A Defence of Two Basic Principles (Part II)

Sorry that it's been so long, you can partly blame health and partly my lack of focus.

Last time I blogged, I made an introductory post on the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and Principle of Causality (PC) and outlined where I intended to go. I said that my approach would be to start by considering the nature of axioms and then to attempt to establish that the PSR and PC should be considered axioms. For this post, I will attempt the first of these tasks (explaining what axioms are); my next post will attempt to make the case that the PSR and PC are axiomatic.

What are Axioms?

The basic function of logic and argument is to get from premises to conclusions. For example, if we start with the premises "All men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" we can reach the conclusion "Socrates is mortal." Often, in a complex argument, our premises will be the conclusions from an earlier set premises. This process raises the question of where our first and original set of premises comes from.

These first premises are, in logic and maths, commonly called 'axioms'. Some philosophers use the term 'properly basic beliefs'. Axioms can't be proven in the ordinary way because, as I said, they are the original premises which all subsequent arguments depend on.

Common examples of what are often considered axioms, certainly things treated as axioms by Thomists, include the three laws of logic famously formulated by Aristotle ie. The laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction and the Excluded Middle.

Are Axioms Reliable?

Since axioms can't, in the ordinary sense, be proven, it might appear that they are arbitrary and that we can't have good reason for believing them true. I disagree. My position (I claim no originality here) is that there are axioms which we can know are true.

Thomists and other Aristotelians have traditionally argued that certain axioms are self evident. However, since many people have asserted that all sorts of things are self evident, there is an argument that helps establish the reliability of genuine axioms.  Put simply a principle can be regarded as axiomatic and true if that principle is such that it needs to be presumed for any knowledge to be possible and/or if the principle must be invoked to argue against it.

An example will illustrate my point. I once got into an argument with someone who argued that the basic laws of logic have no objective basis. His argument went as follows: "If the laws of logic had objective basis the development that we have seen in the sciences would not have happened. The development that we have seen in the sciences has, however, obviously happened, therefore the laws of logic have no objective basis."

Obviously his opening premise is highly debatable, but his argument has a more serious flaw than that. In making his argument, he was himself invoking the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is a basic point commonly found with Aristotle's basic laws, any attempt to argue against them necessarily invokes these laws, thus assuming their validity. This, for Thomists, helps to underscore the self evidence truth of these laws.

Some, of course, will object that while this demonstrates the necessity of such axioms for human thought, it proves nothing about their objective validity. The argument may go that, yes, for human thinking to work, we must assume these axioms are true, but that gives no reason to think they correspond to any objective reality.

On this view, mathematics, logic, and the like, which all depend on these basic laws, are not necessarily connected to anything objectively verifiable but simply the working out of what follows necessarily from these axioms which are, as it happens, necessary for human thought.

I would point out, in response, that if these laws have no objective validity, then we can't even know what follows from them. We might say that "If the Law of Non Contradiction is True then it follows that 2+2 = 4 can't be both true and false." But in saying this we assume the validity of that Law. If these basic axioms are not true, then the whole edifice must collapse, being built on sand.

If these axioms are not reliable, we can't even know that we have no good reason to believe them because that conclusion is it's self based on reasoning based on these axioms; the argument "We only have good reason to believe the things for which evidence can be put forward, but no evidence can be put forward for these axioms" is based on the laws of identity and non-contradiction.

Put simply, these axioms are self evidently true and ought to be believed.

A Defence of Two Basic Principles (Part I)

Last year, I had the honour of debating Travis McKenna of the University of Sydney Atheist Society on the question of whether God exists. I had nothing particularly original to offer, I defended the argument, which St. Thomas calls the most evident, namely the argument from motion. Travis responded in a way which, I'll admit, caught me somewhat by surprise, in that he directed most of his criticism on a single point, namely the Principle of Causality. Since then, I've been intending to write a series of blog posts on Causality, and it's related principle, the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

The Principle of Causality (PC) and Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) were once generally accepted as basic rules of metaphysics. Since the time of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) however, they've been highly controversial. I shall be arguing, however, that they are reliable principles from which knowledge can be derived.

Definitions

St. Thomas defined the PC: "nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality." While I like this definition, it has a certain amount of baggage in that it's tied to some Aristotelian views on potentiality and actuality. Since I want to keep the discussion here relatively focused, for the purposes of this series, my definition of the PC shall be "Whatever is changed in any way is changed by something other than its self."

The PSR, like the PC has been formulated in a variety of different ways. For  the purposes of this series, however, we can define the PSR as this: "Whatever exists has an explanation for its existence either in its own necessity or in some external cause."

For some these two principles may seem simple common sense after all, in our common experience, things don't generally pop into existence without explanation.  Philosophically, however, simple common sense  is not enough. Even if we could, simply accept these principles as matters of common sense in describing interactions between things in our world, that would be insufficient to  justify the use of such principles in arguments for God's existence. After all, the fact of these principles holding good in this universe wouldn't prove that they hold in relation to something outside of the universe.

This Series

What I hope to show with this series, however, is that the PC and PSR have more than just common sense and empirical data behind them but are necessary truths about all possible existence. My plan is to start by looking at the nature of an  axiom, then by examining why the PC and PSR should be considered axioms, then by looking at some common objection.

 

YouTube posts on St. Thomas Aquinas

I've done two YouTube posts seeking to answer the question "Who was St. Thomas Aquinas and why is he so Important?"

The first post runs at just under twenty minutes and can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhtVyeni6g

The second post is just under three minutes in length and can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvSqVn06yiA&feature=youtu.be

Obviously the first post is much more informative but the second will take up less of your valuable time. Have a watch, let me know what you think and, as I say in one of my posts, questions or suggestions for future videos are very welcome.

 

Dr. Kreeft's Bad Case For God. (Part II)

A little while back I noted this video by well known Catholic philosopher and apologist Dr. Peter Kreeft. In the video, Dr. Kreeft puts forward what he claims to be St. Thomas' argument from motion, for God's existence. As I argued here, it isn't, the argument he is putting forward is very different from any argument the Angelic Doctor would have made.

This point irritated me; Thomists have enough trouble with atheists misrepresenting and misunderstanding St. Thomas' arguments, we don't need those who are on our side adding to the confusion. Having said that, I'm sure St. Thomas would say that whether the argument Prof. Kreefts put forward matches the Thomistic argument is less important than whether his argument for God's existence is a good one. Unfortunately, I don't think it is.

As I noted last time, Kreeft states, correctly, that things move and also notes, correctly, that motion requires a cause. He then tells us that causes cannot be traced back indefinitely and that there must be a 'first domino' in the sequence. Why must there be a first domino? The closest Kreeft comes to answering this question is when he raises the possibility of the universe being infinitely old (at the 2:04 second mark of the video). Prof. Kreeft's response is, the universe isn't infinitely old because there is a scientific consensus that the universe is began with the 'big bang.'

I must note here, that I am not a physicist, but then neither is Prof. Kreeft. Among those who are, few seem to find this argument convincing. It's worth noting that Mons. Georges Lemaitre SJ, the priest who first formulated the theory strongly cautioned against using the theory in the way Prof. Kreeft is using it and Fr. George Coyne, former Vatican Astronomer has expressed similar views.

It's also important to note that while scientific consensus exists that a 'big bang' began our current physical universe, there is a diversity of opinion among scientists about what might possibly have preceded this 'bang.' When Prof. Kreeft says "We now know that all matter came into existence some 13.7 billion years ago." that's at best an oversimplification. While we know the present universe started that way, a variety of hypotheses exist about possible preceding causes for the state which produced the 'bang'.

Prof. Kreeft comes close to acknowledging this when he talks about the possibility of our universe being part of a multiverse and declares that, even if such a multiverse existed, it would still need a beginning. Why? Why could a multiverse not exist eternally in the past with big bangs creating new universes being triggered somehow by events in existing universes? If Prof. Keeft has an answer for this, he doesn't give it.

Kreeft then remarks that "Yet some atheists find the existence of an infinite number of an infinite number of other universes more rational than the existence of a creator..." This misses the point. There is no good evidence that a multiverse exists. It is however a possible explanation for the 'big bang'. As long as there are other possible explanations for the 'big bang', God is not the only explanation and, therefore, the 'big bang' is not proof of the existence of God.


 

Answers For an Atheist (Part VI)

Hey everyone, sorry it's been so long. My hope is that I'll be able to get into better regular blogging habits and have more regular updates here. Anyway, I continue answering Hemant "The Friendly Atheist"  Mehta's "78 Questions for Christians." The original post in my series can be found here and my most recent post here. I should add that a lot of the questions I'll be addressing in this post deal with the same basic issues as questions I've already addressed, so my answers will be reasonably short and accompanied with links to previous posts.

#18 What matters to God more: The quantity of people praying or the quality of their prayers?

The love and sincerity with which they pray; I assume that's what you mean by 'quality'.

#19 If quantity matters, shouldn't the most popular team always win the Super Bowl?

This question is not applicable, given my answer to the last question.

#20 If quality matters, why do people you love sometimes die no matter what you do?

I don't know. I really wish I did, but I don't. I go into this in more detail here. This raises the question of why bother praying if it all comes down to God's will, which I discuss here.

#21 Is it possible that your prayers have no supernatural effect and only serve to make you feel better?

I believe God has promised to hear and respond to our prayers and I believe He keeps His promises. However, even without that promise, I believe prayer would still be worth while, see the last link I gave for my reasons.

#22 Would you ever admit it if that were true?

If I was presented with good reasons.

#23 Is there anything in your life that makes you doubt God's existence?

Nothing that causes rational doubts.

#24 How would your life change if you had serious doubts about God's existence?

Since my religion is the essential guiding principle of my life, it would change in more ways than I could count.

#25 Was Jesus white?

No, and I really have no idea what the point of this question is.

#26 Why does God seem more likely to answer the prayers of a talented athlete than a starving child overseas?

I don't believe He does, although if you are asking why He allows the prayers of a starving child for food to go unanswered, see above.

#27 Why does God seem to hate Africa?

He doesn't, although if you are asking why He allows evils like extreme poverty to be so much more prevalent in Africa than Western Europe of North America, again, I don't know, but see my previously linked to comments on why I don't think I need to know.

#28 If a group of people came from (say) Africa to your community with the intent to convert you to their tribal faith, would you listen to them and take them seriously, or would you just dismiss them because they don't believe what you already believe?

If it was my practice to simply dismiss anyone who doesn't believe what I already believe then I never would have become Catholic. I shifted from atheism to a sort of liberal Protestantism and from there to Catholicism in response to dialoguing and listening to other people's beliefs and reasons for believing.

Ok, so that's a lot of questions covered in one post but as I said, a lot of it was repetitive. His next group of questions deal with some different issues so, Deo volente, the next post will be more detailed.

 

How Not to Read a Catholic Masterpiece

Every year a large number of people read J.R.R. Tolkien's great novel "The Fellowship of the Ring." but they read it in a rather odd way. They pay little, if any, attention to the character development, to the grand flow of the narrative or to the great themes of the work. They instead focus on certain specific episodes: Bilbo's party for example or the first meeting with Strider, and they treat these episodes almost as if they were short stories in their own right, giving little thought to how they fit into the novel as a whole. Having finished the book they consider that to be the end of the matter; some of them are aware that he wrote further books, but they've generally been assured that these are not worth reading. So, having finished 'Fellowship' they considered themselves to have read Tolkien, at least in any worthwhile sense.

Ok, confession time, the above is all false. To the best of my knowledge nobody has actually read Tolkien in this way. It is, however, a popular way of reading a Catholic writer comparable to Tolkien, namely Dante Alihegri. As I assume most readers realise, Dante wrote a great trilogy of narrative poems: The Inferno, The Purgatorio and The Paradisio, collectively known as The Divine Comedy (comedy here being used in a rather different sense than the modern one.) These days, however, Dante is normally thought of as the author of the Inferno, the number of people who have read or want to read the Inferno is far greater than those with any interest in the other two works. I've even heard well instructed Catholics argue that the Inferno is the part worth reading. This, to my mind, is a travesty. The comedy as a whole is not only a literary masterpiece but has a number of profound things to say about morality, free will, happiness, sin, redemption and a wide range of other topics and the Inferno is actually the least rich part of  the whole. As Dorothy Sayers notes, the Inferno necessarily has the least to say about these topics since the people whom Dante meets in hell have lost the good of the intellect.

It is also worth noting as Sayers does, that this preference of readers for the inferno is a product of modernity. There is no evidence of any general preference for the Inferno prior to the nineteenth century. Admittedly, the fact that a view is new does not prove it false, in this case, however, I think it highlights an important point; the preference for the Inferno is a symptom of a cultural inability to appreciate long narrative poems. Our general experience these days is with short poms, by short I don't necessarily mean haikus, for purposes of this discussion, a poem of a few pages length can still be considered short, but we generally do not read or write the epics, the grand narrative poems of lengths equal to a modern novel.

As C.S. Lewis notes in his Preface to Paradise Lost, a great many modern people now attempt to read great narrative poems as if they were short works. This, I think, is what a lot of us try to do with Dante, trying to read each episode as though it were it's own short poem. The Inferno can, in a sense, be read this way, the Paulo and Francesca part or the descriptions of various torturers being visited on various popes can be treated like a story in their own right. Even with the Inferno, however, a lot of what Dante is trying to say will be lost. You cannot, however, read the latter two works like this; the only way to enjoy the Purgatorio, or, still more, the Paradisio is with a focus on the themes of he work as a whole.

This is a pity because the Comedy, the whole thing, is a great work both of Catholic literature and of Catholic theology and philosophy, entirely worthy of comparison with Tolkien and I think a greater familiarity with the work would be an important part of a restored Catholic Culture.

This raises the question of how to get over our culture's bias against long poems. Here's my advice, first, if you are Catholic, read the Comedy, the whole thing. Second, read it in a version with a good commentary, I recommend the Sayers version, which should be available through Penguin. Third, on your first reading, almost try to forget that you are reading a poem, think of it as a novel which just happens to be written in rhyme. Obviously, the Comedy is not a work of prose and reading it as if it were will lose something, but I think a first reading will be more fruitful if done this way.

Dr. Kreeft's Bad Case for God (Part I)

Hey, I know it's been a while. You can blame my lack of posting mostly on my health which has been up and down a lot (please pray.) I was inspired to jump back into blogging today when someone posted a video by prominent atheist 'AronRa' responding to this video by prominent Catholic philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft. Now, I have to say, I wasn't impressed by AronRa's efforts and plan (Deo volente) to do a post explaining why, but I wasn't impressed by Dr. Kreeft either. Dr. Kreeft is, as I said, a fairly prominent Catholic figure and lectures in philosophy at a Catholic University, you'd therefore expect him to have a reasonable grasp of the positions of the Church's most famous philosopher, St. Thomas Aquians. Regrettably, he actually helps perpetuate a number of misconceptions about St. Thomas' position, misconceptions that other Thomists like Edward Feser have been working hard to dispel.

After some brief preliminaries, Kreeft tells us that "...a good place to start [in rationally proving God's existence] is with an argument by Thomas Aquinas..." Actually, as St. Thomas would be quick to point out, this argument actually comes from Aristotle, but that's a minor point. More seriously, Kreeft tells us that that the argument begins with the observation that things move (they do) and that motion must have a cause (it must). So far so good but Kreeft then goes on to speak of the need for a first mover being like a first domino, causing the other dominoes in a line to fall. When attempting to give an explanation of why this cannot go back indefinitely Kreeft gives the an arument that the material universe has been demonstrated by science to have a beginning.

That is not St. Thomas' argument. When St. Thomas speaks of God as "First Mover" or "First Cause" he is not speaking about being first in a temporal but in a hierarchical series of causes. To explain the difference, consider a series of dominos. The first domino knocks the second one over which knocks the third over and so on. If the line of dominoes is long enough, then further dominos could be knocking each other over long after the first domino has stopped doing anything. In fact, with a line sufficiently long, you could wait for the first domino to knock over the second, pick that first domino up and throw it in the fireplace to be burned, and the rest of the dominos in the sequence would keep on falling. This is an example of what Thomists call a "temporally ordered" or "accidentally ordered" sequence.

In contrast, imagine a book, laying on top of a table, which is laying on top of a second story floor. The table is holding up the book, the floor is folding up the table, the first story walls are holding up that floor and the building's foundation is holding up the whole thing. In this circumstance the foundation is the first cause of everything being held in place in a very different way to that first domino, if the basement were to be removed from its place, the whole edifice would collapse. This is what Thomists call a "hierarchically ordered" or "essentially ordered" sequence of causes.

For Aquinas, God is the first mover in the same way that the foundation of that hypothetical building is the first cause of everything in the building being where it is. Dr. Kreeft makes very clear that he is not using St. Thomas' argument when he rhetorically asks (a little bit after the two minute mark in his video) "But what if the universe was infinitely old?" St. Thomas' answer is that it makes no difference; even if the universe were infinitely old, at any given moment God would need to exist to underlie whatever motion  is happening in that moment. In the same way, even if, hypothetically, we imagine an infinitely old building, the foundation would still need to exist, moment to moment, to hold the whole thing up.

This is not, however, the answer Dr. Kreeft gives. He attempts to give a scientific argument for the impossibility of an infinitely old universe. I will (deo volente) explain in a future post why I find his argument unconvincing, but for now I will just note that, whether good or bad, his argument is not the argument of St. Thomas.

As a brief aside, at about the one minute, thirty second mark, Dr. Kreeft declares that "Science will never find the first cause, that's no knock on science it simply means that a first cause lies outside the realm of science." I happen to agree with this statement but my reason for thinking this lies in a fairly lengthy bit of reasoning which considers what qualities can be shown to be necessary for a first cause to have. Absent any explanation of this, Dr. Kreeft's claim sounds like a dogmatic assertion. I can well imagine an intelligent listener, unfamiliar with the theistic philosophical tradition hearing this and thinking something like "Why, when science has identified so many other causes, would we imagine that it can't find the first? This is simply God of the gaps reasoning."

Understanding Class, a Rejoinder

Timothy Scriven has written a blog post in which he lays out his understanding of the Marxist theory of class. Tim has declared that his post is written in the hopes of stimulating debate and discussion and I offer this response in that same spirit.

Tim begins by arguing, reasonably enough, that in order to understand something you need to know what it is for. He then explains that the Marxist theory (at least, in his interpretation) differs from most other understandings of class in that its aim is not primarily to analyse society as it now but to identify how the system can be overthrown. As Tim puts it "Marxism sees everything in actually existing society through the lens of revolution." He makes clear that this does not mean that Marxism cannot analyse the existing state of affairs but that, as he put it "...its primary concern is with the instabilities, tensions and lines of possible motion within the system."

While Tim doesn't explicitly quote Marx's famous Eleventh Thesis on Feurbach "Up until now, Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it." that quote would seem to me to undergird his whole article.

This would seem to raise the question of why overthrowing the system is so important. Tim will go on to tell us that he doesn't want to overthrow capitalism just for the fun of it. He writes:

Our objection is that capitalism in its hundreds of years of operation has killed and shortened the lives of billions and drained much joy from the lives of billions more. We are not rebels without a cause... we are instead desperate people.

A number of objections could be raised here, but the deepest objection seems to me to ask how Tim thinks he knows the system has these features which merit its overthrow. The obvious answer would be that this conclusion is drawn from his examination of the system as it currently exists. The problem is that Tim has told us that his analysis of the system takes the overthrow of the system as it's starting point.  If the starting point of your analysis is the overthrow of the system and you claim to derive your belief that the system should be overthrown from the same analysis, you would seem, at least prima facia, to lay yourself open to a charge of circularity.

Tim, none the less, thinks that he can make the case for why the system ought to be overthrown. He makes a number of points in support of this:

To mention just two: we destroy vast quantities of food because the starving who need them who need them can't afford them and we seem to find it inordinately difficult to prevent our species from roasting itself to death since trying to do so would interfere with profit.

I can't deny that Tim has a point. The fact that wealthy nations destroy food because that's the profitable thing to do with it while famine continues to exist in the third world is a blight upon the present system and upon humanity. In wanting to end this, Tim stands shoulder to shoulder with Catholic Social Teaching.

Having said that and having declared that I'm a long way from being any kind of friend of unregulated capitalism, some of what Tim has to say strikes me as more than a little overblown. When I read Tim's comment which I quoted earlier, about capitalism killing billions and draining the joy from the lives of billions more I really wasn't convinced. Are there injustices which Capitalism (especially in its untrammelled forms) creates? Yes, I believe there are plenty. But compare the lives of many who, by today's standards are considered 'working class', 'struggling' or even 'poor' to their counterparts a hundred years ago let alone at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Is it not plain that the worker of today is better fed, better housed, has a wider range of educational opportunities and travel available?

Having established his starting point, Tim goes on to declare that aim of his analysis of class is to determine which force has both the interest in and the power to overthrow capitalism. Tim likens this to the plot of a classic detective novel.

We seek to identify a group with means and motive. We call the hypothetical group who have both the means and motive the 'proletarians'; after a Latin word meaning that the group of people who had nothing to give but their own bodies and wombs.

Now, it's a very long time since I studied Marx's sociology in any serious way and I don't have a direct quote to mind, but Tim's definition here seems to me to stand Marx on his head. When I first read The Communist Manifesto (longer ago than I now care to admit) it seemed pretty clear to me that Marx and Engels started with the fact of the Proletariat's existence and saw it as their task to demonstrate that it was in the Proletariat's interest to overthrow the existing system. On Tim's view, it is analytically true (ie. true by definition) that, if any proletarians exist, overthrowing capitalism is in their interest, it is then the Marxists task to show that anyone fitting this definition of a proletarian actually exists. I have to say, I'm not at all clear why Tim's variation should be considered any kind of advance.

Those are my initial thought's on Tim's post. Obviously, I'm not a sociologist and I'd be interested in Tim's, or anyone else's response to my thoughts.

 

Answers for an Atheist (Part III)

I'm continuing my answers to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta's video "78 Questions for Christians". The video I'm responding to can be found here and the previous parts of this series are here and here.

#5 Should a kind hearted atheist be forced to go burn in hell for all eternity?
#6 What about any non-Christian good person, should they be burning in hell?
#7 Could you be happy in heaven while someone you loved was burning in hell?

#5 and #6 have already been partially answered in my first part of this series. As a Catholic, I don't believe that non-Christians of whatever sort automatically go to hell. Having said that, there is no getting around the fact that Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular does call upon people to believe, and we do think that belief, or unbelief has at least the potential to impact where one might be spending forever and I can well understand why many people believe this is unjust.

To explain why I believe Catholic belief is, in fact, just, I need to explain a bit about what Catholics believe. Central to Catholicism is the belief that God is the source of all truth, goodness, beauty and love. I've read and heard a lot of atheist critiques of Christianity where the one making the critique seems under the impression that we regard hell as some arbitrary punishment and heaven some arbitrary reward that God has chosen to inflict or grant to those who break or follow His rules. That's not the Catholic view at all.

In Catholic belief, the essential nature of heaven lies in the possession of the "Beatific Vision". This means that we will directly see God as He, in His essential nature, is, enjoying perfect communion with that source of love, goodness and beauty.

By contrast, hell consists primarily in what is called the pain of loss. By this, the Church means that the damned will know, with clarity, that they were created for the purpose of enjoying the perfect happiness that comes from the beatific vision and that, through their own choices, they have eternally lost that chance.

With these definitions in mind, I think it can be seen what I meant about heaven and hell not being an arbitrary reward or punishment for following or not following certain rules. Heaven, the beatific vision, is the logically necessary consequence of a person embracing the sort of relationship that God wishes us to have with Him. Conversely, hell is an equally necessary consequence of consciously rejecting that relationship. On the subject of hell, let me add this, Satan and the other fallen angels are in hell, they are direct creations of God who rejected Him with a full knowledge of what they were doing. I do not claim to know how many humans might be there with them, nor who they are. I do not even know with certainty whether any humans are there; I fear there are, but I hope there may not be.

I think the above clarifications will help to show why it is just that belief will have some effect on where one spends eternity. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that all atheists, or non-Christians generally, are going to hell, that's more than I can judge. I am, however, saying that, the person who is given an opportunity to know that God exists but resists this opportunity out of pride or an unwillingness to give up some sin or for some other unworthy reason, is deliberately putting his or herself on the road to the same place as the fallen angels. (Please note! I am not saying that this is the case for all or even most atheists. Absent a supernatural window into my neighbours' hearts, I can't even say with certainty that it's the case for any atheist.)

This applies, not only for atheists but for those of other religions. In arguments I've gotten into and things I've seen written in various places, I frequently encounter the assumption that, if God cares about relationships, this means he won't care what specific beliefs people hold. This strikes me as pretty silly. Generally speaking, if a person is in, or wishes to be in, a relationship with another person, that person wants to know as much as possible about the other person. If Catholicism is true, then the things about God's nature which the Catholic Church teaches must also be true. If a person truly wants a relationship with God, he or she will want to know those things. Again, this is not to suggest that all non-Catholics, or non-Christians are on the road to hell. What it is to suggest is that if someone is given the opportunity to know that Christianity/Catholicism is true and rejects that opportunity out of pride or unwillingness to submit to some difficult Church teaching, that person is, in fact, rejecting a real relationship with God.

Having said all this, I think I can give reasoned answers to the questions above.

#5 - No, I don't think a truly kind hearted atheist should go to hell. I do, however, think that such a  hypothetical atheist, in order to be truly kind hearted needs to want his or her fellow human beings to know the truth and needs to want to know the truth his/herself.

#6 - No, I don't think a good non-Christian person should go to hell. However, once again, to be truly good, this hypothetical person needs to be concerned about and open to the truth.

#7 - I found this the hardest question to answer. I have to admit, I feel the force of this objection and a big part of me wants to agree with Mr. Mehta and say no. I've said already, I want all of my fellow human beings to go to heaven and, obviously, this is a fortiori the case for my family and friends. I sincerely hope the none of the people I know and love will end up in hell. I have to say, though, that if it happens, yes, I could be happy. I don't believe any earthly happiness, however multiplied, could compensate for the knowledge that a person I loved was undergoing eternal torment. However, as I said, heaven is not just earthly happiness multiplied and then made eternal. Heaven is the direct vision of the source of all goodness. Given this, yes, I believe I could be happy knowing someone I loved was suffering in hell, given that I would also know that this was the result of his or her own choice.

I will, Deo Volente, have more answers to Mr. Mehta in the near future. I will also answer the question which Fr. John F. was kind enough to leave in the comments thread of my last post.

Of Infalability and Green Cheese

Brendan Burnett, a friend of mine, an Evangelical Protestant and a fellow blogger, has an argument which, he believes, disproves the authority claims of both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The argument can be found here.

Brendan attempts to refute the claims of those Churches which claim infallible authority to interpret the Scriptures with a Reductio ad Absurdum. For those unfamiliar, this is a form of logical argument, sometimes called a "proof by contradiction". The essence of the argument consists in assuming, for argument's sake, that a given proposition is true, demonstrating that said assumption leads to a contradiction and, thereby showing that the initial assumption was false.

Brendan does a small thought experiment and asks us to imagine a possible scenario:

Imagine, then, that the Church says that John 3:16 means: “The moon is made of green cheese.” Imagine that all the respected, godly, knowledgeable church fathers and leaders forever since the first, second and third etc. centuries AD have always believed and interpreted John 3:16 as meaning “The moon is made of green cheese.” Church today holds it. Holy Tradition has always held it.

In such a circumstance, Brendan, argues, either Roman Catholic or Orthodox claims about the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture would lead to the conclusion that John 3:16 does teach that the moon is made out of green cheese. However, as Brendan quite correctly argues, John 3:16 is very clearly not saying anything about the composition of the moon but is, rather, a statement about God's love for humanity and His salvific purpose. From this, Brendan draws the conclusion that, Catholic and Orthodox beliefs about the infallibility of the Church logically lead to absurdity and are, therefore, proven false.

To clarify what he is and isn't arguing, Brendan writes:

Now for this argument to work, I don’t have to show that there is some real instance of it in the world. All I need to illustrate is that there exists some possible, logically consistent situation, which implies some absurd counterfactual (counter-to-fact proposition) from the premise, “Whatever the Church teaches about Scripture is true.” This proposition would be true if the facts turned out a certain way, This turns out quite easy to do.

The reason this argument may seem logical is because of an ambiguity in the term "possible" in the second sentence. Possible can mean a few different things in different contexts.

Some metaphysicians and logicians use possible simply to mean that given proposition has nothing that makes it logically absurd, it is true in some possible worlds. In this sense, it is possible that Julius Caesar died of old age and Brutus remained his faithful friend until death, since there is nothing about the essential nature of Caesar that logically required him to die of assassination at his former friend's hand.

On the other hand, the word "possible" may refer to real, concrete possibilities in the actual existing world. In this sense it is not possible that Julius Caesar died by any means other than assassination since, all the evidence clearly shows that that's the way he died.

Now, if, in the argument above, Brendan means "possible" in the first sense, true in some possible world, then I'll grant that his fathers and councils teaching John:316 is about moon cheese scenario is possible. I deny, however, that this proves what he thinks it does. To the best of my knowledge, no Catholic or Orthodox theologian has ever claimed that an infallible Church must exist in all possible worlds, as if God was somehow logically bound to operate in this way. If somebody ever did make such a claim, Brendan's argument might (I say might, I'd still have some issues) help to refute them. This, however, tells us nothing about what is and isn't the case in the world as it actually is.

On the other hand, if by, "possible" Brendan is talking about concrete possibilities in the actual world, then I'll agree, if you could prove the possibility of the Church teaching that John 3:16 is about moon cheese, then you would have disproven the Church's claims to authority. The problem here is that, a thought experiment is not, by any stretch of the imagination, enough to demonstrate such a real possibility.

Brendan then attempts to write his argument out formally. For those of you not familiar with philosophy and/or formal logic, what follows may be a little technical and difficult to follow. I'll simply say that I've already made clear my principle objections to his argument, what follows need only interest those concerned with the technicalities.

He writes:

P: Whatever the Church says about Scripture is true.
Q: The Church says that John 3:16 means ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’
R: John 3:16 means ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’

(1) If whatever the Church teaches about Scripture is true, then if the Church were to say that John 3:16 means ‘The moon is made of green cheese’, then John 3:16 really would mean ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’
(2) But the text of John 3:16 cannot possibly mean ‘The moon is made of green cheese.’
(3) Therefore, John 3:16 would not mean ‘The moon is made of green cheese’ even if the Church said that it did.
(4) Therefore, the proposition ‘Whatever the Church teaches about Scripture is true’ is false.

I assume (1) and (2) are premises, and I accept them both. (3) follows necessarily from (2). (4) However, does not directly follow from any combination of (1) (2) and/or (3). The only way it would do so is with the mediation of some premise along the lines of "There exists a real possibility that the Church would say the John 3:16 is about green moon cheese"

Finally, Brendan tries to write it out symbolically.

(1) If P, then if Q then R.
(2) Not-R.
(3) Therefore, not-Q. (Therefore not-’if Q then R’)
(4) Therefore, not-P.
QED. Modus tollens.

And at this point he's pretty much lost me. (1) and (2) obviously correspond to their counterparts in his non-symbolic argument. However, at (3) he gives two statements "Therefore, not-Q" and then, in brackets, "Therefore not -'If Q thenR'". These statements are not equivalent to one another, neither is equivalent to (3) in his non-symbolic argument and I don't see how either is derived from his premises. (4) Does follow as a Modus Tollens from (1) and from the brackets part of (3), but that only helps him if he can explain how he derives (3) from his premises.

In short, this argument will not work.

P.S. I don't believe it's possible to derive the conclusion "Not P" from Brendan's premises. It is, however, quite easily to derive the conclusion "If Q then not P". Absent, however, some proof of at least the real possibility of Q this doesn't help his case.

For anyone who cares, the relevant proof is as follows:

1. P > (Q > R)       (Premise)
2.  - R                    (Premise)
3.  Q                      (Assumption)
4.  P                       (Assumption)
5.  Q > R                (> E; 1,4)
6.  -Q                      (M.T.; 2,5)
7. Q & -Q               (&I; 3,6)
8. - P                       (-I; 4- 7)
9. Q > -P                 (> I; 3-8) Q.E.D.

Virtue is Magic

Mild Spoiler Alert

It's a little over a week now since the screening of "Twilight's Kingdom", the two part, season four finale of My Little Pony: Friendship: is Magic. I'm inclined to regard season four as the best season yet and I'll certainly go to the mattresses to defend the view that this was the best season finale so far.

Why do I love MLP;FiM? I could give a great many reasons: I love the witty dialogue, I love the animation, I love the songs. Having said all that, there is one reason, above all that I love this show. I love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because it is a show about virtue.

Virtue has, oddly enough, become a little bit of a dirty word in the modern world. For many, the word virtue suggests a world of chastity belts, repressed desires and people walking about looking po-faced and serious and never, ever doing anything fun. The ancient Greek Master, Aristotle, however, and the tradition following, him, took a different view of things. For Aristotle, and the tradition following him, virtue describes those habits which tend to lead to greater human flourishing. For the Aristotelian school, there is a happiness the properly follows from human nature lived to its fullest and the virtues are the habits which promote the best chance of that happiness.

This is, in my judgement at least, what MLP:FiM is all about. Throughout the series, the mane (misspelling deliberate per fan convention) six ponies (and their dragon sidekick) learn a variety of life lessons which lead to them developing those qualities of character which lead to a free, happy and fulfilled life. I have no idea whether any of the writers or producers of the show have actually read Aristotle or not, but, whether consciously or unconsciously, they have produced a profoundly Aristotelian parable for life.

So, what was so great about season four? To back track, at the beginning of the first season, the mane six discovered that harmony is maintained in their kingdom of Equestria through six "Elements of Harmony". Through various trials, each of these six becomes mystically linked to one of the six elements: Apple Jack to honesty, Fluttershy to kindness, Pinky Pie to laughter, Rainbow Dash to loyalty, Rarity to generosity and Twilight Sparkle (my personal favourite) to the element of magic.

At the beginning of season four, each of the ponies, to prevent Equestria being over-run by chaos, the ponies had to sacrifice their connection to the elements. In response to their sacrifice, a magical trunk with six key-holes was revealed. Over the course of the season, each of the six mane ponies faced a situation in which she was tempted to act contrary to the element to which she was formerly linked. In each case, the pony in question overcame the temptation, acted in accord with her element and learnt a valuable lesson about the nature of her element as well as a lesson about life more generally.

In the season finale, Equestria faces a new danger, worse than anything it has faced before. The solution to the crisis turns out to lie in the chest revealed at the beginning of the season and the keys to the chest turn out to be linked to the lessons each pony has learnt about her element.

This is why I love this show. At the end of the day, it's show that send the message that the world can be saved and we can all live happy lives by following the path of virtue. Nothing else compares.

 

Science, Philosophy and God

Noted Christian philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig and atheist scientist, Prof. Laurence Krauss, will be debating at Sydney Town Hall tonight. I will be there. Richard Schumark, of the Centre for Public Christianity has written this piece, in anticipation of the debate.

I think Schumark (if you read this, forgive me, is it Mr. or Dr.?) makes some excellent points. For example, he points to the stupidity and downright intellectual laziness of imagining science and philosophy to be in competition. Science relies upon philosophical conclusions, you cannot, for example, perform an experiment unless you take the laws of logic as given, and those laws could not possibly be scientifically proven, they rellie on philosophy.

I think, however, that Schumark makes some arguments about the relationship between philosophy and science, that are more than a little wide of the mark. He writes:

“In the same way Craig’s claim is necessarily scientific in the sense that he marshals arguments for how all the available evidence points to the likelihood of there being a divine designer and creator.”

That may be true of some of Craig's arguments, but not of most of them. Take, for example, Craig's signature argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument (not, I must stress, and argument I'm a fan of). While Craig does sometimes use scientific claims the bolster his second premise, the argument is not scientific at all. Schumark suggests it is because Craig “...marshals available evidence...” but marshalling evidence is not peculiar to natural sciences but to any rational activity.

Science is based on testable hypotheses. You put forward a scientific theory and then expect the world (or the particular part of the world you are experimenting on) to act one way if your theory is true and a different way if your theory is wrong. Classical theists don't claim the world would act differently without God, we claim that the world wouldn't exist without him. Our claims are no more subject to scientific testing than the laws of logic are.

Schumark, goes on to say that he doesn't think God's existence can be proven with full scientific rigour. If he means that God can't be proven by the scientific method, he's right, however, the claim of classical theists is that God's existence can be proven philosophically, and that these philosophical proofs are more, not less, certain, than scientific ones.

Schumark, however, seems to think that a God whose existence can't be certainly proved is plus for Christianity. He suggest that a God who left “hints” of his existence but no certain proof is more in keeping with a “personal and relational God.” He even quotes, with approval, philosopher Paul Mosser and arguing that this is exactly what we would expect of a God who values relationships first and foremost.

I have to say, I can't see why we would think that. I'm personal and I place a high premium on relationships and when I want a relationship, in either the friendly romantic, or any other sense of the word, with someone, I don't leave cryptic hints that I might exist lying around for that person to find. If possible, I generally walk up to them, say hello and introduce myself, thus, unless they have some reason to fear they are having a psychotic episode, they are generally left in no doubt of my existence.

Also, while Schumark doesn't explicitly say, I assume, given where his article is posted, that he is a Christian. In that case, I have to say that the God he believes in, the one leaving us with hints but no definitive proof of His existence, does not sound to me at all like the God revealed in the scriptures. In, for example, the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it is declared that God's existence is clearly revealed in creation, leaving unbelievers “without excuse.” It is to this clearly existing God that traditional Christian philosophy points.

I Have Some Cool Friends....

... And some of those cool friends write interesting, thought provoking stuff on blogs. So, in no particular order:

My fellow Campion graduate and philosophy nerd, Alexander Westenburg, has just started a blog. I don't always agree with him (he is, unfortunatly, a Platonist) but he always has something to say that's worth considering. I really like his first post, found here, and hope he will continue blogging.

Monica "MonJon" Johnson, is a theology student at Notre Dame and, in my opion, a very good writter. She's been writting a serise of posts on the rosary and I found her latest post particularly worthy of note.

Last, but by no means least, Laura McAllister is a fellow convert with whom I became friends as a result of reading her blog after MonJon posted some links to the same on FaceBook. Laura has, in my view, really good instincts, for all things Catholic. Her latest post on the liturgy is a must read.

Oh, and, speaking of Campion people who are, unfortunatly, Platonists, but who write cool stuff anyway, I really loved this piece, by Dr. Matthew Tan.

Deconversion and Morality

The latest edition of Protestant apologist, James White’s semi-regular webcast The Dividing Line is on-line here. Dr. White devotes a considerable portion of this episode to this article, written by Rachel Slick, daughter of White’s fellow Protestant apologist, Matthew Slick, telling the story of her deconversion from Christianity.

White has quite a lot to say about the article and, in spite of the differences between his and my theology, I was surprised at how much of what he said I agree with and how much there is in what he says that I think Catholics can and should take to heart.

What I want to focus on, however, is this one section of Ms. Slick’s story. According to her, the crucial crisis leading to her renunciation of the faith happened as follows:


This changed one day during a conversation with my friend Alex. I had a habit of bouncing theological questions off him, and one particular day, I asked him this: If God was absolutely moral, because morality was absolute, and if the nature of “right” and “wrong” surpassed space, time, and existence, and if it was as much a fundamental property of reality as math, then why were some things a sin in the Old Testament but not a sin in the New Testament?

Alex had no answer — and I realized I didn’t either. Everyone had always explained this problem away using the principle that Jesus’ sacrifice meant we wouldn’t have to follow those ancient laws. 
But that wasn’t an answer. In fact, by the very nature of the problem, there was no possible answer that would align with Christianity.



On reading this section I was interested to hear White’s response. White begins dealing with this question at around the twenty minute mark of his podcast. I have to admit, I was surprised at how close White sounded to my own position. White, correctly, I think, remarks that Ms. Slick seems to think that morality is something that exists external to God rather than being a result, as White puts it “of God's nature and purpose.” I thought that was a good answer, or at least the beginning of a good answer, although I was a little confused about how exactly Dr. White understands the relationship between God's nature and His purposes. If Dr. White ever reads this, I'd be fascinated to hear his views in more detail and try to work out how closely aligned our views actually are.

Ms. Slick's question is related to an ancient philosophical problem, first raised by Plato in his famous dialogue, The Euthyphro. In that work, Plato asks whether certain acts are pious because the gods approve of them or whether the gods approve of them because they are pious. Applied to a monotheistic God, the question presents a dilemma between either a moral law which is above God and to which he is subject, or of morality simply defined by what God commands, with the implication that God could command whatever He likes.

To the best of my knowledge, no major Christian theologian or philosopher ever embraced the first horn of Plato's dilemma and affirmed a moral law external to God, to which He was subject. Certain theologians have, however, embraced the position known as voluntarism, essentially the second of Plato's options. Taken to its logical conclusion, and some have, indeed, explicitly, taken it that far, voluntarism holds that, while, as it happens, God has commanded humans love Him and love each other, He could equally have commanded us to hate him and hate one another. If he had done so, hate would have been a virtue and love a vice.

St. Thomas, however, and those who have followed him, reject the dilemma as a false dichotomy. For the Thomist, the basis of morality lies neither in something superior to God, or in something He arbitrarily decided but in who He, of necessity is.
 

St. Thomas distinguishes between four types of law: eternal, natural, divine and human. Describing, in detail, the meaning of these different types of laws and the relations between them is a topic for a book, not a blog post. What's relevant to Ms. Slick's question, (the one that supposedly can't be answered within Christianity) can be summarised reasonably easily.
 

The eternal law is an aspect of God. Since Thomists believe God to be absolutely simple, that really means the eternal law is God himself, viewed from a certain perspective. God loves and and commands love of us because that is what His nature requires, a nature that He could no more change than He could choose not to exist.
 

The divine law, refers to specific commands of God. As is well known, and as Ms. Slick notes, Christians believe that these commands have changed over time, at one time, God's commands prohibited His people eating of pork, today they don't.
 

As I said, explaining, in depth the reasons for these changes and the relationship between the eternal and divine law is beyond a blog post, but I believe, something of the relationship can be understood if we consider the rules parents make for their children.

Good parents have certain obvious aims in raising their kids. They want to keep them safe and do their best to ensure that they grow up into happy, healthy, well adjusted people. They probably also want to ensure a level of education and preparation for later life. Now, in furtherance of these goals, the parents will make rules for the kids, and some of these rules will probably be constant as long as the child is under the parents' care. For example, rules against anything unnecessarily dangerous, or against serious law breaking will probably be constant. On the other hand, some rules will very likely change over time: things forbidden a child of one age may well be allowed once the child is older, things not expected of a five year old may well be expected of a ten year old.

None of the above means that the parents are making arbitrary rules or that there is no consistent, objective principles. The objective principles are the goals that I outlined, but how those principles need to be applied will legitimately differ.

This is somewhat analogous (I don't claim the analogy is perfect) to the relationship between eternal and divine laws. The eternal law determines God's purpose in relating to humanity, but there is no contradiction between this and the suggestion that that purpose required different specific commands for different times in history.

Special Pleading and the KCA

The latest episode of The Atheist Experience is online. Towards the end of the show, they took a call, which you can find here. The call included a discussion of the claim (which I have heard before) that the various cosmological arguments commit the fallacy of special pleading.

For those unfamiliar, the phrase “Cosmological Argument” refers to a variety of arguments for the existence of God which seek to prove the existence of God as a first cause. Probably the best known version these days is the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA). The KCA exists in a variety of forms, but at it's most basic, it's premises are:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Universe began to exist.

From these premises, the conclusion is drawn that the universe had a cause. As I said, that's the basic argument. Most variations add premises to support the conclusion that the cause of the universe must be something recognisable as a God.

I must make clear, KCA is not my favourite version of Cosmological argument, but, for our purposes, it will serve as a model. The caller to the atheist experience mentioned his experience arguing with theists, their invocation of various forms of the cosmological argument. He said that he replied by asking who made God and they replied by saying that God, has always existed. The caller, host and co-host all agreed that this was an example of special pleading. I disagree.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines special pleading thus:

Special pleading is a form of inconsistency in which the reasoner doesn’t apply his or her principles consistently. It is the fallacy of applying a general principle to various situations but not applying it to a special situation that interests the arguer even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation, too.

For this discussion, the key part of the definition are the words “even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation.” The special pleading objection would, quite reasonably, apply to the popular caricature of the cosmological argument which has, as its first premise, “everything must have a cause.” As as been pointed out, however, numerous times, no actual theist philosopher has ever put this argument forward.

Some will suggest that to apply a principle, in this case needing a cause, to everything in the universe other than God is automatically a case of special pleading. Not so. There are close on seven billion people on earth today. Of those seven billion, any one of them who believes that he or she is current President of the United States is suffering a serious delusion, with the one exception of Barack Hussein Obama. This isn't special pleading in President Obama's case, it's because there is a real principle which would legitimately apply to any other person who thought they were president but not to the person who actually is.

The principle “whatever begins to exist has a cause” legitimately does not apply to a being which has always existed. Now, I have heard atheists attempt to defend the special pleading charge with the claim that, theists get around this problem by arbitrarily defining God as having always existed.

Two things need to be said to that: 1) Even if the claim were correct, that isn't special pleading it would be closer to the ad hoc rescue fallacy. 2) More importantly, the claim is actually wrong. The theist is here not arbitrarily defining God as something that always existed but rather pointing out that the argument, if true, necessarily leads to something which has always existed.

A final point, I'll reiterate that the KCA is not my favourite form of the cosmological argument and not one I'd use a normal apologetic context. If anyone wants to comment on this post, I'd appreciate you restricting your comments to the narrow question of whether or not cosmological arguments in general or the KCA in particular commits the fallacy of special pleading. Id' rather not have this turn into a free-for-all of criticisms of the argument.

Sigh!

So, it's been a while, hasn't it? In fact, almost a month. Sorry about that; I fear a number of factors, including poor health, but also including things like my own poor organisation have kept me from blogging for quite a while. I was spurred to get back to this by my discovery that John Shelby Spong has a new book out.

For those unaware, Spong is the retired Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, in the Episcopal Church, American branch of the Anglican Communion. For decades now, Spong has been one of the most prolific voices in advocating a form of “Christianity” which systematically denies just about every belief historically considered definitional of the Christian faith. Spong denies not only the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible and the historical nature of the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ, but even goes so far as to define God in such a way that would be incomprehensible to any kind of traditional theism. At one point in my theological/intellectual development, Spong was a hero of mine. What can I say; we all have periods in our lives we'd probably rather forget.

Spong's latest book is entitled The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I hasten to add, I haven't read the book, so this is not a review. It is, however, a response to this article, which Spong recently published in the Huffington Post.

Spong writes that his book is the result of five years of “intense” study of St. John's Gospel. He then lists six findings of his period of study which, he says, will upset traditionalists, ie. Anyone with remotely orthodox beliefs. These six findings are: 1) The Fourth Gospel was not written by the Apostle John or any other disciple of Jesus, 2) Jesus probably never said any of the things which the Fourth Gospel attributes to Him, 3) None of the miracles recorded in the Gospel actually happened. 4) Many of the characters in the Gospel never actually existed. 5) John's Gospel contains literary hints that it is not meant to be taken literally. 6) The Gospel frequently engages in exaggeration.

My first thought, Spong says these conclusions are the results of a recent study of the fourth Gospel, but they are, so far as I can see, things he has been saying for decades. I first read Spong close on twenty years ago and I'm pretty sure he was saying all of these things back then.

My second thought, the article talks about how traditionalist Christians who love the fourth Gospel would be surprised and angry with modern scholarship regarding said book. Well, here's one traditionalist lover of St. John who feels no such anger. I do, however, feel a certain annoyance that Spong seems to equate scholarship of the Gospels with scholarship that agrees with him. This is a common feature in Spong's writings and wonderfully illustrates Protestant apologist James White's point that conservatives read and interact with liberal scholars while liberals generally pretend that conservative scholarship doesn't exist.

Spong also seems remarkably blind to the fact that his scholarship is based upon a number of debatable philosophical positions. To give just one example, Spong's third “finding” that none of the miracles reported in the Gospel actually happened. I've read Spong, and others like him, on this subject before. The standard procedure is to begin your study of the biblical text with the philosophical assumption that miracles can't happen and then claim that your finding that none of the biblical miracles are historical events was based on your textual study. No it wasn't, it was the only possible conclusion because of the presuppositions you started with.

When Spong attempts to defend his philosophical claim that the miraculous is impossible, things get embarrassing really quickly. His standard claim is that, before Newton, people could believe in miracles because they didn't know that nature worked in accordance with fixed laws but, now that now we know better. This is rubbish. The post Newtonian world certainly knows more about the details of the laws by which nature works than our pre Newtonian ancestors, but the fact that nature works according to fixed laws was as well known to Plato and Aristotle as is it today. Indeed, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, the very notion of a miracle implies the idea of such laws, if we didn't know the laws of nature exist we couldn't recognise a violation of such laws, which would really make miracles impossible.

If any apologetically minded Christian has more time and money to spare than I have, he or she would probably do us all a favour by purchasing the book and writing a critique of it. Even if I had the time and money, I don't think I'd have the patience.

A Few Quick Links

First, last week, I mentioned philosopher, Dan Fincke's appearance on The Atheist Experience. I said that Fincke had mentioned a particular post on his blog as a good starting point to understand his thinking. Here is the post in question and here is a critique of it by Prof. Edward Feser which says essentially what I would have said but he says it a lot better.

Second, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Fr. Andrew Greeley. For a number of years, I read his columns with considerable regularity; it would be an understatement to say that I didn't always agree with him, but I did frequently find him interesting and engaging. I was touched to read this tribute to him by his fellow Chicago priest, Fr. Robert Barron.

Third, having, in my last post, criticised Jimmy Akin, I'd like to recommend this post of his on prayer.

Finally, speaking of theistic evolution, have a read of this.

Just one Evolution

Jimmy Akin is a Catholic Apologist who I'm generally a fan of and who has written a lot of stuff that I have found very helpful over the yeras. Having said that, I think this article, which he wrote recently is more than a little off-base.

Mr. Akin attempts to examine the debate on the origins of the human species. He notes that views on said question fall on a broad spectrum and divides that spectrum into four groups: Creationism, Intelligent Design, Theistic Evolution and Atheistic Evolution. He does acknowledge that the spectrum could be divided in other ways but says that “... it seems that, today, most participants in the origins discussion would say that they advocate one of four major positions.”

I have to say, I doubt this very much. I am a theist (I believe in God) and I am also a person who accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution happens. I reject the label “Theistic Evolution”, however, because I don't see the two issues as directly related. This isn't to say that I see no link, I'm philosophically convinced that the very existence of scientific laws requires a certain metaphysic and that metaphysic implies a God. This however, is a philosophical question. The question of whether or not humans are evolved from other species is a scientific one. To lump a person's positions on the two questions together seems arbitrary and silly. People's beliefs about physics are not divided into those who believe in “theistic gravity” and “atheistic gravity”, there is just gravity.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me repeat myself; in saying that the two subjects are not directly linked I am not saying there is no link at all. As I said, I'm convinced that the very existence of scientific laws requires a certain view of reality and that view of reality, if consistently applied, leads to God. Alternatively, I am aware that many atheists see the regular structure of the universe as doing away with the need for a God.

Having said the above, I'm quite confident that, if you asked the majority of practising evolutionary biologists, by which I mean people actually studying evolution, they would tell you that they and their colleagues, whether theistic or not, are all studying the same process and believe in the same evolutionary process. There is no such thing as theistic or atheistic evolution; there is just evolution.

p.s. There are other things in Mr. Akin's article that I disagree with. If anyone writes a critique of some other part of his article, send me a link, if I agree with it, I'll happily post the link.

An Intersting Argument about Ethics.

The latest episode (no. 817) of The Atheist Experience was an interesting one. The show is usually devoted to answering calls from whomever happens to call in. On this occasion, however, about half the program was taken up with a pre-arranged call from an atheist philosopher by the name of Dan Fincke. You can find the relevant section here. I'd never hear of Prof. Fincke before but, after hearing what he had to say on the show, I went over to his blog “Camels with Hammers” and, after reading for a bit, I added his blog to my list of those I plan to read regularly.

The Prof. seems to have a double mission, on the one hand he wants to convince his fellow atheists to embrace objective morality, on the other hand, to convince we theists the objective morality can exist without God. This a subject of no small interest to me and I was interested to here his views. I, of course, will be attacking his arguments from one side, I believe in objective morality but don't think it can be meaningful without God. I suspect, however, that many of my atheist friends who reject objective morality will agree with at least some of my disagreements with him
 

Before commenting on what Prof. Finke had to say, I have to note, at several points during the program I felt a strong desire to throw something at the show's co-host, Martin Wagner. For example, at at 7:40 minute mark, Wagner states that “Christians” not some or many Chrustians but Christians generally, when we argue for objective morality, “always” his word, always, claim that such things can't be gotten to rationally but require divine revelation. Mr. Wagner, if that;s what you think Christians always argue, I'd ask you to do some reading on the natural law tradition in Christian moral thought.

Mr. Wagner then goes on to tell us that many Christian apologists, he explicitly mentions Willaim Lane Craig, openly encourage disdain for reason and argue that reason and evidence have no value in getting to truth. Now, I'm sorry, I'm no fan of Dr. Craig, but Mr. Wagner's characterisation of his views is either shockingly ignorant or an outright lie. Craig is known as an evidentialist apologist, as someone who seeks to show that evidence and reason lead to the Christian faith. I could go on, listing Mr. Wagner's incredible distortions, but this is supposed to be a blog post about Prof. Fincke.
 

The central part of Prof. Fincke's argument, if I understand him correctly, come between about the eleven and sixteen minute marks. His argument stands on two main points. One of these is formal consistency. He argues that, just as we can't believe what we see to be contradictory, so there are certain acts which are contradictory. The argument seems to be that, if we attempt to hold others to a standard but fail to live up to that standard ourselves, we would be aware of an inconsistency. There are any number of arguments I could make to this, but I'll confine myself to this reply: I agree that we would see as inconsistent to hold others to a standard and fail to live up to it ourselves, but that simply begs the question of why we should seek to hold people to such standards in the first place.

The second prong of Prof. Fincke argument has to do with the fulfilment of various powers.
According to the good Prof. We have certain powers, our intelligence, our our capacity for technology, our capacity for enjoyment. He thinks it is self evident or something we would all intuitively recognise that we should seek to maximise these powers in order to flourish. Now, in many ways, this seems very close to the Aristotelian and Thomist position. I certainly agree that developing our human powers is a desirable thing. Having said that, I don't think this is self-evident and it isn't intuitively obvious, nor is it clear to everyone. My belief in the moral desirability of developing these powers is based on certain metaphysical beliefs which I assume Prof. Fincke doesn't share. (If he does share them I'd love to here how he reconciles those with his lack of belief in God.) Absent those metaphysical beliefs, many people will in no way see the desirability of developing such powers as obvious, indeed plenty of people seem quite content to drown those powers in drugs and alcohol.
 

Prof. Fincke ended his call with a recommendation to check out his blog and recommended one particular blog post of his. I had originally planned to include comments on that post in this post. I decided, however, that it deserves a response of it's own. God willing, I should get to that in the next few days.