Midway through chapter 1 of David Hart’s book The Experience of God, Dr Jerry Coyne felt sufficiently confident to post a blog article on Hart’s understanding of God—and this following his two articles in which he was bold enough to criticize the book without even having read a single page! Well, I suppose 35 pages are better than none. Coyne quotes the following passage:
To speak of “God” properly, then—to use the word in a sense consonant with the teachings of Orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Baháí, a great deal of antique paganism, and so forth—is to speak of the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things. God so understood is not something poised over against the universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a “being,” at least not in the way that a tree, a shoemaker, or a god is a being; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are, or any sort of discrete object at all. Rather, all things that exist receive their being continuously from him, who is the infinite wellspring of all that is, in whom (to use the language of the Christian scriptures) all things live and move and have their being. In one sense he is “beyond being,” if by “being” one means the totality of discrete, finite things. In another sense he is “being itself,” in that he is the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent, the unity and simplicity that underlies and sustains the diversity of finite and composite things. Infinite being, infinite consciousness, infinite bliss, from whom we are, by whom we know and are known, and in whom we find our only true consummation. All the great theistic traditions agree that God, understood in this proper sense, is essentially beyond finite comprehension; hence, much of the language used of him is negative in form and has been reached only by a logical process of abstraction from those qualities of finite reality that make it insufficient to account for its own existence. All agree as well, however, that he can genuinely be known: that is, reasoned toward, intimately encountered, directly experienced with a fullness surpassing mere conceptual comprehension. (pp. 30-31)
Immediately afterwards, Coyne remarks: “Well, parts of that are opaque to me, particularly the part about God sustaining all things, but so be it.” This says it all. As can be confirmed by a perusal of his blog, Coyne really does not understand what classical theists mean when they affirm that God is “the one infinite source of all that is”; yet that ignorance has not deterred him from bombastically attacking, in one diatribe after another, the notion of a transcendent Creator. Coyne needs to go back to his theological books (or better yet, buy some new ones—recommendations available upon request) and keep reading them until he does understand. A slow, thoughtful, and dispassionate reading of The Experience of God would be a good start.
Grasping what theists mean by “God” is really not that difficult, though admittedly the creatio ex nihilo throws us all for a loop. It may be difficult to believe that God exists, given the popularity of naturalism; but it’s not that difficult to figure out, at least in a general sort of way, what Christians, Jews, and Muslims traditionally mean by the word. With 30 years experience of teaching catechism classes for teenagers and adults under my belt, I can testify that when the Christian doctrine of creation is explained, most people really do see the difference between believing in Zeus or Odin and believing in the transcendent Maker of heaven and earth. They get the difference between a god and the God who is “the one infinite source of all that is.”
Now to be fair to Coyne, let me admit that I do not know what “God” means. I cannot provide a precise definition for “God” and will never be able to provide one. This doesn’t mean that I cannot use the word meaningfully; but it is to acknowledge the radical difference between finite and infinite reality. We can use the word to point to him, but we cannot define or conceptualize him, which is why, as Hart observes, so much of our theological language about God is negative in form: we cannot say what God is, but we can say what he is not. Thus St Thomas Aquinas:
When we know that something is, it remains to inquire in what way it is so that we may know what it is. But since concerning God we cannot know what he is but only what he is not, we cannot consider in what way God is but only in what way he is not. So first we must ask in what way he is not, secondly how he may be known to us and thirdly how we may speak of him. (ST I.3)
Perhaps with sufficient education and an upgrade in my intelligence I could one day come to understand what a quark is or how energy and matter interact at the quantum level; but I will never comprehend the divine essence or nature. The eternal Creator metaphysically transcends the universe and therefore—in principle—cannot be known, apprehended, studied, examined, prodded, poked, or measured by any kind of scientific method, no matter how advanced the technology. God is not an object within the universe; he is not an object of any kind. There are no tests that physicists can devise that would either prove or disprove his existence. The question of God’s existence, therefore, can never be formulated as empirical hypothesis, contrary to what Coyne wants to believe. God is not that kind of being, which means that he is ineffable, incomprehensible, unknowable, unfathomable Mystery.
Existence, whether it be the existence of the universe as a whole or our own personal existence, poses a question we cannot avoid. “Not how the world is,” Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, “but that it is, is the mystery.”
Why? Why does the world exist? Why do I exist? This “why?” is not a scientific question, and therefore cannot be answered by scientists. Call it, if you like, a religious question or an existential question or a philosophical question. Personally I think it is best described as a human question—the human question. Humanity has asked this question for millennia and will continue to ask it, no matter how science advances. We ask “why?” because the question is posed by the mystery of the world itself. As Victor White puts it:
We do not know what the answer is, but we do know that there is a mystery behind it all which we do not know, and if there were not, there would not even be a riddle. This Unknown we call God. If there were no God, there would be no universe to be mysterious, and nobody to be mystified. (God the Unknown, p. 19)
The answer is given in the “why?” That we are the kinds of beings who find the very existence of the universe ultimately mysterious, infinitely wondrous, and utterly problematic provides all the justification we need to affirm the existence of “the one infinite source of all that is.” We may not know what God is; but we know he is the Mystery who answers the most fundamental question human beings can ask.
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
But Coyne doesn’t believe that the “why” question is important.
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Which of course doesn’t mean that it isn’t important, even decisively important.
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i do like kenneth miller and victor stenger’s assessment of the why question. stenger is a bonafide paulinist in his philosophy–“no we might as well eat, drink and be merry!” miller asserts the purpose of life is to live.
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Hi Sun
It’s not that. It’s that the Prof doesn’t see the question as even coherent.
I’m a computer science grad. In *my* talk “why” is what you can call an “overloaded function”. This happens when you use the same word/function name in different ways depending on what variables/information that you feed it.
Which particular definition of “why” are you using? Some semblance of the mechanical how, or are you putting agency in to the process?
Different functions.
Chris 🙂
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there was a time when i was a cse student. switched to religious studies then later added european history 😀
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Greetings.
How is the idea of God as “the one infinite source of all that is”, consistent with the idea that God created the universe ex nihilo?
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Why would they be inconsistent?
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If God is infinite, how can “nothingness” (in the absolute sense, of absolutely nothing…if that makes sense) truly exist? Wouldn’t the “existence” of “nothingness” mean that God is not truly infinite, that there is some place, or region, or event, where God “is not” and “nothingness” is?
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Agni, the brief answer to your question is nothing does not exist. We cannot even conceive of absolute non-existence.
When Christian theologians speak of creation from out of nothing, they are denying (1) that God made the universe out of some pre-existent stuff and (2) that the world is an emanation of the divine being (as in Neo-Platonism). Created by the eternal God, the universe enjoys its own very real, albeit contingent, existence. See my earlier piece on divine creation. Does that help?
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So, I think what you’re saying (after my having read the “divine creation” piece), is two-fold. One, the cosmos and God are not co-eternal. Two, in agreement with the Neo-Platonists, the source of the cosmos is God; but the Neo-Platonists have reified what/who God is, speaking about God’s ’emanation’ and how this emanation ‘process’ produced the cosmos, whereas God is really ‘no thing’, and this ‘no thing’ (and perhaps ‘no process’?) is what the cosmos is made from.
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“Two, in agreement with the Neo-Platonists, the source of the cosmos is God.”
Agni, I must have been unclear somewhere in the material that you read. The point of the creatio ex nihilo is precisely that the cosmos is not divine.
Edit: Oops. I misread your sentence. Right: the source of the cosmos is God, but not as an Neo-Platonism.
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It’s an interesting concept: does “ex nihilo” actually exist if God does, or does the very existence of God make a mockery of the entire concept?
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Fr Kimel,
Hello from the dark side – Vaal here. 🙂
The “strawman” accusation that Hart and so many others fling around at atheists, “new” or otherwise, is tiresome because it almost always amounts to “but you aren’t talking about MY version of Christianity.” Having been discussing these issues with Christians for decades – and atheists in similar positions can all attest – if there is one common theme it is the messiness and discordance within Christianity. You can take what one Christian says about Christianity or God, verbatim, and repeat it to another and you will inevitably get “Oh, well there’s your problem, poor boy, you have a misunderstanding of Christianity/God.” You can never address all the specific concepts of Christianity at once because they are so varied and often in conflict. This is why Jerry Coyne rightly refers to the “whack-a-mole” issue of dealing with Christianity “but you haven’t addressed MY version of Christianity.”
You don’t even have to be an atheist in the mix, you can sit back and look at the schismatic history of Christianity as obvious evidence. Rather than moving generally in a direction of accordance, as science does (and which would be suggestive of actual knowledge), Christianity has only fractured more and more over the years into competing versions. This is highly suggestive that religions like Christianity have no sound method of deciding their claims (if not outright suggesting the supernatural claims within Christianity are a confection of human imagination vs a project converging upon a coherent reality).
Of course Hart is trying to make the claim that the God he is describing IS the God that most Christians – even most theists – are talking about. He’s boiled down some essence he claims is found throughout the major versions of theism. But even IF it’s granted he has found such commonalities (and I don’t yet see that should be granted) it is not necessarily helpful, or even pertinent in terms of the New Atheist critique, to simply denude away the differences found among theists and point ONLY to the commonality to say “see, they all believe the same thing!” An analogy: If Fred says Obama is a normal human being and Joe says Obama is a space alien impersonating a human, bent on ultimately enslaving the human race who must be stopped, then these are very significant differences of view. The fact one can find some commonality – “Look, can’t you see they are both ultimately talking about a bipedal, intelligent creature currently holding the office of the President Of The United States” – is hardly germane to the type of problems that arise from the SPECIFIC DIFFERENCES, the SPECIFIC OTHER ATTRIBUTES being ascribed to the President, their consequences if true, and the behavior each different belief would motivate.
The same goes for Christians. Even IF there was some central attributes, some God-as-ground-of-reality commonality found within Christianity, the other specific things various Christians believe about God matter deeply, and motivate their behavior. And Hart focusing on the “ground of being” attributes of God is to simply miss other commonalities that are also part of Christianity: The Bible.
That is, appealing to the Bible as a source of knowledge about the reality of God. Which is the real target of new atheist’s energy.
This is why the New Atheists have been EXPLICIT about why they don’t spend a lot of time targeting vague “ground of all being” or “first cause” ONLY type deities. Such entities are not the propositions that, in general, energize the behavior of the religious. Those attributes in of themselves aren’t responsible for the type of mischief as the God described in the revealed religions. The ones with the Holy Books at their center. Those books are full of bad ideas and dubious claims about history, nature and reality, not to mention morality. To dignify them as “divine” in ANY WAY- whether it is the Protestant approach, the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or wish-washy liberal Christian, is deeply problematic.
Because insofar as you dignify a book like The Bible in such a way, you are saying: “Go to this book because HERE you will find, somewhere within, DIVINE TRUTHS of the Creator Of The Universe.” It directs people to a landmine of dubious propositions to believe and around which to organize their lives.
Further, accepting any of the supernatural claims of the bible, whether it comprise Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark or narrowed down to select miracle claims like Jesus’ Resurrection, is deeply problematical. Even just claiming some part of the Bible is representative of Divinity in any way, results in such special pleading, such a lowering of the epistemological bar, that it: 1. Is very likely pernicious to our project of understanding and agreeing upon reality and 2. disarms us from being able to criticize bad ideas and beliefs, insofar as we have allowed ourselves to drop the bar just to let in our supernatural beliefs.
And it’s not just the New Atheists who see this: the religious fundamentalists recognize it too. As much as more Liberal or enlightened practitioners of Christianity may point out how absurdly inconstant the Fundy is in trying to take literally the whole text and reject whatever science conflicts with the bible, the Fundy very rightly recognizes the “sophisticated” Christian is standing on sinking sand – because even the sophisticated Christians has granted Divine Insight to the Bible, and/or legitimacy to the Christ story, and it’s just as obvious how the other side has to cherry-pick his way through scripture and every day rationality to do so.
This is why New Atheists keep pointing to the liability of your holy book, whether you are a Fred Phelps, a Ken Ham or an Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, DB Hart or whomever.
So when Hart tries to make the claim that New Atheists are simply being naive and railing at “straw men” he is either being disingenuous, or obtuse (given how consistent and explicit New Atheists have been on these matters). Hart wants to say that the Atheists who asks for good evidence for the Christian God is “naive” and talking about a straw man version of God. That “the God Christians believe in” is not the type of being for which one can demand evidence; One knows of God through metaphysics, a priori necessity, not through crude a posteriori, evidential knowledge. So stop demanding “evidence” silly, misguided atheists! It’s just a category mistake. This is the God of metaphysical necessity, of “pure being,” not the God of dogma or positive evidential claims.”
And then Hart turns around, goes to Church, and opens his Bible.
These “tut-tuts” inevitably come from people who are CHRISTIANS who have a holy book at the center of their religious lives. Hart is not only Christian, he is part of a church that looks to the Bible for information about God and which holds various POSITIVE CREEDS about God. A revealed religion, either via a holy text, or claims of real events carried down via a church body, is BY NATURE a posteriori, evidence-derived knowledge claims. You don’t get the Nicene Creed, or the claims about Jesus’ life, his divinity, or his Resurrection, his sacrifice, or other specific claims about God’s behavior or God’s will, and on and on, via a priori metaphysics! You get it from your Bible. The vague Ground-Of-All-Being God just doesn’t have enough propositions attached to it to motivate most people’s behavior, which is why even the people like Hart (not to mention Thomas Aquinas et al) adhere to religions that contain a posteriori knowledge claims about God, evidence for God’s nature and God’s will (e.g. via the evidential claims of Jesus’ Sacrifice).
And it is THOSE types of claims the New Atheists continually remind theists like Hart that they are most concerned with. The dogmas, creeds of churches, and the the importance of the Holy Scriptures as divine information, rather than merely and ONLY a source of ancient human knowledge claims.
Every time Hart and any of his ilk bring up this “new atheists are railing against strawmen” stuff, we are going to pull aside the curtain and point at their holy book. “Sorry, we still see it. Let’s deal with the problem of believing in this, shall we?”
Cheers,
Vaal.
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Fr. Kimel,
I am still not able to get my mind around the everlasting integrity of the Incarnation in light of what Hart is saying. (I know, in reality, none of us can.) Still, I would so appreciate a future post where you elaborate on this some more.
I appreciated Vaal’s post. To his comment, “You don’t even have to be an atheist in the mix, you can sit back and look at the schismatic history of Christianity as obvious evidence.”, I can only say that the problems in church history for me serve to underscore the very truth the gospel is trying to convey, namely, that “Christ came into the world to save sinners…”
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Andy, could you elaborate further on what precisely you are struggling with regarding the Incarnation.
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David Bentley Hart writes: “He is not a ‘being’, at least not in the way that a tree, a shoemaker, or a god is a being; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are, or any sort of discrete object at all.”
While I would not disagree with his statement, yet it is difficult for me to truly understand the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, in light of it. I think of the Old Testament verse, “The heaven, even the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I have built.”, and wonder if this is how the Incarnation is better understood. When the Logos became flesh, he became one more object in the inventory of things that are, did He not? Indeed, one theologian I’ve read (can’t remember who just now) refers to the scandal of the particularity in the gospel message—that God was in Christ…
Thomas Torrance talks about the everlasting integrity of the Incarnation. The Word has become flesh for time and eternity. “A spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” We are blessed because we do not see, yet believe, yet we so look forward to seeing our Lord face to face, no longer through a glass darkly, as it were. But when we do see Him, when we do embrace Him, will it be Him, or a manifestation of Him? How is the eternal Son of God not confined in some way, if He lives forever in a glorified body? Or is this part of the mystery?
Even though I am not a member of an Orthodox church, I want to be orthodox in my understanding. I’m not asking you to speak for the Orthodox church, but what, Father, is your understanding of these things?
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Andy, you are right on target. Remember that Hart is attempting to present an understanding of divinity shared by the monotheistic religions, as well as some others; hence, his methodology excludes any mention of the Incarnation. Also remember that the Incarnation was a free and voluntary event for God: he did not need to become Man in Christ. Hence it is meaningful for Christians to reflect on the nature of the deity apart from the concrete specifics of the Incarnation.
In himself God is not a being; but in the Incarnation God has become a being, specifically, the man Jesus Christ.
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Hi Andy
Briefly, what Vaal is implying is that “science” is convergent but, religion – in this case Christianity specifically – is divergent when it comes to processing truth claims.
Now, if your epistemology produces divergent instead of convergent “truths”, what does that mean?
Cheers!
Chris
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Greetings, Vaal. Welcome to the blog.
Your point about the diversity of Christian beliefs is well taken; but there it is. We are, after all, talking about a 2,000 year old religious tradition. But I don’t think that let’s you guys off the hook. You still have to do your homework. You still have to do your best to understand what your opponent is saying. (And that, by the way, is not what I see Coyne as doing, which is why he aggravates me so much. I have little patience anymore with ideologues, whether Christians or non-Christians—and I say this as a recovering ideologue.)
In this thread let’s restrict ourselves, for purposes of conversation, just to Hart’s presentation of God (and we have a long citation from his book to get the conversation going) or to the very brief argument for the existence of God that I present in the second half of my article. Otherwise, we will find ourselves all over the place. I’m not terribly interested in scoring debate points against you and your friends. Life is too serious for that silliness, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Let’s also stipulate that Hart is presenting what might be called the classical Christian view. I certainly recognize it as such, though it would need to be supplemented with a clear understanding of the creatio ex nihilo in order to distinguish it from Neo-Platonic or Oriental construals of divinity. Hart is no Paul Tillich. His understanding of God is thoroughly informed by the Eastern Fathers and Thomas Aquinas. What that means is that many of the kinds of arguments you are used to advance against theists (particularly of the Protestant and evangelical sort) may not work against the classical understanding—hence Hart’s complaint about treating God as a god or fairy (http://goo.gl/63T02t).
How does that sound?
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Hi Fr Aidan Kimel,
I’d be happy to discuss the specific argument you suggest in your blog.
And in good faith 😉
But first, your reply compels me to re-iterate some points before we move on.
The issue under discussion at Prof. Coyne’s web site was DB Hart, and his general criticism that New Atheists are philosophically naive, and ignorant of
the fundamental belief of Christianity, which leads new atheists to simply railing against convenient straw-men. Yet when I read Hart or see him speak on the New Atheists, he regularly straw-man’s their arguments, and misses the point they are making.
It’s one thing to believe in a ground-of-being, first-cause “God.” It’s wholly another to say “and that God has manifested as my cat, who is giving me orders on how we ought to live.” If we continued to treat that latter idea with respect, just because it is someone’s “religious belief” we do so at the expense of lowering the rational bar for our other beliefs, and rational discourse in general. Similarly, it’s one thing to hold to the conclusion of a ground of being God, that is ONE discussion we can have, but it’s another to also say of this being “and he manifested himself as a Jewish carpenter 2,000 years ago, wielded miracles, died and rose for our sins, and all this is morally praise-worthy and believable on the accounts of our church or ancient document…”
Or, again, any variation that takes the Bible as revealed information concerning a God, as pretty much every Christian sect does (that’s why they ARE Christian sects). This is why Hart (and you) can not get away with some denuded, reduced “ground of being” God and say “THIS is the God of classical Christianity” when, in fact, Christians, including Hart’s church, accord many other propositions to that God – a posteriori claims derived from revelation and claims about historical revelations of this God. Hart will not be able to justify the biblical beliefs of his church without lowering the epistemological bar, making just as dodgy moves, as any other Christian believing it’s miracle claims. This is why it’s a farce for Hart to claim New Atheists are railing at straw-men, and it’s also why Hart pretends the atheistic discussion ought to centre around basic, ground of being concepts of God he presents…”don’t look at the God-in-the-book-we-believe-in behind the curtain…”
And the thing is, the New Atheists, like Sam Harris, hardly avoid discussion with the more “sophisticated” versions of Christianity. It’s entirely the opposite: Look at their debates and virtually ALL of the the persons sitting across from the New Atheists are with the “sophisticated theists” (or even non-theist). The ones who are saying exactly what Hart does: “you aren’t dealing with the sophisticated versions of Christianity.” Harris and others then go on to make the points I have re-iterated above. That if the Christian opponent is taking the Bible seriously at all as divine revelation, and clearly the opponent must be as a Christian, then the moves the Christian has to make to justify that belief are going to be as dubious, and bar-lowering, and he’ll be left special-pleading just the miracles he wants to believe against the Fundy or other fringe beliefs in general. It’s not for nothing that Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins etc found getting their liberal/sophisticated opponents to actually state what they actually believe in the Bible was like pulling teeth. And insofar as their opponents DO venture to say “this claim I believe…” the results tend to be disastrous for the opponent.
Having seen a great many attempts by sophisticated Christians to justify beliefs in central claims like Jesus’ divinity, resurrection, sacrifice etc, I have little confidence
DB Hart would fair any better in front of a Sam Harris, should he lay his biblical cards on the table.
So, by way of explaining my exasperated tone (and Prof Coyne’s tone as well, no doubt): I’m fairly fed up with the sighing of New Atheist critics about New Atheist naiveté, ignorance or lack of sophistication, when those critiques regularly straw man the New Atheists and just miss their point over and over.
Before moving to your argument, two last things:
You wrote: Your point about the diversity of Christian beliefs is well taken; but there it is. We are, after all, talking about a 2,000 year old religious tradition.
That seems to concede my point, but then the second sentence is supposed to act as some form of answer to the problem? Science has had far less time to deliver knowledge (around 400 years if we take a common view of the modern scientific method, though it doesn’t matter if we go back earlier), and it has had absolutely astounding impact on our knowledge. And it has the general feature of a converging picture of reality. Christianity has gone the opposite route. Your saying “we are, after all, talking about a 2,000 year old religious tradition” seems simply to throw up your hands and say “one shouldn’t expect convergence within a religion – give it 2,000 years and of course it’s claims are going to diverge!” Well…yeah…that’s the point.
And finally, you wrote:
Let’s also stipulate that Hart is presenting what might be called the classical Christian view.
No, that is precisely the claim I refuse to accept, for the reasons above. The classical Christian view does not ONLY entail the most simple, a priori propositions about God: they include divine revelation, historical claims, biblical a posteriori propositions about God as well. Certain divine claims about Jesus Christ rest at the centre of this God. That’s why it is “Christianity” and not “Ground Of Beinganity” To ignore this is simply to ignore the thrust of the New Atheist critiques.
Now, if you want to say “Let’s not talk about the Bible for the moment. Let’s just talk about this particular ground of being concept of God and see if my argument for this entity is viable” I’m on board for that. No problem. I just don’t want other dubious claims, like the ones used to dismiss New Atheists, slipping through the door along with the discussion.
Next I’ll respond to your argument for God.
Cheers,
Vaal
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Vaal, I think that if you go back and re-read Coyne’s article, you’ll see that the principal thrust of the piece is Hart’s understanding of Deity. That’s the reason why I joined the discussion. But to put all my cards on the table, I tend to agree with Hart about the superficial and ideological thinking of the big names in the new atheist movement. Give me Antony Flew any day. Now back to God.
I agree with you that it’s probably impossible for a practitioner within a specific religious tradition to totally bracket natural theology from revealed theology; but I don’t think that’s a problem for our discussion or even for evaluation of Hart’s book. A specialist in comparative religion might, for example, advance criticisms of Hart’s construal of God that he believes to be shared the religions that he names. As a Christian I might do the same. But this is a purely descriptive task. If we come across specific points where I disagree, as a Christian, with Hart’s description of God, I’ll be sure to mention them.
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Vaal, I meant to ask you this question earlier but forgot: Have you read The Experience of God? From different things you have said, I have the feeling that you have not. I’ve been assuming that you have; but if you (and Ben) have not, that may affect my responses to your comments.
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From absurdity or contradiction, any imaginable conclusion may trivially be derived…and your definition of one particular god with the eponymously confusing name, “God,” is the ultimate in absurdity: “The eternal Creator metaphysically transcends the universe and thereforein principlecannot be known, apprehended, studied, examined, prodded, poked, or measured by any kind of scientific method, no matter how advanced the technology.” You’re explicitly describing the indescribable and proclaiming your knowledge of the unknowable. Your god is the married bachelor who lives death in spartan luxury north of the North Pole — but never mind that; let’s restrict our conversation to his preferences in the wall coverings he lays down hanging over nothing.
Sorry, but that’s just not how rational and responsible adults do things in the modern world. It is how confidence artists have worked their scams throughout the ages and still to this day, but most of us have been around the block enough times to not be fooled by that sort of thing.
Would you invest your retirement in a fund with a prospectus that read like sophisticated theology? Would you buy an used car with a warranty that read like sophisticated theology? Would you buy property with a deed that read like sophisticated theology?
No? Of course not. You’d instantly know you were being scammed — it’d be so painfully obvious you’d wonder why the scammer isn’t already in jail.
Then why on Earth would you buy membership in a society whose manifesto is sophisticated theology?
b&
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Ben,
The point I’ve been trying to make (obviously very badly) is that God-discourse, properly understood, does not belong to the domain of science and hence cannot be judged by scientific criteria. It may seem more than obvious to you that we theists (and particularly Christians) are but a superstitious lot living in the age of the dinosaurs; but perhaps it’s also possible that we do not consider our belief in God to be at all “irrational” because we recognize that God, as the infinite actuality of Being, is not a “thing” within the cosmos nor even a “thing” alongside the cosmos (if that is conceivable). Hence divine agency does not compete with creaturely agency.
Case in point: how many atheists do you know who think that the Christian doctrine of creation rests on some version of the Big Bang? (Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking immediately come to mind.) And just to be fair, after you have done your head count, also count up the number of theists you have encountered also think the same thing. But they are both wrong!
Of course, none of this means that the Christian claim that God exists is true. I just think it’s important to be clear about what we are talking about. For more on this, see this article by William Carroll.
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You might not like it, but that is an admission of defeat.
Science, broadly construed, is the apportioning of belief in proportions indicated by a rational analysis of empirical observation. Contrary to what you might see in comic books, all the lab coats and beakers of colorful liquids and machines that go “ping” and all the rest aren’t what science is about. Indeed, if your plumber is at all competent, she’s applying science when she fixes your leaky sink.
The only way there could be no empirical observation for your gods is if they do not ever interact with the real world. If they did, we might not be able to detect them directly, but we could certainly detect the effects they have — just as we can’t detect the Higgs boson, but we can detect the particles it decays into. Or, if your gods do interact with reality but we can’t rationally analyze them…well, frankly, the only way that could be is if we’re all barking mad.
There are two possibilities. Either Jesus had something to do with the Big Bang or he did not. (There is, of course, a third possibility, and the real one: Jesus is purely imaginary — but I’ll play along for the moment.)
If he did not, then Jesus was not involved in creation, and one of the foundational pillars of Christianity crumbles into dust. We do know, with extreme certainty, that the Big Bang really did happen a baker’s dozen billion years ago; other hypotheses don’t deserve dignified responses.
But, even if Jesus was somehow involved in the Big Bang, we know that Inflation diluted any initial conditions far more than any homeopathic nostrum…again demonstrating that, even if Jesus was involved in the Big Bang, that had no bearing whatsoever on subsequent developments here on Earth.
You will likely object that I’m not properly addressing your fuzzy faery tale fantasies, that I’m not showing proper appreciation of the ruffles on the Emperor’s blouse. Sorry. You should no more be surprised that I’m as entirely unimpressed by your gods as you are equally unimpressed by all the other primitive superstitions you yourself casually dismiss.
When you understand why you don’t accept the sanctified meal of bread and water at the sacrificial table of Mithra, despite the very sophisticated arguments that could be made for Mithraic theology, you’ll understand why all your sophisticated arguments are just so much incoherent nonsense to everybody else.
Cheers,
b&
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Ben, if you insist that unless divine agency is empirically detectible and verifiable we have no reason to believe in a divine Creator, then of course I will gladly concede defeat, as I will not play the game according to your rules. Whatever deity you think you are talking about is not the Christian God, as he has been understood and confessed in the classical Christian tradition, nor is he the God of whom Hart writes in his book. So the question becomes, What God do you want to talk about? I don’t have any interest in talking about a god whose activity in the world can be scientifically measured, because that entity is most certainly not the eternal Creator who created the universe ex nihilo.
You write: “Either Jesus had something to do with the Big Bang or he did not.” Let’s keep Jesus and the Trinity out of our discussion for the moment. Is God involved in the Big Bang? Of course, assuming that the Big Bang theory is true. But the critical point is that the Christian doctrine of creation need not entail a temporal beginning of the universe. The doctrine is also compatible with, say, a steady-state theory. In fact, it’s compatible with any legitimate cosmological theory that scientists can come up with.
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Then your god, quite simply, is not understood. Yes, you’ve fooled yourself into thinking you understand it, but deception is something entirely different from understanding. You might, in some perverted sense, “understand” that the Moon is made of green cheese, but that does not mean that you actually understand the chemical composition of the Moon.
Then what you have is not a rational theory, not an understanding, but an useless conspiracy theory.
Useful rational theories are compatible with minimal — ideally, only one — possible sets of observations. Newtonian Mechanics is not compatible with observations of acceleration inequal to the forces acting upon the objects; indeed, Newtonian Mechanics is not compatible with observations of Mercury’s orbit. Darwinian Evolution is not compatible with a verifiable discovery of a rabbit fossilized in the Pre-Cambrian era; indeed, such an observation would be incompatible with pretty much every other scientific discipline as well, especially physics.
On the other hand, the theory that you’re a brain in a vat is compatible with every possible observation. So is the theory that the Queen has been replaced by Reptilian aliens with a body double that looks and acts exactly like her. So is the theory that the Moon is made of green cheese covered by a layer of lunar regolith, and not only does the cheese have a mass density composition identical to that which we’ve plotted for the Moon’s mostly silicate composition, but the cheese will instantly transform itself into the appropriate kind of rock should any astronaut dig down to the cheese layer.
And so, by your own description, is the Christian doctrine of creation.
Conspiracy theories such as yours aren’t merely useless for understanding reality; they only have one practical use ever observed when they’re not simply the product of mental illness. That is, of course, fraud or some other form of deception. I really do own the legitimate deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, and my conspiracy theory explains all the reasons why you can’t disprove the fact — so that’s why you should have faith in me and buy the deed. You’ll be rich forever!
…circling back a bit:
Woah — I thought you claimed to be a Christian.
If I’m not mistraken, a certain authority most highly respected in the Christian community declared, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Are you denying that Jesus was the Logos? Are you declaring that “John” was sorely mistraken when he put Jesus in his Wordy form at the beginning? And did not “John” later quote Jesus affirming that claim, with, “I and my Father are one.”? And if “John” isn’t good enough for you, how about Paul? In Colossians 1:16, Paul quite clearly attributes all of creation to Jesus, the same as “John” did.
Don’t tell me you’re pretending to be a true-believing Christian interpreter of sophisticated theology and you didn’t even read all the way through all four Gospels.
This isn’t some trivial “gotcha” game I’m playing. If your claim is that Jesus had nothing whatsoever to do with the Big Bang, then you’re rejecting plain-as-day scriptural declarations — declarations clearly intended as unambiguous statements of fact about Jesus’s nature, declarations given the most significant possible emphasis. To reject Jesus as the Logos of Creation is tantamount to rejecting the Bible wholesale. And, without the Bible, you have nothing of Christianity left — not even a single footnote. I also seem to remember something about that sort of thing — explicitly rejecting the divinity and / or foundational miracles of Jesus or of attributing them to another — as being the one sin Jesus will not forgive, but that’s your problem, not mine.
I’m willing to engage with you on this topic, but not if you’re lying through your teeth either about what Christianity so clearly is or about your own reasonable claim to being a Christian. Are you really so desperate to protect your faith that you’ll sacrifice anything and everything in its defense, even Jesus himself?
Cheers,
b&
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Second Reply:
I’m concerned with whether: 1. The God concept you proffer makes actual sense and more important 2. why I ought to believe such a God exists.
As to the coherency issue, when you say things like: “God is not that kind of being, which means that he is ineffable, incomprehensible, unknowable, unfathomable Mystery.” Then it suggests the conversation is over. If you can not speak of God, know God, or make God comprehensible, then I no longer care about this God. It seems nothing more than a string of words rattling around in the theist’s brain, one that I have no inclination or reason to import into mine. If God is ineffable, as the old saying goes, ought one not shut up about God? Time to see what’s on TV. (This is of course a common critique, one that a class of Christians have struggled with ever since proposing this type of God description – I just haven’t found their follow-up answers to the problem of talking about God to be very good).
Of course, neither you nor Hart nor other Christians even of the classical bent do stop talking about God. (I’m trying to keep the bible out of it for now). Hart goes on to ascribe positive attributes to the definition of God:
“eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, ….. perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.”
Well, those are in my book positive attributes – power, knowledge, immanence. In every other use of the word, so long as any entity gains more powers or knowledge, it is described in terms of the positive additional knowledge or power gained. Why in the world should I think this stops, or reverses, when an entity becomes “All Powerful/All Knowing?” If “knowledge” and “power” no longer amount to the same positive attributes as when we use those words normally, then they are the wrong words to use.
Moving on, some other claims of yours about God seem in conflict with the attributes mentioned above by Hart. For instance, you wrote:
There are no tests that physicists can devise that would either prove or disprove his existence. The question of God’s existence, therefore, can never be formulated as empirical hypothesis, contrary to what Coyne wants to believe.
But God is described as Omnipotent and Omniscient. It follows from such descriptions that God could if it desired, manifest in any way it wished including in an empirically verifiable manner to us. (In fact, that is what most Christians believe God DID do, in Christ). If God lacks the knowledge or power to do what any of us can do effortlessly, hell even what the diet coke can do sitting on my desk – that is be manifest in an empirically identifiable, testable manner – then why should I think of such a being is “Omnipotent” or “Omniscient?”
I would like to address your argument for God, based on the “why/existence” question, except that I can find no argument in what you wrote. You asked some questions, but I didn’t see arguments for answers.
Why do I exist?
First, if by “why” you mean “what explanation do I have for my existence” then I can give all sorts of answers, scientific answers being for me the most rational and informative. But if at each step your question is going to become instead “well why does THAT exist?” until we get to the universe itself, then just skip to “why does the universe exist?” In which case one can also give a scientific answer that gets us as far back with some confidence…much further in terms of confidence than ANY theistic or metaphysical explanation gets us. (Because
both those types of explanations have been notoriously unreliable, theistic supernatural explanations being particularly empty and impotent as “explanations.”)
If you mean “Why” do I, or does anything exist, as in “for what purpose were we created” then that just begs the question in a debate about God’s existence. I do not see anything suggesting the universe or humans were created “with a purpose.”
As to Victor White saying “This Unknown we call God.” I would reply: speak for yourself, please. I don’t call what I don’t know “God” and see no reason to. In fact, I see plenty of reason not to, as it a title so loaded with baggage it can only confuse the question.
(And, FWIW, I do not find Thomistic/Aristotelian ideas of teleology/first cause/final causes/objective value/ends etc, at all promising answers to these issues. But if you’d like to start an actual argument for believing in God based on such principles, we can of course discuss this).
Cheers,
Vaal
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Vaal (is that your real name or did yous steal the alias from the name of the god in the Star Trek episode “The Apple”? 🙂 ), I appreciate the way you are conducting the conversation. Thanks.
If all I knew about God was that he had created the universe, I don’t think I’d be very interested in him either. But given that I am a Christian, I also believe that the ineffable and incomprehensible God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and that by the gift of the Spirit he unites us to his trinitarian and eternal life and thus find him infinitely interesting. And I suspect you would, too, if you believed.
You state that the divine incomprehensibility renders him boring and irrelevant. I don’t see why. Don’t you like a good mystery?
But let’s remember, at this point our task is descriptive. We are simply trying to give an accurate account of the God the Christian Church has confessed down through the ages.
I suggest that the above attributes listed are best characterized as negative terms. They tell us what God must be like—or more accurately, what he is not like—if he is the creator of the universe: God created time, so he is non-temporal (i.e., eternal); God sustains everything in existence, so he is not ignorant about anything that is happening in his world; God has brought the world from out of nothing, so there’s no creaturely limitations upon his power. In asserting these things we have not in anyway defined God. He remains ineffable Mystery. How could it be otherwise? He’s the infinite Creator of the world, not a finite object within it that we can study and measure.
But whether this makes sense to you or not, the fact remains that this is how Christians have historically understood God.
Of course God can reveal himself in history in any way he so chooses, and as a Christian I believe that he has. He can even do miracles. But it still remains the case that “There are no tests that physicists can devise that would either prove or disprove his existence.”
Time for me to get to bed. Later.
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Then your understanding of what science actually is is no more sophisticated than that of a very young child reading a comic book.
Scientists observe what happens. If a miracle happened, it could be observed; you yourself would claim that there have been miracles and that they have been observed. The apportioning of beliefs in proportions indicated by a rational analysis of those observations is what science is. In that sense, the Gospels themselves are scientific accounts of the incarnation.
The problem, of course, is that the Gospels are pure works of fiction, and unabashedly so; none of it ever happened, and trusting them is as foolish as believing in Pons and Fleishman’s reports of cold fusion. Demonstrating so is trivial; all you have to do is look at the absence of reports in the quite thorough record of actual contemporary sources (i.e., those written during and within a decade of the claimed period), and couple that with observations such as the most detailed ones by Justin Martyr of how Jesus is unambiguously a syncretic patchwork quilt of all the most popular stories of the other Pagan demigods worshiped at the time. Wrap it up with the universal Pagan dismissal (once they finally noticed the Christians a century later) as the exact same type of whack-job lunatic fringe as the Raelians or Branch Davidians or Jonestownians, top it off with (what you’d certainly agree with me is) the obviously fallacious nature of every other religion in the history of humanity, and Bob’s yer uncle.
But that’s far from your only problem — or even the worst of them
If Jesus can do miracles, even today, then surely he can do the mundane as well, no? Such as call 9-1-1 whenever he spots one of his official agents (of whichever division) raping a child in his name?
For you realize, that’s the “Evidential Problem of Evil” that Epicurus laid bare centuries before the invention of Christianity, that no Christian has ever even pretended to seriously engage. Never mind the omni-properties; even a young child of dubious moral character, if but armed with a cellphone, could do infinitely more to fight evil than Jesus ever has. And any adult who did know about child rape and didn’t call the police would be every bit as evil as the rapist.
No, infinite torture in Hell after death isn’t a solution. First, justice delayed is justice denied — never mind all the repeat offenses that would most reasonably be prevented with a call to 9-1-1 after the first one. That, and infinite torture in Hell is the ultimate example of cruel and unusual punishment, itself an evil, amazing as it may seem, infinitely worse than “merely” raping a child.
In other words, as soon as you open the door to miraculous intervention, you place upon the miracle-worker the moral obligation to do with that power what any other moral agent would. Just as you’d call 9-1-1 after witnessing some tragedy, so too must a far-seeing miracle-worker do something comparable; failure to do so at best invalidates claims of knowledge or ability…and, if it doesn’t, it means the entity in question is the worst kind of monster humans have ever encountered.
In other words, either I’m right and Jesus is just a childish fantasy, or you’re right and Jesus is a monster.
Cheers,
b&
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Fr Aidan Kimel,
Yes I cheekily took my screen name from The Apple. I appreciate
you noticed, though you’ve outted yourself as a fellow Star Trek geek, it seems 🙂 I also note your ability to indent quotations, a skill I have not mastered. Since I seem unable to grasp any material method of doing the same (e.g html skills), I conclude your ability to be a miracle, with apologies my posts are not so neat.
You state that the divine incomprehensibility renders him boring and irrelevant. I don’t see why. Don’t you like a good mystery?
It doesn’t hint at being any real “mystery” but instead, just a state of confusion – words strung together with little coherence. (That you may not consider yourself confused doesn’t mean you are not – and I see no good argument here that you are not). Why would I wish to spend time confused, for no good reason?
But then, you admit to other claims about God, e.g. that He manifested as Jesus. What I’d like to see is how you can justify such a belief without a dubious lowering of the skeptical bar.
But let’s remember, at this point our task is descriptive. We are simply trying to give an accurate account of the God the Christian Church has confessed down through the ages.
Actually, I thought we’d moved on from that. I’d already said I was interested in whether your God concept makes sense, and why I should believe that God exists. Whether you frame it as your particular view, your particular sects view, or “the classical christian view,” doesn’t amount to an argument for the coherency of the concept or an argument for it’s existence, which is what I hoped we were on to.
I suggest that the above attributes listed are best characterized as negative terms.
I know: I’m waiting for a good reason to agree with you.
They tell us what God must be like—or more accurately, what he is not like—if he is the creator of the universe:
And just that type of thinking is why the type of metaphysics, and the type of God-talk you are engaging in, has been so impotent and fruitless for our project of gaining knowledge about the universe.
First, as a general approach it is an enormous waste of time in trying to understand an entity simply negatively. I’m thinking of a real object that exists. If I stuck to only descriptions of what it is “not like” I could spend my entire life pointing toward “the things it is not,” die exhausted, and never have come close to completing the list. Wheres if I simply say “a purple crayon” you know what I’m talking about. (Or, I can describe it’s positive properties: a pencil or stick of colored chalk or wax, used for drawing).
Further, it is elucidating, or hypothesizing the POSITIVE attributes of entities that have progressed our knowledge, especially scientific, about the universe. A positive description of a combustion engine gives you information on what it is, and a positive description of how it works gives you more knowledge by which to
predict it’s behavior, and to expand your predictive power in the world. Same for the objects of biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology, etc. We simply haven’t progressed to
any new knowledge of the world talking the way you are talking about God.
Of course God can reveal himself in history in any way he so chooses, and as a Christian I believe that he has. He can even do miracles. But it still remains the case that “There are no tests that physicists can devise that would either prove or disprove his existence.”
I’ve already explained why that is a blatant contradiction. Simply re-stating the claim is no counter argument. (???)
If God is Omnipotent then he can, by definition, make Himself amenable to empirical testing. Therefore your claim of a universal negative “no tests” could prove or disprove His existence, is false. Because God’s Omnipotence actually means that it is possible “some tests COULD” prove his existence.
In order to evade this contradiction what you actually have to do is introduce some other premise such as “So long as it is God’s desire to remain hidden, no test can be devised to prove or disprove His existence.”
But then you have, among various issues, the problem of Divine Hiddenness and it’s epistemological and moral implications. The best you could get to is the metaphysical God, not the one you want to believe in, the Jesus God. Because in so far as you make God empirically hidden, or empirically unreliable, you will undermine the type of confidence you’ll need to believe in any particular manifestation of God (e.g. Jesus) for reasons I’ve already given. You can’t have it all: a leak springs somewhere no matter what hole you plug.
Vaal
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Vaal you ask for measurable, definable, rational proof, yet if a miracle were to happen in your presence you would rationalize it away. Yet I have seen some meanevilnasty people that turned to what you believe as not existing and by turning to Him and submitting to His will it totally turned their lives around to where they are what most would consider good folks, and it is a truly miraculous thing to behold.
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Hi jrj1701
People can change their ways. Are you saying that this is a bona-fide god(s)-driven miracle? Or is it simply kinda unlikely?
Common language has stolen “miracle” to mean “something really unlikely”. People have been killed by flying roof-tiles… VERY unlikely but is that what you want to call a divine miracle?
Be careful. If you claim “massively unlikely” good things to be divine, the you also have to own the “massively unlikely” bad things too. Or you just have to accept that in a huge universe probability is a harsh mistress! 🙂
Chris
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Howdy Chris
I am saying that it is God inspired and the change in the person is performed by God when that person chooses to submit his will to His will. We live in a world where bad things, terrible things happen per chance, for it rains on the just and the unjust, yet we still have free will and abuse it constantly, this abuse of free will blinds and darkens the heart and I believe that there is only one recourse to heal this darkness. There are those that don’t believe this, or doubt it and I believe that they have the free will to not believe or to seek for the truth of the matter. In the search there is found wisdom, truth, lies, controversy, pride, commonalities and differences. I asked Him to help and although it ain’t easy, things are becoming clearer and the way more evident, and it it ain’t as hard as I feared.
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Hiya jrj1701
Question: How can you tell the difference between a supernatural change-of-heart and a natural change-of-heart?
Another thing to ponder:
Bad things happen. If God exist then It lets these bad things happen. Now, that isn’t a problem if you don’t believe in omnibenevolence. But, unfortunately, most Christians do.
Let’s take a step to the right. Do we attempt to make some sort of fair society (including the above judgement about supposed wrongdoing) or do we let “God sort it out”?
In my human opinion, it is a moral imperative that if you have the power to prevent evil then you should do so. In MY opinion if there is an overlooking deity that has, in it’s power, the ability to prevent even the mildest hurt/rape/torture/murder then it should do. OK, natural disaster that causes harm and pain can be thrown in too.
Now, if divine benevolence is valid, then *it* should be able to explain all of this in a way that we can comprehend. If your god is both benevolent and has power, it should be able to intervene in even the most minor fashion.
It doesn’t? It is immoral, by my human calculation. If you… how can I put it… describe a powerful god with these supposedly awesome attributes, then it should be able to implement them.
I have an explanation for natural evil. Do you, without destroying your god’s morality?
Chris
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I agree that if I see something thing horrible happening that I should do something, yet I should resort to violence as the last resort.
This is a quote from Archimandrite Sophrony (His Life is Mine; translated by Rosemary Edmonds; St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press pg.68):
“The problem of evil in the world generally and in mankind particularly poses the question of God’s participation in the historical life of the human race. Many lose their faith because it seems that, if God existed, evil could not be so rampant and there could not be such widespread senseless suffering. They forget that God cares for man’s freedom, which is the root principal of His creation in the divine image. For the Creator to interfere when man inclines to evil would be tantamount to depriving him the possibility of self-determination, and would destroy him altogether. But God can and does save individuals and nations if they tread the road He designates.”
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I think much of the disconnect comes from the fact that theology is still using Aristotelian metaphysics and closely related derivatives. The problem is that that’s extremely primitive pre-scientific superstitious nonsense that not only hasn’t been credible for centuries but hasn’t even been tangentially mentioned in the sciences for just about as long. To the modern mind, theological questions are as incoherent as wondering what it is that moves inertia so that it may in turn move the planets.
Even worse for the ground-of-being types of gods, we know what grounds the stuff of everyday experience: chemistry. And we know what grounds chemistry: atoms. And we know what grounds atoms: electrons and quarks (in the form of either a pair of up and one down for the proton and a pair of down and one up for the neutron) and gluons (that hold the nucleus together). We even further know what grounds all these subatomic particles: the associated fields. Indeed, the particles themselves are merely harmonic resonances in the fields.
Granted, we’re not sure yet what (if anything) grounds the fields, but we know enough to know that gods of whatever conception or sophistication are no more involved in said grounding than they are in drawing the Sun and its Chariot across the dome of the sky every day. We also know that all these levels of grounding — chemistry, atoms, particles, fields, forces, etc. — are every bit as regular and predictable as the Sun in its course throughout the day. If there’s ever been any deviation in the entire baker’s dozen billion years since the Big Bang, there’s not even the slightest hint of the tiniest shred of credible evidence that such has ever happened.
Rationalists also notice not a small bit of deceptive bait-and-switch going on. We are urged to consider one element of the Christian pantheon as the ground of being on the one hand; on the other, we notice Christians proclaiming (contrary to all evidence) that this ground of being took human form a couple millennia ago in a backwater of the Roman empire, acted exactly like a garden-variety Pagan demigod to get everybody’s attention (which nobody at the time actually noticed), all as part of an effort to get us to adhere to what we now recognize as a most barbaric moral code — so barbaric that it’s had to be continually “reinterpreted” through the ages with every secular achievement in that field. Yet this emphatically tribal demigod is somehow also perfectly congruent with the apophatic ground of being. That might pass for sophistication in theological circles, but it wouldn’t even get you a passing grade in any serious academic class even in grade school — let alone make it past peer review in a respected publication.
Of course, we could well be deluded in all manner of ways. One of the innumerable Christian gods — one of the Seraphim, perhaps, or even Jesus himself — could well be, for example, running an insanely sophisticated computer simulation — and this simulation could, for that matter, even have been running only since 4004 BC as Usser calculated. There is no way, even in principle, for us to eliminate any such possibility. But, the thing is, that caveat applies even to gods as well; Jesus at his Matrix-style superdupercomputer has no way of eliminating the possibility that he’s just a small bit of Alice’s Red King’s dream — and the Red King himself may in turn be part of Zhuangzi’s Butterfly’s dream, and so on. And none can rule out that possibility any more than we can.
I suppose another way of putting it is that we rationalists have taken the claims of the theologians seriously. We’ve just dismissed them along with the Four Elements, the demonic possession theory of disease, Astrology, the Luminiferous Aether, Phrenology, and all the other detritus of the history of science. The theologians aren’t happy that we’ve moved on, of course…but we have. Sorry. The universe is what it is, not what you think it should be nor what you want it to be. Faith is the refusal to accept that fact, and it’s at the heart of not only religion but every other confidence scam — again, whether you like it or not.
Cheers,
b&
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Greetings, Ben. Welcome to the blog. Please read the comment I addressed to Vaal, so we’ll all be on the same page.
Regarding your comments about ground-of-being gods, they miss the point, as they blur and confuse the uncreated/created distinction. I can concede everything you say about atoms, subatomic particles, force fields, etc., etc., and still ask what I believe to be the most fundamental of all human questions, Why? When I ask this question, I am not asking for a scientific explanation. Nor can one make the question go away by saying that modern man no longer asks that question, because of course modern man continues to ask that question.
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It’s trivially possible to ask all sorts of leading questions that don’t make any sense at all. To be hyperbolic with the classic, why did you stop beating your underaged prostitutes?
“Why” questions only make sense in one of two ways: in the context of the intentional actions of an intelligent agent, or as a proxy for “What is the mechanism by which this came to pass?”
You could, for example, ask why the water in the kettle is boiling. You might answer that it’s boiling because you desire a cup of tea, or you might answer that it’s boiling because the stove has put enough heat energy into the water such that it is transitioning from liquid to gaseous phases.
But now ask why your geiger counter clicked at a precise moment as you were waving the detector in front of your smoke detecter. We know for a fact that that question is as incoherent as asking what should be the color of a fish singing an eggbeater. Quantum mechanical events have no more “why” to them than the North Pole has a north to it. Furthermore, especially in light of the in-the-news BICEP2 discovery, we know that the Big Bang was, itself, a quantum mechanical event. And, just to rub salt in the theological wound, Inflation diluted any initial conditions that might have existed prior to that trillionth-of-a-trillionth-of-a-trillionth of a second to an homogenized state that makes homeopathic nostrums look like pure refinements.
Again, “Why?” in this context is nothing but Aristotelian metaphysics at its worst. You may as well keep insisting that, until I can explain what it is that pushes inertia that it may in turn push the planets (since metaphysics demands that all motion requires a Mover), you’re going to continue to conclude that Helios really does draw the Sun across the sky with his chariot. And, no, I’m not exaggerating; that really is the exact level of scientific incompetence implicit in the question — especially once you throw Jesus into the mix.
Cheers,
b&
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Ben, I suppose I can understand how someone might say that they do not find the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “What is the ultimate purpose of my life?” meaningful. That is exactly what Jonathan Miller says to Denys Turner in their wonderful BBC conversation. But that is an intuitive judgment about which one might disagree with equal rationality and personal depth. Humanity simply refuses to arbitrarily restrict the question “why?” to the scientific and prudential domains–and in my opinion, rightly so. And this has absolutely nothing to do with Aristotelian metaphysics, as if we need to be Aristotelian in order to be human.
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People see agency in the wind blowing in the reeds or the rattle of a sticky valve in a car’s engine. Part of being a rational adult in the modern world is realizing that these are illusions, no different from the optical illusions with which we’re all familiar.
Asking “Why?” of that which is not the result of intelligent agency is the perfect example of a category error. Using the fact that you’ve asked such an incoherent question to conclude the very agency it presupposes is such a basic logical error that I think even Aristotle would have recognized its fallacious nature.
b&
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There is nothing wrong with the concept that the fundamental basis of the fabric of reality is an eternal, infinite substance: It is extremely reasonable to speculate that because things exist now, something has always existed. Otherwise we would have to accept that somehow the universe created itself out of literally nothing at all, which doesn’t appear to make much sense. The concept of substance dates back at least to Aristotle and substance monism, the idea that there is only one “necessary” substance of which everything else is constituted (and is thus “contingent”) was Spinoza’s position and an inspiration for Einstein, among others, views on the universe.
But what is completely unjustified is when you start adding attributes to this basic substance, which go beyond what is minimally necessary. When theists, such as Hart, talk about god they equivocate between a definition of God as substance and an incredibly over specified God with attributes such as intelligence, omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence etc. None of these attributes stand out as being “necessary” any more than trinity, a long white beard, original sin, having a son called Jesus or wearing a red hat would appear to be necessary for a substance.
So how do we know what the necessary attributes of this hypothetical substance are? The answer is we don’t, of course, at our current state of knowledge. So like many questions where we don’t know the answer, we just have to say that we don’t yet know. But, what we can do is to make cosmological models that take into account what we currently understand empirically and make the most minimal set of assumptions about what we don’t yet have evidence for. For instance, there are models where universes (used in the sense of big bang bubbles) arise from quantum fluctuations in an infinite De Sitter space (vacuum solution of Einstein’s equations). Is this a minimally necessary substance? Is this how universe/s really arise? there isn’t enough information to answer those questions yet. But, the point is that these models are consistent with what we do know and we haven’t added all sorts of unnecessary and probably incoherent attributes, such as omnipotence and omniscience. And when you pare off all these unnecessary extravagances, what you get is not a God, but a process – something that Spinoza recognized a long time ago.
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Greetings, roqoco, and welcome to the blog.
Your appeal to Aristotle and Spinoza helpfully identifies the critical difference between the “God” you are speaking of and the classical Christian understanding of God. On this I refer you to a series of blog articles I wrote several months ago, beginning with “The Christian Distinction.” Against Aristotle and Spinoza, all I can say is that that is not the God catholic Christians confess.
Hence when you refer to God as “eternal, infinite substance,” I need to ask you what “substance” means.
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Hi Fr Kimel, thanks for taking the time to reply.
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Lets make the assumption (i.e. a metaphysical model) that our universe (or big bang bubble) was created some 15bn years ago in the big bang by something outside of itself that is eternal and in some greater system, which we might call the cosmos. You can call this eternal creator “God” if you like (as Spinoza and Einstein did), although that can lead to equivocation with the anthropomorphic gods defined in other ways by religions (including Christianity, of course). So to avoid confusion, rather than referring to God, we could just say that the cosmos has a fundamental structure or fabric that is eternal and out of which our universe bubble (and maybe others) have arisen.
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Spinoza defines “substance” as follows: “By substance I understand that which is in itself [ie uncaused, or as Spinoza puts it “causa sui” which means cause of itself] and conceived through itself; that is that which does not need the concept of another thing, from which concept it must be formed” (Ethics 1D3). Then he says “By God I understand an absolutely infinite entity, that is a substance” (Ethics 1D6). So in this terminology the eternal fabric of the cosmos from which everything arose and is constituted is a “necessary substance” – where necessary just means that the substance (fabric of the cosmos) is not contingent (i.e. it doesn’t arise from anything else).
So, we have a metaphysical model that makes a lot of sense: it answers the question “why is there something rather than nothing” by saying that there has always been something, a necessary substance, from which all created things arise. You could even say that the cosmos *must* work something like this using just a priori arguments (as Spinoza did), because otherwise stuff would have had to magically materialise from nothing.
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Now, Hart’s metaphysical model (in the para you quoted) isn’t fundamentally that much different from the one I have described. He speaks of “an infinite cause of all that is” and says it is “absolutely immanent to all things”. That’s all very reasonable, but then he goes off the rails by ascribing to his god attributes that he can’t possibly claim are reasonable a priori, such as omnipotence and omniscience. You don’t necessarily *need* omnipotence to create a universe, or anything else, you just need sufficient materials to do the job. And you don’t obviously *need* omniscience either, or the ability to constantly monitor what you have created in order to sustain it: Modern physics shows that once created the universe unwinds according to some quite simple laws. So, these are just attributes that Hart has tacked on to the concept of necessary substance (or God if you like) with no rational justification and they should fall to Occam’s razor. In these respects Hart might just as well be talking about unicorns or fairies.
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As I mentioned above, there is a cosmological model (a possible physical explanation) that fits the definition of substance outlined previously. It is the solution to Einstein’s equations of general relativity for vacuum (i.e. empty space) and is called De Sitter space after the guy who came up with the solution. In this model bubble universe/s can arise in a greater multiverse (cosmos was the term used above) due to quantum fluctuations in De Sitter space: We know that quantum fluctuations do occur even in apparently empty space and we know from chaos theory and cellular automata theory that specified complexity arises naturally in systems, even those with very simple underlying rules. That’s the kind of cosmological model that makes sense, with what we actually know about the world, not inventing probably incoherent attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience and assigning them to anthropomorphic entities, which is just pure fantasy.
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I realize, of course, that these views aren’t what Catholics believe, but it’s hard not to conclude that Catholics are just post facto making stuff up, to fit with an ancient text, and with insufficient, obscurantist reasoning… and then believing the results solely based on faith.
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roqoco, despite some verbal similarities, Hart’s understanding of deity is significantly different from that of Spinoza, as you note. Lacking Hart’s philosophical chops and given my relative ignorance of Spinoza’s understanding of divinity, I hesitate to enter into critique of Spinoza. But I immediately note that while Hart is attempting to present an understanding of God that is shared by living religions, Spinoza is inventing a metaphysical system to solve philosophical problems.
In any case, whether one finds Spinoza’s system rationally satisfying or not, it’s not the Christian understanding. I would, for example, never describe God as a substance. I know that some in the analytic school feel free to do so (e.g., Swinburne), but I find that way of talking quite misleading. It immediately leads us to start talking of God as an entity or a thing. God does not belong to a genus; he cannot be comprehended within our philosophical categories, which are grounded on finite reality. Hence the unanimous insistence of both the Eastern and Latin Fathers that the divine essence is utterly unknowable by creatures. I am reminded of this provocative statement by John Scotus Eriugena:
“We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.”
And Meister Eckhart:
“God is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him. If I say, God is good, it is not true; nay more; I am good, God is not good. I may even say, I am better than God; for whatever is good, may become better, and whatever may become better, may become best. Now God is not good, for He cannot become better. And if He cannot become better, He cannot become best, for these three things, good, better, and best, are far from God, since He is above all. If I also say, God is wise, it is not true; I am wiser than He. If I also say, God is a Being, it is not true; He is transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I could understand, I would never hold Him to be God.”
And St Gregory Palamas:
“Every nature is utterly removed and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature; just as he is not a being [on], if the other are beings. And if he is a being, the others are not beings.”
Understanding why Christian theologians have been compelled to employ this kind of paradoxical language is absolutely necessary if one wants to get a handle on the classical Christian understanding of God. Ultimately, this paradoxical language is grounded not in philosophical speculation but in the contemplation of God in prayer, worship, and theosis.
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And, yet, you spill innumerable electrons making unambiguous and absolute declarations about your gods. Either it is a lie that you do not know what your gods are, or all else you say about them are lies.
God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.
First, there’s a perfect example of the lie in practice: after declaring that he does not know what God is, Eriugena declares that god is transcendent. Both statements cannot be true; which is truth and which is lie hardly matters.
Besides, we have a word that perfectly fits the description given, should one ignore the preparatory declaration of ignorance. According to Eriugena, God is imaginary.
I’d agree with that, wholeheartedly, of course.
This also lays bare another dilemma you face, what I call the “Cookbook Problem.” It is especially applicable when one is profoundly ignorant of the true nature of the gods. Specifically, even if one grants that the gods are real, it is utmost folly to have faith in any such entity. As the Man who was Served belatedly discovered, it could very well be a cookbook, not a guide to moral living. Indeed, that is trebly so in the case of Christianity; is not Christ the Good Shepherd and we like sheep? And what, pray tell, is the primary source of protein for shepherds?
Cheers,
b&
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Well, I do not have time to properly wade through the minutiae of these comments. Nonetheless, if I may gesture broadly at some of the basic assertions so far as I understand them — there are various different ideological versions of naturalism. If one wishes to engage a particular individual, one simply has to address their particular views. (Whack-a-mole is an inevitable aspect of encountering individuals with differing truth claims.) That being said, I am rather fond of Aquinas’ model for pursuing the truth. One hopes to find the best exemplars of particular schools of thought. One could, of course, refuse the notion that there is any such thing as a best version. I think that kind of egalitarian pose is disingenuous. All the same, it still comes back to whether one has a desire to engage in a dialectical search for the truth.
I don’t see any intellectual problem in Hart’s limiting himself to a purely metaphysical understanding of God. It doesn’t matter that religious faith espouses more than that. The chief point is that more specific understanding cannot properly contradict the fundamental metaphysical reality. It also doesn’t matter if certain religious people reject those metaphysical truths or cannot understand them. What does matter, rather, is, for one, whether Hart’s understanding is rationally defensible. If it is, one might then wonder if such an understanding opens up the possibility of something like the Incarnation. Those who think talk of God is similar to talk of invisible pink elephants or wonder why the Incarnation could not just as plausibly involve their pet cat are likely not really inhabiting (imaginatively at least for the sake of understanding the views of one’s interlocuter) the metaphysical stance that Hart is proposing.
Aquinas pointed out that there was no rational way to determine if the universe was eternal or not. An eternal universe would still be a contingent one. I don’t think naturalists acknowledge or agree with the force of arguments from contingency. I find it rationally compelling, but it is obvious that many do not. I guess I share Hart’s sensibility. There’s a limit to what debate can actually achieve. Art, love, unique experience will take one further. Unfortunately, when one invokes “vision” or “intuition” those with an analytical philosophy bent are going to accuse one of fuzzy, subjective emotivism lacking cognitive value. Still, reality is actually grasped according to modes of perception and much the most important does not reveal itself to the kind of quantified, repetitive, experimental model prized by early moderns and still prioritized as the best paradigm for truth amongst the epigoni of the Enlightenment.
Anyway, one may actually be harmed by being too interested in winning debates. A triumph of the ego can vanquish the presence of mystery and the possibility of love.
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Brian, I find myself in total agreement with your comment.
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Father,
We are usually on the same page.
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brian,
I don’t see any intellectual problem in Hart’s limiting himself to a purely metaphysical understanding of God. …….What does matter, rather, is, for one, whether Hart’s understanding is rationally defensible.
That would be perfectly fine. Atheists like myself are always up for a discussion about the possibility of a God.
Except that Hart, like so many other critics of the New Atheists, uses this purely metaphysical understanding of God in a straw man attack on New Atheists. He charges New Atheists with ignorance and attacking strawmen for not being more energetic and focused an dispelling this metaphysical God. But New Atheists have been explicit that the mere metaphysical God is NOT their general target and why. That it is the propositions theists believe about their holy books that tend to cause the most trouble. Harris would never have bothered writing The End Of Faith if it weren’t for the obvious ways in which theists, especially the 9/11 terrorists, appeal to their holy books for divine knowledge and moral guidance. And his claim is that you can not accord any of The Bible’s supernatural events validity, or even accord these holy books with Divine Inspiration – as virtually all Christians do in some form or other – with any good justifications. That whether you are fundamentalist or liberal or orthodox you end up appealing to sloppy reasoning at some point to believe the claims of your ancient text, and so you have little ground for criticizing the bad beliefs or justifications of another Christian (including the more pernicious versions of Christianity). This is one reason why religious like Christianity are so schismatic.
If it is, one might then wonder if such an understanding opens up the possibility of something like the Incarnation. Those who think talk of God is similar to talk of invisible pink elephants or wonder why the Incarnation could not just as plausibly involve their pet cat are likely not really inhabiting (imaginatively at least for the sake of understanding the views of one’s interlocuter) the metaphysical stance that Hart is proposing.
I disagree. What atheists (like me) and the New Atheists point out is that even IF we granted a ground of being God existed, human experience still councils us to have a rigorous method of vetting any particular claims of supernatural or Divine manifestation. It’s clear that we humans often have trouble separating imaginary from the real – that we are florid in inventing explanations and claims and misattributing causation, suffering from bias, delusion, etc.
There are massive amounts of bullshit in the world and, God or not, we need some sort of standards for vetting claims, of Gods or any other entities.
As an Atheist I don’t say, for instance, “God can’t exist, and I refuse the possibility that a man was a God incarnate and rose from the dead.” I can say “sure, it’s logically possible, can’t strictly rule it out.” And that’s all you get even if you established a ground of being God “it’s POSSIBLE” that some miracle or divine manifestation occurred, so you are no further toward Jesus’ resurrection than I am. We are left asking “Ok, even if we both admit it’s possible in some sense…what kind of standards should we have for actually believing any specific claim of a miracle like that?”
New Atheists point out that we are already familiar with such standards. They are reflected in type of reason and skepticism we bring to any other extraordinary claims. This is why, even if you accept Aliens might exist, you don’t just accept they have been giving me rides in their spaceship to another galaxy, for lunch. And even if it’s possible a God exists, you don’t just automatically accept my claim my cat is now a manifestation of God, telepathically imparting divine information to me. Or that I am God, manifest.
It turns out that, to avoid special pleading and inconsistency, it’s pretty much the same standards we’d employ for evaluating any claims, especially extraordinary claims (e.g. scientific, epistemologically responsible methods that try to account for the problem of variables and human bias).
And testimonies found in ancient books like The Bible fail our rational standard miserably.
Vaal
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Vaal,
Honestly, reading through the various comments here mainly induces a large sigh on my part. Most people are simply talking past one another. Strongly differing presuppositions about the nature of truth, reason, evidence, etc. lead to very different and incompatible narratives regarding what is meaningful and cogently persuasive. I read a monograph years ago by Eric Voegelin where he opined that something like Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles could not happen in the modern world because there was no longer enough common agreement upon the nature of reality to allow for significant conversation between contending parties. He may be right.
Certainly, I would hope you would admit that the criteria and nature of truth is different for different disciplines. The way one investigates a chemical reaction is necessarily not the same as the way one investigates an historical event, for example. Enlightenment thought and its positivist heirs tend to think there is a kind of simple neutrality and obvious rationality that one can appeal to. This is a naive assumption. A naive empiricism thinks that Darwin or Galileo just looked at things as they were, while everyone else was blinded by ideological commitments. Yet no one perceives anything outside of a language and a cultural grid. Darwin at some level was certainly influenced by early modern capitalism and Galileo’s heliocentric views were indebted to aspects of Renaissance Neo-platonism.
The first hundred and fifty pages of NT Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God are actually a theoretical defense for a particular way of understanding history and historical inquiry. I think his conclusions are very sound. I would also point you to Alisdair MacIntyre’s Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry and his masterful Whose Justice? Which Rationality? The short conclusion is that while all men possess some rational capacities, the reason they employ is always embedded within particular, concrete allegiances. One is not trapped forever within one’s starting point — to outline how change, adaption, conversion to other views happen would require too prolix a statement — but my response to you is essentially that rationality and standards are understood within an ongoing tradition of one kind or another. This is true even if some traditions pretend to be ahistorical or lacking tradition. Hence, what may appear utterly irrational and unfounded to you may appear quite different to someone working within a different tradition.
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Brian,
I fully support your right to sigh in public. But sighs aren’t arguments.
I have had an ongoing interest in philosophy and religion and science for 30 years, and have discussed and debated these topics with people of other philosophical bent and theists of all stripes for nearly as long. So I’m afraid simply presuming I have nothing but naive assumptions (including appealing to naive empiricism, the most common straw-man thrown at atheists) behind what I write is, I would be happy to show, unfounded.
Of course there are the claims that different presuppositions and assumptions/axioms will provide different points of view and deliver different answers. But not all assumptions are equally defensible – they can not be held consistently. That is the very POINT my examples bring up and the road of argument they invite. Do you avoid special pleading in your epistemology or your beliefs? I try strenuously to avoid it myself.
Even IF you want to say “well, I have different presuppositions that allow for the belief in Jesus’ Resurrection” the point is you won’t be able to make this consistent with the normal rationality you accept elsewhere, for instance in the scientific method.
For instance, you write: ” The way one investigates a chemical reaction is necessarily not the same as the way one investigates an historical event, for example. “
Indeed, they can differ somewhat. But it would not be coherent if the methods were so different as to violate each other, because both would be based on more fundamental, shared epistemological grounds. In other words, IF the methods by which you establish
lead can not be turned into gold are scientifically sound, then your historical inferences ought to be constrained by this. You ought to be skeptical of any historical claim that someone turned led into gold. And IF, generally speaking, the scientific method is an expression of deeper, epistemic virtues – as it is! – then you can’t just abandon these virtues when doing the historical method. In other words, for any game-changing or important new claim that would upset the knowledge we have gathered rigorously, it would have to meet high standards of evidence and/or explanatory power. 12 “eyewitnesses” claiming to have seen a perpetual motion machine today would not be nearly good enough grounds to accept such a phenomena, given how much we know about the fallibility of human claims and inferences, and how rigorously we have to guard against them, not to mention how it would overturn what we seem to know. To accept the claims of 12 eyewitnesses, in an ancient book 2,000 years ago as warrant to establish such a phenomenon would be the most ludicrous abandonment of the rigorous standards by which we have come to best understand the world through science. Changing the claim to “a man rising from the dead” or any other similar miraculous phenomena amounts to the same problem. How in the world IF you accept the epistemological virtues
expressed in science, can you consistently drop the bar down to say “Ok, in THIS case, let’s believe the claims in this old book?” I have never seen any theist come remotely close to doing this consistently.
So when I ask you why you wouldn’t think it justified to believe my claim that I have a dragon in my garage, or my claim that I ran 500 miles per hour last night when no one was looking, or my claim God gave me a trip to another galaxy yesterday, or that I am God incarnate….you will either have to accept those claims, or elucidate reasons not to believe them. And you will not be able to elucidate reasons, on down the line, that do not end up undermining believing in biblical miracle claims.
Which is why, I suggest, you will not be inclined to answer such questions 🙂
(And it’s why Hart tries to keep the debate over mushy ground of being propositions, vs all the other dogmas and beliefs of his church).
Vaal
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If God is not “that” kind of being, then what was Jesus? And how is Jesus any different than Odin, for that matter? The Bagler Sagas give eyewitness testimony for Odin’s appearance in the 12th c. or there-abouts. Is the only reason for one being a Christian cultural – given that God is the same for all faiths according to Hart? My take home message from Hart – once you get past the overarching hubris – is that God is a state of mind – a need to act on transcendent experience and nothing more.
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Michael, your question takes us into the ecumenical doctrine of the Incarnation. As dogmatically defined by the Council of Chalcedon, Jesus Christ is most definitely NOT a god or a demigod. He is the incarnate Son of God, true God and true man. Zeus might take up a human form and pretend to be a human, but at no point was he really human. The whole point of the Incarnation is that Jesus was (and is) truly human: he hungered, he thirsted, he slept, he suffered, he died.
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Hi Fr Kimel
Not wanting to gazump anything that Michael wants to say, but that dogmatic definition is an unsupported assertion. It is a doctrinal decision – if Jesus did exist it actually says nothing about his actual properties, simply that these people at this time believed that they were so.
As a skeptic, unfortunately this simply falls into the bucket labelled “opinion”. Looking at wider mythology Jesus does fit into the archetype of a demigod (closer to Heracles than to Zeus, maybe, including Heracles’ eventual deification but in advance). We must already accept the Orthodox conclusion if we are to consider the definition as true.
And again, we are not simply looking at a ground of being type entity here!
Chris
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Chris, of course the Incarnation is a doctrine and dogmatic judgment. It is an attempt to put into words what Christians believe and confess to be the truth and ultimate significance of Jesus of Nazareth.
You say that this is mere opinion, presumably because I cannot prove the claim according to scientific or historical criteria. Does that accurately represent what you are saying? Okay, fine. But given that those criteria from the outset exclude God, divine agency, and the miraculous, I’m not particularly bothered by this.
I’d be happy, either in a thread devoted to christology or in private correspondence to give you my reasons for believing that Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. You may or may not find them persuasive. You state, “We must already accept the Orthodox conclusion if we are to consider the definition as true.” I agree. Ultimately the truth of the gospel can only be known and confirmed within the circle of revelation and faith. I can give reasons, arguments, and evidences to support the claims of the gospel; but they will never prove the gospel beyond a reasonable doubt. How could they, since all the essential Christian claims depend upon the existence of a divine Creator whose reality you dispute?
“But this is circular reasoning,” someone will no doubt say. Yep. And that doesn’t bother me one whit. We all live and think in one kind of circularity or another; but not all circularities are vicious, as rightly noted by Scottish theologian Thomas F. Torrance:
Or as the Apostle Paul wrote, “No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).
As you can see, I do not believe that anyone can be argued into the faith of Jesus Christ, which is why I understand and respect skepticism. Faith itself is a mystery, just as life is a mystery, just as the world is a mystery, just as love is a mystery, just as God is a mystery.
A good apologist (which I am not) might be able to remove obstacles to belief; but he can never prove the Christian faith to be true. Those who think they can—and the internet teems with them, unfortunately—are doing the Church a great disservice.
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Hi Fr Kimel
Thanks for the response. I’ll try not to ramble in my reply!
Looking at the first 2 paragraphs, firstly I’m put of by any dogmatic statements. They tend to put the block on any new evidence being brought to the matter. I’ll also note that humanity has learned a lot more about the working of the physical world since these statements were made. Why should we trust “primitives” with statements about reality when they didn’t even know what thunder was? Tangentally this is also why I tend to look at any “early Christians thought x” arguments suspiciously – what did they know that we don’t, and more to the point, what do we know that *they* didn’t? I get the feeling that we are making an appeal to mystery.
In the 2nd paragraph I’m afraid that you misunderstand the atheist position. We do not dismiss the “existence” of a god from the outset, but as the result of not seeing any equivalent entity in the evidence presented. And further, every so-called miracle is equally lacking in evidence or has been subsequently shown as having a natural cause. I also take a sideways step here and say that any concept of god that I have heard presented fails as either incoherent, or by flatly contradicting evidence that we can actually test. Without, ultimately, being able to empirically test something we have no way of deciding whether something is logically tight fantasy or actually maps to the world as we see it.
Christology – hm, I find it interesting in concept, but ultimately irrelevant to my problems. So many more fundamental questions about reality need to be answered before Jesus comes into the equation. The Bible is the *only* source material for his existence, let alone any of the supernatural claims, and I have absolutely no reason to take it as anything other then a mythological history of the Hebrews (OT) with the story of a Hebrew mystic added (NT). Yes, the books tell us a lot about the place at the time, but in my view no more then that of the ancient Roman journalists. I love reading contemporary Roman history (sadly in translation only), however you can see the mystical thinking of the times. One could claim that the Bible has the advantage of being, in some way, the words of God. Well, so does the Quran, Book of Mormon, plus other books in other cultures. I have no reason to believe one over the other. Theists, taken in their entirety, can’t make up their minds either.
Circularity is an interesting one. I am not a solipsist, so make the basic assumption that I exist in some sort of external reality that behaves in a more-or-less regular fashion. If the “ground of being” is equivalent to this reality then I see it as a needless addition. However, if this entity also plays with the rules on occasions then it fails my parsimony test – UNLESS evidence for it’s presence is presented.
Paul’s comment, to be honest, is somewhat trite: people can say a lot of things for a variety of reasons, good and bad, well supported or not, and so forth. Paul only met Jesus in visions, didn’t he? Personally, if someone honestly came up to me and claimed that they’d spoken to beings in a vision I’d back away politely. (A good friend of mine is bipolar, and has had voices talk to him in episodes. Thankfully, due to modern understanding, he can deal with this and doesn’t think that it’s angels or God talking to him. He’s also Baptist, so it’s not like he dismisses the supernatural out of hand either!) I’m not saying that Paul was necessarily seeing things, though, I’m saying that it’s possible and we know of natural mechanisms that allow this to happen. These mechanisms were unknown 2000 years ago, and when you throw magical thinking in to the mix…
Apologetics do seem to want to argue for faith. The amusing thing about them is that however good the apologist is they always, ultimately, fall back to your position: “I’m just not a good enough apologist to dispel your doubts!” I’m not calling this a deliberately dishonest position, but the answer just may be that the arguments are simply not there and it is not the apologist’s articulation or understanding that’s at fault at all.
Now, just in case you think that I am completely lacking in romance, let me demonstrate that you’ll be absolutely correct! 🙂
“Faith itself is a mystery” – Not really, people believe stuff for all sorts of reasons! (and no, do not go down the “faith in God = faith in friends” route… please… 😉 )
“just as life is a mystery” – Boils down to biology. Which is chemistry. Which is physics. Which is applied maths.
“just as the world is a mystery” – If only in that there’s loads of stuff that we don’t know. Cool. Let’s find out! Only thing is that we shouldn’t try explaining something mysterious with something more mysterious. That’s… not helping anyone’s understanding.
“just as love is a mystery” – Not really, it describes a personal relationship with some biological reactions throw in. The very lack of transcendence is what makes it precious.
“just as God is a mystery.” – So mysterious that it seems to be really very good at hiding!
That wasn’t a ramble so much as a 3 day hike over boggy terrain….
All the best!
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Chris: Looking at the first 2 paragraphs, firstly I’m put of by any dogmatic statements. They tend to put the block on any new evidence being brought to the matter. I’ll also note that humanity has learned a lot more about the working of the physical world since these statements were made.
Chris, are you expressing your concern as a Christian or as a non-Christian? I presume the latter, but I don’t want to presume. Assuming the latter, all I can do is acknowledge that you will of course be “put off” by the central Christian claims: these claims, after all, purport to be divine revelation. They confront you, and me, with an absolute authority. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be a Word from Almighty God.
When a Christian believer declares to you in the name of God that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God who has destroyed death on the cross and risen into eternal life so that you might forever enjoy the love of the Holy Trinity, what kind of empirical evidence, whether historical or scientific, would make this claim convincing to you? Or what kind of “new evidence” might be presented that would disprove the claim? If you could prove, which you cannot, that God does not exist, that would count. If you could prove that Jesus did not exist (I remember actually arguing this in my college days, thanks to my reading of Arthur Drews), that would count. If you could put on exhibit the bones of Jesus (with convincing documentation), that would count. If you could demonstrate decisive discontinuity between the apostolic teaching and the message and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, that would count. But besides evidence of this sort, what “new evidence” could possibly disprove the revelational and dogmatic claims of the gospel?
With atheists I am happy to discuss the question of the existence of God and what Christians mean and do not mean by “God”; but it is unreasonable for the atheist to ask me not to be “dogmatic” when it comes to divine revelation—and the assertion of the Incarnation certainly qualifies, from the Christian perspective, as divine revelation. We do not put divine revelation up for a vote. As Roman Catholics like to say, dogma is de fide. If it were not, it could never rightly bind human conscience. If it were not, we could never heed the summons of Christ to take up our cross and follow him.
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Sorry, but that’s the textbook definition of a demigod that we use for all other religions: an entity born of the union of a god and a mortal, one who lived as an human but with the power of the gods in his veins / spirit / heart / whatever.
You might as well claim that Barack Obama most definitely is NOT the President of the United States; he’s merely the man whom the Electoral College voted for who signs or vetoes bills passed by Congress and commands the military and the rest of the executive.
While we’re on the subject, even ignoring the trinity, the claims of the Judeo-Christian religions of being monotheisms are equally laughable. If Hades and Set are gods — and they most certainly are — then so, too, is Satan. If the Olympians are gods — and how could they not be? — then the Heavenly Host, with all the angels and cherubim and seraphim and the like, can only be gods. If Prometheus and Pandora are gods, as they’re universally understood to be, then so too are Adam and Eve. If Romulus and Remus, then Abraham and Isaac — and so on and so forth.
The fact is, the closest thing to monotheism ever actually proposed, propagandistic claims to the contrary, has been Spinoza’s Pantheism (and variations thereon) — and that’s merely the reification of the Cosmos and might as well be simple outright atheism coupled with Carl Sagan’s poetry.
Cheers,
b&
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Oh, Ben. I honestly do not know where to start; but I might as well be direct: you are clueless about Christianity. If you do not understand the difference between a demigod and Jesus Christ, as confessed by the catholic faith, then you do not understand the Christianity at all. And given (a) that I do not have the time to instruct you on the essentials of the Christian belief and (b) I am tired of your insults and condescension, I hereby bring our conversation to a close.
I can understand why someone might choose to be an atheist, and I can understand why someone might reject Christianity. But I do not understand why someone would accept an invitation for a conversation and then repeatedly insult and disrespect that person. If you want to continue commenting here on Eclectic Orthodoxy, you will need to clean up your act. Respect and civility go a long way.
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Then, before I depart, if I may, I would have two assignments for you.
First, learn what the logical fallacy of special pleading entails, for all your claims of the uniqueness of Christianity are a perfect example of an exercise in such.
Second, study the modern branch of psychology known as “Cognitive Dissonance Theory.” If you are honest, at least to yourself, you will discover therein the real explanation to your continued faith in Christ.
So long, and thanks for all the ghoti.
b&
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One thing that I’d like to quickly add here is that it is possible for Muslims see the Christian idea of a Trinity as polytheism:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/christians.htm
A murky business, and something for Fr Kimel to ponder. Obviously the Muslims’ djinn & etc are spirits as opposed to gods, angels fall somewhere between those stools.
However Ben might phrase his objections it is not simply atheists who have a problem with how the Trinity is defined.
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1001 apologies for keeping dropping in like this, but after thinking a bit about my last post above… If a Muslim considers Christians to be polytheistic, they may accept Hart’s “ground of all being” God but deny that Hart himself actually believes in it.
There are 2 types of answers that are not helpful: 1) those that answer nothing and 2) those that answer everything. Neither add to understanding. It may be that Hart et al are throwing the Christian baby out with the bathwater.
I really butchered that saying but I hope that you see what I mean!
All the best.
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No. The textbook definition of a demigod is a man who is a son of a god after the god has come down temporarily and had sex with a woman. Alexander the Great claimed to be a demigod (son of Ammon) and Plutarch attributed the paternity of Alexander the Great to Zeus. That’s a demigod–note that Alexander never claims to be a god. In fact, a demigod is specifically partly god and partly man. “Demi” specifically means half as a matter of fact. Demigod would be more accurate in terms of the monophysite understanding of Jesus.
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Were the Greeks and Norse talking about your god (which you arrogantly call the God) only in different ways or were they talking about something else? Did their faith and revelations arise from a source other than God, and if so, where? You claim that one can only understand God by first believing in it – why don’t you afford that same understanding to other religions? Couldn’t you only understand say Odin by living in Norway during the pre-Christian era? Would your faith be any less real?
Some years back Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a little book “The Raft is not the Shore” whose title is rather self-explanatory. I don’t understand why you are so quick to denigrate other religious experiences when you have nothing more than faith and revelation to support your own.
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The notion that David Hart, in his book, “The Experience of God”, is arguing against a straw man of his own making is wrong on several counts. First, among the New Atheists, there are several whose concept of God is precisely as Hart describes in his book. Dawkins, for instance, argues that God, were he to exist, must be the most complex being in the universe. But the notion of God as complex being is the complete antithesis of classical theism, which holds to God’s simplicity. Second, the Dawkinsian concept of God seems to consider Him to be a being like other beings, i.e., one being among many, except more powerful. This, again, is contrary to the classical notion of God. But more than all this, anyone who has read Hart’s book will discover that he also makes a case against naturalistic materialism which, he argues, is a metaphysical system with very little explanatory power and riddled through with contradictions. Given that the vast majority of New Atheists do hold to some form of naturalistic materialism, this is hardly a straw man argument on the part of Hart.
Vaal’s analogy of aliens giving us rides in their spaceships is symptomatic of the New Atheist thinking that Hart finds so deplorable. The very use of this analogy betrays a misunderstanding of the classical notion of God. Aliens, if they exist, are simply other beings in the universe. God is not some other being. He is the ground of all being. As such, He both transcends all created being and, for that very reason, is immanent to it. Since He is the source of all being, including humans, who are capable of love, He must also be the source of that love, i.e., He must be Love itself. Given this, it is not far fetched at all to believe that such a being would want to communicate with those He loves in an intimate manner by, for instance, becoming incarnate and dwelling with them. It is no different amongst us humans. Those of us who have friends or families that love us are not surprised that they want to be near us as often as possible. It is hardly irrational to expect such a thing.
Ed
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Hi Edward
Your two parts of an answer seem to contradict each other. How can a supposedly “simple” entity display personal characteristics?
I might be willing to accept that there is a simple “base of being” god, but this absolutely precludes any of the more complex interactions that it supposedly has on our physical reality, up to and including incarnating 2000 years ago. If, however, the god displays complex characteristics, how does it manifest? This brings us in to the realm of science, broadly speaking.
Theists are trying to have it both ways, simply by declaring that “this is how it is”. By this measure I’d have to say that “classical theology” is either flawed or incoherent. What sort of divine being do you want? Ineffable or able to intervene? Simple or some measure of intelligent?
Note: all natural examples of intelligence require some sort of physical medium on which to run, like a brain. Theists are claiming a form of intelligence that no analogy can explain, because there is no equivalent that theists can point to.
The second part of your post, well, if the deity is the ground of all in that respect, then it is the ground of “Hate” as well as “Love”. You have moved away from the “ground of being” and are assigning specific properties to it. Great! How can we justify this entity’s existence?
Another note: I have a real problem with the word “exist” in these conversations as it is often equivocated with. There appears to be “exist” as applied to things like cats, pens, etc (temporal, physical) and “exist” as applies to gods (atemporal, aphysical). These are contradictory. Theists really need to qualify what they mean by “existence” whenever they use the word. A pet bugbear. 🙂 Actually, I’d be much happier if the theist can demonstrate that this version of “exist” is actually not an incoherent concept, but that’s a whole other issue!
Ultimately, and this is the major problem, is that none of this is in any way testable. I’m assuming that you are Eastern Orthodox – that’s fine, but how can you demonstrate the truth in this system of dogma? Why that and not Catholicism? Or Islam? Or Hinduism? Pushing the argument out to “ground of being” means that, in and of itself, you cannot make any further claims on your deity (but that leaves you open to pantheism). However, you, Hart, Fr Kimel are all personally believing in “ground of all being AND…” – see the second part of your post for some of the “AND” component.
The “New” Atheist (although regulars on Prof Coyne’s website generally call themselves “Gnu” Atheists instead!) position is calling on theists to demonstrate this. Call me unsophisticated, to be honest this is kinda OK with me: a purely “ground of being” deity is absolutely irrelevant, to all intents & purposes, although it may be an interesting intellectual exercise to discuss. What we want you to do is justify the “AND” – where does your deity manifest, and what sort of epistemology do you use to justify your belief in it?
Finally, I have not read the book but have listened to some of his arguments. I am not convinced by what I have heard – my position is that I reject mind/substance dualism as, at very best, un-demonstrated which leaves what he says about conciousness pure speculation…
(Apologies if a bit rambling, this is a lunch-time post)
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Many atheists (including Dawkins no doubt) are well aware of the idea of God as a ground of being or elementary substance. But grounds of being don’t *of necessity* have sons called Jesus, carry large hammers, or worry about whether you eat fish on Friday. Those are the kind of gods that most people believe in and that’s the kind of religion The God Delusion primarily addresses.
In any case, apologists really just use the ground of being argument equivocally as a bait and switch tactic i.e. they start off with the reasonable idea that there must be some basis for all the stuff we see around us, as the bait and they call that God, but then they switch to a completely different definition of god, such as the God portrayed in the bible, which has a whole bunch of attributes that make absolutely no sense for a “ground of being” any more than they would for the bricks out of which your house is constructed. And for which there is no supporting reason or evidence.
I’m an atheist not because I don’t believe there is some fundamental structure underlying reality, but because I don’t think the *necessary* attributes of such structure correspond in any way to what most people mean by the term God.
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I believe Fr. Kimel already corrected your metaphysical error on that. The TRANSCENDENT (outside our reality) God is NOT being like us and does not take part in our reality as we do since he’s transcendent (outside our reality).
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I’m well aware that some theists claim their God is outside of reality in some way or another that they are unable to express coherently. How could anyone familiar with religion miss that claim? But, quite why theists see that as some of kind of relevant, subtle point escapes me; it’s really just a way of trying to cover up the fact that there is no sign of a god in the actual world; the equivalent of invisible pink unicorns or rhinos in your bedroom, that disappear when you look at them. You never see father christmas or the tooth fairy in the real world either, and I would suggest the reason for that is that they don’t exist.
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“But, quite why theists see that as some of kind of relevant, subtle point escapes me;”
because that’s the understanding of classical theism. they certainly don’t exist–not in our world that is.
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Roqoco, the transcendence of the Creator undergirds many of the central Christian doctrines—for example, the Incarnation, providence, the sacraments, synergism and grace.
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Fr Kimel
Yes, I am aware of the origin of that doctrine in particular the contribution of Augustine and Aquinas (try googling “Ipsum Esse Subsistens”) to religious thought on the nature of reality. The reason I brought up Spinoza earlier is that part one of the Ethics is in part a response to earlier philosopher’s notions of substance, including Aquinas, Maimonides etc. and IMOP gives a much more pragmatic interpretation of what had previously been largely mystical semantics. In fact I find it surprising that someone who claims a knowledge of the classical origins of theology knows nothing of the responses of particularly Spinoza and Leibniz (among others) to these issues. Without, some philosophical background we can’t seriously debate this issue in the depth it deserves. Certainly, it’s interesting from an ontological and historical perspective.
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Sorry, roqoco, if I’m a disappointment to you, but I’ve never read Spinoza and probably never will. I have my hands full, right now, with St Gregory of Nyssa. 🙂
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Edward De Vita,
Hart does indeed straw man the New Atheists in just the way I’ve described. Of course the new atheists don’t believe in any God, metaphysical or otherwise. Sometimes they do address a more generalized concept of God. But the thrust of the new Atheist Argument is why we should no longer politely give some sort of special credence or deference to religious beliefs, particularly those that are generally associated with the Divine Scriptures. Read their books, watch their interviews and debates. Over and over Harris et al explain why they go after the scriptural God rather than spending much time on purely metaphysical ground of being Gods. Insofar as Hart strips God of it’s revealed, scriptural content, he is simply ignoring the thrust of the New Atheist arguments. If Hart debated Harris and tried to claim that Harris’ arguments against Christianity are a straw man because the God Christians believe in is the stripped down metaphysics he is offering, you can bet your life savings that Harris will nail him on this by pointing out Christians actually believe much more about God via revelation including Hart and his church. And that those other, additional beliefs are the ones that lead to the craziness Harris is trying to combat.
As for Dawkins God Hypothesis, you can’t call it a straw man by claiming “But the notion of God as complex being is the complete antithesis of classical theism, which holds to God’s simplicity.”
Dawkins’ argument is a CHALLENGE, in part, to that type of thinking! That a Personal Creator God who can create or cause universes, KNOW all things, communicate to us etc would more likely be complex, not simple. His argument is that if we have learned anything about tracing causes, it has been that more complex effects seem to trace to ever simpler precursors. He is coming from a scientific point of view of course, but not just arbitrarily: science has been the way we have understood the nature of the universe, how reality seems to work! Metaphysical arguments have not delivered any such results. Arm-chair theorizing about metaphysical Gods have not shown to be of any use in finding out how reality “is” or “must be.” IF you want to posit that at bottom of reality there is some simple cause, that’s ok says Dawkins, but as we here keep saying, he sees no reason to label it “God” since that title comes with so much baggage as to confuse the issue. But if you claim there is a God who has the attributes of being able to consciously cause or design the universe, to know all things, to think, etc, then you don’t get to just declare “Well, my religion says this God is simple.” Dawkins has said essentially he’s aware of such claims (and has criticized them, e.g. Swinburne’s claim). The point is: does it make sense? No, it doesn’t. Which is why he goes on to offer how a scientist would approach the question of whether there is a Personal Creator God.
Of course you can try to provide an argument for why we should conclude God is some ultimate simplicity, and of course certain theists have done so. But then, it’s a debate about the nature of explanations and what would be the likely nature of the cause of the universe. You’d be arguing that Dawkins is wrong that the cause of the universe has to be the type of God you believe in, NOT that Dawkins argued a straw man.
Finally: You missed the point entirely of the Alien analogy. I argued that EVEN GIVEN the conclusion that a Ground Of Being, immanent God exists, this does not entail that every SPECIFIC claim of a miracle or manifestation of that God is to be believed! Every tom dick and harry can start saying “I’m God” or “God raised my mother from the dead” or “God levitated me yesterday” or “God turned the ocean into wine yesterday” or “God visited our classroom yesterday” or countless other claims. Do we suddenly throw down all skepticism and say “Well, if you say so, I believe it?” Of course not. We still have to have skeptical standards, acknowledging humans lie, can be deluded, can be mistaken in their inferences, have biases, etc. And that a PURPORTED MANIFESTATION of God in the ancient past as a Jewish Carpenter who rose from the dead, does not survive
the standards we need to keep all the other bullshit out.
Vaal
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Vaal, back in my college days, atheism meant atheism: we denied outright the existence of a transcendent God. We didn’t qualify ourselves our denial by saying that we were open to “new evidence,” because we didn’t believe, given everything we thought we knew about reality, that there could ever be convincing evidence that could even more us from atheism to agnosticism. Bertrand Russell was one of our heroes. But you have repeatedly insisted in this thread that the new atheists have not definitively precluded the possibility of being persuaded of the existence of God–they simply want the claim to be rigorously demonstrated. Since you know the new atheist literature far far better than I, I accept your judgment. But I will say that back in the day, we would have called this agnosticism, not atheism.
If, as you say, the principal thrust of the new atheism is not the existence of God per se but popular religion, then I do think you need a new name. “Atheism” misrepresents the true nature of your movement and confuses the rest of us.
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Fr Kimel,
If Bertrand Russell was a hero you shouldn’t be confused about this stance. A famous statement from Russell:
“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”
Dawkins has repeated that same stance almost word for word, many times.
Atheists come in all sorts of flavors and self descriptions. But the majority of Atheists to whom I have referred take essentially the stance above. And there is the wide perception that to say one is agnostic is to say one is on the fence on a subject, doesn’t know, or can’t know. But this does not capture the attitude of many atheists like me.
The general issue is that there is no reason to put God in a special epistemic category, giving God a special pass in terms of agnosticism. People have been so used to assuming that God is some special case, that God puts some special epistemic pressure on our beliefs. But this is not so. God is simply a stand in for our general epistemic limitations, which can be illuminated by virtually any other entity that we could propose, or from the entities we already believe in. Your computer, your desk, car, wife, dog…you can take anything that seems rational to affirm and apply “what if” logical properties to them (e.g. they are delusions caused by Aliens from other dimensions we have yet to uncover) that are not technically disprovable – and hence one could say we’d have to be “agnostic” about literally everything of our experience. Agnostic in this sense just doesn’t do any real work for us, so we dispense with it and just understand that we don’t demand from each other absolute certainty in the first place, but rather beliefs that are plausible, as a combination of our reason and experience, employing parsimony etc.
I see no reason to believe any of the God’s of human religions exist, and plenty of evidence to suggest they are imaginary. I have never encountered a good argument for
any other type of God, and see no reason to think a God plausible. It’s logically possible, and I could be wrong, hence I’m open to evidence/reason on the subject. This is the stance almost every atheist I know holds. (With some few exceptions, who I disagree with).
I’ve looked into arguments from many, many theists, Christian arguments from many different denominations, Islamic arguments, etc, and this includes lots of the purported “best representatives,” and all have struck me as so faulty that the trend seems unmistakable to me: inductively speaking, the nature of theistic arguments as I’ve seen it does not suggest there ARE good arguments for God.
Of course, none of us have time to look at every single argument. For every Christian argument you take up, there’s another right behind saying “but you haven’t looked at MY argument.” The same goes for dowsers, people who believe in ESP, ghosts, new age ideas, etc.
I think it’s safe to presume that you have not looked at every possible atheistic argument available, and do not feel the burden to disprove every possible counter theory before affirming your belief. You do, after all, identify yourself as “Christian” not “Agnostic,” correct?
Cheers,
Vaal
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If agnosticism means “I cannot disprove the existence of God,” then I would agree with the Russell citation. But no agnostic I know would accept that definition. An agnostic declares, “I do not know if God exists.” I can’t imagine Russell ever saying something equivalent about the Homeric gods. But I’m not going to quibble over definitions.
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Father Bless,
I have thoroughly enjoyed watching this debate as it has progressed, it has been very informative, and it also lets me know I am very deficient in the necessary skills to engage in this conversation, though my pride wishes otherwise, by His grace I have been given the opportunity to learn and you are a very good teacher. I do clearly see where Ben Goren is deficient in his knowledge of Christianity, though he will probably never admit it, if he would take the time to do a more serious evaluation he might see how his presumptions are blinding him. Thank you and please keep this silly sinner in your prayers.
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One may be silly – I pretty much inhabit that zone permanently – but sinner? What is sin if not some sort of arbitrary judgement?
You’re putting your own humanity down.
Hugs 🙂
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No, I am just looking at my brokenness realistically. for I am taught that ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It sorta eased the sting of that teaching when I learned that the Greek definition of sin ain’t a bunch of meanevilnasty stuff, but “to miss the mark”.
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Hiya
And this I do not understand. If you think that you arrived from the womb “broken” then I am so sorry for you.
I was born human, not broken. I do my best with those around me in mind. If I do wrong then I have to make my amends with those who I have wronged (not ask a third party, ie God, for forgiveness).
Sorry, but for this reason I find Christianity fundamentally immoral. Well, that and the whole concept of substitutional atonement. If I do wrong, no one can take my guilt away even if they take the punishment. If someone wrongs me, then they will ALWAYS be guilty of that whether or not I forgive them.
Chris
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Chris I will agree with you that when I do something wrong that I must make my amends to those who I wrong, and I am still trying to overcome some misguided ideas I have about Christianity, substitutional atonement being one of them. Yet I do believe that Jesus Christ is my savior and cannot deny that, and it is only through Him that I am being healed.
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Question: who does “sin” hurt and how?
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Sin hurts everybody, directly and indirectly, sin is a separation from God and He is the only means to heal me from this separation.
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Ed,
Also:
Since He is the source of all being, including humans, who are capable of love, He must also be the source of that love, i.e., He must be Love itself.
As has been pointed out, you are being rather convenient in your cherry-picking. If He is the source of all being then God is the source of Hate as well, so God must be Hate itself. But then
so long as there is also indifference in the world, God just be the source of that, and must be “indifference itself.” And if there is non-sentience in the universe, God must be “non-sentience itself.” The contradictions just go on and on when you don’t allow yourself to cherry-pick just the implications that make you feel good. Atheists just can’t help noticing how often theists resort to such blinkered forms of inference, which is one of the reasons we stay atheist.
Given this, it is not far fetched at all to believe that such a being would want to communicate with those He loves in an intimate manner by, for instance, becoming incarnate and dwelling with them. It is no different amongst us humans. Those of us who have friends or families that love us are not surprised that they want to be near us as often as possible. It is hardly irrational to expect such a thing.
Sorry…where is God again? I don’t see him. I don’t hear him answering me. I can find no signs of communication, let alone His existence whatsoever. Whereas my friends and family who wish to be near me actually show up and communicate with me.
Or are you talking about a particular purported sighting of God waaaaaay in the past, claimed in an ancient book that is also filled with wild, unbelievable and false claims? And this is the way I’m supposed to accept his existence? I would be hard pressed to think of a worse effort to show me He exists, let alone that He is rational.
Vaal
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Ben Goren said:
“God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.
First, there’s a perfect example of the lie in practice: after declaring that he does not know what God is, Eriugena declares that god is transcendent. Both statements cannot be true; which is truth and which is lie hardly matters.
Besides, we have a word that perfectly fits the description given, should one ignore the preparatory declaration of ignorance. According to Eriugena, God is imaginary.
I’d agree with that, wholeheartedly, of course.”
This is a metaphysical error. When one asserts God does not exist, one is generally talking in general. But the problem is not all statements can be asserted this generally. God does not exist IN THE SAME WAY AS THE MATERIAL WORLD EXISTS. Thus, “God is not” specifically because he is not a being. God is not means God cannot be defined in any mere human terms. You need to go back and study metaphysics.
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Fr. Kimel, I see a lot of people referencing back to the Bible or divine scriptures. Did they not get the memo that you are an Eastern Orthodox priest and therefore hold to a strict traditionalist interpretation of scriptures (scripture interpreted by tradition)?
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Hi Fr Kimel
This has been an enjoyable discussion so far.
I’m also loving the fact that you’re a bit of a scifi geek. I can throw you some reading recommendations if you like! They’re likely to be a bit on the weird side though… 😀
Chris
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To all:
It really is quite amazing to me to see how Christians poo-poo science/empiricism as a way of knowing God. “He’s just not amenable to that type of thing, and wouldn’t stoop to manifesting in a reliably empirical manner…”
And…this is a God who is supposed to care about truth, and we are told so often how “reasonable” it is, in the case of revelation, that God would wish to communicate with us and share his love or whatever.
If this God cared about our actually having knowledge of Him and His existence, why in the world would he choose “religious knowledge” as the path to knowledge about God? A method that has seen nothing but fracturing into competing truth claims about God – even bloody wars fought over their differences!
You don’t see mass divergence, thousands of competing sects, on whether Obama exists, or the moon, or the sun…and countless other empirically verifiable entities. Scientifically, empirically derived knowledge has been the BEST way for people to converge on knowledge, cutting across culture and religion in finding reliable knowledge and agreement. Hence you’d think that WOULD BE the likely way any rational God would give us knowledge of his existence. Showing up in an empirically verifiable manner.
And the thing is: Christians already know this. The value of empirical verification is written right into their own mythology. All over the Old Testament God isn’t depicted as some hidden a priori ground of being: He is CONTINUALLY giving verifiable demonstrations of his presence and powers – talking to people, smiting left and right, doing miracles, sending plagues….
Then in the New Testament, it continues: we get Jesus! God manifests in an empirically verifiable form, and does empirically verifiable miracles – people can SEE him, watch him walk on water, turn water into wine etc. Then we have The Resurrection which is ALL ABOUT empirical inference and confirmation of Jesus’ divinity. “Look, he was killed, and he ROSE from the dead and APPEARED physically to his followers. He let Thomas even feel the wounds himself.
The value and importance of empirical confirmation runs all the way through the whole book. And of course it does, because people KNOW the value of being able to verify something empirically over mere arm-chair theorizing. That’s why the stories are in the bible, and that’s why people are drawn to revelation, and it’s why even people like Hart and Fr Aidan Kimel are drawn to the Bible vs being satisfied with mere metaphysics.
So it’s just hypocritical when the atheist rejects the metaphysical arguments to poo-poo him on the grounds that he wants and expects something better…something in the empirical world….when CHRISTIANS THEMSELVES clearly want the same thing and appeal to empirical a posteriori type information about God (revelation).
New Atheists tend to point out how metaphysical arm-chair reasoning is an unreliable guide to reality and to the extent one can, one should check one’s assumptions and conclusions against reality. That is “Don’t from your armchair tell reality how it must be: check reality to see if you are wrong.” What one thinks of as “obvious” on metaphysical grounds can turn out to be inconsistent with reality. And, again, this very caution can be found right in the Christian’s bible. If you took someone who had the “first principles” version of God as described by Hart (or Aquinas’ arguments for God) you’d believe in a “non-being” a God who is necessarily immaterial, timeless, non-empirical, yet at the same time of course, described “only in negatives” etc.
And then what happens in “reality.” God shows up manifesting as a being, walking talking, empirically verifiable in material human form, acting in time…virtually everything the arm-chair metaphysics would say God is “not.” Well, God-as-Jesus is going to tell you “Nope, sorry, it’s me, God here.” You sure as hell wouldn’t predict God-As-Jesus showing up from the metaphysical string-of-negatives argument for God.
So, even within the Christian mythology, empiricism ultimately trumps far less reliable
“only metaphysical” arguments or knowledge.
Vaal
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Vaal (and Ben Goren, Chris, and other new atheists here),
Overall, I am enjoying this read. I don’t think anyone is talking past another, but rather this is solid engagement that seems to be rather fruitful discussion.
My question (as a former believer trending agnostic): Have any of you read Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle’s “Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag”? I am currently reading it, and find it a fascinating take on our own societal religion that is ultimately taboo. They discuss this country’s ultimate god: society itself, represented by the totem of the American flag, which has killing power, and manifests its own “flag magic” (among many other interesting religious dynamics). I have not read any atheist’s take on this work, but I think it is something important to address, specifically because they illustrate that all other religions withing our society are simply just affiliative groups competing with each other for resources. However these groups ultimately have no power because they don’t have the authority to kill. The totem flag has that authority and exercises it regularly. Carolyn Marvin talks about standing in front of her class (professor at U Penn’s Annenburg School of Communication) and burning an American flag, and the subsequent reactions of her students (who range from theists to atheists and in between) who likely would not have such extreme reactions should she have burned a crucifix, bible, koran, etc. It may be discussed later in the work, but look at what happened to Rosanne Barr when she “disrespected” our national anthem, which is really a religious hymn. I would love to know if any of the New Atheists have addressed this aspect of civic religion, or if they even think it’s a valid theory; and if it has been addressed, where?
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Jason, as interesting as the Marvin/Ingle book might be, it takes us far from the article and this thread. Hence I ask that any discussion of it take pace at a different venue. Thanks.
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“As has been pointed out, you are being rather convenient in your cherry-picking. If He is the source of all being then God is the source of Hate as well, so God must be Hate itself.”
Vaal,
This is a non-sequitur, since it assumes a dualistic metaphysics which is rejected by Christian theists (at any rate, by Orthodox and Catholic Christian theists). Evil (and hatred of others is an evil) is not a being in itself, but rather the absence of being; in particular, it is the absence of a good that ought to be there. Since evil is non-being, it does not require a creator. Lest you misunderstand my meaning, I am not saying that there is no evil in the world; rather, I am saying that evil does not exist as some sort of substantive thing. It is a parasite on the good and manifests itself as a falling short of the good intended for us by God. In other words, God gives us the capacity for love and the free will to choose it. But we can refuse to love.
“Sorry…where is God again? I don’t see him. I don’t hear him answering me. I can find no signs of communication, let alone His existence whatsoever.”
Hart makes a good argument for the existence of God in his book. I think it works. Perhaps you could give us his argument in full in a future post and show us where it is flawed. But more to the point, if you want to find God, you must seek him by being truly open to the possibility that He is near you and loves you and by striving to do what is right to the best of your ability and according to the light you have.
“Or are you talking about a particular purported sighting of God waaaaaay in the past, claimed in an ancient book that is also filled with wild, unbelievable and false claims?”
Vaal, you appear to be making certain assumptions about how Christians read their holy books. You seem to be assuming a very fundamentalist reading of the text. But neither Catholic nor Orthodox Christians read the text in that way. Catholic and Orthodox Christians read all of Scripture in the light of the final revelation in Christ, which is a revelation of God’s love and mercy towards humanity. What does this mean for some of what you call the “wild” and “unbelievable” parts of the Old Testament? Well, it means that perhaps some of them are, in fact, wild and unbelievable if taken literally. We view the Old Testament as a progressive revelation of God to his very hard-hearted people. Hence, these people may, at times, have given God attributes which do not truly belong to Him. We even see within the Scriptures themselves a correction of earlier texts in the light of a developed understanding of God. But this is a topic that could take us far afield, and I don’t normally have much time to spend conversing on blogs.
“You missed the point entirely of the Alien analogy. I argued that EVEN GIVEN the conclusion that a Ground Of Being, immanent God exists, this does not entail that every SPECIFIC claim of a miracle or manifestation of that God is to be believed! ”
No one has said that every specific claim of a miracle or manifestation of God is to be believed. What I did argue in my last post was that God, as our Creator — unlike alien beings who, if they exist, no doubt have no knowledge of us at all — has intimate knowledge of each one of us. Hence, if one admits to God’s existence, it is no great, irrational step to believe that he might want to make some sort of connection with us on a personal level. I grant you that there should be some evidence that he has done so. I think there is such evidence in the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ. But that is a topic for another time.
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Vaal,
For some reason, I did not see a reply link beneath your most recent message, so I am writing you here. Of course a sigh is not an argument. A sigh, as I made clear in the extended reference to Voegelin, is witness to a sense of futility in these discussions. Your most recent post does not belay that concern on my part. When I reference scholarly works, I am doing so because they indicate extended intellectual arguments on these issues which one cannot take part in in this kind of forum. I would like to suggest that you at least do a google search on Henri Bortoft’s The Wholeness of Nature. I bring this work up because it is a good exploration of the thought of Goethe. I do not think anyone would accuse Goethe of being a Christian or conventionally religious. He is a different kind of naturalist, but still a naturalist. Bortoft’s work in my view does a nice job of pointing out deficiencies in the epistemological presuppositions of empiricism. One doesn’t have to have a religious ax to grind to find early modern assumptions about reality deficient.
I do not question that you are aware of theological and philosophical positions, but you are still aware of them from a starting point that makes particular assumptions and also in light of your particular biographical experience. It is evident just how absurd you find Christian beliefs, how you find them full of special pleading, how a different and ridiculously altered rational standard is embraced that differs from every day experience. I can imaginatively understand how someone could see things just so. What I cannot imagine is any way anyone who disagrees with you could answer that would not be interpreted as further obfuscation and evidence of mental confusion.
I don’t really want to get into a tangled discussion of epistemology with you. In my view, everyone starts with presuppositions that they act rationally upon. They may subsequently find that their presuppositional starting point is less adequate than some other view to address reality. No one, however, rationally argues themselves to a presupposition.
If I may add something perhaps tangential to what you wrote me, but it is part of what appears to be the standard argument of New Atheists — and since you are intelligent and convivial, I will throw it out there, so to speak — I really find the notion that an argument like Hart’s for a ground of being is a tactical means to avoid the embarrassment of Biblical concepts of the divine quite false. If one reads Hart with care, the nature of the divine he argues for is not simply a vague concept that even atheists might somehow entertain. It just isn’t. One has to read very sloppily to come to such a conclusion. On the contrary, if one assents to the transcendent Creator God that Hart argues for, the Biblical understanding gains in warrant.
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(Brian, the “reply” function is only allowed a couple columns in. After that, everyone’s comments become so narrow and long that they become virtually impossible to read. When you reach that point, you have to scroll up to find the last reply button and continue that way.)
I want here to pick-up on comment about Hart’s book. Hart, of course, is an Eastern Orthodox theologian. He is not embarrassed by the God of his faith, nor does he think that the Christian God needs to be replaced by some kind of philosophical construction. He is the heir, rather, of a 2,000 year old theological tradition in which philosophical reflection on God has been both integrated into theological reflection and critiqued by theological reflection. If this had not happened, the gospel would never have survived its encounter with Hellenistic divinity.
Hart states the purpose of The Experience of God on page 1: “My intention is simply to offer a definition of the word ‘God,’ or of its equivalents in other tongues, and to do so in fairly slavish obedience to the classical definitions of the divine found in the theological and philosophical schools of most of the major religious traditions.” Why has he undertaken this task at this time? Because he is convinced that the new atheists have been attacking a view of God that is not held “theological and philosophical schools of most of the major religious traditions.”
Now let’s assume that Hart is correct about the new atheist’s construal of divinity (and I’ve seen overwhelming evidence that he is right) and that he accurately presents the view of God that is taught by “theological and philosophical schools of most of the major religious traditions.” Then, I propose, the new atheists need to publicly acknowledge this fact and stop attacking straw gods.
Of course, the new atheists are at liberty to acquaint themselves with the theological traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the other religions mentioned by Hart. Dr Coyne says that he has started reading Aquinas, for example. Good for him. I have to say, though, that his denial of Aquinas’s apophaticism did not encourage me. One cannot understand Aquinas’s theological reflections if one does not understand his denial that mortal creatures can know the divine essence (see the citation in my article). In any case, we’ll just have to wait for the results.
But I hope the new atheists will thoughtfully read The Experience of God and instead of attacking it will acknowledge that on the basis of Hart’s exposition they need to go back to the drawing board and patiently learn what “God” means for the major religious traditions, as articulated by their most thoughtful theologians, philosophers, and practitioners.
If I were to start pontificating on physics and cosmology based on my reading of Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time, I would be rightly and violently dismissed as an irresponsible and dishonest hack. Yet so many of the new atheists seem to think they can get away with something like that. (I submit The God Delusion as Theists’ exhibit #1.) When the leaders of the new atheist movement can accurately represent, say, St Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of God and divine causality—and Aquinas really is crucial here, because of his vast influence upon Western theology—then I may begin to take them as something more than theological hacks. But studying Aquinas is not easy. It will take a lot of work and time.
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Thanks for the info about the reply bar.
Straw gods . . . that’s a good one.
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Fr Aidan Kimel,
“Now let’s assume that Hart is correct about the new atheist’s construal of divinity (and I’ve seen overwhelming evidence that he is right) and that he accurately presents the view of God that is taught by “theological and philosophical schools of most of the major religious traditions.” Then, I propose, the new atheists need to publicly acknowledge this fact and stop attacking straw gods.
While I do very much appreciate your tone with guests like myself, I’m also approaching despair of being able to proceed here.
How could it not be more clear that the target of New Atheism has been, in the main, theism in the form of religious belief in holy texts, and those involving miracle claims?
Why do you think the New Atheists reference the Bible (and Koran) over, and over and over? Why do they site scientific polls concerning what people believe about their holy texts? Why, when faced with contemplative theist critics, do the New Atheists continually wish to talk about the BIBLICAL propositions their opponent represents or believes? This is CLEARLY their main focus in their argument. I not see how anyone remotely interested in understanding the new atheist position could possibly miss this. Billions of people in the world who derive propositions about God from these texts, INCLUDING your church, and since this object of new atheist criticism is a fact, it can not be a straw man!
Even if you were right that New Atheists have not disproved a purely metaphysical cause argument, it does not entail that their arguments were not aimed at other Divine claims people actually believe! It just means YOUR critique misunderstands the target of their arguments! It is actually you (and Hart, I find) who are engaging in the straw-man arguments.
You are part of the “classical Christian theism” that you and Hart claim to be straw manned by the New Atheists, correct? In your case, the Orthodox Church (eastern?)
If we can take the creeds of, for instance, the Orthodox Church:
http://www.bible.ca/cr-Orthodox.htm
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Nicene-Constantinopolitan_Creed
Listed in there is a whole bunch of propositions upheld by the church: all manner of a posteriori propositions about God becoming incarnate in Jesus, being put to death bodily, rising from the dead, the sacrifice for our sins, the virgin mary, ascending to heaven, propositions about heaven, hell, resurrection of the dead…
Do these links accurately represent the view of God as upheld by the more careful thinkers in your Christian religion…or not?
If so, these beliefs about God are EXACTLY within the target of the New Atheists, and have been directly criticized by them. If you think you have arguments in support for those biblical propositions, then of course you can present them (and I’ve never seen any opponent of a New Atheist mount any decent argument for them). But so long as your church holds to those propositions about God you simply can not, honestly or accurately depict the New Atheist critiques as straw men.
Something I’d like to raise for you to consider: do you notice (I do!) how whenever theists like yourself and Hart condemn atheist for not tackling the “best cases for theism” these inevitably mean the God Of The Philosophers? That is, we are supposed to tackle Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysical arguments, or Plantinga’s epistemological case for God as a Basic Belief or the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, etc.
The implication when New Atheists attack biblical beliefs they are going after the “easy targets” and not really tackling the “hard stuff, the most rigorous, best arguments for God’s existence.” Do you notice how damning this is of revelation? God Himself
reveals Himself to his Creation…but curiously enough, the more intelligent theists sense God just didn’t do a convincing enough job to convince a cautious skeptic. So appeals to biblical miracle claims and attempts to justify belief in Jesus rising from the dead not put forth. God’s effort: not good enough. Better we dust off metaphysical
arguments from mere humans. If this doesn’t raise a red flag about the the credibility of God’s purported revelation, I don’t know what does.
You asked if I’d read Hart’s book. I’m going through it now, on the first few chapters thus far. I’m finding it a tough slog, only because I find myself reeling from the onslaught of straw-manning of atheism, new atheists in particular, materialism and naturalism, complete with play-ground rhetoric (simple name-calling: “fundamentalist atheist materialists” etc as if it were so). As well as the way the book is so far headed as one giant Miss-The-Point in the manner I’ve been describing in my comments. You can’t make a valid case someone is straw manning your beliefs by essentially ignoring the parts they are criticizing!
So far it is as depressingly repetitive of all previous new atheist critiques. I’ll try to get through it if possible. I’d like to see *something* interesting from Hart.
Vaal
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Vaal, it may be that our conversation is drawing to a close, if only because our respective interests lie in different locations. I personally have little interest in debating those matters that seem to interest you and vice versa. While I occasionally stray into the occasional polemical piece, as I did with this article on Coyne, that’s not what this blog is about. The polemical-apologetic articles generate traffic but typically not much else. My interest lies in trying to better understand Holy Scripture and the theological tradition of the Church. Peruse through my articles and you’ll see what I mean.
I’d be happy to discuss, for example, the Nicene Creed with you–but certainly not to defend it against atheist attack. Quite honestly, and please do not take this personally, I do not believe that most atheists are equipped to intelligently discuss the articles of the Christian faith, and I see this confirmed again and again on atheist forums and blogs. You say that the doctrinal propositions of the Nicene Creed “are EXACTLY within the target of the New Atheists, and have been directly criticized by them”; but if the new atheists are incapable of recognizing that the biblical God of which the Creed speaks is precisely the “metaphysical” God described in Hart’s Experience of God, how could they and I possibly talk about the specifics of divine revelation? Let them spend several years studying the Church Fathers, St Thomas Aquinas, and St Gregory Palamas, and then perhaps they will be able to engage in an intelligent conversation with a catholic Christian on Christian doctrine. Otherwise, they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. And, just between you and me, I’d say the same thing to some of my fellow evangelical Christians.
I have been immersed in Christian theology for over three decades, and there is still so much I do not understand; yet atheist folks like _____ and _____ think they can vigorously, even violently, critique these doctrines having read only a book or two. Serious theology is as difficult to learn as any scientific or philosophical discipline. It takes years of study—but even more so, it takes a lifetime of biblical exegesis, prayer and worship within the Church of the risen Christ.
Theology for Orthodox Christians is not ultimately an academic exercise; it is the life of the Trinity coming into verbal expression. As one of the great desert fathers said, “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.” I cannot debate doctrinal questions with atheists. By definition, an atheist stands outside the circle of faith; but theology only makes sense within faith, within personal relationship with Jesus Christ and his Father in the love of the Spirit. It’s difficult enough debating theological questions with my fellow Christians, who presumably have some measure of spiritual experience of the God to whom the Scriptures witness; but it makes no sense at all debating specifically Christian questions with non-believers. No one benefits.
If a nonbeliever wants to know what the Church teaches on ____, I’ll do my best to answer. But I won’t debate the matter. What’s the point? Nothing I say can make sense to a non-believer who insists that divine revelation must conform to standards chosen by the non-believer. As Bishop Lesslie Newbiggin rightly observed, “It has never at any time been possible to fit the resurrection of Jesus into any worldview except the worldview of which it is the basis.”
I know that the above leaves me open to the accusation of fideism. So be it. Christianity is divine revelation, and in the final analysis, it can only be received in a spirit of faith and humility. Christians may debate with themselves what specifically qualifies as divine revelation and what does not. Just the other day a friend of mine down at the local cigar store was telling me all about the Noahic flood, as if it were a real historical event. I just listened. There was no point in debating the matter. I’m neither a biblicist nor fundamentalist. But I respect the man’s child-like acceptance of what he believes to be divine revelation. I’ll leave the last word to my Lord and Savior: ““Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
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Father bless,
I really enjoyed this reply.
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Vaal, I have re-read your comment, and I see that I passed over a couple of your comments, which I think need response.
Actually, where have I ever written that the New Atheists have not disproved a purely metaphysical cause argument? Is this really my complaint about the New Atheists such as Coyne? Perhaps I have written something in this thread that might be construed along those lines; but if so, I’d like to know what it is so I could correct that impression. In fact, I believe that the second-half of my article belies your claim. I also refer you to my article “God, Jerry Coyne, and the Unread David B. Hart.”
My gravamen, following Hart, is that the New Atheists appear to be ignorant of the catholic understanding of Deity and his radical transcendence. They do not recognize that catholic Christian theologians do not God as a being whose reality could ever be empirically demonstrated. Perhaps we can reason our way to his existence through metaphysical reflection (which is a very different kind of enterprise). Aquinas and his followers think so. I honestly do not know. But what I do strongly believe is that science has absolutely nothing to say to us about his existence, one way or the other.
Hence I cannot accept your criticism that I am engaging in straw-man arguments. All I have asked you guys to do is learn what the best Orthodox and Catholic theologians really do teach, and have taught over the past 2,000 years, about the nature of God. When David B. Hart tells you that the New Atheists do not understand what the Church has historically taught about God, then you need to pay attention, if for no other reason but to make your criticisms of classical theism accurate.
Again I ask you, really? Where have I claimed that you guys are avoiding the really tough arguments for God? Is that what you have taken from my articles and comments? Really? I invite you to go back and re-read what I have written. Have I ever hinted that I have some kind of knock-down argument for the existence of God? Have I ever hinted that anybody does? Have I ever suggested that faith in God is easy?
If from the above, you sniff a whiff of aggravation, you are right. At no point have I suggested that you and your fellow atheists are irrational or stupid for not believing in the existence of God. What I have asserted is that you haven’t properly done your homework, and I stand by that claim. I know that you have a long history of debating Christians on various internet forums; but have you considered the possibility that they may not have a better comprehension of the Christian understanding of God than you do? And my guess is that most of your Christian interlocutors are from sola scriptura fundamentalist-evangelical backgrounds, which means that they are as ignorant of the theological tradition as Richard Dawkins. A pox on both of their houses.
(cont)
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Why would an intelligent, rational person believe in God? Put aside Aquinas’s Five Ways or the popular arguments from design (which I rarely,perhaps never, invoke). Because LIFE is bigger than all of our rationalistic constructions. Life does not permit us to only commit ourselves to matters about which we can rationally prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Life doesn’t permit us to live only on probabilities.
I had a 32 year old son. He was brilliant, a genius. He had a dual major in physics and philosophy. He was given a teaching assistantship to get his Ph.D. in analytic philosophy. He was a whiz at mathematics and logic. For whatever reasons he adopted the kind of rationality that you and your fellow atheists have been proposing. He too would not accept the existence of God, much less the existence of a God of absolute love and mercy who would bring all things to consummation in his eternal kingdom. He wanted empirical evidence and philosophical demonstration. He described himself as an agnostic, because he knew he could not prove the non-existence of God and did not want to rule out the future possibility that compelling evidence might be forthcoming in the future. But the simple fact is, he had so constructed his rational world in such a way that he could not experience Transcendence in any way. The box was closed tight. All the windows were shut.
And because he could not believe in the God and Father of Jesus Christ, he could not find any meaning for his life. And so two years ago he jumped to his death. And our lives were shattered beyond repair. My brilliant son is gone. If he were alive today, I would show him this thread and he would philosophically analyze both the flaws in my reasoning and the flaws in yours. I do not have a tenth of his intelligence. All I can do now is blog.
So no. My belief in God has very little to do with metaphysical arguments. It really never has.
But my belief in God—and not just any God but the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead on Eastern morning by the power of the Spirit–has everything to do with LIFE, SUFFERING, DEATH, HOPE, MEANING, LOVE.
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Fr Aidan Kimel,
Far be it from me to impose a conversation you don’t wish to have on your own blog site. Though, in your first reply to me the two topics you suggested were Hart’s presentation and a purported argument you’d given for the existence of God.
As I wrote, I didn’t actually see any argument and it seems you wish to drop that subject, which is fine with me. Otherwise, I have been discussing my objections to Hart’s presentation.
Just to make my objection absolutely clear: If Hart wants to
survey the great religions to see if there are shared concepts or threads of convergence about God, that’s an admirable project! If Hart also wishes to clarify a concept of God, define it, so as to make it more understood in a discussion or debate about that God, and suggest there are arguments in support of that particular God concept, that too is of course completely legitimate. (Many of us have been aware of them for a long time).
But Hart does not restrict himself to those claims – nor does it even seem to be his overall goal. What he is doing instead is presenting that God concept as evidence New Atheists are naive and are simply railing against strawmen versions of the Christian God. As if New Atheists “aren’t really addressing the God Christians really believe in.” That straw man accusation is an entirely different ball game, and it’s simply false for all the reasons I have given. It is a disingenuous move to strip away many of the biblical posteriori propositions Christians, including Hart’s church, actually believe about God – the ones criticized by New Atheists – then put ONLY a metaphysical entity with no other propositions in it’s place, and claim See, you aren’t attacking the God Christians actually believe in.”
That just won’t fly, and a pin should be taken to that balloon every time someone tries to float it.
Vaal
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Fr Aidan Kimel,
“My gravamen, following Hart, is that the New Atheists appear to be ignorant of the catholic understanding of Deity and his radical transcendence. “
The charge from Hart has not simply been that atheists are naive about orthodox or classical conceptions of God. The charge has been that the new atheist arguments are STRAW MAN arguments BASED on their ignorance of classical theism.
That is the dispute here. That the arguments of New Atheists can not be valid against your Christianity, since IF the New Atheist is ignorant of such metaphysics, the New Atheist arguments are not really addressing the God you believe in.
That is, after all, WHY you and Hart would council New Atheists to actually go learn what classical theism has to say about God. Right?
I have explained why this criticism simply doesn’t work – what the New Atheists recognize, in part of their argument: that even IF you granted the soundness of metaphysical arguments for immanent, first cause entities, you can not (in principle) and do not (in practice) get the propositions about God from REVELATION – e.g. Jesus, his purported death and resurrection, the bible as representing divine information about God. That is, after all, the point of “revelation” in the first place! This is regularly acknowledged by the sophisticated thinkers of any denomination. Even classical theists tend to describe Aquinas’ arguments as not knock-down proofs of God, but as suggestive of ways to apprehend God. No one that I’m aware of suggest you get Jesus appearance, death and resurrection deduced a priori from Aquinas’ metaphysics.
Given your Christianity accepts the Jesus story as sound, and the Bible as representing new, revealed information about this God, you are stuck now in the world of a posteriori, evidence-based reasoning. And this can be checked by any rational person for consistency with how your other evidence-based reasoning.
You can not appeal to metaphysics to justify belief in The Biblical claims, like Jesus’ resurrection. So the very FACT that The Bible is taken seriously by your church as a source of information about God is a valid target for New Atheists, irrespective of any metaphysical conceptions your church may hold about God!
That’s why they don’t NEED to go studying years of your Church’s metaphysical musings about God in order to, nonetheless, expose the invalidity of believe in the CHRISTIAN God since the CHRISTIAN God contains a posteriori propositions
about God that can not be believed by a rationally consistent person. Because it will be shown how you are inconsistent in your acceptance of rigorous a posteriori reasoning “over here in science or other every day rationality” but drop those standards “over there” when it comes to accepting claims about Christ-God.
This is what puts the lie to the general thrust of Hart’s project, which is to imply New Atheist arguments miss the target, that they “do not apply to the God we believe in” and can not unless New Atheists have a proper understanding of classical theism’s metaphysics.
Vaal
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Vaal, you need to understand one thing about Hart—he does not reserve his ire only for atheists. He is more than willing to tell Christians, particularly those in the theistic-personalism camp, that they too have misunderstood the Christian God. 🙂
You have repeatedly asserted that even if Hart is correct in his presentation of the God who is Being or Beyond Being that doesn’t affect the new atheist polemic about God, since that polemic is directed against theistic religions. Okay. But when you say this, do you know what I hear? I hear you saying, “It doesn’t matter even if we have totally misunderstood what you understand God to be. You’re still wrong (and stupid, to boot).”
At this point let me quote one of your own, Daniel Dennett. The first of his four rules on constructive debate states: “Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: ‘Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.'” I do not yet recognize your construal of Deity as what I believe. Given that, how could we even go on to talk about other questions of Christian theology?
The question you raise about rationality, warrant, and belief in the revelational claims of Christianity is not unimportant. Perhaps one day I’ll write a blog article or two on it, and we could then discuss it further then. But at the moment I’m up to my neck in St Gregory of Nyssa and need to start writing several articles on his trinitarian theology.
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Bravo, Father Aidan, Bravo.
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First, on the subject of clarifying what the other side believes: Please be on the look out for straw-man versions of Atheism, Naturalism/Materialism/Empiricism. If you see the word “fundamentalist materialist/atheist” or “dogmatic” you can be virtually guaranteed this is a cheap tactic and a straw-man is being built.
The New Atheists are anti-dogma, and propose that we ought not to hold any of our assumptions dogmatically “off the table,” and all should be, in principal, amenable to critical inquiry. We are open to the idea that a God may exist, but this should be established by evidence and/or reason, not simply born along generations as dogma. New Atheists are mostly about asking “how do you know that?”
Insofar as some portion of atheists might accept the classification “naturalist/materialist” it is not held as an a priori commitment, but rather as the best conclusion based on human experience and rigorous inquiry, thus far. For instance, the fruitfulness and power of natural/material explanations have shown vs supernatural/religious explanations, combined with the utility of principles like parsimony, etc.
Yes, there is an epistemological outlook behind this, but it is not dogmatically assumed. Atheists such as myself don’t reject “subjective religious knowledge” or “revelation” simply on the basis of ASSUMING our own epistemological standards, as if we are being viscously circular and question begging. Rather, we compare the consequences of accepting the religious epistemology as against the consequences of the one we propose which we argue involves less special pleading, in terms of coherence with many of the features of human experience we share. I would want to adopt any epistemology – religious or whatever – that survived this standard philosophical inquiry.
Of course it’s not so simple as we aren’t all just reasoning machines and are driven by other desires and values, not always ‘in the drivers seat” of our reason. New Atheists have acknowledge this fact as obvious over and over, so critiques like Hart who have said New Atheists imagine some naive utopia outcome in getting rid of religious thinking are straw-manning the movement. That said, it’s still the case that when we want to talk about which viewpoints are warranted, we are stuck with appealing to reason, by definition.
The way critics of the New Atheists, or vocal atheism in general, throw around terms like “fundamentalist atheist/materialist” or “dogmatic new atheism” is one thing: making it stick in the face of what we actually argue, is another.
Vaal.
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Finally,
Fr Aidan Kimel,
I don’t see any grounds for you to “hear” me saying “It doesn’t matter even if we have totally misunderstood what you understand God to be.” I believe I have generally, correctly referenced what you, or your church, believes. This is not the place to give some huge dissection of Thomistic Metaphysics and Biblical Revelation. So I have simply continually pointed to two general truths about what you and Hart believe about God:
1. God is a metaphysical necessity, the ground of being. (I quote Hart’s own description in doing so). The God who is understood via a priori metaphysical reasoning. New Atheists, when they demand “evidence” for this God, as if he were some separate being among many, are not talking about this God of classical theism – and they are making a philosophical category mistake in demanding that God be demonstrated in everyday terms of empirical evidence. This is hardly a new claim: almost any atheist I know is aware of such metaphysical Gods.
2. This God is also known through revelation, as described within the Bible and/or claims carried over through Apostolic succession. Knowing very well your tradition is not one of biblical literalism, I have deliberately refrained from my own claims about what you believe, and quoted descriptions from Orthodox Church web pages, and I’ve referenced some of those beliefs – e.g. Jesus death and resurrection, His divine nature. And I’ve said this is clearly a form of a posteriori knowledge of God. I don’t see that you’ve denied this, so how can this be “misunderstanding” what you believe?
And I’ve pointed out the inconsistencies in saying on one hand God is not amenable to empirical inquiry, while imputing to that God Omnipotence, which logical entails just that empirical possibility among his attributes, along with your church already having accepted that God DID produce empirical evidence in the form of His Revelation!
I do not see you have pointed out any actual distortion of the two basic premises I am referencing about what your church believes about God – metaphysically necessary but ALSO having engaged in revelation. So I don’t see you have actually shown any misunderstanding on my part, of the premises I’ve been using.
Of course we are unlikely to agree on whether your Church’s beliefs about God are ultimately sound or coherent, so that can’t be counted against me. But unless you showed how my arguments have depended upon misaphrensions of what your church believes, I don’t see your characterization as warranted.
Nowhere have I, or would I suggest you (or Brian) or “christians in general” are stupid. That would be just absurd, and it’s manifestly, obviously untrue. Whatever our intellectual gifts (and a hell of a lot of Christians, along with people of other faiths, and atheists, are going to be smarter than I am) we are all stuck “calling it as we see it.” That’s all.
I think Christianity of any form suffers from some problematic inconsistencies. But that hardly makes anyone an idiot. I am 100 percent sure I have inconsistencies within my own thinking, and I am always grateful when I learn from someone else what they are.
Be that as it may, you don’t have time to stay in the comment section of one post forever, and I’m tired of my own blabbering on this page. You have some fine guests here, which speaks well to your blog in general, I think.
Vaal
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Brian,
If you don’t want to get into this on a message board, no problem.
But just to take one of your comments:
On the contrary, if one assents to the transcendent Creator God that Hart argues for, the Biblical understanding gains in warrant.
I could not disagree more with that claim.
It is a vast gulf the theist tries to bridge from a first-principles/first cause to accepting ancient claims of the miraculous. I’ve never seen it done successfully (including by Orthodox Christianity). Some portion of Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism wishes to say “We aren’t backward. We accept BOTH science and that Jesus was divine, rose from the dead and was born of a virgin!” But you just can’t do this consistantly. Science isn’t some game you play while wearing a lab coat. It is our most rigorous, epistemologically responsible attempt to understand reality – one that takes all the variables, including human bias and error, the most seriously in it’s methods. It is born from fundamental epistemic virtues. When deciding when to accord a belief confidence or not, you can’t separate out the claim Jesus rose from the dead as being exempt from those epistemological virtues. That’s exactly the type of special pleading and road to self-deception that lead us to the scientific method in the first place!
When it comes to giving “warrant” to the Bible, here’s the problem in a nutshell: The normal, rational way of evaluating a claim is not to ASSUME the claim is true and then see how one can interpret any other claims to be compatible. It’s to look at the wider picture and infer from the evidence, what seems to be the case.
In other words, if I tell you I’m the best mathematician in the world and then proceed to hand you a sheet of sums I’ve done that seem to contain obvious errors, you don’t say “Well, assuming he’s the best mathematician in the world, he must know something I don’t and so there is some other math he knows that makes these apparent wrong sums correct.” No. You say “Actually, despite your claim, the evidence suggests you aren’t even a good mathematician, let along the greatest in the world.”
The same goes for if I present you a book in which the character declares himself “the smartest man in the world!” But if in the book the descriptions of the character’s actions are what we normally recognize as bumbling and incompetent, you say “Actually, the rest of what is written about this character doesn’t support it’s claim to be about the smartest man in the world.”
We all understand this is how we operate when we are being cautions, skeptical, rational about claims.
Similarly, when someone comes up to me with a bible and says “Look, this is a book about the Creator Of The Universe! All Knowing, All Loving, All Wise, All Powerful.” Ok, let’s see if what is written in the book actually suggests the Character Yahweh is any of those things. Despite the claim, is the character Yahweh actually depicted as matching any of those claims? Not remotely. He seems as bumbling, as short-sighted, as crass, often immoral, irrational, as any other mythical God. (Perhaps even more). He comes off as just a bunch of contradictory mythical, fictional claims.
Whereas in theology you come at the bible with a long-standing dogma which hold’s that the divinity of a God IS represented in the bible, and then work backwards from that, saying “Well, GIVEN we’ll accept the claim within that God is this incredible being, if any of the rest of it doesn’t seem to support this, then we’ll re-interpret it to support the claim, or just say “that part didn’t get it right.”
It’s just backward reasoning.
Two general approaches to respond to this don’t work: One, the idea that you’ve
already established warrant in God belief from first-principles (e.g. metaphysical arguments) and hence can therefore move to the possibility that the Bible COULD be a record, or revelation of this God. But, as already mentioned, that is a gulf you just can not span, rationally.
Two: take the “Jesus as lens” approach. Which is to latch on to the new testament claims about Jesus’ resurrection as if they are less obviously crazy than the OT God’s work, say “Well, the apostolic/eyewitness testimony for THOSE miracles are credible enough (and perhaps throw in some subjective experience of the holy spirit), so if we can take a Divine Godly Jesus seriously, then from that perspective we can re-interpret the rest of the Bible in that light.”
But, again, you just can’t rationally accept the Biblical Jesus miracle claims in a way that is consistent with our justified skeptical rigour in all other areas of inquiry. That goes for arguments from “personal experience” as well.
Vaal
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I think that this discussion has been atypically (as compared with other discussions of its kind) illuminating. In particular, I like Vaal’s virtue epistemology approach a lot. As far as I can understand, Vaal, you are raising two main objections to the Christianity in your last post.
1. It is implausible that the ground of being, whatever it may be, should be a loving and communicative person.
and
2. It is implausible that any loving, communicative ground of being should have communicated through the Bible.
I think 2 is easier to deal with. For a start, you aren’t clear on just what sense the Bible is supposed to be the communication of God. Very reasonably so, as Christianity itself isn’t supposed isn’t clear on this question. You would have an easier time refuting Islam, because Islam is perfectly clear on the sense in which the Qu’ran is the communication of Allah (and, from my own small and prejudiced knowledge of the work, I’d judge that this kind of argument is better suited to it anyway). I am not going straightaway to tell you just the sense in which I take the Bible to be the communication of God, because a) if I did so, I could speak for myself only, and not for any other Christians, and b) I haven’t made up my own mind as of now. But I will suggest ways in which your arguments can be met.
You say ‘when someone comes up to me with a bible and says “Look, this is a book about the Creator Of The Universe! All Knowing, All Loving, All Wise, All Powerful.” Ok, let’s see if what is written in the book actually suggests the Character Yahweh is any of those things. Despite the claim, is the character Yahweh actually depicted as matching any of those claims? Not remotely. He seems as bumbling, as short-sighted, as crass, often immoral, irrational, as any other mythical God. (Perhaps even more). He comes off as just a bunch of contradictory mythical, fictional claims.’ You do not, however provide much by way of evidence for your claims. Now I’m sure you could turn round and sight a bunch of passages which describe Yahweh as endorsing murder and massacre and much else besides. It’s all there in the Old Testament. Why is it there? Well, I would say it’s there because the ancient Israelites often misunderstood God, and co-opted Him in support of their own sometimes petty and sometimes monstrous projects, as many others have done before and since.
How can I tell when the people who wrote the Bible were getting God wrong and when they were getting God right? Primarily, through the ‘Jesus the lens’ approach. Though you reject that approach, your stated reasons for rejecting it (viz, the NT miracles are no more plausible than the OT miracles) are not germane to the point I’m making right now, which is not about miracles, but about whether the Bible can be said to represent a loving God. Do the Gospels represent a loving God? Though there are many who soften and sentimentalise Jesus -‘Get behind me Satan’ he told Peter, of all people – I think on the whole that no answer but ‘yes’ can reasonably be given to that question. Matthew 5 is the first place to look. We have the beatitudes, and the commandment to love our enemies. Jesus above all preaches mercy and compassion, and whether or not you believe that he effected miraculous cures or possessed the authority to forgive sins, he is reported to have practiced the same though a ministry of healing and reconciliation. As Jesus himself says in Matthew 22:40, upon the double love commandment depends the whole of the law and the prophets, that is to say, the Old Testament. And that is the hermeneutic principle which justifies me in going back through the OT and assigning all presentations of God as less than wholly loving to human fallibility.
The further question, then, is whether this destroys the OT? The only fair answer to this question is ‘no’. Even in Leviticus, so often derided for homophobia and bloody ritualism, we hear echoes of God’s true voice. ‘You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God’ 19:9. The prophets, meanwhile, are always harping on about how, when Israel think they are pleasing God, they’re usually wrong. ‘Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them’ Isaiah 1: 14. What is Israel to do instead? ‘Learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’ 1:17.
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Alex, etc.
There’s a kind of Biblical interpretation that treats Scripture as simply providing propositional truths. Evangelical fundamentalism tends to treat Scripture as data in the same way a scientist treats his experimental findings. Patristics, of course, was never like this. The discerning hermeneutic you allude to is the proper way, but those who approach Scripture extrinsically, (i.e., apart from prayer) or as a kind of objective answer book crafted to be fully revealed to the lowest common understanding will not grant it validity.
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Yes, and I think that the evangelicals are thus screwing themselves over on and this point and many others. Fortunately, the evangelical doctrine of Scripture is not the Christian doctrine of Scripture, and I only sought to argue from a legitimate Christian understanding of the Bible.
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alexandersaintanthony
Thank you for the comments.
“1. It is implausible that the ground of being, whatever it may be, should be a loving and communicative person.
and
2. It is implausible that any loving, communicative ground of being should have communicated through the Bible.’
Though I appreciate your contribution, I was not arguing those points (though, one could).
Rather, my argument has generally been that the Christian can not hide behind purely metaphysical arguments as if they reprinted the God he believed in, since he believes in a God associated with revelation – and hence belief in the CHRISTIAN God in thrust into the domain of a posteriori/evidence-based reasoning. And once you are there, you have to enter the discussion of what kind of standards of evidence will warrant such beliefs. There are many standards of a posteriori reasoning already in place, that Christians accept elsewhere, but which they will violate in order to accept the *specific miracle claims* of traditional Christianity, the Bible etc.
Your “through the lens of Jesus” approach of interpreting the OT God doesn’t get off the ground unless you first have good reasons to accept the claims about Jesus in the first place. And I suggest you will not be able to produce good reasons to accept claims about Jesus’ miraculous nature.
Without good reasons to actually believe the Jesus story, one is left evaluating the Bible on it’s face value: even just looking at the story itself, it doesn’t even depict a God who is all knowing, all loving, all powerful (iron chariots, anyone?) Let alone a God who is the non-anthropomorphic, “god of the negatives” arrived at by Aquinas’ metaphysical inquiry.
(And yes, I remain deliberately vague when I talk of the Bible representing divine information about God.
This is obviously because it’s hard to find two Christians who agree specifically about what the Bible actually tells us about God. And you get traditions who say “we don’t interpret the bible literally,” but they DO take the Bible seriously as a source of information about God in SOME WAY, and there is no way of doing so that I have seen to be justified).
Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading your post, so thanks.
Cheers,
Vaal
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Ok, fair enough. I’ve commented on the propriety of invoking the metaphysical God elsewhere. I may as well cover in outline the move from a loving ground of being to Jesus, though. If God loves us, then we would expect him to enter into a relationship with us. This expectation seems to be born out by the actual human tendency towards monotheism, which we can interpret a la Plantinga as a sensus divinitas. Given that different religious claims comes from different quarters, which, if any, should we consider God’s decisive revelation? On the basis of various evidences, including its fortuitous historical trajectory, the coherence of its doctrine, and the difficulty of explaining its origins in naturalistic terms, I would say Christianity.
As for whether the Bible describes a metaphysical God, I would say again that you’re telling one side of the story. Yes, there is a significant anthropomorphic strand in the Bible. But the dominant picture is of just the kind of transcendent creator which metaphysical theism attempts to describe with philosophical precision. Is God all knowing? ‘Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. ‘ Is God all loving? I’ve already dealt that that. The most direct proof-text is Matthew 5:48 ‘Be [in context, morally] perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect’. Is God all powerful? ‘with God all things are possible’ Matthew 19:26. Now I don’t really believe in all this proof-texting business, my point is that all this stuff is really there. The important point is that, if you try to give a philosophically perspicuous synthesis of how God is portrayed throughout the Bible, you would inevitably end up with a standard metaphysical God account. As a shortcut, you can try it with just Isaiah 40: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+40&version=NRSV
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Vaal,
You are consistent given your premises. I believe I understand how and why you think what you think.
I do not think the modern scientific method ought to be the standard for rationality and truth. I think it has a far more limited scope than people with your sensibility grant it. Since our criteria and understanding of the nature of truth differ considerably, we are going to consistently disagree and largely talk past one another.
Really, my view of reason is that prior to the rise of certain schools (like nominalism in the late medieval era,) it would have included elements like intuition and aesthetic appreciation. For the medievals, reason was ratio plus intellectus. The intellectus part was the higher and more important element. However, now that part is considered subjective and non-truth bearing. It’s not even considered part of reason. So, today, bright young people think that science, technology, mathematics, etc. is the royal path to truth and helping humanity and that art, philosophy and the like is a hobby.
All I can say is that from within theology, what appears ridiculous to you does not appear ridiculous to me. You will continue to think my intellect is somehow impaired and I will continue to think that you have too narrow an understanding of reason and truth. Still, I appreciate your good will. Honestly, I tend in the direction of Christian universalism. I think it’s more important that God loves and believes in us. It’s my hope that in the end, we shall all come to love and believe in Him.
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As to your point 1: It is implausible that the ground of being, whatever it may be, should be a loving and communicative person.
Certainly I don’t think there’s a knockout philosophical argument that the ground of being should be a loving and communicative person – I don’t even believe there’s a knockout argument that there should be a ground of being. In fact, I think there are very few knock-out arguments on important metaphysical issues. Nonetheless, I think there are arguments good enough that the existence of a personal ground of being is not outright implausible. Take a look at this fine article from Timothy O’Connor: http://www.indiana.edu/~scotus/files/All_Men_Call_God.pdf.
The guiding principle is that it’s theoretically desirable to be able to explain as much of the world as possible, and admit as little as possible as brute fact. The question is, what explains this universe in all its confusing particularity? Why is all matter arranged one way, and not another? Either it’s a brute fact that the universe is the way it is, or there’s an impersonal mechanism which generated the universe and it’s a brute fact that the mechanism is of such a kind as to generate a universe like this. Both alternatives leave a lot to brute fact. On the other hand, we could postulate a personal agent with an interest in the development of life. It’s not obvious such a move eliminates brute fact entirely, but I agree with O’Connor that prima facie it’s a significant improvement on the alternatives.
There’s a deeper epistemological issue though. As I’ve said, I like the basic thrust of your virtue epistemology. But I worry about your specific judgements of virtue and vice. Do you really believe that the theistic arguments, and the theistic rebuttals to atheistic arguments, are all so weak that accepting theism puts you on the side of vice? If so, how have you come to acquire such a belief? Was the process really so virtuous?
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I would just like to make a brief comment concerning some of the things that have been said about the bible. I was just watching a youtube video of a lecture given by David Bentley Hart on biblical fundamentalism. He states in his talk that, apart from the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church, there really is no bible. All that exists, outside of the Church, is a series of colourful and, often, mutually contradictory texts. These texts gain their unity only within the community of the Church. Moreover, this unity is not found in the purely literal reading of the text, but in its typological and allegorical reading. This, Hart claims, is generally the way in which the Fathers read the bible.
Ed
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David Hart on fundamentalism
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Vaal 4:50
I don’t think Hart and those like him are saying anything along the lines of ‘new atheists are wrong because they think Christians believe in a God who became incarnate as Jesus Christ, whereas actually we only think of God in purely metaphysical, a priori terms’. That would be a patently false claim, as you recognise. The criticism is not that the new atheists should discuss only the metaphysical claims about God, and not the ‘a posteriori biblical’ claims, but rather they should discuss the metaphysical claims about God in addition to the ‘a posteriori biblical’ claims. The theist’s reasoning, whether or not you agree with it, is that once a sophisticated understanding of the metaphysical God is in place, the ‘a priori Biblical’ claims turn out to be a lot less objectionable than the new atheists present them as being.
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Vaal 6:00
‘they don’t NEED to go studying years of your Church’s metaphysical musings about God in order to, nonetheless, expose the invalidity of believe in the CHRISTIAN God since the CHRISTIAN God contains a posteriori propositions about God that can not be believed by a rationally consistent person.’
This just assumes outright that the metaphysical claims about God that Hart et al insist upon don’t affect the plausibility of the a posteriori claims. But Hart et al reject that assumption. You can mount a defence of it, or you can agree to differ and get on with your life, but you can’t maintain the ‘Christianity is rational indefensible line’ without examining the claims of the metaphysical God carefully. If you’re criticising position x, and a defender of x tells you that the best case for x is x*, then ignoring x* while you continue to criticise x is an epistemological vice.
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Wow, is there a Jerry Coyne defense league or something? Mention him and your combox explodes.
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