Well I was using the vocabulary provided my those who speculate along these lines. I’m not uncomfortable with the idea of an Infinite Regress. That it’s considered logically incoherent makes me no nevermind. I’m perfectly willing to leave the “Necessary Being” to the Thomists.
Is our human definition of being and human logic capable of ruling out the possibility of a “necessary being” that is Personal in a manner that is quite beyond our understanding of petty human personalities?
I don’t think anything I’ve said disproves that the necessary being might be personal.
It is rather that,
a) I’m not at all convinced that the later proofs that the first thing is personal work–they are much much more difficult.
b) The idea of a necessary and free being, or equally of a necessary being that is aware of contingent matters of fact, quickly leads to apparent contradictions. (It may be simply that my mind is not sufficiently subtle to reconcile those apparent contradictions, but I have to work with what I’ve got.)
c) I see no evidence of a personal god (he has never made any clear effort to be in touch with me, for example).
Is it possible that the first thing is indeed personal but difficult for my feeble mind to comprehend and just not very concerned with me? Absolutely. I won’t rule that out absolutely. But when I take it all together, I’m not optimistic.
Isn’t an infinite regression no less a suggestion of necessity?
Well by Infinite Regress I mean contingency all down the line and all up the line. There would be no necessary being on any level. This idea gives philosophers vertigo but to me that’s an argument in its favor. And it might be true on a functional level because any necessary being might be beyond our ability to perceive it.
But none of these philosophers are interested in empiricism. It would be vulgar to ask for evidence.
You should first offer proof that the universe was created before the offer of proof that there was a Creator of the Universe.
Don’t jump the gun.
The Pearl of Great Price in the book of Moses written by Joseph Smith explains that all things existed as spiritual before becoming natural. The natural creation is that written in Genesis. Moses 3:5
The Natural Creation.
Input: Spiritual existence
Function: creation
Output: Natural existence.
For there to be an output there must be an input. Function logic.
You should first offer proof that the universe was created before the offer of proof that there was a Creator of the Universe.
To show one is to show the other, because they very notion of being created implies some creator: the concepts are correlative.
If that such a state of Absolute Nothingless can exist and something can become from nothing.
That does not parse.
That is it!
It’s not supposed to parse because the idea (absolute nothingness) itself cannot parse. It is a Conditional (if) and Dependent clause with incomplete aspect as a Incomprehensible Incomplete Thought.
If that such a state of Absolute Nothingless can exist and something can become from nothing.
Stephen, are you thinking of an infinite regression in time backward and an infinite progression of time forward, ie, an eternal universe? Wouldn’t that suggest a necessarily eternal existence of the universe? If the universe could start or cease to cease to exist, that would be a contingent existence. So are thinking of a contingent universe that could begin or cease to exist but nonetheless did not begin to exist and will not cease to exist. So much for your determinism, I guess?.
I sing of the Infinite Regress of causes, contingent all, with no ultimate “ground”, a universe without a floor or a ceiling. Existence is endless and nothingness is impossible. We had a nice discussion a while back about contingency and determinism. The universe is contingent but deterministic. These are not mutually exclusive categories.
On a related matter I note that people who postulate a First Cause seem to have no problem with Infinite Progress, defined as some form of perpetual existence. Once you acknowledge an Ultimate Ground they have no problem with endless extension. But how is Infinite Progress any less absurd than Infinite Regress? It seems to me on a logical basis, if you grant that all things had a beginning, then they must have an end. So the Christian promise of Eternal Life is by no means guaranteed.
I’m not sure how it’s possible to argue that personality is not contingent. Anyone care to have a go?
I’m not sure which later proofs you’re referring to, perhaps Thomas’ Fourth Way?
If we are framing this in terms of The STh, I’m thinking of the material he covers in Ia qq14-24. But yes, those proofs do depend heavily on the conclusions of the 4th and 5th ways (which are themselves much more difficult).
What’s wrong with contradictions, when contemplating the possibility of something beyond our comprehension?
I reject the possibility of both parts of a genuine contradiction obtaining–that way lies madness.
I am willing to countenance a merely apparent contradiction, and the apparent contradiction is due to the feebleness of my mind. But to do that, I want to have bloody good reason to think each side of the contradiction is true, and what I’d really like is a rigorous proof that the thing I am contemplating is necessarily inscrutable.
Here is how I used to think: Free will is necessarily inscrutable even in me (yet I’m certain I have it). Therefore, I should not expect to comprehend the divine free will. But once I gave up theism and a belief in a good and just God, I realized I didn’t have any reason to accept libertarian free will rather than compatiblism (compatiblism explains nicely my experience of freedom, while also avoiding positing something contradictory or otherwise inscrutable).
So basically I’m willing to bite the bullet and say something is necessarily incomprehensible and necessarily mysterious, but that is a last option that I will accept only if cornered into it by overwhelming evidence. So if you show me that there really is a God who is necessarily beyond my comprehension, I will consider it. But in general, if I find a clear contradiction, I take it as a pretty decisive indication of falsity (though always with the caveat that, because of the limitation of my understanding, the contradiction may, in the final analysis, not be quite as clear as I think it seems to me).
This is a matter of personal experience, which can be variously interpreted, but does not amount to evidence in any case.
True. It does not prove that there is not a personal God who–for some reason–hides himself. (Though I do think it is evidence against the God of Christianity–an all loving Father.) If you want to call me an agnostic (with respect to a personal god) you could. I would, however, probably make the point Stephen has elsewhere made: At some point we have to accept (if provisionally) the most likely thesis. And the thesis that there is a personal god, given the total lack of evidence, seems to violate Ockham’s Razor.
Thus I acknowledge the possibility of a personal God, while denying the Christian depiction of that God and inclining towards the view that such a god does not exist. Moreover, if he does exist, given his evident disinterest in being known, I am confident that it makes no practical difference to me or my life. I am, at least, a practical atheist.
I should also add that I am a bit gunshy of appeals to intellectual humility.
As a Catholic, I was convinced that faith and reason cannot contradict, so while I paid lip service to the principle that a potential convert should examine the religion to be sure there were no contradictions, and that any real contradiction would disprove the faith, I also was convinced that any apparent contradiction between faith and reason was specious.
If I encountered an apparent contradiction, I would tie myself in knots to show it needn’t be a contradiction. If I couldn’t find even an implausible solution, I would simply reserve judgement–I am not smart enough to contradict God (or the the long tradition of Catholic intellectuals). I had been bothered by the fact that even though I was committed to the position that any genuine contradiction would decisively disprove the faith, that I couldn’t come up with even a hypothetical contradiction that I wouldn’t be prepared to explain away or, if need be, simply swallow as beyond my ken. From my perspective, the faith was effectively unfalsifiable.
My turning point was when I realized I had never had adequate evidence to accept the faith in the first place, the faith that I had been tying myself in knots to reconcile to reason. The burden of proof had been reversed: Someone had to prove the faith was false to change my mind (which given my faith commitment, would be impossible). I had never really proven that the faith was true or even likely.
The point, I suppose, is that your (Robert’s) most recent reply (why shouldn’t we expect contradictions, God’s not manifesting himself to you don’t prove he isn’t personal), touched that wound. Sure, we can leave open the bare possibility of a personal God, but where is evidence that would make it more than an outside chance? Where is the evidence that would even make it sufficiently plausible to consider seriously?
people who postulate a First Cause seem to have no problem with Infinite Progress, defined as some form of perpetual existence. Once you acknowledge an Ultimate Ground they have no problem with endless extension. But how is Infinite Progress any less absurd than Infinite Regress?
It is not simply infinite extension (either in time or space) that is the problem. It is the process of infinitely kicking the explanatory can down the road (never getting closer to an actual explanation) while claiming that the process of always pushing the problem back one more step counts as an explanation. It is essentially a circular argument unrolled.
Think of the famous story about the woman saying the world is held up by a turtle. “It’s turtles all the way down” never explains why everything isn’t falling. The very fact that the explanation turns into an infinite regress means no step of the series explains anything, and no step brings you any closer to the explanation you are offering the infinite series to give.
This is one area where the Thomistic tradition is really well developed. Aquinas thought (in defense of Aristotle) that there was no philosophical proof that the created world was not eternal–it is only by faith we know the world had a beginning in time. Some infinite series are intelligible (like infinite generations of man). But he did think that a per se ordered causal series could not extend to infinity.
Once you have one turtle that is fixed and supported and not in free fall, there is no logical reason you couldn’t stack up more even to infinity. But you need that first one if you intend to explain why they are not all falling.
Comment 165, 166, 169
Before we say the Electric Universe is less than accurate due to the repulsion objection, we have to know about Hendrik Casimir.
Watch this clip I made. So, I’m removing the label of pseudo-science at this point on the question of The Electric Universe.
The investigator Ashton Forbes gave scientific reason to knock this out.
If you think, otherwise, let us know, but repulsion has been debunked.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Very sorry, that wasn’t my point at all. . . .
Sorry for misunderstanding. Your correction makes sense.
there’s a fine line between the mystic and the madman.
By both training and temperament, I try hard to stay on the side of sanity. If I were tempted to madness, it would be less the appeal of mysticism and more the proximity of genius to madness that might lure me.
The types of contradictions I’m talking about here are thought of at most to merely point toward the possibility of a higher transcendent truth that we are not capable of grasping. . . . this is a necessary step in science as well as in theology.
I am open to it. But I won’t embrace it as actual until I am forced to.
And I want to be clear that my aversion is not just to things I happen not to understand or find baffling and unintuitive, but to things that I can’t understand because they look strictly contradictory. Relativity bends my mind, but I’m happy to accept it because–as surprising as it is–it is coherent. QM bends my mind even more, but I’m not yet convinced it entails contradictions (if it didn’t have so much experimental evidence backing it, I would probably be quicker to write it off as contradictory; but because it does, I’ve been willing to reexamine my own assumptions and categories).
dans la nuit métaphysique où tous les chats sont gris
Truth be told, I’ve grown rather hostile to metaphysics. The early analytics have secured their hold on my thinking. I guess I should turn in my Thomist card.
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