arguments about God and the presumption of naturalism

[skepticgriggsy]

Aquinas begs the question in stating that if one removes the First Cause , one removes the intermediate ones [ See the magesterial 'Theism and Logic]. He begs the question in his contingency argument by assuming Necessary Being [ Kai Nilesen, Malcolm Diamond]. William Lane Craig begs the question with his Kalaam in averring a starting point. So much for cosmological arguments for now. The infinite regress argument shows that as time, causalilty and events require previous times,cause and events, there can be no First Cause. Hans Reichenbach observes that as Existence is a lone object, it requiring at least two for causation, there can be no First Cause.
All teleolgocal arguments beg the question by assuming what they cannot show that we had to arrive; as noted in the current issue of Skeptic, had there been no meteor to cause the demise of the dinosaurs, there would have been no other speicies comparable to us. The probablity one also uses probability before the fact when after the fact requires itself. The fine-tuning one puts the constants as requiring us when the opposite is the fact. As we see patterns , one makes the pareodolia of seeing dessgn like seeing Yeshua in a tortilla [ See Peter A. Angeles 'The Problem of God: a Short Introduction."].
These comments reflect the wide range of our naturalistic thinking against God. They are the gist. One adumbratess them in the books listed in a previous post of mine and in this one.
My critics just regurgitate what they think they know about us new atheists rather than engage in responsible discussions. Other naturalists what say ye? They do not even try to rebut Dawkins! Naturalists, my succinctness leaves for others to dwell upon.

[Richard]

Hi skepticgriggsy,
I think your topic should be named: "references for arguments about god and naturalism". You made statements and gave references but presented no arguments.
Cheers,
Richard

[skepticgriggsy]

I present succinctly what those philosophers take pages to adumbrate. How can theists try to overcome these arguments thaat indeed reveal no God? How might theists adumbrate other arguments that do not have the beg the question aspects of these listed? They can with abstruse language and modal language at length try but in the end they cannot overcome the succinctness of my points, I deign to say!
The First Cause one is ridddled with begged questions and flies in the face of what we know about the Universe ,that it is unique and the law of conservation of mass-energy reveals then eternal Existence through the quantum fluctuations and theories of bounce and bud reveal how it becomes the Multiverse.
Teleological ones suffer from assuming that we had to arrive when as the current issue of Skeptic adumbrates that had the meteor not caused the demise of the dinosaurs, no other being comparable to us would have arrived. Emery might add to that, but that suffices to destroy teleological argumentation.
I outline on what others here might adumbrate. Emery himself might do so. i give glimpses so that others might enlarge to enlighten us all . Anon i 'll add from time to time.
My references are for the industrious ones who ever desire to add to my succinctness.
As with Dawkins and PZ Myers, I state that the most sophisticated theology in the end says little.
I sugget that one ponders the import of my previous argumentation rather than dismissively finding it of small value!

[gary_s]

As with Dawkins and PZ Myers, I state that the most sophisticated theology in the end says little.

I think this line pretty much says it all. Without ever referencing theism, one can effectively converse about and contemplate the ineffable qualities of existence.

[skepticgriggsy]

I make references to Alvin Platinga, Aquinas, William Lane Craig , Richard Swinburne, haughty John Haught and John Hick all the time.
What say ye about my individual comments? They cogently dispose of theism, but one can adumbrate on them at will.
One philosopher, as I do, gets his jollies from the back and forth repartee about the arguments about God.
I write forcefully but as a fallibillist ,I acknowledge that others might be right!
This presumption is just the demand for evidence. Antony Garrard Newton Flew porposed the presumption first as that of agnosticism as it is a method.
Existence is ever so comprehensbile as Victor Stenger proclaims.
Your agnostic, strong atheist!

[Mr. Sluagh]

In summary: in order for the universe to exist, there must be, or at least have been at some point, some quality of the universe that allowed something to come from nothing, or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing. The task of a theist is not just to show this problem, but to explain coherently how the God hypothesis would solve it (show how it's even stranger for a universe to come out of nothing than for an all-powerful super-intelligence to come out of nothing) and provide positive evidence that that is the only possible solution (and not just the only one that said theist can imagine).

[JustJim]

In summary: in order for the universe to exist, there must be, or at least have been at some point, some quality of the universe that allowed something to come from nothing, or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing. The task of a theist is not just to show this problem, but to explain coherently how the God hypothesis would solve it (show how it's even stranger for a universe to come out of nothing than for an all-powerful super-intelligence to come out of nothing) and provide positive evidence that that is the only possible solution (and not just the only one that said theist can imagine).

I'm not sure if it's that I disagree with, or if I just don't understand the first part of your summary. I'm puzzled as to how the universe could possess a quality - the one that allowed something to come from nothing or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing - prior to its own existence. IOW, I don't understand how it could possess any quality before it even existed. What is it that I'm missing there?

I'm also not sure if you couldn't say almost exactly the same thing from the other direction. That is, if you could not equally say "the task of an atheist is not just to show this problem (how the universe came from nothing or that it was unnecessary for something to come from nothing), but to explain coherently how a 'natural processes' hypothesis would solve it (show how it's even stranger for an all-powerful super-intelligence to come out of nothing than for a universe to come from nothing) and provide positive evidence that that is the only possible solution (and not just the only one that said atheist can imagine)." Is that not the same line of reasoning? Did I miss something there, too?

Furthermore, if the theists/deists in question hold to the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God, then they likely do not consider God to require a "source of existence" or a "beginning" or a "cause" of some sort. The transcendental nature of such a God as an "uncaused" cause existing outside of time and space takes away that requirement. And if they hold to a more "pandeistic" position, as I do, they also don't claim to know the mechanisms by which such a transcendental God "became" the universe of physical matter, time, space, and energy while still maintaining a transcendental nature within and outside of that universe.

I think there are more possibilities than just the usual theistic concepts of God and the common scientific concepts of naturalism.

Jim

[Mr. Sluagh]

In summary: in order for the universe to exist, there must be, or at least have been at some point, some quality of the universe that allowed something to come from nothing, or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing. The task of a theist is not just to show this problem, but to explain coherently how the God hypothesis would solve it (show how it's even stranger for a universe to come out of nothing than for an all-powerful super-intelligence to come out of nothing) and provide positive evidence that that is the only possible solution (and not just the only one that said theist can imagine).

I'm not sure if it's that I disagree with, or if I just don't understand the first part of your summary. I'm puzzled as to how the universe could possess a quality - the one that allowed something to come from nothing or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing - prior to its own existence. IOW, I don't understand how it could possess any quality before it even existed. What is it that I'm missing there?

What quality could God have that would allow it to exist eternally, and how is that any less problematic than supposing that the universe has existed from eternity? It only seems less problematic because we understand less about God than about the physical universe, and what we think we know about the universe disallows ex nihilo creation. The problem is, we know even less about God, except that we suppose him to be free of the restrictions that we suppose the universe to have (despite indications that it does not have them).

I'm also not sure if you couldn't say almost exactly the same thing from the other direction. That is, if you could not equally say "the task of an atheist is not just to show this problem (how the universe came from nothing or that it was unnecessary for something to come from nothing), but to explain coherently how a 'natural processes' hypothesis would solve it (show how it's even stranger for an all-powerful super-intelligence to come out of nothing than for a universe to come from nothing) and provide positive evidence that that is the only possible solution (and not just the only one that said atheist can imagine)." Is that not the same line of reasoning? Did I miss something there, too?

It is not necessary to come up with a naturalistic hypothesis (although one may be coming along in quantum physics). It is necessary to say "I don't know" when one doesn't know. Your reversal is an argument from ignorance: "I have an answer to this question and you don't, therefore my answer wins by default whether or not I have any evidence to support it." This fallacy is attractive in this case, because the problem flies in the face of our most basic understanding of causality, making it difficult to even begin to conceive of a solution. The only merits of the God hypothesis are that it is consistent with a lot of mythology and satisfies the human tendency to read agency into inexplicable events (although there are other hypotheses, such as some sort of cyclical time; after entropic heat death, there are still quantum fluctuations in the universe's thinly spread energy, which eventually add up to a singularity on a one in a reallybignumber chance. Something like that. I'm an English major.). The answer may ultimately be in the realm of the unknowable, but the great thing about the unknowable is that it's impossible to know whether it's unknowable. The downside is that it's extremely rash to attribute things to the unknowable, like sentience, timelessness, and existence as a separate entity.

Furthermore, if the theists/deists in question hold to the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God, then they likely do not consider God to require a "source of existence" or a "beginning" or a "cause" of some sort. The transcendental nature of such a God as an "uncaused" cause existing outside of time and space takes away that requirement. And if they hold to a more "pandeistic" position, as I do, they also don't claim to know the mechanisms by which such a transcendental God "became" the universe of physical matter, time, space, and energy while still maintaining a transcendental nature within and outside of that universe.

I think there are more possibilities than just the usual theistic concepts of God and the common scientific concepts of naturalism.

Jim

At this point, you're drowning God in the bathtub to the point that this may be a semantic argument. However, I still don't see how it's less strange to go against Occam's razor and suppose the existence of an extra entity (and a really big one described in a very obfuscatory way, at that) than to suppose that our universe might, in some bizarre way, have the traits you're asking of that entity. I understand even less how it's appropriate to even pick a favored hypothesis on something we both seem to admit is so far beyond the grasp of our most basic understanding of reality.

[JustJim]

What quality could God have that would allow it to exist eternally, and how is that any less problematic than supposing that the universe has existed from eternity? It only seems less problematic because we understand less about God than about the physical universe, and what we think we know about the universe disallows ex nihilo creation. The problem is, we know even less about God, except that we suppose him to be free of the restrictions that we suppose the universe to have (despite indications that it does not have them).

I don't think it's less problematic; I think it's equally problematic for the universe to have existed from eternity. And I think it is precisely because what we know about the universe allows us to rule out ex nihilo creation that we can safely speculate that the universe did not spring up from nothing and that it must have "sprung up" from something that did not require a previous cause and that must have existed from eternity (outside of, and therefore unbound by, time and space). For me, that "something" is God as I understand God, though certainly not the theistic God of popular Christianity.

It is not necessary to come up with a naturalistic hypothesis (although one may be coming along in quantum physics). It is necessary to say "I don't know" when one doesn't know. Your reversal is an argument from ignorance: "I have an answer to this question and you don't, therefore my answer wins by default whether or not I have any evidence to support it." .... The answer may ultimately be in the realm of the unknowable, but the great thing about the unknowable is that it's impossible to know whether it's unknowable. The downside is that it's extremely rash to attribute things to the unknowable, like sentience, timelessness, and existence as a separate entity.

I certainly don't mean to claim that "I know" the answers. I don't. My ideas are merely my best guesses, based on my understandings of how things appear to me and what makes better sense to me. In fact, they're more often a set of conclusions based on what appear to me to be the less preposterous conclusions. I'm not saying, or at least it isn't my intent to say, anything at all like what you suggest I am - that I claim my answer wins by default because you don't have the answer, whether I have any evidence to support my ideas either. How'd you arrive at that analysis? And rash or not, I'm less convinced that the universe arose, from nothing, through purely natural means, than through some pre-existing, timeless (transcendent) cause. (I'm not sure "sentience" is an attribute I would assign to God, at least not in the sense we claim that we are sentient, but that's one of those "God is not a horse" issues I don't want to get back into anymore....)

At this point, you're drowning God in the bathtub to the point that this may be a semantic argument. However, I still don't see how it's less strange to go against Occam's razor and suppose the existence of an extra entity (and a really big one described in a very obfuscatory way, at that) than to suppose that our universe might, in some bizarre way, have the traits you're asking of that entity. I understand even less how it's appropriate to even pick a favored hypothesis on something we both seem to admit is so far beyond the grasp of our most basic understanding of reality.

Regarding Occam's Razor, I'll paraphrase one of the authors of God Wants You Dead, who says with his tongue only partially in his cheek, that his entire experience has shown the opposite to be true - that the simplest explanation is almost never the correct one. Also, what's so inappropriate about picking our "favored hypotheses" on things we don't even come close to fully understanding? We all do it all the time. This whole forum is, in fact, nothing but that, isn't it?

Jim

[Richard]

I agree with Jim, except of the God part.
Any coherent world view has to start with something uncaused and eternal (or non-temporal). I call it "the framework of reality" and use it as "the first cause" for our universe. That's all I can do based on the evidence at hand. Deists and theists call it God and assign characteristics to it. I think the only real debate is if these characteristics are based on evidence or on arguments from ignorance / wishful thinking.

Cheers,
Richard

[JustJim]

I agree with Jim, except of the God part.
Any coherent world view has to start with something uncaused and eternal (or non-temporal). I call it "the framework of reality" and use it as "the first cause" for our universe. That's all I can do based on the evidence at hand. Deists and theists call it God and assign characteristics to it. I think the only real debate is if these characteristics are based on evidence or on arguments from ignorance / wishful thinking.

Cheers,
Richard

I think you're exactly "right on" here. It's the assigning of characteristics and attributes to what deists and theists call "God" that gives rise to the real meat of the debates. I try, almost desperately and often unsuccessfully, to avoid assigning human-like traits to (my idea of) God because it reeks of wishful thinking and "creating God in our own image". And since none of us can know with any reasonable certainty what, if any, characteristics should be assigned to God, I think it's always an argument from ignorance (as opposed to an argument from stupidity).

Jim

[OzAnt]

In summary: in order for the universe to exist, there must be, or at least have been at some point, some quality of the universe that allowed something to come from nothing, or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing.

I'm puzzled as to how the universe could possess a quality - the one that allowed something to come from nothing or made it unnecessary for something to come from nothing - prior to its own existence. IOW, I don't understand how it could possess any quality before it even existed.

When I read what Mr Sluagh wrote, I didn't even pick up on what you queried, Jim. I think it's because I interpreted what I read as "whatever the universe is housed in, most likely allowed our universe to make an appearance, from what appears to be nothing".

Also, taking what Mr Sluagh says literally (ie: at some point there being a specific quality of our universe...); at what point in the birth of our universe (big bang) did time come to exist as we understand it today? Did time exist in the first millionth of a nanosecond of the big bang? How about in the first billionth of a nanosecond? Can I even use a measurement of time to ask these questions?!? The way I see it, there quite likely was an infinitesimally small window of existence where time didn't apply, because surely time (as we understand it) couldn't have existed at the very beginning of the explosion ...at zero hour so to speak. I mean, no universe [at least, no room for Einstein's bendiness that occurs in space], no time measuring device, no time. What qualities, did the universe [in its embryonic stage] have that we have no idea about?

Ant

[OzAnt]

What quality could God have that would allow it to exist eternally, and how is that any less problematic than supposing that the universe has existed from eternity?

I find myself reading the word 'universe' here as meaning "that which contains our universe". In this context I too, find it equally fair to say that it could be God, or that it could be something a lot more natural and a lot less (if at all) sentient; which is to say "I don't know" what it is.

From what I understand of your writings, you're saying if they're both equally possible first causes, then the logical thing to do is delve deeper into why religion exists at all. In other words, where and why did religion come from? If we can nut that out, we mightn't even have to go down the road of evidence (eg: does prayer work etc)

The article you linked, titled Is God an Accident, I found to be a very interesting read. Firstly, I liked it because, although it's written by a psychologist, it's written in language that doesn't have me reaching for a dictionary and forcing me to have to get my head around their lingo'. Secondly, I like reading about where [some] psychologist's thoughts are heading; in this case the religion-as-accident theory, based on the results of studies they're doing - in this case, with unbelievably difficult subjects, namely babies.

Supernatural beliefs might be explained in a similar way. This is the religion-as-accident theory that emerges from my work and the work of cognitive scientists such as Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Justin Barrett, and Deborah Kelemen. One version of this theory begins with the notion that a distinction between the physical and the psychological is fundamental to human thought. Purely physical things, such as rocks and trees, are subject to the pitiless laws of Newton. Throw a rock, and it will fly through space on a certain path; if you put a branch on the ground, it will not disappear, scamper away, or fly into space. Psychological things, such as people, possess minds, intentions, beliefs, goals, and desires. They move unexpectedly, according to volition and whim; they can chase or run away. There is a moral difference as well: a rock cannot be evil or kind; a person can.

Where does the distinction between the physical and the psychological come from? Is it something we learn through experience, or is it somehow pre-wired into our brains? One way to find out is to study babies. It is notoriously difficult to know what babies are thinking, given that they can't speak and have little control over their bodies. (They are harder to test than rats or pigeons, because they cannot run mazes or peck levers.) But recently investigators have used the technique of showing them different events and recording how long they look at them, exploiting the fact that babies, like the rest of us, tend to look longer at something they find unusual or bizarre.

This has led to a series of striking discoveries.
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Understanding of the physical world and understanding of the social world can be seen as akin to two distinct computers in a baby's brain, running separate programs and performing separate tasks. The understandings develop at different rates: the social one emerges somewhat later than the physical one. They evolved at different points in our prehistory; our physical understanding is shared by many species, whereas our social understanding is a relatively recent adaptation, and in some regards might be uniquely human.
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But these systems go awry in two important ways that are the foundations of religion. First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls. This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife. Second, as we will see, our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist. This makes us animists and creationists.

Fascinating stuff. It's so tempting to paste the whole article and so difficult to just cut bits out of it, because it all flows so well, but after reading the article I want to say that I better understand where you're coming from.

Thanks,

Ant

[JustJim]

When I read what Mr Sluagh wrote, I didn't even pick up on what you queried, Jim. I think it's because I interpreted what I read as "whatever the universe is housed in, most likely allowed our universe to make an appearance, from what appears to be nothing".

Housed in? You mean like an even larger universe or something like that? The way I ponder it, nothing except God existed prior to the universe's "birth" process. And as you know, I see the "creation" of the universe as God "becoming" the universe. I have no guesses as to how or why, of course.

So far as time as we understand it is concerned. I agree with you. Time in its most basic form is some variation of measurement of motion. A year is a measurement of the motion of the earth as it moves around the sun, for example. And so, without any motion of objects within a physical universe, time (as we commonly understand and measure it) does not exist. Prior to the universe's existence, then, there was no time as we understand it. That's what the "transcendent" nature of God is all about. That's what it means to say that a non-physical "entity" existing before there was a physical universe was "transcendent" - existing "outside of" time. There was no such thing as "time" without the universe. And, as you suggest, if there was a point in the initial existence of the universe when there was not yet any motion of physical matter, there would also have been no such thing as "time" then, either - at least not in the way we understand it as a measurement of motion.

Jim

[OzAnt]

Housed in? You mean like an even larger universe or something like that?

Yes and no. I've got many competing ideas in my head on this one. The obvious thought is that, yes, it's something larger (ie: what would we run into at the edge of the universe, or what might we discover ourselves in if we crossed the edges of the universe's boundaries). However, it could also be small; and here I draw from my computer experience with virtual worlds. When I log into a first person shooter game (great for stress relief), I'm generally in a pretty big world. For instance, it's big enough that I'm constantly re-evaluating whether I should have my sniper rifle, machine gun, pistol or even knife out in the ever changing environment I'm traipsing through. Yet, I know that although I'll cross many, many kilometres during any gaming session, that entire world exists on memory that's a few centimetres long in two directions (and millimetres thick in the third direction).I'm not saying that we're in a virtual world by any means. I'm just saying that I have no idea what's possible - and that I'd love to know, if the universe is 13.7 billion light years across (pulled that figure from memory, so it might be wrong), what would happen if we travelled 13.71 billion light years? Can't be nothing, can it?

The way I ponder it, nothing except God existed prior to the universe's "birth" process. And as you know, I see the "creation" of the universe as God "becoming" the universe. I have no guesses as to how or why, of course.

Thanks for specifically sharing your thoughts on what existed prior to the universe's birth. Nevertheless, I gotta ask, have you ever pondered what God existed in prior to the universe (ie: what was it "housed in")?

Ant