18 posts tagged “theism”

These are a couple of articles I found thanks to Victor Reppert at Dangerous Idea.  I haven't read them yet as what little focus I have is directed elsewhere this week, however, I am eager to have the time to sit down and read them thoughtfully.

Beauty, Providence and the Biophilia Hypothesis (aka Argument from Beauty) by Mark Wynn (75k pdf)
On the Truth of Beauty by Sonia Sikka (120k pdf)

These along with several other promising links are posted at the Calvin College Resource Library.

Posting here as a reminder to myself to read.

I was surprised to see these points made by an atheist in a blog post elsewhere. 

1. Having an explanation does not make your position superior to that of those who may lack one.
2. Not being able to explain a phenomenon doesn't preclude you from legitimately assuming the reliability of that phenomenon
3. Assuming the reliability of a phenomenon without being able to 'account for' it does not mean that you implicitly accept the world view of people claiming that theirs is the only explanation of that phenomenon.
4. The failure of a person to explain a phenomenon doesn't invalidate their world view or render it inconsistent.
5. Acknowledging that you don't have an answer is better than making things up.

These points were made in attempt to refute presuppositionalism, a position for which I have no opinion. My question is does the author offer the same concessions to theistic belief that it has allowed for himself in these five points?  I don't think so.  For sake of discussion, I think it is fair to equate the concept of a lack of explanation to acceptance by faith.

1. Having an explanation does not make your position superior to that of those who hold their position by faith.
2. Accepting a phenomenon by faith doesn't preclude you from legitimately assuming the reliability of that phenomenon.
3. Having faith a phenomenon by faith without being able to 'account for' it does not mean that you implicitly accept the world view of people claiming that theirs is the only explanation of that phenomenon.
4. That a person accepts a phenomenon by faith doesn't invalidate their world view or render it inconsistent.
5. Acknowledging that you accept some things on faith is acceptable.

I believe having an explanation is the superior position, that not being able to offer an explanation forces one to take things for granted and/or to rely on something/one external to decide for us what is true, that the worldview of other people with an explanation may be less dependent on faith, that the inability to explain, while not necessarily invalidating one's worldview, certainly calls into question the reasons for holding said worldview, and that the more options held open the more likely one is to find truth.  I believe that both theists and atheists accept certain premises on faith and that acknowledging that they do so is better than dissembling, equivocating, and wrapping oneself in blankets of deliberate ambiguity.

I have no idea where I'm going with this.  Apparently I just needed to get something off my chest.  Anyway, overall you'll find a thought-worthy article although I think the author probably needs to revisit his five points in light of a broader application.  Presuppositionalism is something I need to understand eventually--probably sooner than later.

I'm back on Clifford's Principle again today--the one in which he asserts "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

Consider these propositions:

    P1 Theism is true.
    P2 Atheism is true.

The theist believes P1 and atheist believes P2.  The tendency is to demand the theist provide evidence while the atheist gets off the hook.  A negative cannot be proved, they argue.  Phooey, I say.  Neither should get off the hook.  If person believes P2 he should have evidence supporting that proposition.  To quote Carl Sagan, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Lacking sufficient evidence, agnosticism is the only reasonable position and not only in religious matters.

I've never heard Clifford's Principle invoked against anything but religious belief.  I wonder why. 

Although I've become quite the skeptic or agnostic of late, it troubles me when ill-informed unbelievers, disbelievers, atheists, or whatever claim that it's reasonable to conclude there is no God because there is no scientific evidence of his existence.  Such claims beg the question.  Science deals with the natural world.  To demand scientific evidence of God assumes that God is not supernatural and therefore is not God at all.  Not only is this type of reasoning begging the question, it is also an example of the argument from ignorance because it assumes the existence of God to be false because it has not been proved to be true.

Victor Reppert has linked to a thought provoking article called "Is There Scientific Proof of God?" that is worth reading.  Here's a snippet:

...the only way science can empirically prove the existence of ‘God’ is if the Naturalist position is correct.  But if ‘God’ were empirically proven, He would necessarily be a part of Nature, and thus not Supernatural – nor God – at all.  To prove Him scientifically would be to disprove Him. In other words, if the Naturalist position is correct, science could never offer proof of Supernature because once science proves a thing, it proves that thing belongs to Nature.  If the Supernaturalist’s position is correct, no manner of science could ever offer proof of a supernatural God, because by definition God is 'not of Nature', the only realm where science is equipped to speak.  "...god isn't a scientific phenomenon, and hence cannot be evaluated using scientific methods."

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

A review of Christopher Hitchens' "careless and dishonest polemic" God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Tom Piatak .

Here's one paragraph:

Although Hitchens’ book is lively and well written, it is fatally marred by its many rhetorical evasions and falsehoods.  Throughout the book, whatever Hitchens dislikes is blamed on religion and whatever he likes is credited to something else.  A clergyman Hitchens admires, Martin Luther King, is dismissed as someone who was “in no real … sense … a Christian.” By contrast, Hitchens blames the atheistic dictatorships that killed more people in the 20th century than had been deliberately killed by the state in all the preceding centuries on religion, offering up the Jesuit missions of Paraguay which protected the Indians until their dissolution as the first successful instance of totalitarianism and claiming that “A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy.” What Hitchens ignores is that Christian Europe produced very few theocracies, because the Church, basing herself on its founder, has always taught that men should “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The political legacy of Christianity is thus one of law and liberty, not one of unitary despotism and worship of the state.  In Hitchens’ strange mental universe, religion is to blame for slavery—a primordial human institution abolished in major part by religious men such as William Wilberforce—and the Rwandan genocide, where one Catholic ethnic group slaughtered a different Catholic ethnic group.  Hitchens also repeats the Communist inspired lie that Pius XII was “pro-Nazi,” citing as his sole authority the book by John Cornwell that has been so thoroughly discredited by serious historians that even its author no longer makes such a claim.

Complete Article

If God is dead, does that mean we cannot survive our own deaths? Recent best-selling books against religion agree that immortality is a myth we ought to outgrow. But there are a few thinkers with unimpeachable scientific credentials who have been waving their arms and shouting: not so fast. Even without God, they say, we have reason to hope for — or possibly fear — an afterlife.

Curiously, the doctrine of immortality is more a pagan legacy than a religious one...

Read more @ NYTimes

Jim Holt offers a thought provoking piece, however, I have to wonder what led him to distinguish paganism from religion.

A few days ago, I found an article that came out in June '07 explaining how discoveries in physics are leading researchers to the conclusion that "time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality."  It's a fascinating read and the information revealed has potentially profound theological ramifications.  The biblical perspective of God is that he is eternal--he exists outside of time.  Panentheism and process theism hold that the universe exists within God. If these ideas are correct, it follows then, that the most fundamental levels of existence would be outside of time.

Victor Reppert, at dangerous idea, has Thomas Aquinas's Argument from Contingency:  Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Here's the argument: 

So how did St. Thomas Aquinas argue for theism? Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger, in their book Reason and Religious Belief (OUP, 1991) present the following argument, which they call the Thomistic cosmological argument.

1. A contingent being exists.
2. This contingent being has a cause of its existence.
3. The cause of its existence is something other than itself.
4. What causes this contingent being to exist must be a set that contains either only contingent beings or a set that contains at least one noncontingent (necessary) being.
5. A set that contains only contingent beings cannot cause this contingent being to exist.
6. Therefore, what causes this contingent being must be a set that contains at least one necessary being.
7. Therefore, a necessary being exists.

The commentary and discussion over there is thought provoking.

Yesterday I posted the conclusion of an article by Michael Gerson entitled What Atheists Can't Answer.  Christopher Hitchens responded with a piece of his own. 

Here's his conclusion:

"In a world without God," he writes, "this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution but designed for disappointment." Again, he substitutes the wish for the thought. We very probably are, as he admits, not the designed objects of the Big Bang or of the process of natural selection. But this sober conclusion, objective as it is, is surely preferable to the delusion that we have been created diseased, by a capricious despot, and then abruptly commanded to be whole and well, on pain of terror and torture. That sick joke is one that we can cease to find impressive, that belongs in the infancy of our species, and gives a false picture of reality that we would do well to outgrow.

Complete Article at WasthingtonPost.com