Can a Case be Made for a Deistic Christian God?

[greg]

This situation again resurrects the venerable argument from evil. If God knew of everything when He made the world, surely He must have seen the suffering the act of creation would bring about. Since God would have the choice to create or not to create, would not God be responsible for all the evil in our world? You may counter with "free will", but consider, God could with 100% certainty KNOW how events would unfold. To use a mythological example, He would have foreseen Satan's treachery and Adam and Eve's fall from grace far, far "before" He created the universe. Yet, He made everything just as He intended.

I must admit, I have never found that "free will" really solves this dilemma, even as far as the conventional, interfering God of Christianity is concerned, as far as I understand it. God still possesses His knowledge, way in advance of the tragedies to come, and He does not seek to prevent them, and any future remedy would only serve to highlight His original failure. The world MUST have been what God intended, because He knows everything and He can do anything. And, as Christians often say, God is also perfectly good. Taken as a whole, this strikes me as a most jarring contradiction, one that I feel has not been resolved by any argument I have seen put forward.

I completely understand this part.
When you think about it like this, all logic completely falls apart. And when logic falls apart......

[Fëanor]

...

     There are not 3 positions, there are only yes and undecidable/no, which is why the atheist/agnostic split is more a question of temperament than a genuine epistemic dispute. You may be an undecided, but all undecideds agree that no/undecided does not mean yes. Operationally, it means no.

Indeed!   

[drogulus]

Indeed!  

    I see I'm not the only one that has noticed this rather obvious point. One of the "virtues" of a philosophically rigorous education is that it provides you with more possible positions to take in disputes than the world affords.

   

[drogulus]

I completely understand this part.
When you think about it like this, all logic completely falls apart. And when logic falls apart......

    Call the Midas Muffler Man, or Roto Rooter.  

    It may just be a practical problem about what's there. Logic plays only a supporting role, to help you understand what you find, not to do the work of finding things on its own. The only reason logic is dragged into it is as a desperate attempt to recover from an evidence deficit, hence the now farcical Ontological Proof ("a perfect thing must exist blah blah"). No one ever, ever confirms the existence of something with this.

[DavidRoss]

Greg--be careful.  You know how when you're learning to play an instrument you should get a qualified teacher, otherwise you may develop some very bad habits that may prove very difficult to correct?  Well, that same principle applies to almost everything--including learning how to think.  If you can't play a lick and haven't heard much else, someone who can pick out a passable Stairway to Heaven might sound pretty good to you, even if they don't even know enough to begin to suspect how flawed their technique is, how little they really know, and how ill-qualified they are to teach.

[greg]

Greg--be careful.  You know how when you're learning to play an instrument you should get a qualified teacher, otherwise you may develop some very bad habits that may prove very difficult to correct?  Well, that same principle applies to almost everything--including learning how to think.  If you can't play a lick and haven't heard much else, someone who can pick out a passable Stairway to Heaven might sound pretty good to you, even if they don't even know enough to begin to suspect how flawed their technique is, how little they really know, and how ill-qualified they are to teach.

This might sound extremely egotistical  , but that never applied to me. I never have had a teacher, and I really do know when I'm playing something wrong or using bad technique, just by listening. If I'm using bad technique, I then correct myself and learn how to play something until it sounds perfect.
Though this type of stuff is different because I'm not so much involved in it. Still, it's always best to question without stopping- question your questions, question your own answers, question everything, because in the end we may not really know what we think we know.

[greg]

    Call the Midas Muffler Man, or Roto Rooter.  

    It may just be a practical problem about what's there. Logic plays only a supporting role, to help you understand what you find, not to do the work of finding things on its own. The only reason logic is dragged into it is as a desperate attempt to recover from an evidence deficit, hence the now farcical Ontological Proof ("a perfect thing must exist blah blah"). No one ever, ever confirms the existence of something with this.

Hmm.... i get what you mean here. It's sort of like making up music vs. studying the theory what's been written, or the difference between man and computer- computer only uses logic, while man can question, or make up art?

[DavidRoss]

Still, it's always best to question without stopping- question your questions, question your own answers, question everything, because in the end we may not really know what we think we know.

You speak wisely, young Skywalker.  The Force is strong with you.  And don't forget the corollary:  we don't know what we don't know. 

Cheers!

[Elgarian]

No investigator has any need for theistic concepts to explain anything real.

That sounds convincing, until we realise that the definition of 'real' is left hanging in the air. If our definition of 'real' involves excluding certain kinds of experience from the investigation, then of course the model of reality we end up with will have no need for the concepts we excluded. This looks like a tautology in disguise, to me.

[Elgarian]

I can't imagine the true agnostic would be drawn into debates such as these. Once one reaches the point where the inability to know is the final result, it becomes inefficient to get into debates about knowing.

I don't think that a 'true agnostic' is such a final, closed entity as this. One's perceptions and conceptions of the world change continually. Every experience is contextual and any conclusions reached are necessarily provisional. I wrote with tongue-in-cheek in another thread about the responsibility of being at the universe's cutting edge as it unfolds in its creative advance, but I wasn't really joking. For the true agnostic, everything is still to play for. The next day, the next moment, may bring fresh enlightenment. From that perspective many of these arguments, whether theistic or atheistic in flavour, seem driven by a need to close the debate: to settle the thing once and for all in some conclusive proof, or final statement of belief or disbelief, so we can ... what? Get on with our lives? But I would suggest that recognising the extent of the mystery of our existence, and grappling with that mystery however we can, is the very stuff of being alive.

[drogulus]

That sounds convincing, until we realise that the definition of 'real' is left hanging in the air. If our definition of 'real' involves excluding certain kinds of experience from the investigation, then of course the model of reality we end up with will have no need for the concepts we excluded. This looks like a tautology in disguise, to me.

     I take your point, Elgarian. However, I suggest that what constitutes the real confronts you with a version of the halt problem. Where do you stop conferring the title "real"? Do you exclude everything of an abstract nature, leaving only matter and energy? My answer is no, we should say that what we term real should include all the emergent abilities of minds, as the products of minds, which are themselves the product of brains in bodies. So I'm not about to endorse the view of B.F. Skinner that minds are fictions. I think this approach accounts for souls and gods in an efficient manner.

     There's no need to invoke the mysterious in preference to the merely puzzling. In fact we are obligated not to take a defeatist line as long as there's an open path for investigators. Let's find out what the material world really can do instead of just writing it off to reinforce an ancient prejudice. No one has ever given a good reason why matter and energy can't do what it plainly does, and causation ought to be purely material because that's the only way it can work, and materialism seen like this is simply the name we give to the discoverable. I think it's self-thwarting and obtuse to concoct a definition of what's there that appears deliberately designed to be unhelpful. It astonishes me that this isn't apparent to more people.

[Elgarian]

Let's find out what the material world really can do instead of just writing it off to reinforce an ancient prejudice. No one has ever given a good reason why matter and energy can't do what it plainly does, and causation ought to be purely material because that's the only way it can work, and materialism seen like this is simply the name we give to the discoverable.

I really do sympathise with the difficulty in expressing these things (the task is almost impossible, I know), but I read this merely as a lengthier restatement of the original tautology. What you call 'the discoverable' carries the same problem as 'the real'. I'm also worried about the inclusion of 'to reinforce an ancient prejudice' which sounds like there's a different agenda working its way through, there. When I say that I'm troubled by the idea of 'finding out what the material world really can do instead of just writing it off', I'm troubled not because of an ancient prejudice, but because I really am concerned about the validity of such an approach.

[DavidRoss]

I really do sympathise with the difficulty in expressing these things (the task is almost impossible, I know), but I read this merely as a lengthier restatement of the original tautology. What you call 'the discoverable' carries the same problem as 'the real'. I'm also worried about the inclusion of 'to reinforce an ancient prejudice' which sounds like there's a different agenda working its way through, there. When I say that I'm troubled by the idea of 'finding out what the material world really can do instead of just writing it off', I'm troubled not because of an ancient prejudice, but because I really am concerned about the validity of such an approach.

Yep, in four years of trying I've had no luck helping Ernie to grasp the idea that if you define 'the real' to exclude everything not amenable to measurement on an oscilloscope, then it's no wonder that you think things that can't be measured on an oscilloscope aren't real.

He's not bad at spotting others' prejudice, but remains willfully blind when it comes to recognizing his own.

But he is a good sport and a lovable sort.  (Whoops!  There's no measuring 'love' with an oscilloscope.  Guess that means we'd be deluded about that, if we could pin down just what that 'we' is.  Hey!  Is that my tail I see?!)

[drogulus]

I really do sympathise with the difficulty in expressing these things (the task is almost impossible, I know), but I read this merely as a lengthier restatement of the original tautology. What you call 'the discoverable' carries the same problem as 'the real'. I'm also worried about the inclusion of 'to reinforce an ancient prejudice' which sounds like there's a different agenda working its way through, there. When I say that I'm troubled by the idea of 'finding out what the material world really can do instead of just writing it off', I'm troubled not because of an ancient prejudice, but because I really am concerned about the validity of such an approach.

     Do you call it tautological to say the real world is what we find? This is strange. The name "real" ought to be given to what we can find, with the inference that what we haven't yet found is orderly in the same way, however different, because that's the only way it can work. I think you're using the word in a special way. As for a hidden agenda, why hide what's in plain sight? The antimaterialist says not to believe that the world is constructed the way it appears to be and won't/can't say why. What's the case that we're wrong? How would you even start to make it? Never mind, this is a bird in the bush that will never come when you call it.

    Shouldn't the antimaterialist be forced to explain how your brain runs on mystery stuff and not the stuff we can actually find there? How does science work without the "tautological" approach that what we're looking for necessarily must be found among the materials at hand, and why has this been the successful path for the last several thousand years? If it really were a tautological fantasy wouldn't the record of science be as dismal as that of the gurus and wizards that my worthy opponents are so enamored of? Or do you have to be a conspiracy nut, too? At some point common sense ought to intervene.

   Maybe you don't understand what I'm really saying. I'm saying that truth is what we find, including that minimal inferential equipment to build the world model. The objection ought to be "yeah, but what's really true?" And here's where I differ, because I say no to that impulse. I say what if you conceived of what is true beyond what is actually known in the same spirit of minimalist inference, on the grounds that nothing entitles us to more than that. Then you have in brief outline my model. What's different about it is that it turns the tables on the usual concept of ordinary "inferior" truth and the unknown truth that reigns supreme. I reverse this, making what's known the boss and model maker for the unknown, just like in real life!* Ordinary discoveribles are in the drivers seat because they earned their way there and speculation about higher or hidden truths only escapes inferior status by becoming testable. It's weird, even to me. But it appears to be a rather straightforward extrapolation of English language philosophy for the last 3 centuries.


    _{* Dennett said something that impressed me deeply. He said philosophy should be like engineering. You're not writing a novel: you get no points for making it "deep" or "heavy".}

[Elgarian]

How does science work without the "tautological" approach that what we're looking for necessarily must be found among the materials at hand, and why has this been the successful path for the last several thousand years? If it really were a tautological fantasy wouldn't the record of science be as dismal as that of the gurus and wizards that my worthy opponents are so enamored of?

These two sentences show where the source of our disagreement lies, and we've been here before. The record of scientific enquiry has been marvellous because it has limited the kind of questions to those which it can answer. Their very specific type of answerability guarantees the success of science. The tautological fantasy only becomes an issue when we try to apply its conclusions outside its self-imposed limits, and that's when we enter Whitehead territory ('the exactness is a fake'). Please note that I'm not arguing either for or against the existence of angels; merely that the pronouncement of science about their non-existence is a foregone conclusion; so science has nothing to contribute to any debate about the reality of an angelic realm, however successfully it can predict what will happen to the pressure of a gas when its volume is halved.

[DavidRoss]

There are not 3 positions, there are only yes and undecidable/no, which is why the atheist/agnostic split is more a question of temperament than a genuine epistemic dispute. You may be an undecided, but all undecideds agree that no/undecided does not mean yes. Operationally, it means no.

Indeed!   

    I see I'm not the only one that has noticed this rather obvious point. One of the "virtues" of a philosophically rigorous education is that it provides you with more possible positions to take in disputes than the world affords.

Indeed.  And if you had such an education, you would not spend so much time chasing your tail and shifting the ground without recognizing it.  There are not 2 positions, but 3.  (God but we have gone over this ground so many times!)

(1) God does not exist.  This is the atheist position.  It is absurd because it implies omniscience.  Fellows like you try to dance around that by insisting that the referent of "God" must be like the flying spaghetti monster, or Russell's teapot, but that's like insisting that "women" refers only to creature that are ten feet tall with two heads who play the oboe on Sundays, and since no one credible has ever reported one, that "proves" that God does not exist. 

(2) God does exist.  This is the theist position, based either on direct experience or by inference. You might not have had such an experience, and might not be willing to infer God's existence from the evidence, but just because you have never tasted or seen a mango does not qualify you to credibly deny the existence of mangos.  And despite your insistence otherwise, there is nothing irrational about believing in mangos even if one has no direct experience of them, based on mango sightings reported by credible sources.  Such reports, however, do not compel belief any more than your lack of mango experience compels disbelief.

(3) I don't know whether God exists.  This is the agnostic position--literally, "not knowing."  This position is perfectly rational in the absence of compelling evidence, and most people who profess atheism are actually agnostic.  They are not so deranged as to claim that they know everything in the universe (quick--what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen African swallow?), they do not have direct knowledge, and they do not feel that the evidence they have examined, if any, is conclusive.  They don't know and they may or may not be inclined to believe--or to care.

[greg]

And despite your insistence otherwise, there is nothing irrational about believing in mangos even if one has no direct experience of them, based on mango sightings reported by credible sources.  Such reports, however, do not compel belief any more than your lack of mango experience compels disbelief.

What about UFO sightings?

(3) I don't know whether God exists.  This is the agnostic position--literally, "not knowing."  This position is perfectly rational in the absence of compelling evidence, and most people who profess atheism are actually agnostic.  They are not so deranged as to claim that they know everything in the universe (quick--what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen African swallow?), they do not have direct knowledge, and they do not feel that the evidence they have examined, if any, is conclusive.  They don't know and they may or may not be inclined to believe--or to care.

I like this one. The only thing is, even though it literally means "not knowing", in a way, that applies to everyone since no one really knows for sure if there is a God or not, since no one has seen him. I just wish the word "agnostic" literally meant "absence of belief", or something similar, since that'd be more accurate.

[Fëanor]

...

(3) I don't know whether God exists.  This is the agnostic position--literally, "not knowing."  This position is perfectly rational in the absence of compelling evidence, and most people who profess atheism are actually agnostic.  They are not so deranged as to claim that they know everything in the universe (quick--what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen African swallow?), they do not have direct knowledge, and they do not feel that the evidence they have examined, if any, is conclusive.  They don't know and they may or may not be inclined to believe--or to care.

There's the damnable thing about skeptics.  Despite lack of rigorous proof of the non-existence of a thing, they tend to disbelieve in it simply because it has no verifyable evidence or compelling theory favouring it.

As a subspecies of skeptic, atheists typically see God as being like a bad scientific theory:  a theory which is unnecessary for the explanation of real phenomenon and for which no objective experiment has ever yielded favourable results .  And for no better reason than that they they disbelieve: the effrontery!  Damnable I say!

[Elgarian]

(1) God does not exist.  ...
(2) God does exist.  ...
(3) I don't know whether God exists.  This is the agnostic position--literally, "not knowing."  This position is perfectly rational in the absence of compelling evidence, and most people who profess atheism are actually agnostic.  They are not so deranged as to claim that they know everything in the universe (quick--what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen African swallow?), they do not have direct knowledge, and they do not feel that the evidence they have examined, if any, is conclusive.  They don't know and they may or may not be inclined to believe--or to care.

That's about as clear as it can get, so I feel uneasy about fiddling with it, however slightly; but I wonder if I can make a case for a subgroup within 3? I mean the kind of agnosticism I was discussing in my earlier post (see above, #49), which proposes that the whole debate is premature; that pretty well everything is still up for grabs; that we don't know enough even to decide on what the concept of 'God' might mean, let alone debate his possible existence; that the best we can do is construct a temporary provisional platform to stand on - one that seems to encompass most of what presently concerns us - and be constantly on the lookout for new insights, ready to modify or rebuild the platform if need be. I fancy that drogulus might be able to sign up for most of that, and that the only difference might lie in how we choose to allow the 'new insights' to get in.

My point is that there's a significant difference between the passive agnosticism that says 'I don't know. Pour me another beer', and the active agnosticism that says, like Captain Picard, 'Let's see what's out there'.

[Fëanor]

...

My point is that there's a significant difference between the passive agnosticism that says 'I don't know. Pour me another beer', and the active agnosticism that says, like Captain Picard, 'Let's see what's out there'.

Yeah, thing is there aren't that many "active agnositcs" out there.  Most have taken the logical step to atheism.