properties. Can something that we describe in third-person terms have first-person characteristics? How beer causes tipsy behavior is one thing, how it causes the inner state of tipsiness is another
Sometimes these points are used as quick and easy "refutations" of dualism, and I consider such quick and easy refutations to be fallacious. Some of us who have responded to all of this have thought that this is what you were up to. Apparently not, however.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Is belief in God properly basic?
This links to an essay in which Plantinga argued that it is perfectly rational to believe in the existence of God without being able to provide an argument for the existence of God. The burden of proof, for Plantinga, does not automatically rest with the believer.
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