From Nothing to God?
Oh Brother, Lawrence Krauss is back to his old tricks again. No doubt wanting to follow-up on the success of Hawking’s last philosophically bankrupt work of semi-fiction, Lawrence has a new book coming out entitled ‘A Universe From Nothing‘, where he still, just like his buddy Hawking, surreptitiously defines “nothing” as a sea of quantum energy governed by physical laws. When will he ever realize that this state-of-affairs is not nothing? Never, it seems.
In his interview with Robert Wright a while back, bemusement ensued. Naturally, Robert, being the all-around erudite that he is, questioned this definition of nothing, which Lawrence seems so beholden to despite the consequences on his philosophical credibility, as it seemed so diametrically opposed to the kind of nothing that’s in many a philosopher’s mind.
If the audience was able to listen to that interview astutely, Lawrence, after multiple attempts at verbal calisthenics to evade the question, thusly proceeded to make the rather epic and utterly impotent extrapolation that, because of cosmology’s winning streak in its ability to show causally prior states to what was previously assumed to be nothing, cosmology, in time, can also –will also, in fact– show how the universe came from philosophical nothingness. One wonders what gives?
The problem for Lawrence is that, should he be able to show that universes come from philosophical nothingness, rather than providing a metaphysical framework for his atheism –which seems to be the real intention of his book– he’ll be providing one for theism instead:
If something can come from nothing, then ANYTHING can come from nothing; if the universe can come from nothing, then so can pink bunnies, spaghetti monsters, and evil, moustache-twirling genitalia. In fact, if the universe is infinitely old, as Lawrence seems to think, then all those things have already materialized from nothing infinitely many times. Absurd ain’t it?
If the universe can come from nothing, then anything can come from nothing since there’s nothing in the universe; no quality to it; not one iota about it; not anything about it; nothing about it, that would make “nothing” tend to produce it, because before it was produced, it wasn’t anything! The old Scholastics weren’t stupid. There’s a reason why they took it as metaphysical truth that from nothing, nothing comes; ex nihilo, nihil fit.
That’s why anything (the universe, in this case) that arises from “nothing” will more plausibly have a personal-agent-type teleology; an agent who had the intention of producing from nothing that which was produced from nothing (and this, as Aquinas likes to say, we call GOD). Else, you’ll have to accept the absurd and patently untenable consequences, as illustrated above, that would ensue from its counter-factual (good luck defending against a reductio ad absurdum).
Lawrence was unsuccessfully trying to foist on Robert his feeble definition of the word nothing. And since Robert didn’t quite buy it, he backtracks in an attempt to salvage any credibility for his book, and manages to make a case for theism. Lucky for him that Robert was either ignorant of the particular philosophical argument or was being too polite to point it out.
I would recommend Lawrence’s book though, but for the science and not for the philosophy. Lawrence, of course, will say it’s a book on science. But that only yet again shows his complete ignorance of philosophy; he’s so ignorant of philosophy that he’s scarcely even cognizant that he’s actually philosophizing.
Indonesian jailed for anti-religious FB post.
Now this is just absolutely silly; an Indonesian atheist was jailed for saying God doesn’t exist. Not only that, apparently the guy has also been beaten.
I’m a Christian, but I think anti-blasphemy laws are stupid. I may disagree with everything this man says, but I sure as hell will recognize his right to say it (with a few caveats, of course). Let them say what they want to say, I say.
What’s also particularly revolting are the theist nutbags –yes there are a lot of them– who’ve commented on the issue saying this all served him right. Way to go, douchebags. That’s sure to help the cause!
Debate re: the Cosmological Argument
This is a recent debate I had with an intelligent atheist on the cosmological argument (prime-mover, first cause, etc.).
Gray fonts mine, blue fonts his, and red fonts are what he quotes from my responses.
Posting this debate obviates the need for me to be writing a whole piece on why I think this argument is so powerful as evidence for theism.
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Atheist:
Here’s why an ex nihilo universe is highly plausible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
I understand that it’s really counter-intuitive. It requires some familiarity with quantum physics.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that the watchmaker argument was the least bit convincing to people who took up high school biology. It still only supports the deist non-interventionist God. Not the God of your choice.
(Also, I really can’t help but point out the irony in you being suspicious of “hocus-pocus.”)
P.S. Adding God to the top of the causality chain only begs the question. Who made God? If no one made God, then why can’t it be that no one made the universe?
(This first post of his was a response to someone else. I merely interjected with what would be my first rebuttal, below.)
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Me:
The problem with that version of creation ex nihilo is that it shows Krauss’s complete ignorance of philosophy. Krauss’s “nothing” is a sea of quantum energy still governed by physical laws. That’s hardly a “nothing” in a strict metaphysical sense. Krauss even admitted this much during his debate with Craig.
And to object with a “who made God?” is to seriously miss the point because it assumes the premiss the argument rests on is ‘everything has a cause’.
Not quite.
The premiss the whole argument actually rests on is the one for which we have at least prima facie evidence for, which is: everything that *begins to exist* has a cause, or, everything that’s contingent has a cause.
God isn’t arbitrarily defined as an uncaused entity, actually. The aim of the whole argument, in it’s complete form, and not the form it takes on infidel websites, is to show that there must be a cause of everything which could not in principle be caused because it’s not the sort of thing that in principle can be said to have had a cause.
Ofcourse, the reasons for the above, in all their complexity, won’t be easy to show here –if I even attempted to do so, I’d be doing an injustice to philosophers like al-Ghazali, Aquinas, Leibniz, or Craig– but It nevertheless shows why an objection like the one made above is not a serious objection to the cosmological argument.
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Atheist:
Yes, that is true because, according to quantum physics, even empty space has stuff due to the uncertainty principle. Actually, to suppose a “beginning” for the universe misunderstands what time is and how it “began” itself at the big bang. All notions of causality fly out the window. Asking what came before the big bang is like asking what’s north of north or what is outside space. It is effectively meaningless. Krauss’ “nothing” is simply a something that is not the universe we have today—an environment from which a universe such as ours, with its dimensions, particle energies, and entropies, can spring forth. So, on that we can agree.
A god is an arbitrary starting point because it is a failure of the imagination. It asserts that the universe could not bring itself to being, or could not have existed forever. Huge assumptions that are not even argued for with any evidence whatsoever. It assumes that there must be nothing rather than something. Why shouldn’t we ask, rather, why there could even be nothing? Why is nothingness the default? It prioritizes our own cognitive biases over the actual fact of the matter: that the universe is much stranger than we can ever intuitively understand. And why would we be able to intuitively understand the nature of cosmos? Our brains never had the evolutionary pressure to understand how light can be both a particle and a wave, how electrons are everywhere in an area but only as a function of a probability equation, how light takes every possible path from point A to point B.
It is outside our realm of experience to know just what kinds of things “start” something like the universe, which is not like just anything else that we know, because it itself is everything that there could be. We have never seen anything like a universe, where time is inextricable from space, begin. So, to suggest that since everything we know has a cause, then the universe itself must have a cause rests on a simple failure of the imagination. It’s an argument from incredulity.
At the very very least, the position must remain that we do not know how or why the universe began. And definitely, to add a sentient intelligent being as the solution to the causality chain is no answer at all. (It itself rests on even more assumptions, such as that things such as intelligence and sentience can exist without material such neurons or electrical charges.)
To summarize, the god argument rests on several tenuous assumptions:
- That there is something that is “before” time. (That is, there was a time, t = –1s.)
- That the universe or the laws of nature did not always exist.
- That the universe could not bring itself into being from the pre-existing laws of nature.
- That there must always be nothing instead of something.
- That a god is free from all the existential responsibilities of causality that are unfairly lumped on the universe.
- That the beginning of the universe operated on our intuitions of cause and effect.
- That the universe must have a cause.
- That sentient intelligent gods with thoughts, wills, and desires can exist without material such as neurons or electrical impulses.
And these are just off the top of my head.
And, again, this is just the deist argument. Theists have all their work ahead of them even if we allow them all these assumptions.
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Me:
The “what’s north of the north pole’ objection has become an increasingly popular objection to the cosmological argument. But, ironically, it has already been dispensed with centuries ago.
Aristotle wasn’t even interested in proving God’s existence when he made his argument from change where a potential can only be actualized by something that’s already been actualized until a first cause that’s pure actuality would be inescapable as a starting point.
Aquinas and the old scholastics even assumed that the universe was eternal.
Ofcourse, these versions were made centuries before Einstein developed his theory that gave us an idea of the reality of time.
But, so what? the objection will only hold if the argument claims God created the universe *before* time. Indeed, the word ‘before’ shows a temporal relation, so it really wouldn’t make sense to say “before time”. But God need not be chronologically prior to the act of creating. Intention and action can happen simultaneously; you can be preforming the act of hanging from a tree branch while simultaneously having the intention of not falling. So, the idea that God created the universe while not being chronologically prior to it isn’t at all incoherent. And it sure is more coherent than an infinite regress.
Krauss unruefully tried to circumvent this by saying that mathematicians do in fact deal with infinities, yet this only succeeds in further demonstrating the illogic of his position because an actual infinity is different from the concept of infinity.
God isn’t an “arbitrary starting point” because the cosmological argument is a strict metaphysical demonstration that precludes any scientific considerations. They start with a priori generalizations that science itself must assume to be true for it to work –like, for instance, that there’s an empirical world at all, or that our senses can be trusted. Like I said previously, without getting into the details of the argument, it’s aim is to show that there must be a cause of everything which could not in principle be caused because it’s not the sort of thing that in principle can be said to have had a cause.
Nothing is arbitrarily posited. Everything proceeds from premises that science can scarcely deny without denying its own evidential presuppositions.
And, if everything proves sound, then, yes, theists will still have alot of work ahead of them in demonstrating the truth of their views. But then it would be a debate between different strands of theism, and not whether theism or atheism were true.
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Atheist:
” So, the idea that God created the universe while not being chronologically prior to it isn’t at all incoherent. ” And you can’t replace “God” here with the “laws of physics” why?
“Krauss unruefully tried to circumvent this by saying that mathematicians do in fact deal with infinities, yet this only succeeds in further demonstrating the illogic of his position because an actual infinity is different from the concept of infinity.”
Completely beside the point.
“They start with a priori generalizations that science itself must assume to be true for it to work –like, for instance, that there’s an empirical world at all, or that our senses can be trusted.”
The difference being science actually admits to its limits. If, say, that empiricism were to fail to produce an understandable and coherent picture of our nature, then science must revise itself. That the world is not empirically comprehensible would have implications on science. Suppose that evidence of the supernatural actually rears its fabled head, then science must incorporate this into itself. If it is unable to study the supernatural, then, at the very least, study the how the supernatural interacts with the natural.
But, this is all to fall prey to your attempts to sidetrack the conversation.
“God isn’t an “arbitrary starting point” because the cosmological argument is a strict metaphysical demonstration that precludes any scientific considerations.“
Then it is consigned to meaninglessness. You could very well say the same thing about invisible snow faeries with orange capris.
“Like I said previously, without getting into the details of the argument, it’s aim is to show that there must be a cause of everything which could not in principle be caused because it’s not the sort of thing that in principle can be said to have had a cause. Nothing is arbitrarily posited. “
Yes, “God” is the arbitrary assertion. Why can’t the universe or the laws of physics not be the uncaused cause?
I issue the challenge again, why should there be nothing instead of something?
The advantage of starting with the universe or the laws of physics is you cut off an unnecessary element that explains nothing. We know for a fact that the universe exists (to the extent that the word “fact” retains any meaning). Nobody knows for a fact whether God, a god, or gods exist. Until proven otherwise, I would choose the more parsimonious theory. Especially in the face of the assumption you conveniently ignored: that sentience can exist without matter.
For the sake of convenience, I will post again the list of assumptions that the god hypothesis makes.
- That there is something that is “before” time. (That is, there was a time, t = –1s.) [To be charitable, I'll let you off the hook for this one, but I do not think you understand the implications of this. No "before" time would mean that the laws of nature have always existed in some form without needing gods.]
All the rest, you did not back up at all.
- That the universe or the laws of nature did not always exist.
- That the universe could not bring itself into being from the pre-existing laws of nature.
- That there must always be nothing instead of something.
- That a god is free from all the existential responsibilities of causality that are unfairly lumped on the universe.
- That the beginning of the universe operated on our intuitions of cause and effect.
- That the universe must have a cause.
- That sentient intelligent gods with thoughts, wills, and desires can exist without material such as neurons or electrical impulses.
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Me:
You draw your conclusions from begging the question that naturalism is true. You’re beholden to the idea that propositions for which we cannot have empirical evidence for are meaningless, but that’s a snake that bites itself in the tail because you cannot prove, through empirical evidence, that only propositions we can have empirical evidence for are meaningful. Much of modern philosophy has already ruled out verificationism as a philosophical dead-end precisely because it is self-refuting.
The reason why “the universe or the laws of physics” cannot be it’s own prime-mover is because that’s the very thing that is ruled out by the cosmological argument –which, again, proceeds from premises that even science cannot dismiss without undermining itself. If you think we should do so, then at least some argument as to why we must distrust our modal intuitions is in order.
Let’s take one of its variations; aristotle’s ‘act and potency (although Craig’s Kalam is the most honed in my opinion): ‘Only what is actualized can have the potential to actualize, therefore, an agent that’s pure actuality must have been the starting point’. (this is, ofcourse a very rough summation). Saying the universe is it’s own prime-mover is essentially saying that the universe actualized itself, which violates the whole concept of act and potency, which claims, not through arbitrary armchair-meandering, but through rigorous philosophical and metaphysical demonstration, that that which has potency cannot actualize itself; It must be actualized by something else.
That’s why you cannot just assert that the universe can be its own prime-mover without a philosophical argument that’s sound. Without the ability to infer that conclusion from demonstrably sound premises, you might as well assert anything you wish in its place.
So, I’m not “undercutting” anything that’s already necessarily ruled out by the argument. You can, however, refute the argument, or one of its premises. I would be glad to hear some such.
And on the “north of north pole” thing, what I was saying is that it’s not incoherent for God to create the universe and do so outside of time (not before time). To create would entail an *intention* to do so. And it doesn’t put God chronologically prior to the act of creating –which would mean he was *before time*– because he could have intended to create while simultaneously doing so, as my previous example shows. I am not suggesting that God existed before time, I’m suggesting God exists outside time. I’m familiar with that contention, and the only seeming contradiction is between the intent and the act of creating, because both are seen to have temporal relations, which isn’t necessarily the case.
On your notion that only complex systems can be sentient, this isn’t as obvious as you seem to think. The mind-body problem and mental states like intentionality suggest otherwise. But this is a completely different subject. And it’s a digression that isn’t worth having as it will lead us away from the heart of our discussion. However, we can get to this if you like.
As for your “list of assumptions”, I’m afraid I’m going to have to overlook it for now. But I think I’ve been able to answer the more substantive part of your case.
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Atheist:
I simply subscribe to naturalism because there are no good reasons to believe that the supernatural exists. I also believe that an objective reality exists (that is, I do not think that we are in a computer simulation). The world would be very different if the supernatural were to be a real thing. (Fields such as medicine would cease to be a coherent field of knowledge if prayers, for example, were to disrupt the lawful succession of events of disease progression.) I admit that science has values of empiricism built into it, and ultimately, the only reason why we use such values is because they work. (A reason why I do not think that there is a true distinction between facts and values, but that’s a different thing altogether.) I acknowledge the limits of reason, in that you cannot use logic to prove logic and no amount of evidence can be used to support the idea that using evidence is a good idea. But here’s the thing, the same limits apply to you. Unless you simply want to assert narratives about this god of yours and how you simply take this assumption without making a case for it using evidence because you do not value evidence, reason, or logic, then our conversation is at an impasse. I cannot reason with you at all. Though, I am skeptical that you would be as dismissive of empiricism if someone were to say to you that your car is being towed.
So, if you continue to assert simply that the cosmological argument says that the universe cannot bring itself into being because that’s what the cosmological argument means (“The reason why “the universe or the laws of physics” cannot be it’s own prime-mover is because that’s the very thing that is ruled out by the cosmological argument –which, again, proceeds from premises that even science cannot dismiss without undermining itself.”) then I simply cannot convince you of anything and that’s alright, because this thread has been exceedingly interesting.
“Saying the universe is it’s own prime-mover is essentially saying that the universe actualized itself, which violates the whole concept of act and potency, which claims, not through arbitrary armchair-meandering, but through rigorous philosophical and metaphysical demonstration that that which has potency cannot actualize itself.”
I can see now that it takes a lot of learning, such as what you clearly have, to be so very wrong. Such babbling as this is exactly what physicists like as Hawking complain about regarding philosophy. It has failed to keep up with science and it is drowning in its own ejaculate. “Rigorous philosophical and metaphysical demonstration” indeed. I am almost tempted to believe that this is a Sokal-esque hoax.
“That’s why you cannot just assert that the universe can be its own prime-mover without a philosophical argument that’s sound.”
“Without the ability to infer that conclusion from demonstrably sound premises, you might as well assert anything you wish in its place. “
I completely agree, which is why I’m baffled that you seem to have impressed even yourself. I would hope that it is not sufficient that a system of knowledge be self-consistent to be believable for you. It would need to reflect objective reality. I’m afraid that this might be too much to hope for.
“I’m suggesting God exists outside of time. “
I know, which is why I stopped pressing the point. The fiction of intention and tree branches remains unimpressive, however.
“But I think I’ve been able to answer the more substantive part of your case.”
I think you have, in that I think you have refuted my assumption that people are generally reasonable and amenable to change their mind using evidence.
You may very well be completely right, Miguel, on every single one of your claims. But I could also be right when I say that blue and yellow polkadot-speckled narwhals the size of battleships emerged from the tails of rhinoceroses during lunar eclipses in the Devonian era. This is because narwhals achieve their potential quantum systematics as a result of temporal displacement topologies. Neither of these claims make testable predictions and neither will ever be disproved. Without a single drop of evidence for your case, (all the while abstracting Aristotelian concepts) you would only be right coincidentally. I’d sooner choose to admit that I do not know how the universe came to be than bask in glibness masquerading as a plausible refutation of a thoroughly scientific claim: that the universe brought itself into being.
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Me:
You talk as if empiricism owns logic so that denying the former entails denying the latter. That’s not true. Logic is precisely what I’m using –and what others have used– to show that empiricism, or verificationism, is false. You then assume that when one denies empiricism one is committed to the belief that emprirical evidence doesn’t matter. Again, that’s not true. Empirical evidence does matter, but It’s not all that matters, and that’s where the “logic” points to.
The problem with all of this isn’t that it’s an absolutely bizarre response, though of course it is, but rather that it seems to be a very obvious attempt at creating a strawman just to be able to attack something.
Notice that I never “continue[d] to assert simply that the cosmological argument says that the universe cannot bring itself into being because that’s what the cosmological argument means” without having expended a good effort to show why that is precisely the case. You accuse me as if I merely asserted it. I did not. But I understand that it will be easier for you to pretend that I did.
And to say that all that is just “babbling” seems to me a very thin excuse to avoid having to educate oneself in the subject –as indeed one should if he wants to be taken seriously.
Then you bandy about the implication that I’m inconsiderate of your “evidence”, which you say should suffice to convince a reasonable mind. But where, pray tell, is it?
As for your puerile analogy of “blue and yellow polkadot-speckled narwhals the size of battleships”, I’ll take it seriously once you show how it can have the same explanatory power a God hypothesis gives, while still having some semblance of being non adhoc. Your equating this babyish mockery to the ideas of Aristotle and the old scholastics is telling of your ignorance of philosophy, and it manifests a deep flaw in the way you think. You think philosophy is all “babble”. The problem is, the God question is a philosophical one.
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Atheist:
“You then assume that when one denies empiricism one is committed to the belief that emprirical evidence doesn’t matter. Again, that’s not true. Empirical evidence does matter, but It’s not all that matters, and that’s where the “logic” points to.”
I don’t see anywhere where I claimed this. In fact, I even conceded to the limitations of empiricism.
“Notice that I never “continue[d] to assert simply that the cosmological argument says that the universe cannot bring itself into being because that’s what the cosmological argument means” without having expended a good effort to show why that is precisely the case. “
Here is exactly where you did this: “The reason why “the universe or the laws of physics” cannot be it’s own prime-mover is because that’s the very thing that is ruled out by the cosmological argument –which, again, proceeds from premises that even science cannot dismiss without undermining itself.” Premises, I might add, that you never presented.
“And to say that all that is just “babbling” seems to me a very thin excuse to avoid having to educate oneself in the subject –as indeed one should if he’s to be taken seriously. “
I’m sorry if all this talk of potency and whatnot strikes me as nonsense.
“You think philosophy is all “babble”.”
I find nowhere in did I say that all philosophy is babble. Maybe yours is, but certainly not all.
“The problem is, the God question is a philosophical one.”
I must insist that it is scientific as the god hypothesis (at least, the theist variant) makes testable predictions. It makes predictions about the nature of medicine, biology, and physics. The deist variant is one of a failure of imagination, still.
“The you bandy about the implication that I’m inconsiderate of your “evidence”, which you say should suffice to convince a reasonable mind.”
On the contrary, I assert that you have no evidence for your claims, not that I particularly have evidence for mine. You may have noticed that I remain in the position that “I do not know how the universe came to be than bask in glibness masquerading as a plausible refutation of a thoroughly scientific claim: that the universe brought itself into being.” I avoid any claims to know how the universe began, save that the god hypothesis is unimpressive at best and useless at worst.
“I’ll take it seriously once you show how it can have the same explanatory power a God hypothesis can have while still having some semblance of being non adhoc. “
And what is the power of the god hypothesis? That something intelligent and sentient must have created the universe? That requires even more explaining. It’s much simpler to presume that the universe (or its prerequisites that have been proposed by Krauss, Penrose, and Hawking) must have always been here in some form. No need to posit additional attributes to the first cause such as intelligence or sentience.
My challenge remains unsatisfied: why should there be nothing rather than something?
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Me:
I’m not saying their should be nothing rather than something, I’m saying there should be a prime-mover, or an uncaused cause, and that the cosmological argument rules out the universe itself, or whatever physical laws, as a candidate.
I’m also saying that the cosmological argument doesn’t posit a God out of convenience. It’s the opposite. Aristotle’s act and potency argument, where most of the variations of the CA had been derived, wasn’t even meant to show the existence of a God. But that’s where it led to. The cosmological argument leads to theism, it doesn’t start from it.
The God question is a purely philosophical one, because the scientific method needs to presuppose naturalism to work. You cannot know anything about the immaterial if you’re employing a method that already presupposes it does not exist. You’re cutting the branch on which you sit and thinking yourself clever while doing so.
I won’t go to back to each of your points. We both won’t be persuading the other. But that’s just as well, because we both don’t seek to.
Thanks for this exchange.
Short response to a stupid rebuttal (made by an ostensibly intelligent guy)
Some guy objected to the argument for God’s existence from first cause principles –otherwise known as the cosmological argument– with a video of Physicist Lawrence Krauss explaining a philosophically bankrupt version of a creation ex nihilo event, while bolstering it with the statement “If everything has a cause, then what caused God? [huh? huh? I got you now!]“
The amusing thing is that people who make this objection, and who are sufficiently well-versed in philosophy of religion –as indeed they must be if anyone’s obliged take them seriously on such issues– seem to think that this most obvious retort was somehow overlooked by philosophical giants like Leibniz, Aquinas and Craig –to name a few of its more notable defenders.
To disabuse his mind of the folly of his thinking, I responded tersely with:
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The problem with that version of creation ex nihilo is that it shows Krauss’s complete ignorance of philosophy. Krauss’s “nothing” is a sea of quantum energy still governed by physical laws. That’s hardly a “nothing” in a strict metaphysical sense. Krauss even admitted this much during his debate with Craig.
And to object with a “who made God?” is to seriously miss the point because it assumes the premiss the argument rests on is ‘everything has a cause’.
Not quite.
The premiss the whole argument actually rests on is the one for which we have at least prima facie evidence for, which is: everything that *begins to exist* has a cause, or, everything that’s contingent has a cause.
God isn’t arbitrarily defined as an uncaused entity, actually. The aim of the whole argument, in it’s complete form, and not the form it takes on infidel websites, is to show that there must be a cause of everything which could not in principle be caused because it’s not the sort of thing that in principle can be said to have had a cause.
Ofcourse, the reasons for the above, in all their complexity, won’t be easy to show here (at the comment box) –if I even attempted to do so, I’d be doing an injustice to philosophers like al-Ghazali, Aquinas, Leibniz, or Craig– but It nevertheless shows why an objection like the one made above is not a serious objection to the cosmological argument.
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Morality, An Illusion On Naturalistic Atheism.
Mr. Grayling performs some interesting contortions when asked the question: ”Can ethics be derived from natural-selection?”
No it can’t. Unless, by “ethics” you only mean behaviours that have adaptive quality –like, say, eating or reproducing. In any case, ethics on naturalism will simply be dependent on adaptive pressures and will thus have no fixed ontological base. If it were adaptive, say, to behead every first-born, then we will likely be be-heading every first-born, and be thinking it moral.
This is the problem with basing “ethics” on evolution by natural selection. What we think are moral acts are really just acts that are on average evolutionarily advantageous; they’re socio-biological spin-offs that are really amoral.
Philosopher John Hicks’s thought experiment of an ant suddenly endowed with knowledge of biological pressures makes my point quite nicely. The ant feels the pressure to self-immolate for the colony, but realizes it’s an illusion wrought into him by natural-selection for the survival of the colony. Why shouldn’t he fight-off this illusion? Surely, his own life is of more value to him than the colony’s? Surely, if nature is amoral, then nothing can be objectively immoral. Why then should he be motivated to follow through with the illusion and sacrifice his life, given the act bears no objective moral worth?
The corollary to holding to an evolution-based ethic will be direful. For instance, if this were true, then the love you have for your child is just an illusion. You, like everyone else, evolved to have such illusory feelings because it makes the species evolutionarily successful in the long haul.
DNA neither knows nor cares, as Richard Dawkins says in his book ‘The God Delusion’. It simply is. And we dance to its music.
Ofcourse, Mr Grayling knows all this. But he nevertheless dances around the question like a monkey because the short answer that’s based on the truth he espouses will be a pill too bitter to swallow.
I Authored 30 Books, So I Must Be Right!
If the smart answer makes you look wrong, then give the stupid one. This is what Mr. Grayling, in his response to a questioner, opted for.
He was asked:
“Why would anyone wish to believe that he or she is a combination of a body and a disembodied mind or soul? “
And this was his response:
“One should never underestimate human ingenuity in search of support for implausible views. The idea that human beings (not, usually, dogs or newts) consist of a body and a mind or soul is older than history, but the reasons for the belief are not empirical. Dualists remain in the majority in today’s world, if only because almost all religions involve belief in an afterlife. There are even a few philosophers who are dualists, protecting the reputation of their profession to provide representatives of every view, mad or sane, invented by mankind.”
In other words, for a lot of people, they’d rather believe souls exist because it validates their theological convictions.
That’s from a philosopher who has authored 30 books.
He then takes a jab at theists in the subsequent paragraph –nevermind that it neither demonstrates his case nor does it have anything to do with the question being asked– with this line:
“[R]eligions promote belief in an afterlife variously to keep control of people with the prospect of posthumous reward and punishment, simultaneously solving the problem of religion’s inefficacies in this life (petitioning the gods so rarely works; the bad seem to flourish; promising a just afterlife pre-empts disaffection); and so on.”
Which nicely evidences what I’ve been suspecting all along about these ”brights”; to them, there’s no sense in letting an opportunity to take pot-shots at religion go to waste.
What’s incredible is that Mr. Grayling very well knows the answer he gave isn’t the case. If he was sincere in it, then it’s reasonable to conclude he was a product of a very parochial education. Since it can’t possibly be that, I’m thinking he’s employing some “human ingenuity in search of support for implausible views.”
The real reason why people believe in some form of dualism or another (or believe in a soul, if you prefer) is because of the mind-body problem. There cannot be a materialistic account of properties that are exclusive to the mind. Intentionality, for instance, is a feature of the mind for which a materialistic account is impossible. Brain processes, unlike thoughts and intentions, are devoid of any meaning. It’s impossible to establish causal linkages between an electro-chemical event in the brain and the thought or intentionality itself. And the only way to get around this rut is to be an eliminativist –which is just a more sophisticated term for people who don’t believe mental- states like intentionality are real. Needless to say, eliminative materialism is incoherent and self-refuting since people holding this view will scarcely be able to show, through their own mental states, that mental states aren’t real.
There is a mind-body problem. And that’s what undergirds dualism.
Ofcourse, Mr. Grayling, towards the last part of his response, acknowledges this by saying:
“More reflective prompts to dualism turn on considerations about the essentially different nature of material and mental phenomena..” [blah blah blah].
But in doing so, puts the cart before the horse. Because it is more logically the case that the philosophical reflections seed the belief (“Mind-body problem? Hmmm.. Maybe souls exist!”) and not the other way around (“Well, I really have to believe in souls or I’ll go to hell, so what philosophical mumbo-jumbo can I possibly contrive?!”)
Funny thing that “human ingenuity” is, eh? Mr. Grayling?
R.I.P Christopher Hitchens.
I scarcely ever agreed with the man –except with his stance on abortion, which was interestingly in opposition to his fellow anti-theists. I have always, however, thoroughly enjoyed his prose and other-worldly rhetorical gifts that, even when wrong, never once felt boorish and dull in the way the other horsemen were prone to.
To be honest, I was always somewhat ambivalent about the Hitch’s skewering of religion; one part of me hated him while the other part had a pleasurable frisson by the witness of such formidable intelligence and indefatigable wit.
One thing can be certain; Mr. Hitchens’s mastery of the art of prose will surely be missed by anyone who values the language.
There will never be another Christopher Hitchens. He was always combative, often sneering and bellicose, eviscerating his opponents with remarkable style, humor and wit. And, although he was often wrong, he at least had his heart in the right place.
May his family be at peace, and may God have mercy on his soul.
What’s The Meaning Of Life?
Will Wilkinson, in his article, expresses his misgivings about the idea that life is absurd without God.
He writes:
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“[W]hat do you do with folks like me who are sure that life has meaning without having any supernatural beliefs at all–who think the question of the meaningfulness of life is logically independent of questions about the existence or nonexistence of supernatural stuff.”
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Well, that’s all well and fine. Whatever meaning you’ve found for yourself, as you really ought to know by now, is subjective and ultimately meaningless. Whatever meaning you can ascribe to your life, absent a transcendent meaning-giver –otherwise known as God– will have no epistemic difference from, say, what the next chap subjectively feels is the meaning of his life. The meaning of your life, then, is really just your opinion. That’s fine.
If to some random NBA athlete, the meaning of life is to be as good as Michael Jordan, that’s fine. If to Obama, the meaning of life is to be the best president in the history of the United States, that’s fine. If to Dahmer, the meaning of life is to sodomize the corpses of young boys, that’s fine. Certainly, if your point is that life can have meaning absent God, then you’re right. It can. Once you’ve beaten MJ, and have become the best president the world has ever know, what’s next? A billion dollars would be nice. Maybe that can be the next meaning of life to you; to have a billion dollars. Or, hey, helping the needy might make you feel important and increase your sense of self-worth. Maybe that can give meaning to your life. Awesome.
You can see where this is going.
It’s pretty clear that absent God, people merely jump from one subjective meaning to the next to avoid the stark reality of an ultimately meaningless existence.
The irony is that, in the atheist’s attempt to kill God, who he feels represses and subjugates, he only succeeds in killing himself; In his attempt to be free from the one he says enslaves, he imprisons himself.
Whining About Facebook Whiners.
One thing about facebook that is particularly annoying is when people post –without the slightest bit of hesitation– short and tediously hortatory tirades about things nobody really cares about. Sure, some people will click the ‘like’ button, or will offer a cheerleading comment or two, egging for you to keep going. But, really, for the most part, nobody cares. Nobody cares about that stranger for whom your mini-diatribe was dedicated, and for what he did — which you’ve laboriously laid out in detail– that’s irked you so much.
You’ve got to be a special kind of narcissist to truly believe anyone actually gives two turds about the fleeting and inconsequential banalities that annoy you during the day. Any sufficiently civilized individual isn’t going to be bobbing his head in approval over your pompous and sermonizing verbal attacks on people who aren’t in the least bit interesting insofar as they’re existence isn’t of any considerable import to the lives of anyone else.
I’m reminded of this one time when a friend (no longer in my friends list) wrote, as her status update, a substantially long invective about some cash registrar who kept asking her questions about her credit card. I was tempted to respond with “cry me a frigging river.” The only thing she was able to achieve with that snotty castigation is a reduced estimation of her by those friends of hers who fell at the higher end of the intelligence bell curve. If you have to whine about someone, or about how bad you *felt* about some situation, you could at least be pithy about it.
What’s worse than the facebook whiner is the incessant facebook whiner. Really, are you so depressed and is your life so mundane that you have to compensate by whining about everything and be telling everyone about it? That peevish snivelling, as you really ought to know, is only succeeding in making you look like a sanctimonious prick who needs to be unfriended like the conspicuous, pus-filled anal wart that you are.
What’s worse than an incessant facebook whiner? The grammatically challenged, incessant facebook whiner. Seriously, educate yourself before making mindless declamations. The fact that your harangue is a bit more difficult to understand makes it, to that slight extent, more annoying. Although it may on occasion give people a good laugh at your expense, if done too much, it will take everything they have not to pepper spray you in the face.
Bottomline: if it’s anything that will not profit anyone in any conceivable way, then it’s likely better left unsaid.
(I know, this is also a diatribe. But this is also a blog, so it doesn’t count. So shut up.)
You Is So Smart. Really, You Is.
Dec 9
Posted by Miguel
One commenter responded to my last post about the absurdity of a life without God with this lengthy drivel:
My response:
Well, life would indeed seem “utterly meaningless” on theism if your childish and insanely anthropomorphic rendition of the concept of God and heaven were true. And, no, the scientific jargon you’ve liberally bandied about will scarcely hide the stench of your ignorance. So the next time you try to be irritatingly pedantic, you could least try doing so more competently.
What’s amusing about a lot of atheists nowadays is that they keep showing a complete failure to understand Christianity –something they mock and jeer at with much alacrity–while claiming they’ve been able to refute it. Some notable ones even go so far as to call philosophy of religion a “sophisticated language game” to avoid having to do the rather tedious work of educating oneself in it. “What? Aquinas’s Summa Theologica says something about that? No matter! Just say Aquinas was dumb for having believed in some omnipotent sky-daddy!” As if we haven’t seen such a strategy exhausted ad nauseum.
In any case, your kilometric diatribe only further demonstrates my point about life being absurd on atheism. Unless, ofcourse, you’ll be arguing that all those “uncountable trillions of years” of blind indifference actually had deep existential implications by your account. If that’s the case, don’t bother. You’re welcome to espouse such a ludicrous fantasy.
Posted in apologetics, philosophy
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