I think that Bart’s post is essentially saying (I’m distilling and summarizing) that we cannot know if God exists or not, and that we would be presumptuous if we thought we could. I agree with that proposition. But what that means to me is that agnosticism makes more sense over atheism. Now if someone says, OK but I personally don’t believe in God, to me that is a statement of faith. To me that is no different that someone making a statement of belief and saying “I believe in God.” It’s just the opposite proposition.
On the issue of consciousness, as Bart said, many books have been written about it, and many of the books disagree. To state that consciousness is derived solely through chemical or biological means is, to me, another statement of faith. If someone said that consciousness is derived from God, that to me would be another statement of faith.
Maybe it’s harder to be an agnostic. It can be harder living with uncertainty.
Robert said
Stephen also does not claim certainty.
It’s ok Robert. I’m used to it. It doesn’t matter how often or how slowly I explain. I’ve achieved a sort of weary hilarity when I’m accused of having faith because I don’t believe in something for which there is no evidence.
I was reading Angelus Silesius (Johann Scheffler) today, from his The Cherubinic Wanderer , and came upon this striking passage purely by coincidence –
The Unknowable God
One knows not what God is. Not spirit and not light,
Not one, truth, unity, not what we call divine.
Not reason and not wisdom, not goodness, love, or will,
No thing, no-no thing either, not being or concern.
He is what I or you, what any other creature
Has never come to know before we were created.
Hi. I’ve just joined the forum. Huge fan of Bart’s but limited to watching his lectures and debates until recently! On the atheism agnosticism subject I was on the Sam Harris chat room many years ago discussing this very question, where I was informed that agnosticism is not really a coherent position. You can be a weak agnostic i.e. ‘there could be something out there but I don’t know’ or a strong agnostic who will never be satisfied without indisputable evidence. The weak agnostic is really indistinguishable from a Deist and the strong agnostic is really indistinguishable from an atheist. At least that’s my memory of the discussion but as I say it was many years ago. I describe myself as a ‘spiritual atheist’, that is to say I have experience of other (don’t want to say higher) states of consciousness but that doesn’t prove anything and it doesn’t make me want to rush into the nearest religion.
Robert said
mnels said
Thanks, glad to be on the forums. …Regarding definitions, classical theists argue that it can be established that an all-powerful, utterly simple, non-composite, uncaused being necessarily exists. Since these properties are commonly ascribed to God, it is reasonable to hold that if the prime-mover exists, and the prime-move necessarily has these properties, then God exists. You are right to say that God cannot be comprehensively defined, but that does mean that nothing whatsoever can be known about God.
This could be an interesting discussion!
So my previous question: Do you prove that something exists, but you don’t know what that something is?
Would Thomas merely say that God cannot be comprehensively defined or simply that he cannot be defined? I tend to think the latter, but I’m happy to be corrected. For him, I think, all knowledge or language about God is analogical, ie, analogies, metaphorical, poetic in the classical sense of the word. Do you agree or am I going too far in appropriating classical Thomism for my own purposes? Would Thomas agree with you and other classical theists that God is ‘a being’, as you say above.
Without getting into a discussion about what it means to “define” as opposed to “describe”, we can say that Aquinas describes God as being itself, who has the properties that I mentioned above. Note that God is not merely “a being” among many, but simply is being. Aquinas does think we can know a fair amount about God from reason alone, but obviously not everything. So if you take definition to mean a “comprehensive description” than, no, classical theists don’t think we can have that.
Stephen said
mnels wroteRegarding definitions, classical theists argue that it can be established that an all-powerful, utterly simple, non-composite, uncaused being necessarily exists. Since these properties are commonly ascribed to God, it is reasonable to hold that if the prime-mover exists, and the prime-move necessarily has these properties, then God exists. You are right to say that God cannot be comprehensively defined, but that does mean that nothing whatsoever can be known about God.
My question is, does it really makes sense to refer to the concept of “god” apart from the actual religious traditions and the gods they worship in those traditions? The abstract philosopher’s god seems rather thin gruel.
It makes sense, insofar as it is logically coherent to believe in the God of the philosophers. You are right in that it isn’t especially meaningful to believe only this. And most classical theists do subscribe to some religion which fleshes out the picture, usually Christianity but sometimes some other monotheistic religion.
The real challenge, if the philosopher’s God can be established, is to determine what else we can know about God besides these properties. Does God care about humans, listen to prayers, offer an afterlife, establish moral guidelines, or enlist people (Jesus, saints etc.) to do things on the earth? Some of these things, none of them?
This requires moving beyond philosophy of religion to fields like history, archeology, biblical studies, theology, ethics etc. to try to figure it out. But the abstractions do form an important background and should critically inform these tasks. For example: the fact that God must be singular right away dismisses various Greek religions that posit multiple Gods ruling over different departments.
In short, the proper order for discussing religion would go something like 1. metaphysics 2. arguments for the philosopher’s God 3. arguments for any particular religion
If you are interested in a defense of this position, philosopher Edward Feser describes this in more detail in ** you do not have permission to see this link ** blog post.
-Michael
B) Having conducted a extraordinarily thoughtful and effortful search, we have found no evidence that X exists.
Therefore:
C) It is unlikely that X exists.
In most real world scenarios, we implicitly accept this series of inferences around evidence and probability. Try substituting for X anything typical that we have no evidence for, say “a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow” or “at least one happy Mets fan”.
As an agnostic, I find it intriguing when this inferential pattern is questioned with respect to X = God, because the discussion then starts to get to the heart of what kinds of justificatory frameworks underlie rational (inferential) beliefs. If we lack evidence for X, why is that lack not also evidence against X? Is it that for most Xs, the stakes are low, but the stakes are too high for X = God? Or is it that it’s not the case that there’s no evidence, but that the evidence is equivocal? Or is it that a lack of evidence for something is also indistinguishable from a lack of epistemic access to said thing? Or…?
Hngerhman said
Very interesting! How might a classical theist distinguish this concept of God from the concept of “everything that exists, taken together as a totality”?
The position you describe in quotes looks like a variant of pantheism, which holds that God is simply everything together. Some people posit that maybe the universe itself is God. Classical theists don’t hold this view for two reasons: 1. Classical theism holds that God is, among other things, immaterial, unchangeable, and non-composite. The universe, by contrast is material, undergoes change, and is composed of parts. 2. Even if you include God and the universe in the word “everything”, classical theists still wouldn’t subscribe to the view that God = everything, since God is distinct from the material things he creates.
A) When there is a marked lack of evidence for something in the face of an extraordinarily thoughtful and effortful search for that thing, it is unlikely that said thing exists.
B) Having conducted a extraordinarily thoughtful and effortful search, we have found no evidence that X exists.
Therefore:C) It is unlikely that X exists.
I would probably challenge premise A here. It may be that humans lack the technology or brainpower to understand something at that moment in history. If you scanned the beach for hours using a metal detector and determined after a thoughtful search that “cardboard does not exist on this beach”, it wouldn’t show that cardboard is unlikely to exist, only that the tool you were using was not appropriate to the task. The fact that scientific approaches don’t show evidence of God (and people like Francis Collins would probably challenge this) does not mean that God is unlikely to exist, only that a different approach (e.g. philosophy of religion) is the better way to go.
How does / can one properly distinguish “being itself” from the property of existence? It seemingly runs precariously close to tautology if one seeks to underpin the existence of X by reference to X as defined as existence itself.
Hngerhman said
It seemingly runs precariously close to tautology if one seeks to underpin the existence of X by reference to X as defined as existence itself.
Not precariously close, it is tautology. And that’s the problem with every religious ‘proof’. William Lane Craig, memorably, in debate with Bart: ‘Standard historical analysis of the Bible requires the presumption of atheism. But if you allow for the existence of God, then the resurrection of Jesus from the dead becomes the most likely conclusion from the evidence.’
Has anyone mentioned Mandelbrot yet? Highly complex, even infinitely complex, structures arise from very simple algorithms. I’m not saying god (i.e. the prime cause) is a simple algorithm because you still have the question of how the algorithm got there. But investigation of an infinitely complex structure (the universe, life on earth) is unlikely to reveal the simple algorithm at the root of it. That could be one reason why there’s no evidence for the existence of god.
Hngerhman said
Thanks mnels!I recently went on a David Bentley Hart kick, and the concept of God as “being itself” is a markedly frequent leitmotif in his popular works. A razor sharp intellect, he believes that this definition does a lot of philosophical work and throws it around like we actually know what we mean when we say it. I for one do not, probably on account of my razor being rather dull.
How does / can one properly distinguish “being itself” from the property of existence? It seemingly runs precariously close to tautology if one seeks to underpin the existence of X by reference to X as defined as existence itself.And it also seemingly runs precariously close to X as, in some real sense, either everything or nothing. In a classical theist’s ontology, is God itself an entity? The number of things that exist – would it be the same, or one fewer, or zero, if one were to posit God does not exist? I know this second question may seem trivial, but it gets at what we really mean by “being itself”.NB – I will come back on the inferential issue – I like your framing.
Let me start my mentioning that most of what I know is from three people: Ed Feser, Brian Davies, and Josh Rasmussen. Ed has a great blog: edwardfeser.blogspot.com and you can ask questions in the comment section, and usually somebody (more knowledgeable than me) will answer. I haven’t read much of DBH because, as you suggested, he is incredibly smart and difficult to understand.
But I would venture to guess that Hart is agreeing with Aquinas (even though Hart is not himself a Thomist) in thinking that God’s essence is to exist. Whereas for contingent things, like us, it is not our essence to exist. We happen to exist, but we could just as easily not have. Where as God, as being itself, could not have failed to exist: it is his essence to exist.
This concept is important for some arguments for God, like Feser’s “Thomistic Proof.” But it alone is not an argument. That is, he isn’t arguing that: Being exists, God is being, Therefore God exists. That, of course is a weak (though valid) argument. Rather, given that contingent things exist, what accounts for them existing as opposed to not? At rock bottom, there must be some entity that must necessarily exist, and that we will call the first-cause or God. The question then becomes: what properties does the first-cause have? Aquinas talks about this second question in the summa, and Feser has a chapter in his book about these “divine attributes.”
I’ll just add that Dirk’s response isn’t relevant here: Craig was simply pointing out that depending on whether you’re a theist or atheist, it will affect the probability one assigns to historical events. He was not arguing for God’s existence in that debate. Moreover, Craig isn’t a classical theist so I’m not really concerned with his arguments here.
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