Via 3quarksdaily, here is Richard Skinner (“poet, writer, qualified therapist and performer”) elaborating on Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously. I would argue that they should take him seriously because much of what he says is true, but that’s not Skinner’s take.
Skinner suggests that Dawkins is arguing against a straw-man notion of God (stop me if you’ve heard this before). According to the straw man, God is some thing, or some person, or some something, of an essentially supernatural character, with a lot of influence over what happens in the universe, and in particular the ability to sidestep the laws of nature to which the rest of us are beholden. That’s a hopelessly simplistic and unsophisticated notion, apparently; not at all what careful theologians actually have in mind.
Nevertheless, Dawkins and his defenders typically reply, it’s precisely the notion of God that nearly all non-theologians — that is to say, the overwhelming majority of religious believers, at least in the Western world — actually believe in. Not just the most fanatic fundamentalists; that’s the God that the average person is worshipping in Church on Sunday. And, to his credit, Skinner grants this point. That, apparently, is why Christians should take Dawkins seriously — because all too often even thoughtful Christians take the easy way out, and conceptualize God as something much more tangible than He really is.
At this point, an optimist would hope to be informed, in precise language, exactly what “God” really does mean to the sophisticated believer. Something better than Terry Eagleton’s “the condition of possibility.” But no! We more or less get exactly that:
Philosophers and theologians over the centuries, grappling with what is meant by ‘God’, have resorted to a different type of language, making statements such as “God is ultimate reality”; or “God is the ground of our being”, or “God is the precondition that anything at all could exist”, and so forth. In theological discourse, they can be very helpful concepts, but the trouble with them is that if you’re not a philosopher or theologian, you feel your eyes glazing over – God has become a philosophical concept rather than a living presence.
The trouble is not that such sophisticated formulations make our eyes glaze over; the trouble is that they don’t mean anything. And I will tell you precisely what I mean by that. Consider two possible views of reality. One view, “atheism,” is completely materialistic — it describes reality as just a bunch of stuff obeying some equations, for as long as the universe exists, and that’s absolutely all there is. In the other view, God exists. What I would like to know is: what is the difference? What is the meaningful, operational, this-is-why-I-should-care difference between being a sophisticated believer and just being an atheist?
I can imagine two possibilities. One is that you sincerely can’t imagine a universe without the existence of God; that God is a logical necessity. But I have no trouble imagining a universe that exists all by itself, just obeying the laws of nature. So I would have to conclude, in that case, that you were simply attaching the meaningless label “God” to some other aspect of the universe, such as the fact that it exists. The other possibility is that there is actually some difference between the universe-with-God and the materialist universe. So what is it? How could I tell? What is it about the existence of God that has some effect on the universe? I’m not trying to spring some sort of logical trap; I sincerely want to know. Phrases like “God is ultimate reality” are either tautological or meaningless; I would like to have a specific, clear understanding of what it means to believe in God in the sophisticated non-straw-man sense.
Richard Skinner doesn’t give us that. In fact, he takes precisely the opposite lesson from these considerations: the correct tack for believers is to refuse to say what they mean by “God”!
So, if our understanding of God can be encapsulated in a nice, neat definition; a nice, neat God hypothesis; a nice, neat image; a nice, neat set of instructions – if, in other words, our understanding of God does approximate to a Dawkins version, then we are in danger of creating another golden calf. The alternative, the non-golden-calf route, is to sit light to definitions, hypotheses and images, and allow God to be God.
It’s a strategy, I suppose. Not an intellectually honest one, but one that can help you wriggle out of a lot of uncomfortable debates.
I’m a big believer that good-faith disagreements focus on the strong arguments of the opposite side, rather than setting up straw men. So please let me in on the non-straw-man position. If anyone can tell me once and for all what the correct and precise and sophisticated and non-vacuous meaning of “God” is, I promise to stick to disbelieving in that rather than any straw men.
Update: This discussion has done an even better job than I had anticipated in confirming my belief that the “sophisticated” notion of God is simply a category mistake. Some people clearly think of God in a way perfectly consistent with the supposed Dawkinsian straw man, which is fine on its own terms. Others take refuge in the Skinneresque stance that we can’t say what we mean when we talk about God, which I continue to think is simply intellectually dishonest.
The only on-topic replies I can see that don’t fall into either of those camps are ones that point to some feature of the world which would exist just as well in a purely materialistic conception, and say “I call that `God.'” To which I can only reply, you’re welcome to call it whatever you like, but it makes no difference whatsoever. Might as well just admit that you’re an atheist.
Which some people do, of course. I once invited as a guest speaker Father William Buckley, a Jesuit priest who is one of the world’s experts in the history of atheism. After giving an interesting talk on the spirituality of contemplation, he said to me “You don’t think I believe in G-O-D `God,’ do you?” I confessed that I had, but now I know better.
For people in this camp, I think their real mistake is to take a stance or feeling they have toward the world and interpret in conventionally religious language. Letting all that go is both more philosophically precise and ultimately more liberating.
On the goals of religions: Swami Dayananda Saraswati:
(Vaidika : one who follows the Vedic tradition.
Plato,
What is required is a paradigm shift on several levels. First off, the real problem with monotheism isn’t whether or not there is some anthropomorphic entity pulling the strings, but that it exaggerates monolithic thought patterns and projects them on to the entire community. As individuals, we have what amounts to a one track mind. There is always only one thing we can effectively focus on at a time, otherwise the internal conflict is a mental disorder, otherwise known as schizophrenia. The larger reality is that there are any number of potential perspectives. This is why life organizing itself as a multitude of individual beings is such a successful adaptation. Not only are there multitudes of perspectives, but any particular position and especially those with any degree of clarity and force, enable, encourage and in fact require an opposite position as balance. Eastern philosophies are far more cognizant of this fact, thus the fundamental concept of yin and yang. The practical problem is that while it may be a more intellectually advanced understanding, it can be politically inconvenient. Looking at both sides of an issue tends to get one branded as wishy-washy and the less scrupulous opponent will punch you in the nose, as you examine his side of the argument. Campaign politics proves this on a daily basis. In fact, this political advantage is the basis of the success of the monotheistic model in the first place, from the old testament to Constantine’s vision of the cross as a war totem. The fact is that everyone is able and frequently does view themselves as both individual and as part of their chosen group. Just not at the same moment. Like a coin, there are two sides, but you can only view one at a time. Thus we have the current political standoff between conservatives and liberals, both defending various rights of individuals that they approve of and attacking those they don’t, while generally following the various scripts approved by their groups.
I think this tendency towards one track thinking being required of their group often extends to the academic and scientific disciplines as well. The circumstance that comes to mind is cosmology. To be accepted professionally you had better believe in Big Bang Theory with the same depth of belief in the Holy Trinity being a Jesuit requires, yet there are quite a few problems with this narrative description of the universe and it has some rather extreme patches, such as Inflation Theory and dark energy to maintain it. But the fact is that basic political factors insist only the Big Bang model is acceptable. The reality is that the coin can be flipped over and many of the observations can be viewed from other perspectives and may well fit together in an entirely different fashion.
Rather then get into issues that don’t have much bearing on this discussion, I’ll close with an example I described in my first post in this conversation(10), of how something viewed from one perspective can be flipped around and seen in an entirely different light;
Here is another one; 1+1=2, right? Well, if you’ve actually added them together, then you should properly have one larger entity, so 1+1=1. We are just focused on how thinks come apart, not how they come together.
Wow, okay, you really went off on a tangent there. This is just so vastly far off-base it’s not even funny. First of all, the big bang theory has been wildly successful at a providing us with the correct results for a number of predictions. As a result, we can be certain that it is at least correct on an approximate level, provided we don’t try to extrapolate too far back into the past (where inflation takes over).
But, more than that, many scientists have been looking at fundamental modifications to the theory. Essentially, the two assumptions of the theory are:
1. The universe as a whole is nearly homogeneous and isotropic.
2. General Relativity is correct on the scales of interest.
Both assumptions have been and are being investigated in detail. For example, since we know that the region of the universe we can observe is simply not homogeneous and isotropic, we know that the first assumption is only an approximation, and it is a good thing to check and see just how good of an approximation it is. This is, as near as I can tell, ongoing work.
Other scientists are investigating ways in which general relativity might be modified, something which would change the relationship between matter and the curvature of space, which could, potentially, explain the observed acceleration in lieu of dark energy.
So no, you’re incorrect. There is no “blind faith” here, as it’s all strongly evidence-based, and scientists are questioning the fundamental aspects of the theory as well.
Jason,
I’ll do the larger discussion a big favor and drop the subject. I would be interested in your thoughts as to my observation about time, since it does tie into my points about how consciousness and intelligence relate and function.
Jason, in various replies to me and other commenters, you keep saying that something has to “make a difference” even to be intelligible. That is more the position of a school of philosophy, like positivism, than a logically necessary correlate of meaningfulness per se. As for positivism and its discontents, let me repeat below what I said earlier (that never got a substantive reply):
What really cracks me up is people saying such and such is “meaningless”, but they don’t agree with it, believe it exists, etc. If something is truly meaningless, you wouldn’t even “get” it well enough to object. That phrase is just a sort of trash tool, and I have shown weaknesses elsewhere (like all the things we can’t verify that are perfectly comprehensible, like details of the unrecorded past, or even talk of what will happen long from now that is yet unverifiable and won’t be for us as individuals, etc.) PS: Positivism was such a hilarious crock, just consider that “axioms” aren’t either synthetic or analytic, nor is the very school-defining statement that all statements are either S. or A., etc. This was supposedly the flower of rationalism, I gather. My favorite no-clothes question always is “What is the operational definition of saying that things exist while we aren’t observing them.? Well?
In brief, you are letting post-modern/Wittgenstein philosophical defeatism and circumscription drag you down.
… there is no need to ask for an “operational” test for God, it is a retrodictive philosophical argument. Do you appreciate the irony that the arguments saying there should be such proof, why we should believe this or that or not, what is “meaningful” etc. are themselves philosophy and not scientific experiments – so, why should we believe them?
In particular, in your reply of Oct 24th at 9:09 pm:
In order for a definition to be useful, there must be natural conclusions that are not assumed in the definition. The problem is that typically with a god, you can’t actually make any deductions: every effect of this deity’s existence has to simply be assumed. This all flows right back to Sean’s point: unless you can present concrete, testable predictions of your deity’s behavior that flow naturally from its definition, your definition is meaningless.
If a conclusion is logically related to, and a reasonable outgrowth from an initial assumption, it is not thereby “assumed” in the definition – otherwise, all good cause-effect arguments would be circular definitions. I “assume” (postulate, rather), as do many theological thinkers, that an ultimate Mind would want fraternity and companionship with other minds, and so that more beings can have experience. Since I don’t think such a primal Mind is omnipotent, but only a bestower of “reality” on selected possible universes (i.e., it “shines light” on select patches of what would otherwise be a sterile modal-realist panoply of model worlds.) It “breathes fire” into some equations and not others. A universe conducive to life is a reasonable outcome of such a God notion, an outcome you OTOH with your ideas can’t explain without either:
(1.) Accepting the bizarre coincidence that constants very narrowly just right for life are inherently rational or physically appropriate for an existent universe, but not because of any design purpose.
(2.) Or, multiple universes exist, and we are the lucky self-selection outcome. That could happen, but that produces embarrassing questions about why it should stop there and not include every imaginable thing (just fleshing out the Platonic world of everything in toto), the hypocrisy of complaining about unobservable God but accepting unobservable other universes, etc. As for different regions of space having different laws, I am waiting for any evidence at all that our own universe can be a substrate for more than one unique set of laws and constants. (Isn’t evidence what matters to you so much? But you were rather casually throwing off speculation about different laws in different regions once – since there’s no evidence, a purist of your school shouldn’t use the idea in argument at all…)
Here’s something I think you still don’t get:
There is no reason yet to suspect that a natural universe is absurd.
Sure there is, if you understand the philosophical framing at the ground level. The natural contingency argument is something you either get or you don’t, in my experience. One way to start: draw an arbitrary shape (like an amoeba silhouette) and then ask yourself: could this*particular* shape be blessed, by some inherent logic, with a special non-predicate status like “exist”, and yet other shapes (like a somewhat different amoeboid outline, or triangles, etc.) not be? That is just plain absurd at a fundamental level. Once you realize that, you can’t go back. Some believe that all the possible “worlds” (descriptions) exist, but then the self-selection likelihood is that there’d be no distinct and coherent laws of physics in any world we found ourselves in. That’s because the class of *descriptions* in general is so much bigger than the class of descriptions with dependable law-like behavior (e.g., crisp 1/r^2 forces constant over time.) The alternative to that polymorphous mess is that Someone breathes that realness into some of those shapes (metaphors for ways to be) so minds can exist and strive.
Dude – it’s philosophy, OK? Neither of us knows squat, you just think about which argument looks better to your deep insight. This is at levels of abstraction so high, the highest of all, that putting it in terms of our world’s physical properties and history of exploring of same is just not adequate.
Quick note about “meaningfulness” and testability: How can testability affect immediate comprehension in the mind? Suppose for example, that at first we thought some proposal was untestable. So, to some it’s “meaningless.” But then suppose later we find out it is testable after all (there are no classes of propositions which are inherently protected from error, so we could be wrong about such things like anything else.) But if “meaningfulness” depends on actual testability rather than whether we think it is testable, would we have experienced the meaningfulness before we knew it was testable? How can comprehension itself depend on something like testability, which capability might not even be known to the assessor of the idea? Finally, does that really comport with the original definition of “meaningful” anyway?
Here’s a counter example: It has been shown that we can’t use known set concepts to prove whether the cardinality of the continuum (the set of real numbers, including irrational – shown non-equivalent to the set of rational numbers by Cantor’s diagonal argument) is Aleph sub one, the next cardinal number (sequential infinite set characterization) after Aleph sub zero (cardinality of the integers and rational numbers), or not. Hence, it uses German c as symbol. And yet, anyone familiar with cardinal arithmetic and trans-finite set theory attests there is a clear meaning to the question – it is not “meaningless” in any meaningful way. (Did it sound like mere gibberish to you, or just “jargon” that a student of the subject could appreciate?) Sure, we can’t find out, but that doesn’t make the question therefore “meaningless”, unless the latter was merely an inept ostensible synonym for the former. I suspect it’s an attempt to stifle thought about mysteries with a put-down, cashing in on the gate-keeping status of intelligibility in ways that aren’t warranted.
John MerrymanRather then get into issues that don’t have much bearing on this discussion,
Hi John,
I was leading you to the point about Sean’s post.
If God is in Spirit then what saids we are not far from understanding GoD by learning to understand our position of entanglement? All “forming aparatus(focus)” is as much as “if we set the ideal,” and all things that arose from “the idea” becomes manifested in the world around us.
I would think I was still dealing with the larger discusssion? It has nothing to do with alignments of who said what, or governmental political parties.
Yet as an “ideal” I might have choosen one.
Sean:The trouble is not that such sophisticated formulations make our eyes glaze over; the trouble is that they don’t mean anything
John,
In what little I gave you, there is a deduction. It is about what God might mean.
What if you believed in a God who could be cajoled or bribed ?- one who wished to be flattered,pleased – sacrifice would be demanded – Here take him not me !
Quasar9, so from the range of possible gods you just choose one (more or less at random? Or the one your parents chose for you?), and stick with it, knowing that the probability that your god is the correct one is close to zero?
I suppose you do not also claim to be a rational person?
Carl
Plato,
I apologize, as I seem more inclined to get off topic then anyone else. That said, my distinction between consciousness and ideals is based on the point I made about time. Whereas energy goes from past events to future ones, the information created goes from being future potential to past order and the same distinction can be drawn between consciousness and the intellect. Our essential awareness goes from past events to future ones, but that which we perceive is constantly receding into the past. Now ideals are the templates by which we make sense of the process. As such, they are somewhere in the middle, as we keep pushing them out to define the future, as the details from which they are induced recede into the past.
Think in terms of a factory; The product goes from being raw material to finished units, while the production line faces the other direction, consuming raw material and expelling finished product. Ideals amount to the blueprints used in the design of the product. The evidence we see of them is the finished units, but they are constantly being refined and updated by the process.
CarlN, from the range of ‘possible’ universes
you chose One, the one your parents chose for you (and you are stuck in it for now, whether you like it or not)
Does that make you irrational? –
I have not ‘chosen’ any god
I have stated that it is possible A God exists,
just like it is possible a big bang took place.
No one (not you, not Dawkins, nor anyone else) can claim to have scientifically or philosophically disprove A God exists, any more than someone can ‘scientifically’ prove God does exist.
You can choose not to believe in the existence of a god, or disbelief in the gods others have chosen – but you have no proof (and have not proven) that A God does not exist. Just like you have no ‘idea’ what is beyond the Cosmic Event Horizon – but you do not conclude that the other side of the Cosmic Event Horizon does not exist – else how is it you have a Cosmic Event Horizon.
lol Daisy Rose,
unless you are vegan or vegetarian, I suspect some animal will be sacrificed, to feed you tonight. In some cultures you can even choose, jow many chickens or which piglets, lamb or calf you’d like sacrificed for your next birthday bash.
Don’t you just love those restaurants where they keep live fish and live lobsters and you can choose which one to sacrifice for tonight’s feast.
Now I presume men & women do not think themselves gods or godesses (well actually some wonder around as if they were).
It is not in the name of any god hundreds of thousands of Iraqies have been killed or sacrificed, but in the name of Son of Bush, American Freedom? and US Democracy. But I guess the Syrians prayed please god not me (us) let it be Iraq. But the only thing that saved Syria is that it did not have Iraqi Oil (rich pickings).
Quasar9, so I’ll prove there is no god.
A god is supposed to be eternal, right? I have already proved the impossibility of something eternal. See the “why something rather than nothing” discussion.
So a god is simply impossible. Of course. A god would not make any sense, anyway.
Carl
Carl,
What is eternal? See my point about time.
Hi CarlN, an atheist mathematician can maintain the philosophical tenet that numbers and the relationships among them exist outside of time, and so are in that sense eternal.
Augustine of Hippo wrote that time exists only within the created universe, so that God exists outside of time; for God there is no past or future, but only an eternal present. One need not believe in God in order to hold this concept of eternity: for example, an atheist mathematician can maintain the philosophical tenet that numbers and the relationships among them exist outside of time, and so are in that sense eternal.
Theists say that God is eternally existent. How this is understood depends on which definition of eternity is used. On the one hand, God may exist in eternity, a timeless existence where categories of past, present, and future just do not apply. On the other hand, God will exist for or through eternity, or at all times, having already existed for an infinite amount of time and being expected to continue to exist for an infinite amount of time.
One other definition states that God exists outside the human concept of time, but also inside of time. The reasoning for this definition is that if God did not exist both outside of time and inside of time, God would not be able to interact with humans.
Related to the notion of eternal existence is the concept of God as Creator, as a being completely independent of “everything else” that exists because he created everything else. (Contrast this with panentheism.) If this premise is true, then it follows that God is independent of both space and time, since these are properties of the universe. So according to this notion, God exists before time began, exists during all moments in time, and would continue to exist if somehow the universe and time itself were to cease to exist.
Related to ‘eternal life’, the biblical revelation first indicated that Man as a special created being is able to grasp the abstract concept in contrast with the lower animal world which did not have the ability to understand the concept of “eternity”.
Strugatsky Brothers have written many sci-fi books including
“Hard to be a god”/(It is not so easy…);
see amazon
(another interesting book is the “Ugly cygnets”(/Rain time)).
Trying to imagine possible development of
“chips/computers” (~50 years old) on the next thousand years (that
is not so much for cosmology, and not so great even for the
history of humans), one can believe
that, for really developed civilization (developed both in
technical and in the moral aspect), it is quite easy (would be the
desire!) to organize (for less developed fellows, like us)
something like “doomsday” or “survival” (using another elemental base,
sure, – in some reserves; there is a lot of room in 11-D space:).
BTW, people arrange “wildlife sanctuaries” for “the wild
nature” (however not trying to lecture democracy to ants:).
Does it make great difference who is capable “to read” your thoughts,
to influence them (washing your brains): the God, advanced
fellows (“God’s children”), or aboriginal “oligarches/fat cats”
(“godfathers”) ?
Guys,
What is something eternal? That is something that has not started to exist, right?
Carl
John Merryman (re: #156), thank you very much for the recommendation. EAP looks like it might be right up my alley (no pun intended!). Also, I’ve now added an email address to the profile information on my blog’s website: meadowsweet.myrrh [at] gmail.com.
John Merryman:Eastern philosophies are far more cognizant of this fact, thus the fundamental concept of yin and yang. The practical problem is that while it may be a more intellectually advanced understanding, it can be politically inconvenient
There is always the Taoist view of these differences, where a “middle line is walked” utterly being unaffected or being swayed from that middle position.
It has become clearer what you are saying and I hope what I just wrote confirms this.
How could one say “perfecting” and that this contact outside/inside ourselves is the understanding of our potential growth through learning. That we are indeed working toward what had already existed for us “before we choose to get entangled in the matters” to slowly “loose sight of,” has now circumscribed our perspective/view of our world?
While this is going on and our emotive states can create this circumspection, depending on how traumatic or dense these emotive states are, we know that there is a lighter intellectual side to freeing ourselves from these states.
Beyond that, there then is the understanding that such intellects can move beyond what is “lighter and freer” by realizing that what we were in the beginning, is just a return to what we have always been?
While it may seem that this too is far from the topic, I would say it has very much to do with what God “is.”
Ok, we all agree that something eternal is something that has never started to exist. Also something that does not exist (except perhaps in our imagination) has never started to exist.
From this, (although it is correct) it is of course too easy to equate “eternal” = “does not exist”. But it shows where we are going.
However, in this case of disproving the existence of God by disproving the existence of anything eternal, we note the following:
Given the information that X has not started to exist we can only logically conclude that X does not exist. We cannot assume that X has always existed.
Knowing that Santa has not started to exist, it only makes sense to conclude from this that Santa does not exist. Same goes for God.
More to come..
Nothing god-like is going to be found by a physicist. So you can ask how could such a thing be descovered by measurement and mathematical calculation? And again, the same could be said of an explanation of consciousness.
Then it could be asked isn’t there something universal that can’t be explained by measurement and mathematical calculation? That is, how matter can remain in their naturally organised forms as atoms, molecules and living organisms and while the forces act just as they have been measured and described?
Andrew,
Only self-consistent “things” can exist. So only realities that are logical and “mathematical” can exist. That’s why “forces” and matter are the way it is.
Most descriptions given of gods are something that is not self-consistent, and certainly these gods do not exist.
And of course, actually no gods exist. Logic tells us that.
More on name.
“Your logic” used Carl was just as equivalent to my own postulation.
We “use language/mathematics,” and from whence language/mathematics come?
We could then go into circular reasoning, and John M. has already covered that.
This is still about God.
Plato, math and logic “comes from” where the universe comes from. Nothing. Otherwise there would be circular logic indeed. See the “why something rather than nothing” discussion..
Language comes from humans and is not relevant here.