The Tsunami, God, and the Problem of Suffering

[Stunster]

I say problem of suffering, rather than problem of evil, because the tsunami is not guilty of moral evil. It can perhaps be called a natural evil. But in reality it's really just a natural event--a disaster to be sure--that causes great suffering.

We Catholics believe that God is perfectly loving and good, so how could God allow this to happen---and indeed, all the other natural disasters that occur? And what about illness, pain, and horrifying diseases?

I suspect that this is *the* major reason why people don't believe in God. They hear all this talk about God's goodness and love for humanity, and they see what happens to innocent people by the millions--not to mention innocent animals---all around the world, in every age and place.

I don't think it does any good to just avoid the question.

The traditional Catholic answer---the one that I grew up with---is that 'it is a mystery'. True, but tell me something I don't know, for pete's sake!

At any rate, I was thinking about this tsunami disaster, and I had the following thoughts...

1. If I was a member of a superior race of space aliens, who lived in a paradise of a solar system, where life was wonderfully long and pain-free, where there was no moral evil, and where every good and beautiful thing was available via computer-controlled means; and I had the opportunity to take human beings away from this 'vale of tears' we call the Earth, with all its toil and strife of life, wouldn't I do so, even at the cost of some transitory pain and suffering? Well, maybe not right away---I'd want those humans to fulfil a good portion of their potential---but yes, eventually, I think I would do so. I'd look at those poor fishermen, those poor sewing women, those children who are struggling just to eat, and I'd say to myself, "Let me reconfigure their bodies using the inter-galactic bio-transporter---yes, I know it's painful---and bring them here, to this wonderful solar system of ours. Those poor folks--they deserve a better life than the one they've got." Well, maybe God thinks, "Let me bring those folks to heaven, and away from that vale of tears. Let this tsunami/earthquake/flood/cancer/plane crash/car accident be their final, very last suffering. They've endured enough." What looks like sadism to us may actually be an act of great compassion.

2. From a scientific point of view, the tsunami was caused ultimately by the laws of physics. Yes, those very same laws of physics that allow us to exist and enjoy anything in the first place! Without them, there'd be no human life at all.

3. The laws of physics have to be practically universal in order for there to be rational agents. If events were not governed by law-like regularity, rational expectations would not be possible. So, if God wishes to create not only all the orders of angelic beings, but also rational agents who are physical beings, then God has to instantiate laws that operate with almost universal force. Why doesn't God step in to miraculously save lives? Because if God did so frequently, or quite commonly, rational expectations with regard to the physical world would be impossible, and hence rational agency itself would be impossible. Miracles, by definition, must be rare events. 'Common miracles', at least in any physical sense, is a contradiction in terms.

4. Most people, despite all the suffering of the world, are glad that they exist. Suicide, or even a desire for non-being, is a rarity. The vast majority of the human race is glad, upon reflection, that they exist, even knowing all the suffering and tragedy to which human flesh is heir. Why, many people even procreate, knowing what potential suffering there may be for their offspring. Do we, most of us, think that procreation is a cruel, sadistic act? I don't think so. Most of us think that procreating and parenting are very loving things to do, even though we know our children are going to experience some suffering.

5. It's not as if God kept aloof from all of this. No, what Christmas means, what Christianity means, is that God decided that he would not spare his own divine nature from being united with human nature, to the point of death----death by crucifixion.

6. What is the atheistic alternative? It says that in a fundamental ontological sense, this tsunami is no different in essence from, say, a meteor striking a moon of Jupiter. It's just a bunch of atoms moving about--matter in motion. But who really thinks this describes the reality and truth of this tsunami disaster? No, we see it as different from the meteor that strikes the moon of Jupiter precisely because it's not just matter in motion. It is that, but it's also how it affects many possessors of rational consciousness, a fact that immediately suggests that materialism must be wrong in some basic and key way, because there's this pesky additional fact, beyond mere matter in motion, of rational consciousness being subject to a dramatic impact. We are consequently moved to pity by the suffering---we experience compassion. We feel a moral duty to alleviate the suffering. Compassion and moral duty---experiences which are poorly accounted for on the terms of atheistic materialism. I mean, if we are essentially just the same stuff that the rest of the material universe is, how could such things as compassion and moral duty even arise? So if the tsunami disaster raises questions about belief in a loving God, its immediate emotional and moral consequences raise even even more difficult questions for atheistic materialism.

8. Was it the tsunami's fault that so many people died? In an important sense, I don't think so. If the Indian Ocean had a tsunami warning system as does the Pacific Ocean, the death toll would have been vastly smaller. Indeed, it may be that no-one would have been killed, had such a system been in place. Human laziness and neglect contributed greatly to this disaster, as did poverty and social injustice. Had the tsunami been heading for, say, Los Angeles, the early warning system used in the Pacific, the superior stability of Californian building structures, and perhaps a greater sense of caring and respect for the value of our citizens' life than was shown by some Asian governments, would probably have resulted in far fewer, if any fatalities. In an important sense, this colossal death toll was caused by human carelessness.

9. Is it God's fault if you die because you went for a space-walk but forgot to put your space-helmet on, or if you put your head inside the jaws of a shark or a crocodile, or if you try to take a corner while speeding at 125mph? God gives us intelligence so that we can deal compassionately and cleverly with the challenges nature will throw at us. God has given us the freedom and autonomy to use that intelligence, as best we can, in every age and place. We have become better, and have grown mightily---intellectually, morally, and spiritually---precisely because we've been given those challenges. But if we don't learn from our mistakes, then shame on us, not God.

10. Eventually, no matter how well we cope with physical challenges, we will all succumb to nature and die, because we are finite, physical beings, and our intelligence is limited. But that is no reason to blame God, if there awaits us an even greater paradise than the one to which a space alien might compassionately wish to bring us, even at the cost of some transitory suffering. If Christianity is true, then leaving this vale of tears, however that happens, may be the most loving 'act of God' there is.

[Don Claybrook]

1. I can see you have strongly-held views

...but how do you feel about an impersonal god, more in the Eastern style? This is a concept that presents many fewer problems for me than does the notion of a personal god who knows your name, what you're up to, cares about you, and so on.

Put another way, why would not this god choose to actuate the intergalactic-transport-whatever by way of having these people expire in their sleep?

Just something to throw out there.

[catbert836]

3. God dosn't do that kind of thing

For whatever reason, it would seem pretty strange to have people just expire in their sleep for no reason. I think its to present a probable cause of death to their survivors.

[oscar111]

5. god DOES do that kind of thing: stroke, die in sleep peacefully

so it could happen to us all, if love ruled all. so it seems to me.

[Stunster]

9. See points #2, and # 3

And then think about it.

Water is needed for human life. Humans are what they are (DNA etc). Water is what it is (H2O etc). One of the consequences of these facts is that, in certain circumstances, humans will drown.

[Stunster]

8. What's the point of an impersonal God?

I cannot regard as divine anything that has less point to it than I have.

I'm a person, and I think that a person always has more point than a non-person.

[aneerkoinos]

37. You would think so, wouldn't you

But in all true religion, in mystical thought from Master Eckhardt to Sufi and Buddhism, true knowledge means liberation from the illusion of self/ego-continuity ("person").

Thus, the "point" of an impersonal God (or what ever) is that by thinking of yourself as a "point" you will stay point of ignorance, blinded by the illusion of being a person, a mask.

[catbert836]

2. Excellent post! Congratulations!

What I think: The tsunami, while natural, certainly helped some people who would never be satisfied here be satisfied in heaven.
I'm praying for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. May God have mercy on them.

[oscar111]

4. distill your orig post pls. Errors oft hide in long spiels

the skeleton of an argument is where one spots errors.

or, where one is astounded by Truth.

Oscar the ignorant.... thanks

wish for ~ 30 lines.. one screen.

[2Design]

6. maybe instead of raising up rw - god is raising up muslims -

so the raputure might be happening for a different group of people -

[catbert836]

7. And Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jains and Catholics.

n/t

[soothsayer]

10. theodicy. When bad things happen to good people. It's a real

head scratcher.

[soothsayer]

11. One prob is that we don't know what death is. If we really knew

what it means to be dead (I mean, what happens when you die) and/or if we knew the meaning of life, then it might all make more sense, or better sense, or be easier to grasp. But we're just in the dark.

[FDRLincoln]

12. good post

This is a good post. The problem of "natural evil", or the indifference of nature to human suffering (and animal suffering), is one of the reasons I wrestle constantly with my faith. On a certain logical level, atheism (or at least agnosticism) makes more sense than theism. But at the same time, I've had certain experiences that lead me to believe that there is such a thing as a spiritual reality and a loving God.

I doubt I will resolve this internal conflict until such time as I die myself and find out the truth one way or another.

[T_i_B]

13. I have been thinking about this recently

and as a Christian, the first place I feel it is relevent to look in the Bible is the book of Job.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/RsvBJob.html

But beyond that, I can't say why this happened. I could attempt to say why God had allowed this to happen if it had happened to the UK, but not the Bay of Bengal and Sumatra.

And beyond that, I think we should be thankful that this has not happened to ourselves, and also we should try our best to help those in need.

http://www.redcross.org/

[Frogtutor]

14. My sister-in-law is REALLY struggling with this right now...

She is/was a Christian. Lately her faith depends on the moment she is in. She lost her oldest child in May of 2004. It was a freak, unexpected death; finding out he had a massive brain tumor when he went to the doctor concerning neck pain (seemed perfectly healthy otherwise). He very possibly would still be alive if not for the negligence and incompetence of his doctors; he died 45 days after a horribly botched brain surgery, and a series of medical mistakes. He suffered horribly during that time. He was 24 years old.

This not only has caused her immense pain, but she is understandably quite angry with God. Then this huge natural disaster occurs. Now she feels guilty grieving so deeply for her son when so many others are suffering so horribly. But, her biggest source of confusion right now is why God does these things (or allows them to happen)? Why do we exist? Did God just create us, then leave us to fend for ourselves? How can God love us and allow these things to happen?

I just wish I could provide some answers, or at least comfort for her. She needs God so much right now, but she can't trust Him without some kind of feasible explanation for the pain and suffering...

She likes to read; if anyone has good suggestions for books, etc. I would appreciate them. I'd love to find something that could help her with these questions.

Thanks in advance,

Frogtutor

[Az]

35. I do not envy her struggle

The loss of a long established belief is never an easy thing. Particularly when there is no obvious replacement at hand as yet. It is like stepping into the void. But sometimes beliefs change to such an extent that stepping into that void is perferable. I can only advise you to be there and support her whichever path she decides on.

[opiate69]

15. Oh, Gawd...

"2. From a scientific point of view, the tsunami was caused ultimately by the laws of physics."

And, who created these laws of physics?

"Without them, there'd be no human life at all."

So, God was powerful enough to create life, and the universe, and everything that has ever exoisted, but he was constrained by some "laws of physics", and had to work within their parameters? Only if you disingenously mis-define "omniscience". But then, many who read the bible mis-define other words regularly if it benefits them, don't they?

"God gives us intelligence so that we can deal compassionately and cleverly with the challenges nature will throw at us."

So, all those people who had the misfortune to be born into families livng in poverty-stricken fishing villages simply didn't have the intelligence to leave the only life they knew behind, and move inland so they wouldn't be killed by a once-in-a-millenium tsunami? How compassionate and Christian™ of you.:eyes:

[Stunster]

16. I think

you are profoundly mistaken. Math, logic, rationality, and the physics which expresses them are not man-made constructs. They are aspects of divine reason itself. I guess I find the idea of there being a physical body without any physics governing it completely unintelligible, and of 'doing something that is logically impossible' just as unintelligible.

Also, you're assuming that God did not 'intervene' to save, say, 16 million people from drowning in tsunamis over the past 30 years. And you're assuming that God would design laws which would require periodic suspension, rather than just choose the laws which would minimize the amount of natural harm consistent with the evolution of humans in the first place.

So, I'm asking you to show that the actual laws are *not* such harm-minimizing laws, by showing what the alternative laws are that would minimize natural harm consistent with the evolution of humans. Or else show that not creating humans at all would have been the better option. I'm asking you, in other words, to rely on reason rather than emotion, to make your case.

Here's a couple of emails I sent to a different forum recently that develop these and related points:

#1
Aaaaackk!

Look, I'm *not* saying that *no* harm is due to
God. The harm that results directly from
the laws of physics can properly be described
as due to God. But it *doesn't follow* that
permitting or causing this amount and type of harm is
morally objectionable, if it is the case, as
it might well be, that there is no possible
*alternative* physics that would produce *less*
harm overall but still be consistent with
human life; provided that, on the whole, it
is better, i.e. more valuable, that humans
exist than that they don't exist--which is
a value-judgement that is not in any way obviously
false. In fact, I think it's one that most people
would endorse.

To support your contention that a good God
would never permit or cause harm or suffering,
you'd have to show first that a good human
being would never cause harm or suffering.
But a good mother weans her child, even though
the child hates being weaned. A good surgeon
amputates legs sometimes. A good nurse gives
vaccinations to screaming, frightened children who
are appalled at the prospect of having needles
stuck into them. These and innumerable
other instances of harm and suffering are justified
by the goal enhancing or preserving human life.
We also slaughter animals for that purpose too.
Sometimes we let people die rather than resort
to extraordinary means to keep them alive.
So even just from our own ordinary human experience,
there are many examples of letting people die, and
of causing them pain, which are *quite compatible*
with, or even *required for*, being morally good.

Assume that God wants there to be human beings.
Assume that the physics necessary for human life
has an underlying mathematical rationality to it.
Then a physics has to be selected by God that
will produce human beings; and that physics will
also inevitably, by logico-mathematical necessity,
produce a certain amount of natural harm. It would
not be logically or mathematically possible to
eliminate all natural harm and still have human beings.
If it were, then a gust of wind could cause you to
fall from the top of the Empire State Building,
and you'd be fine. And your space-ship could
explode because it was hit by a meteorite in
outer space, and you'd be fine. I'm saying such
ideas are *illogical, irrational fantasies* that
violate the mathematics underlying the order and
structure of any possible physical world. So there
obviously have to be some limits to human endurance
and indestructability.

Now, assume that in addition to natural human
life, there is also eternal life in heaven.
And make the plausible Kantian assumption that
a rational being, all of whose actions and
states are determined by causes external to itself
is a contradiction in terms. And assume that ultimate
happiness for a rational being must include an
autonomous choice in favor of loving and accepting
love from other rational beings.

If these assumptions are correct---and nobody
has demonstrated that they are not correct, and I
personally think that they are all quite plausible
---then God may well be morally justified in creating
human beings, even though God foresees that
a certain amount of natural harm will inevitably
accompany human life. God would do this by
instantiating that set of physical laws (including
quantum mechanical probabilistic laws) which would
ensure the creation of human beings while keeping
natural harm to a minimum. Of course the minimum
amount may be fairly large, depending on the mathematics
underlying the physics needed to create human life.

On the alternative view that you propose--that
there is just physics and nature--then our actions,
both the ones we deem good, and the ones we deem
bad, are all the result of evolutionary biology.
All our thoughts too, both the rational ones and the
irrational ones, are the result of evolutionary
biology. Hence, my thoughts on this subject are, and
yours are too. The normativity of reason and
morality are, on this view, mental projections
which themselves are caused or determined by our
evolutionary history. They therefore have no
objectively 'correct' status. Correct reasoning
and correct moral living have the same causal basis
as incorrect reasoning and immoral living. If
an individual happens not to care much about being
logically consistent or rational, or happens not to
care much about what what is good for the survival
of the species, then that's just another natural fact
about the world, and has no objective normative
significance, any more than whether someone likes
vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream has any
objective normative significance. Morality and
reason are reduced to tastes that our evolutionary
history may or may not cause some to have. Some
will be sociopathic killers and conmen, others will
be altruists and responsible citizens. 'Correct'
will just mean 'approved by most people', and their
approval itself will be caused by evolutionary history.
They would not be choosing to approve or disapprove
on the basis of reasoning about *objective* moral or
rational norms, because, ex hypothesi, there are no
such objective norms. All norms are subjective, and
are causal outcomes of evolutionary processes, and
are not shared by all members of the species.

But I think it's *incoherent* to say all this and in the
same breath claim that it is objectively the rationally
correct view of the world.

Furthermore, on this evolutionary materialist
worldview, there is no possibility that the
millions of lives which have been marked by misery
and injustice will be redeemed. There is no possibility
of any strong coincidence of happiness with virtue or
merit. The universe and human life as such have no
point or reason to them, and any point or reason to
human life must be given by ourselves. But no point
we give it will be objectively correct. If someone
makes the point of living the establishment of an
Aryan master race and the extermination of Jews, then
that's one point, no more objectively correct or
incorrect than anyone else's.

But it gets worse. There are lots of deep
philosophical problems for evolutionary materialism.
I've previously given Plantinga's Cartesian argument
against the coherence of believing that the world
has no rational creator *and* believing in the
deliverances of reason; and I've also mentioned
the huge problem of reconciling materialism with
the indubitable fact of phenomenal consciousness.
Michael Rea has recently developed powerful arguments
showing that materialistic naturalism a) is without
rational foundation; b) is committed to the surprising
consequence of rejecting realism about material objects,
rejecting materialism itself, and perhaps realism about
other minds as well. His book is entitled WORLD
WITHOUT DESIGN: THE ONTOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF
NATURALISM (Oxford University Press, 2002. Paperback
edition, 2004). (I've not finished reading it yet).

In sum, there are strong, *rational* arguments
for rejecting materialistic naturalism. There
are also well-reasoned arguments to show that the
existence of natural and moral harm is not inconsistent
with theism (I've only scratched the surface of such
arguments). I gave my first course on this problem
over 20 years ago. So, I am not just a naive fideist,
and I take seriously the need for rational thought
and discourse about theism and objections to it,
as well as materialism and objections to it. So
far, I find theism preferable on rational, intellectual
grounds to materialism, and I don't find your
present objection rationally compelling to any
degree. I would, however, if you could show me
the alternative possible physics that a God ought to
have instantiated. But in the absence of that,
then I see no reason to think that the amount of
natural harm in the world is more than it needs
to be, given the physics needed for existence of
humans. Nor do I see this as compromising divine
omnipotence, since omnipotence is *defined* by the
limits of logical possibility. And tsunamis and all,
I still believe that it is preferable to have the
human race in existence than not.


#2
This is complex stuff, and I don't pretend
that it's easy to understand. But nor is
the General Theory of Relativity easy to
understand. Doesn't mean it's not true.

Consider what I wrote previously:

"Nothing can 'violate' a natural law, because 'natural law' is just a
description of what happens, and if something happens, then it has to
be consistent with a description of what happens. If something
'violated' a natural law, that would just be a way of saying it
actually wasn't a *law*. What perhaps you mean is that God should
make the regularities of nature less law-like, so as to minimize
harm. But maybe God does. Maybe God jiggles the quantum effects about
so that loads of people escape harm, while preserving enough
law-likeness in nature to ground rational expectations and thus things
like rational agency and science."

Now read what string physicist Brian Greene
wrote in his best-seller THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE:

"But for microscopic particles facing a concrete slab, they can and
sometimes do borrow enough energy to do what is impossible from the
standpoint of classical physics--momentarily penetrate and tunnel
through a region that they do not initially have enough energy to
enter. As the objects we study become increasingly complicated,
consisting of more and more particle constituents, such quantum
tunnelling can still occur, but it becomes very unlikely since *all*
the individual particles must be lucky enough to tunnel together. But
the shocking episodes of George's disappearing cigar, of an ice cube
passing right through the wall of a glass, and of George and Gracie's
passing right through a wall of the bar, *can* happen." (_ibid_., p. 116).

Got all that?

Ok, here's what I'm saying. The term 'miracle'
cannot possibly MEAN a *violation of a law of
nature* because that notion doesn't even make
sense. If an event E happens, then by definition
what it is supposedly violating CANNOT be a LAW (in
a strict sense of 'law'). In other words,
if there is a putative law that says "An event of
type E cannot possibly happen", and then E happens,
then the putative law is not in fact a law, and the
very statement of it must be false--if E actually
happens. Assume E is a 'miraculous' event. Well,
by definition, it cannot have violated a law of
nature.

But what quantum physics reveals is that all supposed
laws of nature are not absolute regularities, but in
fact are STATISTICAL GENERALIZATIONS. What such
generalizations do is assign probabilities to various
types of event. What Greene is saying is that it is
not strictly impossible for someone to walk through
a wall. It's just extremely unlikely. It is also
extremely unlikely, though less so, for an individual
particle to do something similar. But if the particle
does 'tunnel' through, it hasn't VIOLATED any law of
of nature. It's consistent with the statistical
generalization. It just has a low probability.

What I take from this is that we should define
'miracle' to mean an event of low probability, but one
that is nevertheless consistent with the true
statistical generalizations describing our world, and
such that it has extraordinary positive value for the
body and/or mind of one or more human beings, with
the result that the person or persons are inspired
to have a stronger relationship with God.

Can God perform miracles in *this* sense? Yes.
But notice that *by definition*, miracles so defined
MUST OCCUR RARELY. They are low probability events,
by which I mean very or extremely low probability
events. But if even physicists are telling us that
it's not strictly impossible for someone to walk
through a wall, then miracles in the sense I've
defined are possible for God to perform. But
they cannot be common, frequent, or everyday occurrences.
If they were, they would be high probability events,
not low probability events, and we would not even
regard them as miracles. It seems 'miraculous' that
we can make babies, etc. By that, we simply mean
the procreation of human life is marvellous to behold.
But it's not a low probability event, so we don't call
it a miracle in any strict religious sense. But other
events might be (in the sense I've defined).

So, God picks the best set of physical laws compatible
with human life etc. But by structuring them
as quantum mechanical probabilistic 'laws', God leaves
open the possibility of miracles in a religious sense,
though it's a mistake to think of them as *suspensions*
of the operations of physics.

God also builds into the physics lots of harm-prevention
features. We would hardly have evolved and survived
as a species otherwise. So God arranges the quantum
probabilities accordingly. But there is a limit to
how far this can go without compromising the *basic*
ORDER of nature. Nature has to be *sufficiently*
law-LIKE to ground rational expectations about the
future, and so enable us to have rational interactions
with nature, and hence be able to develop scientifically
and technologically.

Maybe God has 'saved' 16 million people from drowning
in tsunamis over the past 25 years by the quantum
probability tweakings God has built into the physics
governing our world. His timeless building in of those
and other favorable probabilities is God's answer to
prayers for protection from natural harm. And very
occasionally, a person is healed or saved 'miraculously'
---meaning the probability in that instance was
extraordinarily low. But over a long period of time,
and a large population, there accumulates a significant
number of 'miracles'.

All this is logically possible for God to do. And
so God does it. What is not logically possible for
God to do is violate the basic structure of nature,
without making life itself impossible, since that
basic structure has to be 'fine-tuned' to be suitable
for life. The physics involved has an underlying
mathematical rationality which itself is but an
aspect of divine Reason. Nor is it logically
possible for miracles to be frequent or high probability
events.

But it is simply *not a problem* for classical theism
that God cannot do the logically impossible! For classical
theism does not define omnipotence in that way. It
defines omnipotence as being able to do whatever is
logically possible. And the limits of logical possibility
are aspects of reason, and God IS self-subsistent
reason. Logic and mathematics are aspects of God's
eternal THOUGHT, or REASON, or LOGOS, to use the Greek
word made famous by the Prologue of the Gospel of John.

Does any of this mean that God is not involved in
human life? No. God is involved, because the
whole of God's Logos has humanity eternally in view.
We are created in and through the Logos, we are
redeemed from sin in and through Logos Incarnate.
("The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us")

God designs the physics to create humans, and
chooses it in such a way as to minimize natural
harm consistent with a rational order appearing
in nature. God performs 'miracles' by making the
laws of nature probabilistic and quantum mechanical.
God enters into his own creation to communicate and
reveal himself to humans. God creates not just
a physical world, but one from which consciousness,
rationality, and morality can emerge. God communicates
further via our consciousness, reason, and moral
experience. God, being timeless, is able to
build into his design of the physics his response to
human prayer (since all prayers are timelessly
'compresent' to the divine consciousness, which
timelessly 'thinks', begets, or generates the Logos
which designs and implements the physics governing
the world.)

These are the outlines. When we enter eternity
for ourselves, it will all become clear.

[opiate69]

17. One more time, for those in the back of the class....

"With God all things are possible....."

If God created everything in the universe, he also created the parameters in which everything exists.. This includes the concepts which we humans have named "physical law" and "logic". If He was perfect, and was able to create everything, as has been alleged, He could have created an enviornment which would not be filled with deadly dangers at every turn. Things that would so easily and horrifically kill his supposedly beloved and favored creations.


" What is not logically possible for
God to do is violate the basic structure of nature,
without making life itself impossible, since that
basic structure has to be 'fine-tuned' to be suitable
for life."

Why??? What if God, on a whim, decided to make methane the primary compound of life instead of Carbon? You are putting limits on an allegedly limitless deity. And, if he is limited, and/or fallable, what makes him worthy of anybody's worship?

[Selwynn]

18. I think you're opinions are valid, but uncomforting right now...

...put your self in the place of a grieving mother who has lost father and all children. Imagine her asking God "why?"

To me, though the may be valid, Points 1-4 don't seem particular comforting to someone who has just lost everything. I desire to find a way to speak truthful comfort to the heart of a person like that, not just a more clinical analysis of the technical realities of the nature of God and his interaction with the world.

I want to say more than, "hey don't pin this on God!" I want to talk about the deeply personal ways in which the concept of "God with Us" is deeply and personally true in the face of our deeply tragedies.

Point 6: I'm not sure I can agree with your critique of atheism for it seems to me to imply that somehow by nature of lack of believe in God an atheist is not moved to the same kind of compassion and sense of moral duty that a theist is. Did I misunderstand your position here? It seems to me that all we need to do is look around and see that clearly, this is not the case.

Point 8: I'm not sure how valuable it is to blame anyone or anything at all. We need to accept the fact that sometimes things just are. It is perhaps true that certain things could have been done better or different, but in the end this was a natural disaster - it just happened, it just is. It is brute fact. There is no one to blame. It is just one of the harsher aspects of life. Sometimes the first step to recovery is coming to the place where we can make peace with the fact that there is no one to blame.

That is not a rip on your post. It is just a expression of my desire to express my thoughts on this tragedy in a different, yet complimentary way.

Sel

[Stunster]

19. God is in our anger at God

God is in our grief, and our brokenness. God is love, and our anger, grief, and brokenness at the death of loved ones is an expression of love, and hence an expression of God's very nature.

I don't mean atheists are not moved by compassion and a sense of moral duty. I'm sure most of them are. No, what I mean is that I don't believe the phenomena of experiencing a movement to compassion and a sense of moral duty are adequately accounted for on a materialist worldview. Many atheists now seem to adopt such a worldview, and I only mean that I think their 'metaphysics of morality' is mistaken. I'm glad, of course, that the mistake does not necessarily result in them being immoral, or lacking in compassion.

[Stunster]

20. Also, why should we presume that it will always

that it will always be, or should always be, possible to give comforting answers?

"A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loudly lamenting;
it was Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted
because they were no more."

[Selwynn]

21. I believe compassionate response should always be our aim.

Your quote says nothing about what our actions and responses towards others ought to be. That one refuses to be comforted says nothing of our reponsiblity to offer compassion and comfort.

However Jesus has a lot to say on it, when he calls the merciful and teaches us to act in loving and compassionate ways towards our fellow human beings.

[Stunster]

22. The point of the quote

is to draw attention to the exceedingly tragic nature of some events. Events which are so tragic that no comfort can be given--at least by us.

I've certainly been in situations where I've had no comforting answer to give to someone who's experienced tragedy, no matter how much I desired to comfort the person. My point is not to say that we shouldn't have the desire. It's just that sometimes we have nothing that is effectively comforting to say.

[Selwynn]

23. Comfort can always be offered

-- just becuase someone may not be able to be comforted right then and there does not remove from us the responsibility to act compassionately towards tragedy

-- we don't always know what kind of lasting affects our choices to offer compassion will actually have. I know in my own life the very comfort I could not immediately feel when offered to me were acts of comfor and consolation that were later profoundly important to me.

-- acting compassionately and trying to comfort is simply the morally right action - is not the same thing as "fixing" somone else and is not interlinked with another persons ability to accept the tenderness offered. Acting compassionately comes in all kinds of forms, including sometimes leaving people be. It is an attitude of the heart more than a rigid set of actions; it is context-driven but always the correct attitude of the heart.

Sel

[Az]

24. Allow me to address some issues

I would suggest that the problem of evil is a primary reason many struggle with their belief in god and may even be a major cause for those that once did believe to lose their belief. But it is not the primary reason for a lack of belief in god. The primary reason sited by most atheists is lack of evidence for the existance of god.

An atheist does not struggle with the notion of a benevalent overseer allowing harm to befall his creations. There is no struggle for us with this notion. There may be if we struggled with trying to maintain a belief in god but that is not our position.

You will find that such issues that create strong emotional reactions are often focal points for crisis of faith. They challenge the balance of how we view the world. It can work both ways as well. Such a crisis can even cause an atheist to question their views.

Your point number six unfortunately creates a false explanation for how most atheists view the world. We recognise the shared bonds of humanity in other people. We are all part of the web of life and struggle through this world together. We are hurt when others are brought low. The death of one affects us all.

Secondly your position misses a critical difference between atoms on Jupiter and our fellow living beings. The atoms on Jupiter do not comprise the structures we accept as examples of a living entity. The marvel of the human being is not something lost on us. We do not discard it as meaningless or without value.

In your point 8 (what happened to 7?) you then explore the notion of fault. Fault implies a capacity to do otherwise. It implies intent. A tsunami has neither of these. A person certainly can display both of these but a tsunami has displayed not capacity for reasoning or thought.

The latter issues of point 8 and point 9 both seem to try to be turning the matter into one of human failing. Tsunami are extrodinarily rare in that part of the world. Furthermore the poverty level of the areas hit imply that there was little ability for those present in the locations to simply decide their fate by moving to a better location. And I also suspect that the vast majority of the inhabitants were not geophysists and thus were ignorant to the threat.

The only reason one might have to blame a god has entirely to do with how you define god. As he is not presenting his case to define himself we are left to the descriptions provided by his claimants. Some of these proclaim him to be all powerful, all knowing, and all good. If that is the criteria I can imagine a god that could have made a universe that preserved all the rational and rules you implied but managed to not include that particular tsunami and would manage to exclude hookworms as well. But as I said it all depends on the nature of the god you define.

[Stunster]

25. "There is no evidence for God"

Atheists often say such things.

What do they mean? Do they mean, they personally don't have evidence for God? Or do they mean, nobody, anywhere, at any time ever has evidence for God?

If it's the latter, then this, it seems to me, is simply false. The two most powerful, memorable, transformative experiences I've ever had have been experiences of God. I have met and known a number of other people who would say the same thing.

I reckon Saint Paul, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Augustine et al might have said the same thing if they'd been asked. Certainly they all wrote about them. And there'd be many non-Catholic theists who would say similar things, and have written similar things.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this 'proves' that theism is true. But I'm trying to get a handle on what it would mean to say that I, and all other theists who have had extraordinary experiences of God, don't have any evidence for the existence of God. And if we do have such evidence, doesn't that mean that it is simply false to say, as atheists are wont to say, that there is no evidence for God?

I mean, suppose there was a rare species of polar bear, which only a few Inuit had ever encountered. Would it be true that there is no evidence that such a species existed? Seems to me there would be evidence, even though it was not directly available to everyone.

Now, the objection might be that there is no scientific evidence for God, but there could be scientific evidence for the rare polar bear species. But theism says that God is not a physical entity, so it would not be surprising in the least that there is no scientific evidence for God, if God exists (assuming, that is, that there is indeed no scientific evidence for God, which I'm only conceding here for the sake of the argument. There is in fact an ambiguity in the phrase, 'scientific evidence for God'. It could mean that there is no scientific procedure which would establish God's existence. This is something I believe to be true. Or it could mean that none of the findings of science provide any data for a rational abductive inference to the belief that there is a God. This is something I believe to be false. Science provides loads of data which provide the basis for an abductive philosophical inference in favor of theism. Cf.
http://www.origins.org/articles/bradley_existenceofgod.html)

If there is a God, then God is not a physical object. So insisting on God being subject to the kinds of empirial testing procedures that we have for physical things would be to miss the point, and to beg the question. The question at issue is whether there are realities other than physical ones, and kinds of evidence for the existence of such realities other than physically experimental evidence. So insisting systematically on providing scientific evidence for God in that sense would be a clear case of the logical fallacy of begging the question. But the absence of physical experimental evidence for God is consistent with there being tremendously good evidence for God. Evidence is a broader concept than empirical scientifically testable evidence.

Let's imagine, for a moment, that Saint Paul had a profound encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, such that nothing else would be as convincing to him as that experience. Then, St Paul would have a way of knowing, or reasonably believing, that materialism (if he knew what that was) was false and that Christianity was true. He'd have evidence for that belief. But no scientific procedure would be able to establish this. Yet someone (St Paul) would know it. He would have great evidence, from his perspective, of the truth of Christianity. But that would entail that "there's no evidence for God" is a false proposition.

"Ah, but we must use the term 'evidence' in such a way that it is independent of anyone's perspective".

Well, there seems to me to be two problems with this objection. It seems to me that an attempt is being made yet again to insist that the concept of evidence be restrictively defined to mean evidence yielded by natural scientific method---in other words, to beg the question again. But let's just ignore that for a moment and ask instead, is St Paul's evidence (or mine) purely perspectival? It seems to me that if you placed anyone in St Paul's shoes (or mine), and if anyone had the experiences that St Paul (and me) had, then that would count as evidence for them too---just as much as it would count as evidence for St Paul, me, and anyone else that there is a rare species of polar bear if you placed us in the shoes of the Inuit who had personally encountered that species. Just because St Paul, me, and most other people would not, ex hypothesi, have actually been in the shoes of those Inuit, surely doesn't entail that there is no evidence for the existence of that rare species of polar bear.

In other words, two points: 1) the concept of evidence is a logically broader category than the concept of evidence deriving from natural scientific method; 2) the concept of evidence is a function of experience. Given the right sorts of experience, then anyone will have the right sorts of evidence.

Have there ever been experiences that count as the 'right sort' to qualify as evidence for the existence of God? Sure there have! I've had a couple, and it seems I'm not alone. Nobody would have heard of St Paul if he hadn't had the right sorts of experiences. It doesn't prove theism to everyone's satisfaction. But an 18th century Inuit couldn't have proved the existence of that rare species to everyone's satisfaction. He'd still have damn good evidence, though, that there was such a polar bear species. And maybe St Paul and I have had damn good evidence that theism is true. And I think this means that the proposition, "There's no evidence for God" is straightforwardly false, unless one insists on committing the logical fallacy of begging the question in favor of scientific naturalism's definition of evidence. Which is a logical fallacy and an error of reasoning...

The difficulty I'm having with an a priori commitment to a universal reliance on naturalistic scientific method is that we have no really solid a priori or experimentally verified reason for thinking that, as science progresses, it will be able, in principle, to uncover the truth about these matters---the truth or otherwise of theism, or Christianity specifically---as long as the above-described scenario regarding Saint Paul seems logically possible (which it strikes me we have every reason to suppose it will always appear to us to be). But what if, science won't be able, even in principle, to uncover the truth about these matters by means of using the natural scientific method, and yet St Paul is right, and as justified as he could possibly be (given the nature of his experiences) in thinking that he had met the Risen Christ and that materialism is false and Christian theism is true? Wouldn't that mean that there is evidence that God exists, even though, as in the case with the rare species of polar bear, not everybody had the evidence, or was in a position to experience that species of bear. (Let's assume that the Inuit and bear species in question all died out 150 years ago).

It seems to me, in other words, that the rational thing to do is to be open to the possibility that science might not be the only way of knowing things, or even the best way, at least with regard to certain classes of knowable reality, and that science itself may well be systematically incapable of discovering this fact (if it is a fact, which it would be given the truth of theism); and that there may be other ways of discovering it, which a rational person may have access to, or even have had access to in the past (which, if Christianity is true, is indeed the case). So unless one systematically begs the question against the truth of Christian theism, the rational to do is to be open to this possibility. In fact, not only do I think that one should, rationally, be merely open to this possibility. I think it's actually rather plausible that it is the case.

Some will say that we can't even count religious experiences as evidence for theism, because lots of people have strange experiences which are later shown to be associated with certain kinds of cognitively non-veridical brain states. But how does this show that all religious experiences are merely the products of cognitively non-veridical brain states? Isn't that another blindingly obvious logical fallacy? "Some things of type A are the products of F. Therefore all things of type A are products of F." Yup, a fallacy alright.

'Ah, but it's more reasonable to think they are products of F, because being a product of F is more conformable to the worldview of scientific materialism." Yet again, the objection is logically invalid, because it begs the question at issue---the question being, whether theism, as against scientific materialism, is the correct worldview.

And please name ANY human experience that does not involve some brain event/process or other. There are none? Fine!

Would you then infer that that every human experience was therefore illusory, or non-veridical? Of course not!

Many years ago, hominid brains evolved in such a way as to enable humans to experience watching a bird fly in the sky, the taste of ice cream, the sound of music, the sound of words, the emotion of fear in the face of wild animals seeking to eat us, etc. That fact says PRECISELY NOTHING about the veridicality of those experiences. Why should a qualitatively similar fact concerning brain processes say any more than PRECISELY NOTHING about the veridicality of religious experiences?

Hence this type of argument---all religious experiences are caused by brain-states, therefore all religious experiences must be non-veridical---is, not to put too fine a point on it, utterly IDIOTIC.

It also has a name. It is called the Genetic Fallacy. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

[Az]

26. Pretty sure I was clear

They have not seen any evidence for god. Other individuals have had profound mental experiences that they attributed to god. We have managed to recreate such experiences in lab conditions (studies in UCLA San Diego). This by no means indicates that all experiences of god are simply an altered state of mind. But it does indicate that by themself such experiences cannot be conslusively sited as evidence for god. As they are temporal events they cannot be individually tested but our knowlwedge that such things can happen leave us with a simpler explanation in the absense of additional compelling evidence for the existance of god.

The fact that God is proclaimed to not be a physical entity does not preclude us finding evidence of his existance should he exist. Unless he takes no action in this universe he will leave evidence behind. Since the claim is that he is an active and present god we should expect to be able to come up with some means of detecting his activity. And yet here again we have nothing convincing. True there are suggestions and claims. But none truly hold up under scrutiny.

As to St Paul and his walk. The fact that another person is convinced is not indicitive of his accuracy. Our minds draw conclusions based on the emotional impact of a situation. If you create a strong enough emotional impact the relevance of factors can be truly distorted. We are fallable. We are not great observers. Thus Paul may be absolutely convinced beyond any question of an issue and still be unconditionally wrong.

This fallibility by no means implies that all such observations are flawed. Merely that we must remain skeptical and look for other ways of verifying their truth or refute them if possible. It may very well be that Paul had an interaction with a god. But just based on his word an no corroborating evidence we simply are unable to draw a conclusion. We are left with you either believe it or don't. And if his observation clashes with other observations the likelihood of his accuracy decreases.

[Stunster]

28. Naturalism as a research program

More email material relevant to the core issues:


> And despite all this I seem to remain a materialist who when considering
> today's weather does not resort to almost infinitely long calculations
> of interactions between sub atomic particles. I feel reasonable happy
> and comfortable discussing today's weather in terms of precipitation,
> wind speed etc. What's more, and this may be sacrilegious, I don't
> reduce the love for my wife and children to physics. My love of Celtic
> isn't about quarks either. How can this possibly be if all materialists
> argue as you want us to??
>
> Unlike Richard Dawkins I don't want to reduce everything to biology.
> Further I don't want to reduce every explanation to physics. For me, the
> physical universe has qualities which emerge at different levels of
> physical complexity which are not best explained by reductionist
> reference to purely physical explanations. We live in a physical world
> from which emerges non physical phenomena. Love, hate, pleasure, Celtic
> etc.
>
> Stevie

I just take this to be inconsistent with materialism
as it's usually defined in analytic philosophy.
Now I realize you're a bit of a Marxist, and so
you're not tied to the analytic philosophical
tradition, but are into things like dialectics,
and Hegelian stuff. Fair enough.

Here's what I think is wrong with this, in
analytic philosophy terms. Your position
---at least as expressed in the above formulation
---is essentially akin to that of Colin McGinn
and the New Mysterians. What do those guys say?

Essentially, what they say is that non-materialistically
understandable phenomena emerge from the natural order.
(Centrally, they claim this about consciousness as
such). We don't know how. We will probably never
know how it does so---our minds may well be incapable
of solving the mind-body problem, just as much as a
monkey's mind is incapable of understanding the
General Theory of Relativity. But that's just a
natural fact about monkeys, and our incapacity for
solving the Hard Problem of consciousness is just
a natural fact about us. In any case, we should
just cling to the naturalistic worldview. We should
just accept on faith that there is an unknowable,
hence mysterious (to minds like ours), but nonetheless
naturalistic way, in which these emergent and
apparently non-physical properties emerge and have
the character they do.

That's their view in a nutshell, and I don't believe
I'm doing it an injustice. That's what they say, and
my reading of what you're saying is that it amounts
to the same thing. Some months ago, I sent this
response on this topic:

One response has been the New Mysterianism. This says that naturalism
is true, and we not only don't know how naturalism and consciousness
co-exist, but that it's *impossible* to how they do. It's an
intrinsically unsolvable mystery. We just have to have faith that
naturalism is true nevertheless.

Do you see what's being said? The New Mysterians are saying and
arguing that we have to take naturalism ON FAITH. Not only is there
no good argument for how consciousness fits with naturalism, no good
argument is EVEN POSSIBLE. The way they fit together is intrinsically
UNKNOWABLE by any conceivable method of natural science. But we just
have to *assume* that somehow naturalism is true. The leading New
Mysterian is Colin McGinn, professor at Oxford. which is arguably the no.1 university philosophy department in the
English-speaking world for the philosophy of mind specialization]

Do you see how and why a critic of naturalism might object? Of course
you do!

I won't bore you with the arguments for the view that consciousness
logically cannot be given a scientific explanation. But they're
there, as strong as ever, and they're not going away, and have not
been refuted. In fact, that's why the New Mysterians became New
Mysterians. They realized that the arguments re consciousness not
fitting conceptually or logically with naturalism, are logically
valid, and irrefutable. They're saying, yes, those arguments are
right, there is no possibility of explaining how consciousness can be
explained by naturalism. But rather than do the obvious thing when
you get data that don't fit the theory (consciousness does not fit the
theory of naturalism) and which you concede CANNOT EVER be made to fit
the theory by human beings--the obvious thing being to dump the
theory in question, namely naturalism--these guys just say no, IT'S AN
UNSOLVABLE MYSTERY HOW NATURALISM CAN POSSIBLY BE TRUE, BUT WE'RE JUST
GOING TO BELIEVE IN IT ANYWAY.

There is, I grant you, no conclusive way to refute
this position, if the New Mysterian arguments
for the unsolvability of the mind-body problem
are correct (which I think they are). But now
do you see why a theist might be chuckling at this
point? The theist has been accused of relying on
faith (I think unjustly---loads of theists have
proferred reasons for believing in theism). But
now the same charge can be levelled at naturalists.
A reviewer of one New Mysterian (Galen Strawson)
asked the reasonable question which professions of
faith conjure up---why this faith rather than another
faith (I posted the review some time ago).

Michael Rea puts the point very well. One way to
think of the theism v naturalism debate is to think
of it not as two competing worldviews, but as a worldview,
and something else again, namely a 'research program'.
The concept of research program has been a staple in
philosophy of science since the work of Imre Lakatos.
But one of the things a research program does is
define the kind of thing that constitutes evidence.
That is, it sets out criteria for being evidence.
But that criterial selection process is internal to
each research program. Hence you can't use evidence
to choose between research programs, you can only
use non-evidential or pragmatic considerations such
as scope, predictive power, economy, simplicity, elegance,
coherence with other entrenched beliefs, logical consistency
etc (this is all philosophy of science 101, btw).

Now one of the things that Lakatos talks about is
whether a research program is forging ahead successfully,
or else is degenerating. Ok, my take is that naturalism
is degenerating. It is finding insoluble problems within
its own framework. Consciousness. Fine-tuning. Modal
reasoning. Intentionality. And quite a few other
areas. Now it's important not to think of a degenerating
research program as a failed research program!!!!
What it means is that it has done what it is able to do,
perhaps extremely well, but now it is encountering
data which it's not capable of solving. Examples abound
within science. Newtonian physics gave way to relativistic
and quantum physics. But very quickly, as Greene has
shown in a celebrated way, and has been known within the
physics community for some time, QUANTUM MECHANICS AND
RELATIVITY ARE NOT MUTUALLY CONSISTENT. Hence, a new
paradigm is needed (Greene proposes string theory as
the new paradigm. The whole notion of paradigm shift
goes back to Thomas Kuhn's seminal work in the
philosophy of science.)

Ok, an example of a proposed paradigm shift is
that proposed by Chalmers:

"We know that a theory of consciousness requires the
addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in
physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. We
might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience
can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be
like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental
feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we
take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of
constructing a theory of experience."

Earlier, we had the paradigm shift proposed by
Bohm:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bohm+implicate+order&btnG=Google+Search

Ok. Now you might say that this is all within
'science'. Yeah, well, not a few people--especially
among old-fashioned materialists---foam at the mouth
because the new physics seems to be so damn 'mystical'.
I am suggesting that the mystical character of this
new physics is on the right track---information,
irreducibility of consciousness and rational order,
intelligibility all the way down.

Which brings me to the fine-tuning of physics.
If you think about it---and I suggest you read
the Willard piece, and the link about 'scientific
evidence' for the existence of God, at
http://www.origins.org/articles/bradley_existenceofgod.html
then you will not see this as science in a naturalistic
sense. But that's just one way of defining science.
I prefer 'rational inquiry', as it's a less loaded word
than science. And what I think is that rational inquiry
in a broad sense is homing in on something that wouldn't
count as a naturalistic entity in the way that naturalism
has been defined up until now. Naturalism as defined
to date is finding that it has not got within itself
enough conceptual resources to formulate the problems
that lie at the boundaries of the data---consciousness,
fine-tuning, Big Bang cosmology, etc all propose limits,
which drive the older naturalistic paradigm into serious
internal coherence, such as positing an infinity
of unobservables, or proclaiming the New Mysterianism,
or saying that consciousness is not physical---all of
which would be anathema to the older generation of
naturalists. These and similar considerations
make me think that naturalism is degenerating (in Lakatos's
sense) as a research program. So I think the position
you've outlined above belongs to a degenerating research
program. Theism, as a worldview, enables me to adopt
new kinds of research programs, open to broader conceptual
and evidential resources. Old style materialism or
scientific naturalism does not do so well, imo.

[Az]

29. Not interested in email not written in response to my comments

I am interested in what you have to say. You seem to believe in your position quite strongly. I expect you to defend it in your words. Would you care to directly address my post instead of trying to take it off track?

[Stunster]

33. The email is mine

and it's relevant to the core issues between us. I can't be bothered re-typing arguments I've given before, so I cut and paste my own past email writings, as it saves time.

Sorry if that insults the sense you have of your own unique worth and dignity.

[spryker]

44. evidence for God

The "evidence" you submit is no evidence at all. What we have are
people, past and present, that claim to have seen, heard or experienced something. Without concrete proof or the same "supernatural" experience I am not obliged to believe in what
somebody else asserts. See Thomas Paine on this, for example.

[Stunster]

27. Atoms on Jupiter

I am not so uncharitable as to accuse atheists of thinking that there is no moral difference between atoms on Jupiter and the Holocaust. Obviously, there is a moral difference.

The question at issue is what ontological difference this moral difference arises from.

The materialist thinks that ontologically, storms on Jupiter and genocidal activities on Earth are both instances of quarks and electrons in motion through spacetime. Is there any more ontologically to it than that. Sure, the amount of quarks, the amount of electrons, and their particular spatiotemporal vectors.

Any more? Well, at this point the materialist invokes complexity. Apart from it being far from clear how complexity yields normativity, this answer seems rather poor on its face. One can easily imagine more complex arrays of subatomic material particles and vectors describing their motion through spacetime on the surface of a very large star than were involved in the Nazi Holocaust of Jewry.

But maybe that's to miss something important about how to describe the relevant complexities.

My answer, however, is it doesn't matter if we are missing anything from a natural description of the particles and vectors involved. Because no matter how we describe naturalistically those particles and vectors involved, we won't be able to derive any moral conclusion from the naturalistic description.

To think otherwise is to subscribe to the Naturalistic Fallacy.

All true natural descriptions of the world logically entail no moral conclusions. This includes descriptions of belief-states (construed as reducible to brain-states). Suppose, for example, that everyone, including slaves, thought that slavery was a morally good thing. It would still be a morally bad thing.

The same issues crop up in a previous email exchange between me and a naturalist:

>
> That's pretty much accurate. I'm not really sure how you would
> define "free will", except to say that there was some entity that
> existed outside of nature, that helped influence our decisions
> within nature.

I'm not sure how to answer this question, because
I'm not sure how one ought to define 'nature'.
If you mean by 'nature', physical nature, then
free will as I use would not be a component, or
at least simply a component, of physical nature.
There are philosophers---Chalmers is one---who are
now saying that consciousness is part of nature,
but it's not part of physical nature, in the sense
of being detectable by physical science. These
folks (Kripke is another) are what are known as
'property dualists'. They hold that some properties
in nature are non-physical, or that there are non-physical
aspects of nature. I'd go along with that. But
my abductive inference as to the best explanation
of this expanded notion of nature would be theistic.
(See below.)

One standard way of showing that a belief is reasonable
in science (in criminal law, and in philosophy)
is by showing that it is arrived at through a
reasonable abductive inference (or 'inference to the
best explanation'). One appeals to things like
simplicity, economy, coherence, scope, etc in choosing
between competing hypotheses.

Elsewhere I've suggested that theism accounts for the phenomena
associated with reason and value (consciousness; rational thought; the
reliability of sense-perception; meaning; free will; morality; the
'unreasonable' efficacy of mathematics; aesthetics; profundity and
centrality of emotions like love, pleasure, joy, etc; the fine-tuning
of the physics governing the universe, rendering it suitable for life;
the general orderedness of the universe; and religious experience) all
in one fell swoop, more naturally than materialism or Platonism. I
don't claim that this is 'proof', but only that it is a reasonable
abductive hypothesis, accounting for a bunch of diverse data, (and
hence it's not surprising that loads of people have essentially made
the same inference)


>
> Where it get's difficult is in the area of probability, multi-factor
> statistics, and complex math. I did engineering at Uni, and in
> engineering we do pretty advanced mathematics.

Is mathematical reason itself a part of nature,
as you would define it (i.e. physicalistically)?
Again, I have difficulty in seeing how mathematics
(in the sense of normative mathematical rationality)
is compatible with a physicalistic naturalism.


> in fact it looks chaotic (hence Chaos Math) . The limit of what we
> can actually calculate accurately is very limited.

Yup, I know. Paul Davies has a good section on
this in his book THE MATTER MYTH. But if theism
is true, then God is infinite. One way of thinking
about God is to think of God as unlimited, pure,
self-communicating information. I think the
self-communicating information part implies
the concept of consciousness. Chalmers, himself
not a theist, says that we should think of matter
as information from the outside, and of consciousness
as information from the inside. I find this notion
quite suggestive. In a sense, I think the reason
we don't see God is not so much that God is not
physical, as that God is infinite---there's just
too much information for us to grasp. I think in
a way chaos mathematics can see this. It sees that
there is too much info for us to grasp, but that in
an important sense, it's 'out there'. I think it's
self-communicating, which I interpret to mean that
God grasps it. Penrose has some highly interesting
things to say about this too, in relation to Godelian
theorems and whether the mind can be a computer. (He
thinks it can't be, because the computer can't solve
the halting problem for itself, but we can prove
Godel's theorems---we can see the truth of the theorems,
but computers can't arrive at this conclusion in a
finite number of steps. In short, given our ability
to prove the Godelian theorems, we can't be Turing
Machines.)

> So while I do think that we are creatures of nature, I also think
> the factors that govern our choices and decisions end up being a
> combination of biochemistry, environment, social factors, etc...

My view is that it's not an either/or thing.
Kant's idea is that a rational being *all*
of whose actions and states are determined
by causes external to itself is a contradiction
in terms. Of course, this still allows for
rational beings to exist many of whose actions
and states are determined by causes external to
themselves.

>
> I do not think it will ever be possible for us to define equations
> to predict and control all human action and behaviour.

Very much agreed. A famous philosopher at Berkeley,
Donald Davidson, argued that there are no psychophysical
laws such that we can formulate that for all mental
states and all physical states that, the laws correlating
them are such and such. His idea has come to be
known as 'anomalous monism'. Do a google search on
'Donald Davidson and anomalous monism'. I think his
arguments though are not simply to do with complexity.
They are also very controversial, as is the whole
business of explicating notions of rational and moral
autonomy and freedom of the will, in relation to
broader ontological commitments (such as naturalism
or materialism). My view, having spent years studying
the likes of Davidson, and other naturalists who are
trying to explicate these and other notions
naturalistically is to say "To hell with it. Theism
is much more straightfoward and simple than this
endlessly tortured and controverted naturalistic
reasoning." In other words, I have the same reaction
to naturalism as you do to theism. ;-)

Why? Not
> because of the randomness of a soul and free will, but because
> there are an infinite number of influences and factors, and
> predicting the outcome of these factors is not possible and likely
> will never be. So it then becomes sensible to treat people like they
> have free will and set a moral and legal and behaviour framework
> that gives us the best chance for a successfull outcome. The root
> of the morality being generated by human opinion and social
> development. Hence free will is a human construct that is used to
> base the development of our moral and ethical laws. We understand
> that free will has limits, and when social/environmental factors
> are simple enough to define an action. "I had to shoot him he was
> killing my family"... we make exceptions to our rules.
>

Yeah, that is the picture naturalistic science
gives. I've given before my worries about
the vacuousness implied by Darwinian accounts
of morality:

"Darwinian evolution
has to explain both morality and immorality on the same
evolutionary basis. Trouble is, this gives us no
principled way of justifying morality. The contrast
between morality and immorality becomes vacuous.
If something is adaptive (such as killing weaker
members of the species) then that becomes the right
thing to do. In order to avoid this conclusion,
the evolutionist has to say that it's not 'really'
adaptive. But all this does is to make the
supposed contrast between adaptive and non-adaptive
behavior vacuous. So either the evolutionist
preserves a non-vacuous contrast between adaptive
and non-adaptive behavior, but at the price of
sacrificing a non-vacuous contrast between morality
and immorality. Or vice-versa."


> Incidently, I think this actually describes well what has actually
> happened to human moral/ethical development over the ages. It is
> not absolute and external to human nature, it is dynamic and is
> constantly evolving.
>

This is a descriptive statement ("describes well").
Of course, what your opponent who defends objective
normativity is going to say is that it begs the
question against the notion of objective normativity
to say that it can all be reduced to description.
I don't think there's a way round this. The only
thing I would say in advocating objective normativity
is that it is as much a part of the data of consciousness
as all the descriptive stuff is a part of the data
consciousness. Just try to think about the notion
***the logical validity of an argument*** in reductively
entirely descriptive, entirely non-normative terms.
It's bloody hard, I'd say impossible.
"Why Reason Can't Be Naturalized" is a well-known
article by the very well known philosopher Hilary
Putnam. (Whether knowledge can
be completely 'naturalized' is a big, controversial
topic in philosophy).

Ok. All this is by way of debating the issue
of naturalism (which is a huge topic in itself).
But why do I draw from these sorts of debate a
theistic inference?

Well, one standard way of showing that a belief is
reasonable in science (in criminal law, in historical
studies, in philosophy, etc) is by showing that it is
arrived at through a reasonable abductive inference
(or 'inference to the best explanation'). One appeals
to things like simplicity, economy, coherence, scope,
etc in choosing between competing hypotheses which are
proposed to explain the data that we receive in our
conscious minds (not all of which happens in labs,
but even there it enters our conscious minds).

Elsewhere I've suggested that theism accounts for
the phenomena associated with reason and value.

-- consciousness;
-- rational thought;
-- the reliability of sense-perception;
-- meaning;
-- free will;
-- morality;
-- the 'unreasonable' efficacy of mathematics;
-- aesthetics;
-- profundity and centrality of emotions like love,
pleasure, joy, etc;
-- the fine-tuning of the physics governing the
universe, rendering it suitable for life;
-- the general orderedness of the universe;
-- religious experience)

all in one fell swoop, and more naturally or intuitively than
materialism or Platonism. I don't claim that this is 'proof', but only
that it is an eminently reasonable abductive hypothesis, accounting
for a bunch of diverse data economically. Hence it's not surprising
that loads of people have essentially made the same inference).
That's why even non-materialist forms of naturalism don't appeal to
me. They are too, well, clumsy as models of reality compared to the
theistic model. Admittedly, religious experience plays a key role in
suggesting the theistic abduction. If it weren't for that, then I
might just go along with a non-materialist naturalism---Platonism
being the most famous instance thereof. But I guess, when I read
theistic mystical and spiritual literature---the Autobiographies of
Augustine, Ignatius of Loyola, St Teresa of Avila, Thomas Merton, John
Main, etc---it's just obvious to me that they're honestly sharing as
best they can what they've found to be real. And this has been
confirmed in my own experience.

[Az]

30. You really are angry at that argument

Its not the argument I am making though. I never claimed complexity. My position is quite specifically dealing with the unique process that a living being is. It has value to me. Its destruction has moral implications to me. Please argue to my case and not some argument you have practiced on.

[Stunster]

31. No, you are

It's really transparent that a) you're projecting massively your own anger, and b) that you are hopelessly mired in systematic 'petitio principii' fallacies in favor of scientific materialism.

[Az]

32. Sigh, I tried

Here is the icon you like to use :boring:

[Stunster]

34. It's amusing that you accuse me

of not engaging with your arguments. ;-)

The words, 'pot', 'black', and 'kettle' spring to mind.

Immediately.

[Selwynn]

42. As an independent reader of the faith persuasion - I agree with Az

In this case, it feels like you've talked a lot around Az's points rather than actually addressing them. Also, I'm not infallible, but I certainly haven't seen Az demonstrating the barely contained anger you speak of.

Az makes some valid points I feel. As you recall I also had some critiquing thoughts about your point #6, and Az -- being of the non-believing, yet articulate and rational persuasion -- was able to better illuminate those concerns than I was.

May I gently encourage you to keep focused on the argument, not the person, and if Az feels you haven't directly engaged his arguments, ask Az to bullet point a lists of specific declarative points that he would like you to respond to, so that nothing gets missed.

I think everyone knows that both you and Az are smart, decent people - which is why letting the argument de-evolve into arguments about each other's attitude, motive or state of mind are far less interesting that one that could stick to the interesting intellectual subjects.

Just my opinion, as a passive participant in the exchange.
Sel

[Stunster]

36. What's boring is naturalism as dogma

This stance begs the question systematically about whether scientific method is the only available way of knowing or having rational beliefs about something, and then claims that it's 'open-minded' about the ways in which we might come to know something or have rational beliefs about it---and does not see the logical incoherence of what it's doing (begging the question systematically) with what it's claiming about itself (that it's open-minded).

---"Fine show me the evidence that there's another way of knowing or having rational beliefs about something"

"Here's some...."

---"Oh, I'm not going to count that as evidence"

"Why not?"

---"Well, it's not, um, scientific."

"But isn't that begging the question at issue?"

---"No, I'm open to other forms of evidence---as long as they conform to my a priori, not scientifically derived, commitment to scientific method as the only respectable yielder of evidence."

"But what about consciousness, and all the phenomena associated with reason and value"

----"No, that doesn't count, because I believe that science might one day be able to explain those things in materialist terms."

"And if it doesn't?"

----"We'll never know if it will or not. But in the meantime, I'm determined to believe that it will, regardless of all rational philosophical arguments to the contrary. Not that this is faith on my part. It's scientific open-mindedness."

"But I get the impression that regardless of how unsuccessful a scientific research program is into the nature of consciousness, reason and value, you will always say, ah, but it might be successful in future. Surely that's just a statement of faith on your part?"

----"No, I'm just being open-minded. And to show that I'm open-minded, I reject on a priori grounds the a priori arguments of philosophers who argue that science will never succeed in solving these problems."

"Hmmmmm. Well, what about all these indications from cosmology and physics and biology that the universe and life is extremely unlikely to have come about from chance, and exhibits to a marvellous degree mathematical intelligibility and order? You're saying that provides no evidential support for the theistic hypothesis?"

----"No, that's not scientific evidence either. You see, it's simpler to presume that there's an infinity of unobservable universes, than to posit the theistic hypothesis."

"An infinity of unobservables is a simpler---and scientific---hypothesis?"

----"Yes, because that's more conformable to naturalism."

"But isn't that begging the question again? Aren't we trying to decide if naturalism is true or not, or more rational believe?"

----"Yes, we are, and I'm completely open-minded about that. Just show me the evidence."

"But you won't count anything as evidence if it's not naturalistic evidence, so you're begging the question!"

----"No, I'm prepared to consider the possibility of there being other forms of evidence. Just as long as it has all the features of naturalistic evidence. If it doesn't have all those features, then that shows it's not good evidence at all."

"But you're begging the question again! The question is whether the concept of evidence is logically broader than the concept of evidence as defined by the naturalistic research program."

----"But we have good evidence in favor of the superiority of the naturalistic research program."

"What evidence is that?

----"It's the evidence we get when we do natural science---that kind of evidence is good evidence for the validity of natural science."

"But how does that show that that's the only kind of good evidence there is?"

---"Oh, there might be other kinds of good evidence. And I'd be prepared to accept that. Provided this can be shown by the methods of natural science, of course." :boring:

[aneerkoinos]

38. Good post

Been there, done that, that's how the materialist's argument goes... :)

Only thing where I do agree with the materialist is that infinity of unobservable universes is better answer to the problem posed by the anthropic principle than theism of a teleological creator god.

At least, if one want's ALSO to argue that the creator god is in addition omniscient, all-powerfull and benevolent. That is simply so contradictory it is absurd (credo quid absurdum est?). Of course, a Gnostic "proud and ignorant" demiurge deity in the role of creator god would present no such logic defying problems, and in that case the problem could be posed as personal preference on the mode of language, more directly meaningfull mythical language and math-based scientific language, which would not necessarily offer inconsistent views on reality.

[Stunster]

39. Disagree that there's anything absurd about it

At least, if one want's ALSO to argue that the creator god is in addition omniscient, all-powerfull and benevolent. That is simply so contradictory it is absurd (credo quid absurdum est?)

I think it's 'credo quia absurdum', not 'quid'.

No, I don't believe classical, ethical monotheism is absurd. I'm presuming that your objection rests on some version of the argument from evil (which I've posted about at length on this forum), or some supposed logical problem with omnipotence or omniscience. There's a vast literature on this, much of it in defence of the traditional theistic concepts. At any rate these folks don't think it's absurd at all, and nor do I. Not arguing that they are right, I'm just arguing that it's doubtful that it's in any way straightforwardly the case that what they and many other theistic philosophers are saying is absurd. At least, one needs to engage with the arguments of sophisticated defenders of theism before one can be confident that what they're saying is absurd.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/articles.html

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~howardd/papersandbooks.html (scroll down for his papers on the problem of evil)

http://www.faithquest.com/modules.php?name=Sections

For instance, omnipotence? Here's Edward Wierenga's take on that concept:
http://www.courses.rochester.edu/wierenga/REL111/omnipch.html

You might want to try Wierenga's book THE NATURE OF GOD: AN INQUIRY INTO DIVINE ATTRIBUTES (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)

Also,THE NATURE OF GOD, by Gerard J. Hughes, (Routledge, 1995)

And three books by Stephen T. Davis:

LOGIC AND THE NATURE OF GOD (Eerdmans, 1983)

GOD, REASON AND THEISTIC PROOFS (Eerdmans, 1997)

ENCOUNTERING EVIL: LIVE OPTIONS IN THEODICY (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).

And,

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, by Peter Van Inwagen (Eerdmans, 2004).

[aneerkoinos]

40. links back at ya

http://home.btclick.com/scimah/thealogy.htm
http://home.btclick.com/scimah/God.htm

[Jim__]

41. More strawman arguments- lots of "quotes" - zero citations - n/t

[Red Sox Dem]

43. What about intentional human destruction?

In Point #9 you wrote: "...God has given us the freedom and autonomy to use that intelligence, as best we can, in every age and place. We have become better, and have grown mightily---intellectually, morally, and spiritually---precisely because we've been given those challenges. But if we don't learn from our mistakes, then shame on us..."

How do you respond to the systemic, deliberate evil caused by bishops in the Roman Catholic Church who allowed, fostered and covered up for the sexual crimes of priests and bishops against children?

Natural disasters are terrible events. More so are those caused by the willful destruction of human beings by those who refuse to take responsibility for their crimes and for the crimes of those whom they protect.