Plantinga: The God Delusion

[Catison]

If in some manner evidence about an alternative realm different from ours should come to light, then we will get a chance to observe, discover rules and make all the distinctions that we can't make now.

But believers have accepted the bible as evidence.  This is sufficient evidence that the metaphysical is real and that Jesus capable of miracles.  The only reason it is not evidence to you is because you choose not to believe.  True, the text is ancient and written in a style quite unlike that of a biography or history, but to the standards of ancient texts, they offer a good source of information about metaphysical events 2000 years ago.

But there is no guarantee the metaphysical is observable by scientific standards.  Its not like we are constrained to one set of physical laws and God another.  The idea is that He is unconstrained, by definition.  But in order to accept that you must admit there might be a realm unobservable by science.

[drogulus]

But there is no guarantee the metaphysical is observable by scientific standards. 

    There's a guarantee that it isn't.

Its not like we are constrained to one set of physical laws and God another. 

      It's not like anything else, either. By definition, that is.

  But in order to accept that you must admit there might be a realm unobservable by science.

      I do accept it. Unobservable should be taken seriously, though.

[Norbeone]

But believers have accepted the bible as evidence.  This is sufficient evidence that the metaphysical is real and that Jesus capable of miracles.  The only reason it is not evidence to you is because you choose not to believe. 

Something being sufficient evidence because you choose to accept it isn't a good reason for regarding it as evidence. Why don't you accept that all events in the Lord of the Rings books really happened? (aside from the fact that the author obviously didn't attempt to convince readers of it)

The bible shouldn't be evidence for anyone because it is simply not able to demonstrate that the events that occur within it actually happened, or that it's claims are factual.

Why in God's name (pardon the irony of the expression) don't people be a little more demanding than this? Maybe I missed a meeting or something.   

[drogulus]

Why don't you accept that all events in the Lord of the Rings books really happened?

I'm narrow-minded.

     Or maybe this is how it is:

     God is real. He's a tall skinny guy named Fred who lives in Hicksville, N.Y. He teaches Earth Science at Division Avenue H.S. in Levittown. He votes Republican and shops at Modells.

     If you can't define what you mean by saying something exists, then you aren't really doing what you think. Fred really is God. But a certain looseness in the parameters makes it possible to say so. Most of us would prefer a beard and omnipotence and an Orson Welles voice. But the definition has been chosen to maximize the possibility of real existence, so Fred it is.

     If you want to fulfill an ideal definition you may not find what you want, so you might as well put it someplace no one can look to avoid unpleasantness. Or you can look for something that is there and tailor the definition to fit it. That's how you get Fred. Maybe now that you have him you don't want him. Maybe what you really want is something that you can't have.

[Catison]

The bible shouldn't be evidence for anyone because it is simply not able to demonstrate that the events that occur within it actually happened, or that it's claims are factual.

But this is the point.  How do you expect to judge something metaphysical using logic?  Regardless of whether or not Jesus is truly the son of God, if you attempted to judge the gospels themselves by any scientific inquiry, it is bound to fail.  If you only accept a material universe, then yes, there is no possible factual basis for the gospels.  However, a believer need not rely upon physical evidence when the stories speak for the evidence.  His reality is very different.

[Florestan]

But, it is you [us] who have invented the question. It was not based on an observable phenomenon.

Not an observable phenomenon?. You're kidding, right? Look around you: inorganic matter everywhere. many different forms of life, stars in the sky etc. It is a legitimate question, arisen from an empirical reality, to ask "Why all these exist?". Now, the answer depends on where you look for it. If you turn only to science --- or rather, to scientific materialism --- you will not find any answer, you'll conclude there is none and stop there. But some of us won't stop there. If scientific materialism can't provide an answer to a question, we'll look elsewhere: There is much more wisdom in the world than it: religions, traditions, customs, the collective uncounscioussness etc. If you want to limit your world only to what can be measured and weighted, fine. I just wish you good luck in quantifying love, friendship, sacrifice, beauty, goodness or whatever else is not a material entity.

You are asking science to find the answer to it, and if it can't (and it can't) answer it, why should it take the blame for it?

You don't read very attentive what I write, do you? I said it before and say it again, this time in bold, maybe this way you'll see it: I don't ask science to answer "Why?" and I don't blame it for not being able to answer just as I don't blame a dog for not being able to fly.

They are not the same type of questions, you do realize that. These questions were asked after there was an observable phenomenon. People were dying of tuberculosis so to find a cure was an answer to that problem. Or they have observed birds and other flying creatures in the nature, examined it, blueprinted the mechanism of wings and other tools, then asked "How can we make a machine that can fly us in the air?".

Exactly. They saw people dying of diseases, birds flying or trees in the wood and asked "Why all these (diseases, birds, trees) exist?" A reality-based question if ever there was one.

What do you think the reason is? and how would it affect the rest of the universe in your opinion?

I think and believe the reason why Universe and everything that's in it exist is because God wanted it to exist and created it through a complex process whose technicalities are way beyond our grasp, although its traces can be observed and studied.

Yet we are bound by time, we are not God. Our solutions will always have to include the notion of time. If it is revealed to all of us today without leaving any trace of doubt that God created the universe for the reasons that were foretold in the scriptures, wouldn't it dawn on anyone to ask what the rest of the universe was for? and why it took 14 billion years to shape to what it is today?

First you admit that if God exists He is not bound by time, then you ask Him what the time was for. As I said earlier, your logic is seriously flawed.

[Florestan]

The type of "why" questions I question are those that ask not "why do the birds fly" which is essentially asking "how do the birds fly", but those that ask "why am I here" which is a different type of "why" which has nothing to do with "how is it that am I here".

Sophistry and verbal play, I'm afraid. The crux of the matter boils down to this:

Theist: How do the birds fly?
Atheist: This way.
Theist: Why do the birds fly this way?
Atheist: ...

[Al Moritz]

    That's a good point. My atheism is not having a religion. My affrmative belief is that materialism models how true beliefs are found.* But they don't have to be consistent with what materialism says now. A real god, in the process of being discovered, would reveal many things not imagined as possible now. But I don't think the intuitions relied upon by believers are a good guide to what a real god would be.

    Another thing to consider is that a real god would collapse the distinction between the natural world and the purported supernatural one. In the process of formulating rules to acccount for a real god we'd have to abolish a distinction that would have been rendered inoperative.

     *You can take that operationally, rather than metaphysically. I like to speculate, though. 

So in one way you admit that agnosticism might be a good way to go, but on the other hand you have already positively decided to reject the reasonable theist version of God. A "real god" has to do this and that, and his works should be open to evidence of the kind scientific evidence is. The theist God, however, has created the regularities of nature that science studies and only very rarely performs miracles. Since God is thus behind and in the regularities of nature He will be the reason of it all, but still be undetectable by science which thrives exactly on those regularities of nature, on reproducible observational events (which miracles are not). You reject this view, by the way also held by the founding fathers of science. And you have already decided that the Bible cannot be true since it is not open to scientific investigation.

You thus have already dogmatically decided against the possibility of the theist God, but on the other hand you claim that you are not dogmatic. But that is exactly what you are, a dogmatic atheist.

[karlhenning]

. . . You thus have already dogmatically decided against the possibility of the theist God, but on the other hand you claim that you are not dogmatic. But that is exactly what you are, a dogmatic atheist.

Precisamente.

[Florestan]

I daresay not all dogmatic are atheists, but all atheists are dogmatic.

[karlhenning]

I daresay not all dogmatic are atheists, but all atheists are dogmatic.

Perhaps so;  I was going to offer a mild objection, but of the people whom I immediately think of as 'non-dogmatic atheists', pehaps agnostic is the more accurate descriptor.

Whereas being firm in "ruling out" a theistic god, in most instances certainly qualifies as dogma.

Just as Ernie's (e.g.) rabid protestations against religion readily qualify as a zealous crusade.

[Florestan]

Perhaps so;  I was going to offer a mild objection, but of the people whom I immediately think of as 'non-dogmatic atheists', pehaps agnostic is the more accurate descriptor.

Exactly. I know who you think of here and I strongly agree.

[orbital]

Sophistry and verbal play, I'm afraid. The crux of the matter boils down to this:

Theist: How do the birds fly?
Atheist: This way.
Theist: Why do the birds fly this way?
Atheist: ...

Florestan, you have the answer for the second question already, yes? If I am not answering that question it is not because I don't know the reason why the birds fly this or that way, it is because I don't think there is a reason for me to think that there is a reason for it, that's all.
IT is not fair to say that everything must have a reason and then to delegate all those reasons to one principle which is the source of those questions in the first place. Those "why" questions would have no meaning if you did not think you have the answer before asking it.

[Florestan]

Florestan, you have the answer for the second question already, yes? If I am not answering that question it is not because I don't know the reason why the birds fly this or that way, it is because I don't think there is a reason for me to think that there is a reason for it, that's all.
IT is not fair to say that everything must have a reason and then to delegate all those reasons to one principle which is the source of those questions in the first place. Those "why" questions would have no meaning if you did not think you have the answer before asking it.

What you say describes quite right the self-imposed limitations of the atheists.

[Catison]

What you say describes quite right the self-imposed limitations of the atheists.

As far as I can tell, the philosophy is this: All things in the universe have a purpose, but the universe itself has no purpose.  So I can ask the question, what is the purpose of a bird flying from A to B.  But I cannot ask why this bird flys in such a way, because that would be too close to asking, why the universe is the way it is.

If that is true, why should there be a disjunction between which questions have an answer and those that do not?

[Al Moritz]

As far as I can tell, the philosophy is this: All things in the universe have a purpose, but the universe itself has not purpose.  So I can ask the question, what is the purpose of a bird flying from A to B.  But I cannot ask why this bird flys in such a way, because that would be too close to asking, why the universe is the way it is.

If that is true, why should there be a disjunction between which questions have an answer and those that do not.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[orbital]

As far as I can tell, the philosophy is this: All things in the universe have a purpose, but the universe itself has no purpose.  So I can ask the question, what is the purpose of a bird flying from A to B.  But I cannot ask why this bird flys in such a way, because that would be too close to asking, why the universe is the way it is.

If that is true, why should there be a disjunction between which questions have an answer and those that do not?

Not all things in the universe have a purpose.  Is there a purpose to why a distant star in the Eagle Nebula goes bust? There is a reason for it, i.e there are underlying causes, but there is no philosophical purpose to it. We would not be affected in the slightest if that star lived another 10 million years.

What is the purpose of a bird flying from A to B? To gather food, to give birth and look after their young, to mate. Or perhaps for shorter distances (i.e from tree to tree or from branch to branch) to have a more advantageous view of below perhaps? Simple survival tactics. I don't understand your question "Why does a bird fly in 'such a way'"? What is curious about the way they fly 

It is hard for me to believe that there is no distinction between what organic beings do and for what reason, and why the universe came to be. They don't belong in the same category at all. We know that if some birds did not fly south they would go extinct, so here is your reason. Can we say the same thing about the universe? What if it did not come into being  How can we compare the two at all?

We know why some things occur because they happen over and over again. In that way we can observe, see similarities, the circumstances surrounding them and draw our conclusions.

[Al Moritz]

Not all things in the universe have a purpose.  Is there a purpose to why a distant star in the Eagle Nebula goes bust? There is a reason for it, i.e there are underlying causes, but there is no philosophical purpose to it.

You're right, one might say that this holds for a theistic universe as well.

[Brian]

Theist: How do the birds fly?
Atheist: This way.
Theist: Why do the birds fly this way?
Atheist: Because it's better than the other ways which the bird's ancestors and cousins have tried over the last few million years.
Theist: Why do the birds fly at all?
Atheist: Wouldn't you want to?
Theist: Why do the birds even exist?
Atheist: If the birds didn't exist, then why wouldn't they exist?
... and so on and so forth ad infinitum. My basic problem with the question of "Why?" can be summarized as "Why not?" If, for example, life exists here on Earth for a purpose, the logical question in my mind is, "Well, what is the purpose of life not existing somewhere else?" Surely the nonexistence of life would have a purpose too!

[Catison]

Surely the nonexistence of life would have a purpose too!

Yes, exactly.  That implies a decision has been made to create, or to not not create.