Another reason why philosophers are useless

[anthony022071]

No, I respect that, Charlemagne – and I appreciate your stating it so boldly and openly, so that both sides (the believers and the non-believers) understand each other.

The thing is that, given your argument, one could not predict in advance what an outcome reflective of God’s love for us would be. There is no predictive power there, at least in terms of the details. If an asteroid were headed for a populated area, we could not even predict, “in a world where God loves us, although some in that city might die, others in that city – fervent Christians who prayed – likely would be spared, miraculously.” If there were such thing as a 100% casualty rate, we still couldn’t say that God doesn’t love us and is not concerned for our well-being and flourishing. Nothing could possibly occur on this earth, no matter how unpleasant by human standards, that could disprove that a personal God loves us and is actively concerned for us, given that God always knows better. For example, if folks prayed that God avert the asteroid, and the asteroid nonetheless wiped an entire region’s population off the map, God “must have had” good reasons for doing so.

By the same token, of course, good things – miraculous healings, miraculous survivals (like that girl who was the lone survivor of a plane crash some years ago) – is not in itself evidence that God does love us; not, at least, if the non-miraculous (or perhaps miraculous?) non-survival does not prove that God doesn’t love us.

Yet, in human beings as they actually are constituted, there seems to be a double-standard – the good stuff is taken evidence that God cares for us, that He listens to our prayers, while the “the bad stuff” is not taken as evidence that He doesn’t.

So be it – I can accept this, that the proposition, theoretically at least, is irrefutable, that it is a non-falsifiable theoretical possibility.

Then again, there is no way to disprove that God doesn’t love us, either. Both are beyond empirical verification or falsifiability, just like the existence of limbo (if limbo, by definition, is not discernible by the senses, it is subject neither to being empirically verified, nor empirically falsified).

That God loves us is known through revelation and can be reasonably inferred through the sustaining of the created world,which is called divine providence. The existence of God is known through the very existence of the natural world and is order and life. And it is only reasonable to infer that God must love human beings by the fact that he sustains our lives and provides for our needs and gives us beauty and pleasure through nature and its processes. We are also given an intuition that God loves us through his grace. So the love of God is not beyond empirical verification. The ancient Jews and early Christians or even some of the enlightened pagans of Greece and Rome did not think that way. It was not until the 1800’'s that “scientific” reasoning,which is naturalistic,came to be widely regarded among educated people as the only test of truth. And that was due to the successes of the natural sciences,the abandonment of medieval theology,the separation of reason and faith,and the denial that reason can know anything supernatural.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Innoruk
**
Present your “God” so I can compare him to the yardstick. I am here to accept any challenge from your imaginary deity… where is he? If he does not show up, he loses by default. … oops… he lost. **

He doesn’t “show up” by your command to be measured by your yardstick.

But you will someday be summoned to “show up” to be measured by His.

 

[Portofino]

Innoruk
**
Present your “God” so I can compare him to the yardstick. I am here to accept any challenge from your imaginary deity… where is he? If he does not show up, he loses by default. … oops… he lost. **

He doesn’t “show up” by your command to be measured by your yardstick.

But you will someday be summoned to “show up” to be measured by His.

A Muslim would say the same thing to Innoruk, vis-a-vis Allah – and to you, as well. Not to mention those Protestants that do not think Catholics are going to heaven.

It reminds me of that saying, “you can please all people some of the time, and some people all of the time; but you cannot please all people, all of the time.” There are those in this world who believe that Innoruk, or myself, are gravely immoral; and others – including fervently religious individuals – who believe that Catholics are gravely immoral, as well.

I suppose that, at some point, one has to buck up and have what is called the “courage of one’s convictions” (or lack thereof).

 

[Portofino]

That God loves us is known through revelation and can be reasonably inferred through the sustaining of the created world,which is called divine providence. The existence of God is known through the very existence of the natural world and is order and life. And it is only reasonable to infer that God must love human beings by the fact that he sustains our lives and provides for our needs and gives us beauty and pleasure through nature and its processes. We are also given an intuition that God loves us through his grace. So the love of God is not beyond empirical verification. The ancient Jews and early Christians or even some of the enlightened pagans of Greece and Rome did not think that way. It was not until the 1800’'s that “scientific” reasoning,which is naturalistic,came to be widely regarded among educated people as the only test of truth. And that was due to the successes of the natural sciences,the abandonment of medieval theology,the separation of reason and faith,and the denial that reason can know anything supernatural.

Life can be good, no doubt about it I just can’t presume to say that it’s good for everyone, or that everyone should see it that way.

A lot of what is good about our lives is the result of the efforts of men, including those who lived many generations before us. If there’s food on the table, thank God or thank the universe – but thank (for example) Adam Smith, as well

 

[inocente]

My apologies. Let me try this again: I would like you to actually produce credible reasons why philosophy is useless.

You said we should harbour doubt; I said we shouldn’t. You said we should just in case a demon came along and whispered in your ear that if you threw yourself from the Temple pinnacle down then angels will come and rescue you lest you dash your foot against a stone… oh wait no you said that Superman would do the rescuing. For this reason, then, you said we should generally harbour doubt, and second guess ourselves as a rule. I argued rather that harbouring constant doubt is a kind of madness and will make you clinically ill. It will also make you watch the Matrix over and over again so you can find ways to detect whether or not your cable repair guy is really an agent of the machines that are controlling your world. It might also lead you into becoming a liberal agnostic who can’t see the difference between a marriage and sodomy. But then again there is no difference; after all, its all just atoms or, perhaps, just a computer generated imagine being produced in my brain by greedy, energy hungry machines.

I’ll take the highlighted sentence, after that your demons and Matrix and sodomy and whatever lost me again.

Take an example. I do not believe my car will break down on the roadside today, but I can’t be certain and so carry a high-vis jacket to wear for safety on the off-chance I’m wrong. In fact that’s the law, because rescue services statistics indicate that on balance of probabilities the lives saved make it worthwhile to have the jacket on-board just in case.

In life most issues are not black and white, we often do not have all the information needed to know for certain whether a proposition is true or false. That doesn’t stop us from accepting it provisionally while acknowledging that we may be wrong. It is very useful to have a bit of humility, to remember we might we wrong, to carry the high-vis jacket.

Yet you appear to be suggesting we can’t acknowledge such doubts and uncertainties without going raving mad. Of course we won’t.

 

[inocente]

Erm, no, I am not asserting it as an axiom. My broader point is that there is no necessary connection between disagreement about the purpose of life and the nonexistence of a purpose of life. Furthermore, I am saying that there the purpose of life disclosed by the classical philosophical tradition is both objective and common to all humans.

Hmm. Which classical philosophical tradition? Analytic, Continental, Eastern? There are so many opposing views on the meaning of life that if you try synthesizing one answer from them all, I think you’ll find that the only way to avoid contention is no make it so bland as to say nothing.

This, after all, is the joke behind giving the quantified answer 42:

The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_%28number%29#The_Hitchhiker.27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

You are misconstruing my point. I am not asserting from the start that there must be a single purpose (although I am saying that you would be committing a logical error to rule it out from the start), but, as I said, the purpose which we conclude is necessarily the only purpose. This is obviously a subject for multiple volumes (cf. Thomas Aquinas), but to put it shortly, the proofs for God’s existence are binding on all, and the conclusions about human nature are, of course, about human nature, ie. what applies to all humans.

Misconstrue perhaps, but you have now switched into religious fiat mode, where apparently we must accept your diktat or else.

But all so-called proofs of God’s existence (and non-existence) are at the very least contentious. It’s also unclear what human nature is, since it refers to those characteristics which transcend cultures, nature rather than nurture, questions which can only by answered by science, if even then. To borrow a line from a philosopher (Rousseau) “we do not know what our nature permits us to be”.

 

[polytropos]

Do you believe that God intervenes to prevent evil, sometimes? What you’re writing seems to square much more easily with a world in which God never intervenes, always respecting free will.

In a word, yes. I believe God can (like any agent) intervene instantially while preserving free will. It is the prevention of evil by an omnipotent being in total (in all cases) that would be problematic for free will. However, that’s really what is demanded as the alternative to the “problem of evil” in the world right now; a prevention of just some evil does not satisfy those appealing to the problem of evil. (Such a person could say that they would be fine with the prevention of just some evil, but it would necessarily be an arbitrary amount.)

Leibniz claimed that this world, since it was created by God, must be the best world. Aquinas, however, argued that since this world is not God Himself, it cannot be fully good. So there would have to be some evil, it seems.

If so, then you are granting that God can intervene, without violating free will (or, perhaps, that free will can and ought to be violated, if God wills it to be). Presumably, you are leaving it up to God as to the conditions under which violating free will is permissible; thus, if God decided that it is not important for the will to be free, you presumably would have no problem with that. Freedom is only important because God has determined it to be so.

A couple points:

• My argument is that the wholesale prevention of evil basically removes those acts from ontological possibility, which means that it is impossible for the intellect to grasp them in the same way that the intellect cannot grasp other contradictions like a married bachelor. Since the intellect cannot grasp them, it cannot will them. The example I give with “snarfling” is meant to illustrate this: if your intellect cannot grasp an evil act, there is no way you could will it (and here we are talking about willing the evil act, not necessarily being able to perform it). In other words, if the evil act is technically possible (although not necessarily, physically possible in my current situation), then I can will it because it can enter my intellect. But if it is never possible, then I can never know what it is, and so never will it.
• Since “evil” technically engenders things as broad as, say, lukewarmness toward God, a world in which evil is always prevented does basically result in a world of non-free agents.
• For those reasons, God’s instantial prevention of evil is not what I am referring to as problematic. An instantial prevention would not prevent the intellect from grasping an act in every case, so the act can still be willed. And God does prevent some evil; there is just no “limited” amount of evil which God could prevent to satisfy the skeptic (assuming God would like to maintain free will).
• Why would God like to maintain free will? I think you are in a sense right that God has chosen that free will is important. Non-rational animals do not have free will because they are not intelligent. God chose to make us intelligent (in His image), and will follows from the intellect. So God could have chosen simply to make all non-rational animals and none rational. So if we did not have free will, we would essentially be like any other animal; we would generally act in a way that fulfills our final causes because we could not choose to do otherwise. The decision to make free will important is not really arbitrary, though, since our creation in God’s image as intellectual is a generosity which uniquely grants us eternal souls (which means we are capable of seeing the beatific vision). These are all pretty extensive topics in Thomism, but hopefully it clears some things up.

The argument that God knows better cannot be disproven, in principle; yet it pretty much ends the discussion, since – even if the world were a lot worse than it is (let’s say a natural disaster destroyed 99% of humanity) – there still would be no way to disprove that it wasn’t for the best, or that God wasn’t all-good and all-merciful. God is not being judged by the same standards as human beings; what would be immoral for a human being, is not immoral for God.

There’s no way to prove this – nor disprove this. It’s simply a theoretical possibility. So, there is no need for evidence that God loves us and cares about our well-being, since it’s already considered to be proven that whatever God does “to us” could, in principle, be a result of his love and concern for us. Nothing that could possibly happen could ever be adduced as counterevidence – not even if the Black Plague, or Noah’s Flood, had wiped out all of humanity. If God had done it, there would be good and justifiable reasons for doing so.

The argument is clever because it is immune from criticism – in the final analysis, it is neither verifiable empirically, nor falsifiable, empirically. You would never know for sure

Yes, I do think that the argument is basically unfalsifiable, but this is not really the theist’s fault. (Again,) the atheist has taken on an exorbitant burden of proof in trying to demonstrate that God cannot (as in, it is logically impossible) have sufficient reasons for allowing what evil there is in the world. Given that Christ’s passion is an example of supreme suffering of the most innocent of all men, and that Christianity assures the glory of the beatific vision for the faithful, I don’t see how anyone could successfully argue that God literally cannot have sufficient reasons for evil. At least in an argument from evil, the atheist cannot (for the sake of argument) deny Christ’s passion or the beatific vision, since doing so would be to beg the question. So the problem of evil, for all of its emotional force, seems doomed to fail.

 

[polytropos]

Hmm. Which classical philosophical tradition? Analytic, Continental, Eastern? There are so many opposing views on the meaning of life that if you try synthesizing one answer from them all, I think you’ll find that the only way to avoid contention is no make it so bland as to say nothing.

As I mentioned in an earlier response, I am broadly referring to the philosophical tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas (particularly the latter two). I have no intention of synthesizing other philosophical systems.

Misconstrue perhaps, but you have now switched into religious fiat mode, where apparently we must accept your diktat or else.

Not really. I am not really covering the arguments of said philosophical system, since that would take a lot of space and this topic seems to have bitten the bullet, but I am saying that there are philosophical arguments within the philosophical system which would entail that it is the only, universal system. This is a claim that I am making based on my evaluation of the system, so one could disagree with it, but it is not an appeal to faith (even Aquinas doesn’t appeal to faith in the relevant demonstrations). So no religious fiat here.

But all so-called proofs of God’s existence (and non-existence) are at the very least contentious. It’s also unclear what human nature is, since it refers to those characteristics which transcend cultures, nature rather than nurture, questions which can only by answered by science, if even then. To borrow a line from a philosopher (Rousseau) “we do not know what our nature permits us to be”.

They are contentious. I am simply stating that I think the arguments for them are good and rationally undeniable.

I’d be willing to discuss Aquinas’s proofs (or the integrity of his philosophical system) elsewhere, but in this topic I think it would be a bad idea to start.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Portofino
**
I suppose that, at some point, one has to buck up and have what is called the “courage of one’s convictions” (or lack thereof). **

That’s an old saw that I have long since abandoned. There is no courage in fleeing God. One might as well buck up and face Him up close and personal.

 

[inocente]

As I mentioned in an earlier response, I am broadly referring to the philosophical tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas (particularly the latter two). I have no intention of synthesizing other philosophical systems.

If that means you think other philosophies are useless, it would seem that philosophical preferences, like religious and cultural preferences, depend mainly on place of birth.

Not really. I am not really covering the arguments of said philosophical system, since that would take a lot of space and this topic seems to have bitten the bullet, but I am saying that there are philosophical arguments within the philosophical system which would entail that it is the only, universal system. This is a claim that I am making based on my evaluation of the system, so one could disagree with it, but it is not an appeal to faith (even Aquinas doesn’t appeal to faith in the relevant demonstrations). So no religious fiat here.

I guess all systems of philosophy argue that they alone are the one true philosophy.

I’d be willing to discuss Aquinas’s proofs (or the integrity of his philosophical system) elsewhere, but in this topic I think it would be a bad idea to start.

Agreed, indubitably.

 

[1AugustSon7]

I’ll take the highlighted sentence, after that your demons and Matrix and sodomy and whatever lost me again.

Perhaps you should doubt that you like it. Maybe you really don’t like it.

Take an example.

But I should doubt that I should take an example.

I do not believe my car will break down on the roadside today, but I can’t be certain and so carry a high-vis jacket to wear for safety on the off-chance I’m wrong. In fact that’s the law, because rescue services statistics indicate that on balance of probabilities the lives saved make it worthwhile to have the jacket on-board just in case.

In life most issues are not black and white,

This is an appeal to vagueness. In fact, in life something will be either wholly black or white or some other colour, or combination of them, or otherwise have no colour at all. If you doubt that, then you’re going to lose your grip on reality.

My problem inocente is that you are attacking philosophy by appealing to doubt as if it were a virtue. Please realize that no one has ever thought to advocate doubt as a virtue and no one has ever included it in a list of the virtues; in fact, it has always and ever carried negative connotations. No one desires doubtfulness.

Doubt =/= virtue. You are of course free to doubt that: it’s just not reasonable or even healthy. You are also free to doubt whether or not this is a real conversation between two persons or suspect that perhaps I am a secret agent of the machines that control your body and use you for a living energizer battery trying to prevent you from realizing that this is all a grand fiction.

Doubt is not a virtue; and it is not even an intellectual one. If we can’t have some measure of confidence in our abilities to both know and understand things, then all science is vanity and we don’t really know anything at all; but this is impossible, because we would then know that we don’t know, but we aren’t supposed to be able to know anything.

we often do not have all the information needed to know for certain whether a proposition is true or false. That doesn’t stop us from accepting it provisionally while acknowledging that we may be wrong. It is very useful to have a bit of humility, to remember we might we wrong, to carry the high-vis jacket.

So we should be in a constant state of doubt? No I don’t think so. Again, doubt is not a virtue.

Yet you appear to be suggesting we can’t acknowledge such doubts and uncertainties without going raving mad. Of course we won’t.

There are many things we can’t seriously doubt without going raving mad as the logical conclusion or climax. Like whether or not you are real or are actually thinking what are you thinking and any number of other things.

In reality, inocente, you are advocating that we should be be true to our very nature: i.e., we should be reasonable and not doubtful. There is a great difference between being reasonable and being in a constant state of doubt, which latter is actually very dehabilitating. Reasonableness, on the other hand, carries no such negative connotations; being doubtful, however, rightly does. Advocating doubtfulness as if it were a virtue is simply wrong. Rather you should advocate being logical and reasonable. Conseqently it is a wonder that you so rashly lambast philosophy.

 

[polytropos]

The argument that God knows better cannot be disproven, in principle;

More on this:

It is not the burden of the theist to produce an empirically falsifiable response to the problem of evil. This assumes that the argument from evil could succeed, which is not necessarily true. It is possible that the atheist’s argument is simply no good - that he has chosen to argue something that is in principle impossible to prove, hence an exorbitant burden of proof. He has taken on the task of demonstrating a necessary contradiction - and it might be that there are no circumstances in which such a contradiction arises. So much the worse for the atheist. This would just imply that Christianity is internally consistent, at least as it pertains to the existence of evil.

This is not to say that the existence of God cannot be argued against, just that the argument from evil would not succeed against it. Thomas’s arguments for the existence of God rely on a few premises that could be disputed by someone who would like to deny the existence of God:

• the act/potency distinction
• the occurrence of change
• that change is a reduction of potency to act by something else in act
• that a per se series must be finite

It happens that the intellectual price of denying these premises is pretty high, but that’s just because they are true and cannot coherently be denied.

I understand why the defense of the problem of evil might be frustrating coming from a fideistic Christian who insists that you should accept God in spite of evil, without any other evidence. But the Catholic has an array of proofs which are logically necessary, in the way that the argument from evil is not.

 

[polytropos]

If that means you think other philosophies are useless, it would seem that philosophical preferences, like religious and cultural preferences, depend mainly on place of birth.

Well, I used to be a materialist despite being born to a Christian family. But you are probably right: I probably became a materialist because my parents, as far as Catholics go (although perhaps not as far as American Catholics go ), were fairly fideistic, and the prevailing culture implied that things like the Big Bang and evolution falsify religion.

Eventually I found materialism to be insufficient, investigated other philosophical systems, and returned to Catholicism.

Agreed, indubitably.

Nice talking to you.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Thanks for the video, Peter Plato. I did view it and definitely appreciate Father Barron’s “thoughtful” take on things.

It seems that your argument has more of a bearing on the need for the existence of moral evil, though (murders, rapes, thefts), as opposed to the existence of natural evil (hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, freak accidents, incurable diseases).

Yet this would not be without exceptions, it would seem – the story of the Flood, for example, or the smiting of Sodom and Gomorrah.

It seems that both arguments are promulgated, at once – first, God does not interfere with free will; second, when God does intervene, and makes things happen to us, He is wholly justified in doing so.

In other words, we are as free as God wants us to be – when we are free, it is God’s will; when we are not free (e.g., the lives of the first-born Egyptians were cut short, such that it was no longer possible for them to live and to make choices) it is God’s will, as well.

Actually, this “zombification” view of moral evil does serve to justify to a large extent such “acts” of God (though not natural “evil”) precisely because only he would be in the position to judge whether the wholesale “zombification” of humans in those instances had reached a point of no return. That at those points all the humans who were destroyed were beyond the point of redemption - their zombification complete and irreversible. The evil would not have been in their destruction by God, but, rather, in the moral ruination that had preceded the destruction.

The acts of God in those cases could be seen more as instances of a surgeon removing cancerous cells from the body of humanity to stem the contagion and not let it infect the remaining morally intact human beings, at least those not beyond “treatment” in other ways.

 

[Portofino]

More on this:

It is not the burden of the theist to produce an empirically falsifiable response to the problem of evil. This assumes that the argument from evil could succeed, which is not necessarily true…

I think you’ve convinced me that, with the problem of suffering, although the non-theist can raise a valid question mark as to whether this squares with the existence of a personal God who loves us and who cares about our emotional well-being, the Christian can nonetheless give a response to the problem of suffering (or of evil) that is a *valid conceptual possibility. *

If one does not accept the authority of the Church, however, or the authority of the Bible, do you see any way to argue to the non-believer that this is not merely a coherent conceptual possibility, but is actually the case?

That’s all I am trying to communicate through this mention of testable predictions and verifiability. The Second Coming of Christ is a testable prediction – either Christ will return before the extinction of homo sapiens, or he will not.

The Second Coming of Christ is actually one of the few Christian beliefs that I believe is subject to being verified experimentally. Others – such as “the Church has everything a human being needs to be saved”; or “there is no salvation outside the Church”; or “heaven, hell, and purgatory exist” – are proposititons that do make predictions regarding the future, but they are predictions that can only be tested beyond the grave.

Do you acknowledge this, or am I missing something?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Portofino

The Second Coming of Christ is actually one of the few Christian beliefs that I believe is subject to being verified experimentally. Others – such as “the Church has everything a human being needs to be saved”; or “there is no salvation outside the Church”; or “heaven, hell, and purgatory exist” – are proposititons that do make predictions regarding the future, but they are predictions that can only be tested beyond the grave.

Again, there is no requirement that the truths concerning the next life must be judged by the standard of scientific truth in this life.

So long as there is the possibility that God and heaven and hell and salvation exist, we are truly foolish to throw all that away on the possibility that they do not exist.

 

[Portofino]

Portofino

The Second Coming of Christ is actually one of the few Christian beliefs that I believe is subject to being verified experimentally. Others – such as “the Church has everything a human being needs to be saved”; or “there is no salvation outside the Church”; or “heaven, hell, and purgatory exist” – are proposititons that do make predictions regarding the future, but they are predictions that can only be tested beyond the grave.

Again, there is no requirement that the truths concerning the next life must be judged by the standard of scientific truth in this life.

So long as there is the possibility that God and heaven and hell and salvation exist, we are truly foolish to throw all that away on the possibility that they do not exist.

I’ve been thinking of Pascal these past couple of days, for this very reason – whether one agrees or disagrees with his recommendations to “play it safe” by believing, he nonetheless acknowledged that predictions are being made (e.g., “if you do not believe in God, you will go to hell”) that will either be definitively proven or disproven in the afterlife.

But this is also the reason why disagreements regarding religion often can be so intractable. I took note, in November 2012, of the seemingly endless arguments between pundits regarding who was going to win the 2012 US election. Some very smart individuals insisted that “the polls were wrong” and that, “mark my words, Romney will be victorious.” It was unclear whom to believe, given that each respective panel of experts – the side that predicted an Obama victory, and the side that predicted a Romney victory – were impressive and seemingly cogent in their arguments. They even quoted numbers and statistics, of course, probably losing a good deal of the audience in the process Confidence in one’s own assertions tends to impress others, rightly or wrongly (this may be human nature), and some of these pundits seemed absolutely convincing and persuasive, because they had the credentials (advanced degrees and a lifetime of experience) and they were able to “say it like they mean it.”

Then the election came, and one side was proven wrong. The matter was now settled. Those pundits who had predicted a Romney victory subsequently appeared on those same talk shows they had appeared on previously, acknowledging their error and putting forth some ideas regarding why they were wrong (and trying to sound smart in the process, of course, though their tone was necessarily more subdued and humble).

We don’t have that in religion, to a large extent, because a lot of these issues will only be “settled” once we die. This is not to say that pundits – to return to my example – were not already convinced that the matter was settled, to a high degree of certainty, prior to the election. But it’s only when the predicted event transpired or didn’t transpire – a predicted Romney victory, in this case – that we could all agree that the matter was settled “once and for all.” People stopped arguing about it; the case was closed.

I suppose I’m just stating a fact here – until events transpire that “settle” the issue once and for all (Christ’s second coming, or one’s dying and experiencing the afterlife) it’s not likely that these religious questions will be settled “once and for all,” and the debate will continue.

But you’re right – if predictions are being made that, “if you reject the Christian God, you may lose salvation for eternity,” then you have to think about how convincing, how rationally sound, you find the arguments; whether you find them possibily true, even probably true.
Muslims probably don’t believe that the afterlife for us “infidels” (non-Muslims) will be very pleasant, but that presumably is not compelling most of us to pay lip-service to Allah.

 

[Portofino]

More on this:

It is not the burden of the theist to produce an empirically falsifiable response to the problem of evil. This assumes that the argument from evil could succeed, which is not necessarily true. It is possible that the atheist’s argument is simply no good - that he has chosen to argue something that is in principle impossible to prove, hence an exorbitant burden of proof. He has taken on the task of demonstrating a necessary contradiction - and it might be that there are no circumstances in which such a contradiction arises. So much the worse for the atheist. This would just imply that Christianity is internally consistent, at least as it pertains to the existence of evil…

Again, I accept this – free will and original sin; the existence of the devil; the existence of a blissful afterlife; a God that values freedom as having inherent dignity and as setting the conditions under which one will attain to heaven, hell and purgatory – are all conceptual possibilities. They are, indeed, coherent explanations that are conceptually possible.

But, though I’m aware that proofs adduced for the existence of God are not generally accepted by the majority of philosophers today (which does not mean those philosophers are not wrong), tell me how you get from proofs for existence of God, which you seem to equate with incontrovertible logic (“they are true and cannot coherently be denied”) to all of these other things that are invoked when Christians explain – even to other Christians – the potentially “false problem” of evil.

Would you put the existence of an afterlife; of the devil; of the importance of freedom vis-a-vis one’s eternal fate into the category as that which is not only true but “cannot coherently be denied”? Or is there a dropping off of demonstrability (proofs for the existence of God would be a 10 out of 10, presumably), such that – for example – proving that “Jesus was God”, although not subject to that strong a proof, nonetheless is something that one could argue is “probably true to a high degree of probability.” With the divinity of Christ, one has left more a priori logical proofs and entered a more empirical realm – for example, arguing for the “historical reliability” of the gospel accounts. I’m assuming that means that you would acknowledge that the proofs are not quite as “airtight”, as logically incontrovertible, as proofs for the existence of God.

I’m hoping you will give me candid feedback on what you believe the “dropping off” point is, (where one can only argue for probabilities, not for incontrovertible logic) ; would the virgin birth, for example, also be something “cannot coherently be denied”? Or would that too necessarily rely on an empirical element that, frankly, we do not have direct access to (namely, the empirical or historical circumstances under which Jesus was conceived).

 

[Peter_Plato]

Again, I accept this – free will and original sin; the existence of the devil; the existence of a blissful afterlife; a God that values freedom as having inherent dignity and as setting the conditions under which one will attain to heaven, hell and purgatory – are all conceptual possibilities. They are, indeed, coherent explanations that are conceptually possible.

But, though I’m aware that proofs adduced for the existence of God are not generally accepted by the majority of philosophers today (which does not mean those philosophers are not wrong), tell me how you get from proofs for existence of God, which you seem to equate with incontrovertible logic (“they are true and cannot coherently be denied”) to all of these other things that are invoked when Christians explain – even to other Christians – the potentially “false problem” of evil.

Would you put the existence of an afterlife; of the devil; of the importance of freedom vis-a-vis one’s eternal fate into the category as that which is not only true but “cannot coherently be denied”? Or is there a dropping off of demonstrability (proofs for the existence of God would be a 10 out of 10, presumably), such that – for example – proving that “Jesus was God”, although not subject to that strong a proof, nonetheless is something that one could argue is “probably true to a high degree of probability.” With the divinity of Christ, one has left more a priori logical proofs and entered a more empirical realm – for example, arguing for the “historical reliability” of the gospel accounts. I’m assuming that means that you would acknowledge that the proofs are not quite as “airtight”, as logically incontrovertible, as proofs for the existence of God.

I’m hoping you will give me candid feedback on what you believe the “dropping off” point is, (where one can only argue for probabilities, not for incontrovertible logic) ; would the virgin birth, for example, also be something “cannot coherently be denied”? Or would that too necessarily rely on an empirical element that, frankly, we do not have direct access too (namely, the empirical or historical circumstances under which Jesus was conceived).

Pardon my intrusion, but it seems to me that once the existence of a theistic God is assumed or established (depending on your perspective) then one would begin to look for evidence in the historical record of consistent interventions by such a God. It is the fact that the Virgin Birth, for example, is a part of a persistent and continuing narrative (some 4500 years in length) that does provide a contextual validity to what might otherwise be, standing on its own, somewhat of an erratic proposition.

If God is personal, in any sense of the term, why would a creative, enthralling, compelling and slightly eccentric narrative NOT be a plausible aspect of his presence in human history? Perhaps modern man has become too pedantic or anal retentive in outlook to accept more imaginative possibilities where God is concerned.

 

[Portofino]

Pardon my intrusion, but it seems to me that once the existence of a theistic God is assumed or established (depending on your perspective) then one would begin to look for evidence in the historical record of consistent interventions by such a God. It is the fact that the Virgin Birth, for example, is a part of a persistent and continuing narrative (some 4500 years in length) that does provide a contextual validity to what might otherwise be, standing on its own, somewhat of an erratic proposition.

If God is personal, in any sense of the term, why would a creative, enthralling, compelling and slightly eccentric narrative NOT be a plausible aspect of his presence in human history? Perhaps modern man has become too pedantic or anal retentive in outlook to accept more imaginative possibilities where God is concerned.

Thanks for your response I understand – you have the “core” (the “noyau dur”, as the French would say), which are *a priori *arguments for the existence of a Supreme Being. From there, you move on to comparatively more “synthetic a posteriori” judgments (in Kantian language) – for example, “the man Jesus Christ, who walked this earth 2,000 years ago, was the physical incarnation of God.” To support that “synthetic a posteriori” proposition, one obviously has to draw upon an arsenal of historical arguments that concern “empirical” events (the resurrection, obviously, would have been an historical, empircal event), and one seeks to build a “compelling” historical case for it and a compelling psychological case, as well (for example, “why would the early Christians have sacrificed so much, for something they knew to be a lie”?)

With logical proofs for the existence of God, you are not in a “court of law”, as it were. With arguments for the divinity of Jesus, you are in a court of law – seeking to provide enough compelling historical or psychological evidence for one to maintain that the proposition “Jesus was God incarnate” can be considered to be true “beyond a reasonable doubt” or “true with a high degree of probability.” If the jury reaches a verdict, it will not be affirming this proposition with 100% “apodictic certainty” (the Kantian terms are coming back to me ). But the jury has nonetheless reached a verdict, based on the criteria of providing evidence that something is “most probably” true, beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, as regards some of these more “synthetic” propositions of religion, it depends on who the “jury” happens to be, that is deciding on the verdict, which jurisdiction – the Church; secular philosophers, etc. You want to have an “unbiased” jury, as it is reasonable to acknowledge that there are some who would be biased for, and others who would be biased against.

So I can appreciate that, as far as reason is concerned, you indeed are building a case there and are not necessarily claiming that these propositions – e.g., the “resurrection of Christ was a historical event” – are so airtight that to assert the falseness of those propositions would be logically absurd (whereas, in the case of “God exists”, it is being claimed that to assert the falseness of this proposition is a logical absurdity, like saying “A = not A”).