h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is all to much for my wee head to take.
I'm going to leave you all to it, for now anyways.
If God is a DJ? What would he be playing? It would hardly be Pink, would it?

I'll talk to you crazy kids later on hi.

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The problem with accepting religious leaders as ethical sources is that there is no reason to expect their conclusions to be ethical--sometimes they're right, but there's nothing keeping them from picking some of the less savory scriptural ethics next time.

Deuteronomy 21:18--if parents can't control their son, they should tell the village and everyone will stone him to death.

As for rape, take a look at the story of Lot--it seems that it is right to protect strangers from a mob by giving the mob your daughters to rape.

Athena,

I agree with your analysis of the kalam argument - it is deeply flawed because it, rightly, denies infinite time within the universe but then illogically proposes an 'eternal' god - where's the difference?

On the issue of god/God's psychology, we have debated here before and concluded that G/god must obey the rules of logic. He can't for example create something so complex/heavy/whatever that he is unable to create it. This limits his omnipotence a tad but seems to be inescapable.

It then follows that however screwed up his mind is it still must have some underlying psychology. I admit that the omniscience presents a problem because he could deliberately spoil the results of the tests but I suspect there are ways to work round even that problem.

The repeatability examples were to point out that people attribute 'god's will' to complex phenomena but not to simple ones. It was simply an observation that the more we understand about the universe the smaller is the area of G/god's influence.

This brings us back to the kalam argument. It is in fact a tacit acceptance that g/God has no influence in the universe at large - that if he did we would notice it (eventually). They claim that, in effect, G/god lit the blue touch paper and stood well back. Everything following the big bang follows natural laws. This squeezes G/god into one single role a very long time ago but this logic itself is inevitably flawed, as you have pointed out.

F

Hi Athena!

But we are (or at least, we began by) talking about the Pope here, and according to your latest post there is nothing preventing him from picking either of the two passages you cited...?

I haven't read the backlog of this discussion yet, but isn't the kalam arguement that thing Toxxin likes to post that purports to prove the existance of a creator? I don't recall it too well, but I remember thinking that the logic was flawed--I think I even posted something attacking it, but I haven't the tinyest idea where or when.


"It then follows that however screwed up his mind is it still must have some underlying psychology."

What if that psychology is a random number generator? Or perhaps connected to causes in another universe that we can't observe? The problem with the idea that a God has understandable psychology is this: The basic idea of a God is that there is some entity that can circumvent/change/control the laws of nature. If that God has a knowable psychology, then that psychology becomes part of the laws of nature--so even if a God must have some underlieing psychology, we can't understand that psychology or it ceases to be a god. Doesn't it?



"This brings us back to the kalam argument. It is in fact a tacit acceptance that g/God has no influence in the universe at large - that if he did we would notice it (eventually). They claim that, in effect, G/god lit the blue touch paper and stood well back. Everything following the big bang follows natural laws. This squeezes G/god into one single role a very long time ago but this logic itself is inevitably flawed, as you have pointed out."

Isn't it the basic premise of Deism? It seems to fit into Dawkin's arguement about atheism. Assuming a person who sees no evidence of a god in the behavior of the universe, someone who sees everything as a consequence of natural law. They can only rationally be an atheist if they can explain the existance of the world around them from natural causes. Before Darwin, that was just about impossible, so people who saw the universe governed by natural laws were Deists--they assumed a creator who then ignored his creation. Actually, if you think about it it makes a bit of sence if you think of the universe as a computer simulation. The Programmer sets up the initial conditions and then watches the results--he doesn't interfere once he sets it running because that would interfere with the results of the simularion.

"Anyone who tries to defend their "ethical" views by picking and choosing from ancient texts should not be treated as an authority on right and wrong."

I'd agree with that-but it sounds like you're implying absolute right an wrong. If so, can you defend that idea?

If you're picking and choosing then the text has ceased to be an authority. Same goes if you pick and choose between texts. On what basis is the choice made? Not, in the last analysis on the authority of the texts themselves.

Noggin

Infamy! Infamy! ....... You've all got it in for me.

Fair enough, I'll address Athena's points first, but I have reasoned responses to all that everyone says. First, let me point to the KCA summarised at the 'locus classicus': http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html

It's listed at the bottome of Ramey's paper, followed by Craig's website. Some digging is doubtless required though so I shall try to answer all points here. Please repeat any queries I've missed or address anything I say that seems flawed. That should keep me busy for a while!



Craig takes on the scientific points in detail. There are those that (Noggin?) who find the idea of God counter-intuitive; so that particular argument cuts both ways.

There is a lot of fudging going on between 'natural' and 'material' causes, Athena! I take it that the alternatives to 'supernatural' are 'material' and 'personal'. The latter are the two kinds of cause to be generally accepted. I don't think I ever use the term 'natural' in anger; does anyone I've cited?

I'm struggling to make sense of some of your points because of the use of the word 'natural'. Can you defend it or rephrase the questions?



There are two interpretations of 'eternal': 'timeless' and 'everlasting'. I tend to go for the first although I suspect that God has His own personal dimension that applies for Him alone and has roughly the same function as time has for the material universe. God, of course, is immaterial. I guess we'd have to call it 'immaterial time'. I think that is my own take, although I'm happy to be corrected.



Nope. The material timeline begins with our universe. Logically prior to that, perhaps also in the sense of 'immaterial time' introduced above, there is God. Alternatively, God is independent of time. So we don't have to propose the contradiction of material time before the beginning of material time.

Someone mentioned 'omnipotence'. I hope Swinburne's account answers the question. He assumes the 'everlasting' view of 'eternal', but I think I can adapt his account.

"Omnipotent
A person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about any logically contingent state of affairs x after t, the descriptions of which does not entail that P did not bring x about at t. This is subject to the restriction that a person is no less omnipotent for being unable to bring about a state of affairs if he believes that he has overriding reason not to bring it about. So, God is omnipotent even if he is unable to do what he believes wrong. The paradox of the stone has false premises."

That comes from here: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/philosophy/0198240708/toc.html#

I suggest that you click on the button that shows the chapter abstracts.


Please list unanswered key questions and I'll try to get back shortly.

toxx

RDO. I like your points, and I concur that the KCA doesn't, for me, go beyond Deism with the implication of a personal Deity. Philosophically, I'm quite content with that. Anything more seems to me to be biography! Well, history if you like.

I also like the points raised by yourself and others about the psychology of God. I'm not sure that the idea is a coherent one. Hey, let's have Swinburne's definition. I think it's most enlightening.

"2. Conditions for Coherence—I
A proposition or coherent statement is one such that it makes sense to suppose that it and any statement entailed by it are true. Analytic statements are distinguished from synthetic (or factual) ones. The weak verificationist principle claimed that to be factual, a statement had to be confirmable or disconfirmable by an observation statement. But it is unclear which statements are observation statements, and how one could show that a statement was confirmable or disconfirmable by one. And anyway, there are no good arguments for believing the vertificationist principle to be true.

3. Conditions for Coherence—2
For a sentence to express a statement, it must contain meaningful words (i.e. words with semantic and syntactic criteria for their use). The only way to prove a statement to be incoherent is to show that it entails an obviously incoherent statement, and the main way to prove a statement coherent is to show that it is entailed by an obviously coherent statement. The whole process thus depends on intuitions about what else is coherent or incoherent. But there is an indirect way of showing a statement to be coherent—by showing that by normal inductive criteria there is actual evidence in favour of its truth."

Since God is immaterial, His reasoning is not mediated by a brain. Hence He does things for reasons, NOT in response to causes. Such a being is inevitably 100% consistent (why think otherwise?). This doesn't fit with any standard psychological model. Psychology is surely the study of a function of a material thing.

Hence God's actions are simpler to understand than those of humans.

You deny that we can understand God's 'psychology', and then make quite a nice job of it in the bit I've just quoted.

toxx

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But it is presumably mediated by rules, and any rule may be represented by symbols and processed by cause and effect rules.

Noggin

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Yet that is what the religious leaders who are generally taken seriously do. On the other hand, fundamentalists generally advocate rules of behavior that are completely unacceptable.

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What is the distinction between a reason and a cause? If I decide to eat because I am hungry, my reason is hunger, which is the cause for my action. A reason is just the cause that a concious entity assigns to an effect. It may or may not be the real cause.

How do you know your God is immaterial? Might he be perfectly material in his own plane of existance/universe/whatever? A computer program could argue that it's programmer is immaterial because he is not stored on the network's disk space, but surely the programmer is material and has a brain.

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I'm using the word natural to refer to any set of self-enforcing laws, ie the laws of physics. In our universe, at least, they enforce themselves and lead to events on a non-personal basis. Personal implies a concious entity. A natural cause for the universe would mean that something non-personal outside of the universe causes this universe. I don't think I used the word material in my arguements about this--I don't see what it would have meant, really. Probably can be read a natural (as explained above).



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My point is not that the universe or its beggining must be counter-intuitive, merely that we cannot reject things simply because they sound counter-intuitive--it may well be that the universe began in a way that doesn't seem normal to our way of thinking.



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Can you defend the claim that God is "immaterial", and define what you mean by "material"? I agree that if there is an external cause for the universe, it cannot be within our space-time. That does not mean that it has a time dimention, though. If God has a time dimention, She either lacks a beggining or doesn't. If She has a beggining, we have the same set of problems all over again. If She lacks a beggining, then we have to explain how She ever got around to creating our universe if she had to wait forever first--surely the arguements made in the first article you posted about the impossibility of time without begging apply here. Thus, I think we can conclude that if there is a creator-God, She has no time dimention and must do everything in the same instant. However, if all Her actions pile up in one instant, it is hard to see how She can be personal. Thus, I suggest that if the universe has an external cause, that cause cannot be personal. Furthermore, that external cause cannot exist in a time dimention, material or immaterial (I still want your definitions for those terms).





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I agree that our timeline exists only within our universe and cannot extend before it. If by immaterial time you mean some larger timeline in which we are imbedded so that to God our time looks like a space dimention, then you must still explain the start of this immaterial time, or else claim your God existed for an eternity before creating us--which violates the arguements about endless time being meaningless.

If God is independent of time, she lacks a time dimention, I suppose you mean. So all her actions take place at once. I still don't see how a personal cause is distinguishable from a non-personal cause if both entities take place all at once. I don't think a personal entity without a time dimention even makes sence, really--but counter-intuitivity is a weak arguement.




<<"A person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about any logically contingent state of affairs x after t, the descriptions of which does not entail that P did not bring x about at t. This is subject to the restriction that a person is no less omnipotent for being unable to bring about a state of affairs if he believes that he has overriding reason not to bring it about. So, God is omnipotent even if he is unable to do what he believes wrong. The paradox of the stone has false premises.">>

The problem is dimentional assymetry. I assume that the omnipotent entity here is not limited by space dimentions--he can make x take place anywhere he wants, in any direction or distance. However, you say he can only do it after t, not before. This seems to put a direct limit on omnipotence--the omnipotent entity is restricted from acting in a portion of the universe. However, if we free the entity from this restriction we imply causuality violations and a tonne of paradoxes. The only solution I can see is to posit that an entity can only be omnipotent in a universe of a lower number of dimentions than his own, so that the time dimention of the universe in which he is omnipotent is a space dimention in his universe and he is not affected by the causuality problems he would otherwise cause (ie if today I cause world peace last week, then today there has been world peace for a week, so why should I cause what is already there, but if I don't then there is no reason for me to not...). Omnipotence cannot exist over the universe in which an entity exists, only over lower-dimentional universes.

Hi Noggin.

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But it is presumably mediated by rules, and any rule may be represented by symbols and processed by cause and effect rules.>

Sorry bud, but this is smack, bang in the middle of my area of expertise and I'm afraid that what you say isn't wrong, but irrelevant! The 'rules' of thinking, from a psychological point of view, are purely descriptive. They are not prescriptive and mediate nothing. They are simply constructs in the mind of the observer - insofar as they exist at all.

From a philosophical angle, we can, and do, construct logical systems of how, perhaps, we ought to reason. The more such a system is perfect - the more it approaches God's reasoning. (See my c&p on coherence). Such systems can easily be implemented in a material, typically computer, system. That doesn't mean that there is no other way of reasoning that isn't materially instantiated or that God has a material body.

'If p, then q. p, therefore q.' Is not cause and effect.

Here's a causal story which looks like the above: "If I put sugar in my tea, then it will taste better" (assumption). Therefore,"If I put sugar and sewage in my tea, it will taste better." That can be proved logically to be a correct deduction. Causally it is, of course, crap!

toxx

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I still don't understand your material/immaterial distinction.

The difference is that, unless I am very confused, the computer analogy was about a Deistic God. My point is that we cannot understand a Theistic God's psychology. From now on I wil distinguish them more clearly. Deos may well be understandable, noone claims Her to be omnipotent/omniscient, merely able to create our universe somehow or another. Such a being may well be comprehendible.

Theos, on the other hand, is an entity that is actively involved in our universe. He performs miracles, ect. and can be considered an active participant. If we are able to understand his psychology well enough to predict his behavior (especially 100% accurately), then he merely becomes an extention of natural laws who has no or very little free will--as such He can't be considered omnipotent. A Theos God whose psychology we 100% understood (or even mostly understood) would be indistinguishable from a set of natural laws that we completely or mostly understood. How do we know that gravity is due to a natural law that mass attracts mass, or because a Theos God has an unalterable psychology that makes Him bring massive objects together.

If a Theos God is predictable, He is indistinguishable from natural laws, which are defined as being predictable. Such a Theos God is meaningless and is eliminated by Occam's razor--if there's no way to differentiate Him from natural laws, you can't propose his existance.

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Doesn't work. The problem is this--it depends on the order. Premise: if you put sugar in tea, it will taste better.

-If you put sugar in tea first, it will taste better.If you then add sewage, the sugar/tea will taste worse.

-If you put sewage in the tea first, then add sugar, you aren't putting sugar in tea, you're putting it in sewage/tea, which isn't what the premise says (and the sewage tea may taste better anyway.

-If you put sewage and sugar in together, you aren't adding sugar, you're adding sewage/sugar, which isn't what the premise says.

Athena. I'm afraid that, for me, persons are natural entities - so it's difficult for me to speak in the terms you prefer.

I have two reasons for supposing God to be immaterial: first, that the standard theistic model assumes it; second, that I can't concoct a coherent account of God without that assumption. Hence, if there's a God, He has to be immaterial.

Yup, you describe very clearly the reasoning that leads us to suppose that God has His own 'time' dimension. There's no reason at all why an omnipotent being can't do that. There is no reason to suppose that there can be no immaterial infinite! It is the material examples like hotels and libraries that give rise to contradictions or paradoxes. I guess that a mathematical potential infinity is a class of immaterial infinite.

Even so, your point is an excellent one and I shall work further on it. I don't claim to know it all - or even much of it! I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts on the relation between actual, potential and immaterial infinites. My working assumption is that the latter are sufficiently similar, if not identical.

Maybe, like your speculation on omnipotence, it is necessary that God occupy a set of dimensions that only partially overlaps with our own. I see that as a bit of potential progress rather than a problem.

You asked for my definitions of 'material' and 'immaterial'. Well, here's a way of differentiating between them although not a complete definition. A material thing has a shape, size and location (and any other physical property such as velocity, momentum etc). An immaterial thing has none of these.

Athena. I've really enjoyed this exchange so far. It seems to me that we're actually 'doing' a bit of philosophy rather than just discussing it.

toxx

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I'll switch to an alternative if you have one you'd prefer over natural.




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OK, then your immaterial is basicly an entity existing in a continuum without space dimentions--every physical propery except durration I can think of would imply space dimentions, and your immaterial God, you say, can have time, so He can have durration. Now I understand what you mean--your God can affect things in our universe/create our universe but is actually situated in one with either no dimentions or only time dimentions.




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Well, from a Deistic point of view, I don't see why something like R. Daneel's computer model couldn't work--Deos exists in Her own universe and has physical properties/space dimentinos there. So a Deos can be material. As for Theos, hmm... I'll get back to you on that. I don't want to inturrupt my chain of thought, but I think it can be done.




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It seems to me that an omnipotent being would have to have it's own time dimention if it had any. The thing is, by your own statments, we assume time to be immaterial (else your immaterial God can't have any time dimention/durration). So, if immaterial things can be infinite, so can time, even time in our own universe.



I have also enjoyed this discussion/philosophization/whgatever the right word is.

Athena. You're quite right that in terms of the propositional calculus of logic, there's no reason to suppose that the sewage tea *would* taste worse. That is what I was saying.

A little more formally: given "If p, then q", we are permitted to conclude "If p&r, then q". That is a use of the &addition rule of propositional logic. I'm sorry to introduce formal logic, dunno why I did it. Someone must have rattled my cage in an appropriate way. Ah yes; logic and causality.

toxx

I see your point about material Gods making no sence--if by God we mean initial creator and not just creator of our universe.

However, I don't see how an initial creator God can have duration without having infinite duration (otherwise you get into the creator question again). Also, I don't think immaterial durration has any meaning.

How does time have meaning in our universe? The state of objects changes. However, a immaterial plane of existance has no objects, thus nothing to change. God's thoughts could change, but, if we imagine him as being omnipotent and outside our universe's timeline, he could have no new stimulation. If, as you have claimed, He is completely predictable/logical, he can pass through the logical chain of thoughts from our universe over its whole existance, and have no possible other change. Durration for God cannot be infinite, but, if it is not, then when did it begin?