Argument for God from Complexity

[Ani_Ibi]

he didn’t say that it became invalid; his point is that you need to present an argument for the truth of materialism. and you haven’t.

Yes I did. He edited that part out of my post.

I also missed your argument for the truth of materialism. Please use the quote tags to demonstrate that you have made this argument. From there we can proceed to whether or not your argument is in fact an argument and, if it is one, then whether or not it is a valid argument.

 

[cpayne]

Okay, so your point is that God could exist in the same sense as bugs bunny or santa clause, in the realm of human ideas and abstractions.

1. Everything that is the result of a purely physical process is neither true nor false. It simply is. (Examples: digestion, cloud formation, trees growing, etc. Digestion is not “true”; it just is.)
2. Our thoughts, however, can be true or false.
3. Our thoughts are created by physical proccesses.
4. Therefore, the premise, 1, must be false.

Ideas are the ONLY thing that truth or falsehood can be applied to. Rocks, trees, digestion, can’t be true or false because they’re not ideas, it has nothing to do with their basis in physical processes. Everything has a basis in physical processes, your obfuscated non-logic aside.

To take your first “point”: No, Santa Claus is a human idea, but I am talking about the truth contained within propositions, such as “I am typing on a computer.” The statement “I am typing on a computer” is physical in one sense, being made up of photons on a screen. However, the truth contained in that statement is not made up of photons on a screen. It is non-physical in nature. What the Bugs Bunny and Santa Claus examples have to do with this, I don’t know.

With my “obfuscated non-logic” (I think you meant “obfuscatory,” but perhaps not), what I was pointing out is that, if you insert the extra premise 3 (“Our thoughts are created by physical processes”) (and I would add the word “only”), you have to present a convincing argument for that premise, since that is precisely the premise being questioned. In other words, you have to explain how ONE THING IN THE UNIVERSE (our thoughts) can be like everything else (purely physical in nature) and still also be true or false (UNLIKE everything else in the universe). Since that premise is exactly what my argument is showing to be false, simply asserting the premise as part of the argument (which is basically what your final paragraph does) doesn’t work. You can’t just say, “Well, our thoughts can be true or false, but other than that minor detail, they are purely physical, just like everything else.”

“Special pleading,” indeed.

 

[Contarini]

Non-material objects logically can’t exist. Material is anything an object is made of, if it’s made of something other then material, then it’s not an object.

Right. God is not an object. God is not “made of” anything. That’s exactly the point. To be “made of” something is to have existence from outside oneself–to be a composite of form and matter (I’ll leave to one side Aquinas’s somewhat dubious notion that angels are pure form but are composites of essence and existence). From the contingency of the physical things we know, we deduce the existence of an immaterial reality which we cannot know directly in our current state, though we can have indirect experiental knowledge of it (perhaps, as the Orthodox claim, including its “uncreated energies”).

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I reject the notion of the term “Absolute Perfection” even making any sense, perfection is relative to your standards.

Then we really can’t communicate. We have no basis on which even to say that the other one is wrong, because you reject the standard of rationality by which we operate. we might as well all go crazy–in fact we are all already crazy.

I don’t. I don’t think anyone can reasonably make that claim. “lesser” things cause “greater” things all the time, if you can even claim any objective standard of “greater” or “lesser”

This statement shows how attenuated your view of causality is–you reduce it to efficient causality. Of course a lesser thing can be the efficient cause of a greater thing, but it cannot be the total cause of the being of a greater thing.

Edwin

 

[Ani_Ibi]

From the contingency of the physical things we know, we deduce the existence of an immaterial reality which we cannot know directly in our current state, though we can have indirect experiental knowledge of it…

Yes.

 

[GreenJeans]

Can you give any examples of lesser things causing greater things?

I’m not sure this qualifies as an example, but it’s worth looking at. Cellular automata shows us how very complex structures can be generated from very simple instructions and iteration. These structures have both order and complexity.

Stephen Wolfram is the leader in the field, and his book is A New Kind of Science. Although Wolfram is one of those guys who earned a PhD from Cal Tech at 19 his book is easily understood by non-scientists.

 

[cpayne]

If I’m remembering correctly what started this particular sub-point in the first place, it was the idea of God’s simplicity. (If I’m not remembering correctly, just ignore the following. ) However, “simple” as opposed to “composite” does not mean “lesser” as opposed to “greater.” “Simple” just means without parts or extension. So, for example, Joe might be “loving” but he is not “love.” God is not only “loving” but “Love,” because of His simple nature–whatever attribute He may be said to possess, He may be said to possess absolutely.

This doesn’t make God “lesser”–quite the contrary.

 

[Mersenne]

No, you actually haven’t. You’ve just asserted it, and dismissed any talk of the immaterial as ludicrous. Why not just go the whole nine yards and argue that everything that exists or ever has existed is within our universe?

And really, you should calm down. Getting so angry just because people disagree with you is supposed to be a religious trait.

Yes, I did, and anyone who can read can see that. I’m not going to go through a whole copy and paste thing, but I presented a clear line of reasoning that concluded in materialism.

And who said I was angry, I just stated facts. I did make an arguement, and he ended out 90% of my post where that reasoning was. Isn’t lying suppose to be a non-religious trait?

 

[Mersenne]

You seem to be saying that all objects are made of things distinct from the object, but one can imagine a particle that is not made of anything other than itself (for instance imagine a true fundamental particle).

Your words also seem to allow for the existence of abstract objects like sets. Like the set {1, 2} which is “made of” the elements 1 and 2 – but most people would not describe the set {1, 2} as a “material” thing.

That’s a different meaning of the word object. Just as in “object oriented programming”. But as I told another poster, if you want to admit to god only existing in that realm, that of human abstractions, like bugs bunny and saint nick, then I agree with you. Yes, god exists only in the realm of the human imagination.

 

[Mersenne]

Can you give any examples of lesser things causing greater things?

Raindrops creating rainbows. Planets forming out of random dust. Snowflakes. Mamals forming out of lesser animals.

 

[Mersenne]

We can.
If we do, then that particle would be God.
As for its non-intelligence: that would remain to be demonstrated.

That’s not anyone’s definition of god.

 

[Mersenne]

where in any of those definitions do you find reference to “empirical” proof? sounds like special pleading to me…

I didn’t ever say empirical evidence was part of the definition. You need justification. You can justify the exception to the rule between birds and rocks through empirical evidence. How you want to justify yourself is up to you.

at any rate, it’s very clear that you don’t really understand the terms you’re using, since my reasoning clearly is not an example of special pleading: there are justifications for my statements forthcoming; special pleading involves the presentation of arguments for which such justification is not available.

No, special pleading is presentation of arguments without justifying yourself, the “availability” of justifications is irrelevent. I have a hard time understanding why you think “I have an arguement I just haven’t presented it yet” is adequate. Until then you’re using special pleading. Just as if I had said “I’m correct because I say so” and insist that I’m not using appeal to authority because I’ll provide a justification to my opinion later.

the only reason i don’t offer point-by-point elaborations of my statements right off the bat is that there are libraries dedicated to the investigation of these issues, and i’m not going to start reproducing all of the books i have read and papers i have written just to avoid juvenile and erroneous accusations from people like you that i’m engaged in some logical fallacy; what’s more, many more learned people than you already know much of this stuff, which would make my reproduction of it superfluous.

The most common criticism in literature against the idea of such arguements for theism is that you are using special pleading. So if there is some gem of knowledge tucked away somewhere that you’d like to share with the whole class I’d like to hear it. But this is how debate goes. I argue with either your premise or your reasoning and you expand to meet where I see a flaw. You don’t whine that I’m being unfair by pointing out a gap in your reasoning.

 

[IanBoyd57]

Are you saying that Christians, and theists in generally, were not extraordinarily active in pursuing the scientific truth of the world we see?

You seem to be confusing the theological idea that ‘God did something’ with the attitude of ‘And therefore we’ll never understand it’. We may never understand God perfectly, but creation as a whole has long been considered to be reasonable and understandable - in part because it was created by a being who possesses quite some reason. Have a look at the Big Bang thread; you’ll find that theists are entirely comfortable talking about branes. Why is that?

Nor has the denial of scientific inquiry taken place exclusively on the theistic side. There were scientists who strongly resisted everything from Quantum Mechanics to the Big Bang primarily due to their philosophical (rather than theistic) leanings. Hence Max Planck’s quote about his goal not being to convince the professors of his day, but to convince the students who would replace them.

What you apparently don’t accept is that theists can both explain the natural world, accept what they find, and still see God at work. There are Christian/theistic physicists, cosmologists - even biologists. Agnostics and atheists are just going to have to get used to the fact that people can accept the natural world and still differ with them philosophically and (a)theologically.

Of course, not all theists aren’t active, that would be why I said ‘some.’ I didn’t realize the word ‘some’ was ambigious, but it means ‘not all, but an unspecified nuumber of them.’

Newton was a great scientist, but he made one horrible mistake that I think we can all learn from.

He figured out gravity and many other aspects of physics, but then he, well, gave up.

Newton looked at the solar system planets and said, “You know what… they are all in a line, in a perfect plane. There is no way that could’ve happened by accident, it simply couldn’t. There absolutely has to be a God who specifically designed this.”

He likened it to clockworks, with the planets spinning around and God looking down on them.

Newton was wrong.

Scientists have now learned that the planets should be in a plane, due to celestial mechanics and how everything forms.

It was not an example of God being necessary to explain this phenomenon, it, just like almost every ‘mystery’ we have solved so far, pushes God further away.

First Zeus and the other gods were on Mt. Olympus. Then, we realized we were wrong, because we went up there and found it empty.

Next, God was out in space, and he created everything and everyone in their modern day complex forms. Whoops, wrong again, we all arised naturally through evolution.

Now, God is way, wayyy out there. In fact, he exists outside of time, and space.

Again we are left with a problem that right now, we can’t answer.

We are getting there. String theory is coming along.

pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

Check it out. It is wonderful, exciting science that is teaching us something new about the very world we live in. This is not the end.

If you follow the trends of science, everytime we thought that this was it, God had to have done, there is just no other conceivable way, we have broken past and found answers that don’t involve
God necessarily.

I’m afraid of one thing, though.

We may be reaching our limit.

Even today there are some people so stupid that evolution will remain forever out of their grasp. They deny it fervently, despite it’s scientific consensus and vast body of evidence.

Perhaps even if science can breach the barrier that many think is undoable, and find what’s beyond this universe, maybe the simpletons will not follow them. Maybe they will deny it. Who knows.

But again, the real point of this thread, the question that keeps getting ignored, why is God exempt from the law of causation? If there can be an exception, any exception, then by Occam’s razor, it should be existence itself.

 

[john_doran]

No, special pleading is presentation of arguments without justifying yourself, the “availability” of justifications is irrelevent. I have a hard time understanding why you think “I have an arguement I just haven’t presented it yet” is adequate. Until then you’re using special pleading. Just as if I had said “I’m correct because I say so” and insist that I’m not using appeal to authority because I’ll provide a justification to my opinion later.

this is useless. look, i’ll accept your definition, but then you’re just as guilty of special pleading every time you say something without offering proof. which is most of the time.

for example, you haven’t offered evidence for your claim that availability of argument isn’t relevant (it is). special pleading.

you haven’t presented an argument for the equivalence of having an argument that you don’t volunteer, and the proposition “i’m right because i said so” (they aren’t equivalent). special pleading.

Mersenne:

The most common criticism in literature against the idea of such arguements for theism is that you are using special pleading.

where’s your proof? i guess it’s true because you say so.

special pleading.

Mersenne:

So if there is some gem of knowledge tucked away somewhere that you’d like to share with the whole class I’d like to hear it. But this is how debate goes. I argue with either your premise or your reasoning and you expand to meet where I see a flaw. You don’t whine that I’m being unfair by pointing out a gap in your reasoning.

i’ve provided arguments for my position, arguments you have failed to address.

i have asked for your arguments, and you have not presented any.

i’m not sure what else i can do.

 

[Mersenne]

do you have an argument to support this position? if not, then you’re specially pleading, right?

and i hope that this isn’t your argument, because it is an good example of circular reasoning, since your conclusion “if an object is made of something that’s not material, then it’s not an object (i.e. then it does not exist)”, is one of your premises: “non-material objects cannot exist”.

do you have anything else?

1. Anything that an object is made of is material.

see definition of material

dictionary.reference.com/browse/material

1. Anything that is made out of material is a material object.

by definition of material object.

1. Therefore all objects are material objects.

 

[john_doran]

1. Anything that an object is made of is material.

see definition of material

dictionary.reference.com/browse/material

1. Anything that is made out of material is a material object.

by definition of material object.

1. Therefore all objects are material objects.

and that’s a circular argument, like i said before: your premise 1 is the same as your conclusion.

you define “object” as “something made of material”; you then conclude “therefore all objects are made of material”.

that’s not an argument of any kind at all.

 

[cpayne]

I looked up the dictionary reference provided. One of the definitions gives the philosophic usage: “Material”: Of or pertaining to matter as opposed to form.

Well, never mind. I can supply the response by now:

The form of an object is non-material.
Everything that exists is material.
Therefore, the form of an object doesn’t exist.
This also proves that everything that exists is material.

No need to thank me.:banghead:

Part of the problem is the definition of the word “response.” John Doran (and I) would say that typing words after someone else has typed words doesn’t really constitute a “response.”

Regarding the previous poster’s desire for an answer on the question, “How can God be uncaused?”–first of all, it has been answered, but I’ll give a different answer.

As Aquinas argues, composite beings are explained in terms of simple beings (not vice versa). If God exists now (by definition), God would be a supreme being, supreme in the sense of maximally perfect. A maximally perfect being would neither improve nor decline, since both improvement and declining would imply potential on the part of the being. A maximally perfect being would have no potential and hence no change–would be changeless, in other words.

Any kind of change implies a succession of moments, before, now, and after. A changeless being would not be limited by any such succession of moments (if it were, it would be getting older, which would be a form of change). And to the point: A changeless being not bound by any succession of moments would not require any moment of “coming into existence.” In fact, a changeless being would never have a “coming into existence” moment.

Nothing else in the universe (including the universe itself) satisfies any of these conditions: changeless, possessing no potential, not bound in a succession of moments. Therefore the universe requires a cause; God does not.

You may point out that the entire argument is prefaced by “If God exists now.” That’s true, but the argument for God’s existence is a slightly different argument. What you were asking for is how God could be uncaused, but everything else require a cause. If you think about the idea of change requiring a cause, you’ll see why Aquinas thinks of God as not only the Creator, but the Preserver, of the universe.

 

[Nullasalus]

Newton was a great scientist, but he made one horrible mistake that I think we can all learn from.

He figured out gravity and many other aspects of physics, but then he, well, gave up.

No - Newton couldn’t figure something out. It happens to every scientist. Every scientist, atheist and theist, has ‘given up’ on something - they go to their graves with unfinished theories. He didn’t give up due to God.

Newton looked at the solar system planets and said, “You know what… they are all in a line, in a perfect plane. There is no way that could’ve happened by accident, it simply couldn’t. There absolutely has to be a God who specifically designed this.”

He likened it to clockworks, with the planets spinning around and God looking down on them.

Newton was wrong.

See, this is where you’re overreaching. Newton was wrong to suppose that the planets needed specific intervention by an intelligent force to continue their path. That’s what Newton was wrong about. God’s design is a philosophical and theological question; Newton could not use science to address it.

First Zeus and the other gods were on Mt. Olympus. Then, we realized we were wrong, because we went up there and found it empty.

I’d love to see a cite for this. I think you may be confusing poetics with serious attribution.

Next, God was out in space, and he created everything and everyone in their modern day complex forms. Whoops, wrong again, we all arised naturally through evolution.

No - actually, the mechanism of creation was a question to even the earliest Christians, as well as the earliest Jews. Some had strong feelings on it. Many had differing feelings.

Now, God is way, wayyy out there. In fact, he exists outside of time, and space.

You do realize that the “God outside of time and space” was proposed and considered well in advance of evolution and the Big Bang, yes? It was never a reaction to any scientific result.

We are getting there. String theory is coming along.

Again, you may want to look at that Big Bang thread. And after you’re done there, check out Lee Smolin’s “The Trouble With Physics”. Science is coming along - String Theory has some problems. It may overcome them, and it may not.

But again, the real point of this thread, the question that keeps getting ignored, why is God exempt from the law of causation? If there can be an exception, any exception, then by Occam’s razor, it should be existence itself.

And here we end up - philosophy. And really, it’s fine to have philosophy. But no one’s ignored the question - exemptions from the law of causation have been discussed. You don’t accept the reasoning, which is fine. Einstein didn’t want to accept the Big Bang for quite awhile either. He never wanted to accept QM.

I think you’ve sold yourself on a story of the gradual retreat of God due to science, without realizing it’s just that - a story. Made up. Philosophies of God you cast as reactions to scientific advancement came well before they occurred. Theistic scientists “gave up”, but the atheists who gave up are ignored (Darwin did this with the origin of life.)

You’ve come to your conclusion, and you like it. Which is fine. But rely on real rationales - don’t just invent them. Otherwise you end up as the atheist version of the more headstrong YECs.

 

[john_doran]

IanBoyd57:

But again, the real point of this thread, the question that keeps getting ignored, why is God exempt from the law of causation?

he’s not. the law of causation is: everything that begins to exist has a cause. god didn’t begin to exist…

 

[Contarini]

Next, God was out in space, and he created everything and everyone in their modern day complex forms. Whoops, wrong again, we all arised naturally through evolution.

Now, God is way, wayyy out there. In fact, he exists outside of time, and space.

This is hardly a recent view. Please provide a citation from a traditional Christian theologian (i.e., one of the Church Fathers, or a medieval scholastic, or an Eastern Orthodox theologian) claiming that God exists in space. This was firmly rejected early in Christian history. Practically the only educated Christian I’ve ever heard maintain it as a possibility was a (Protestant) colleague of mine who is a philosopher (and has very little use for Christian tradition)!

See Aquinas, *Summa Theologiae, *Part 1, Question 8, Art. 1.

Edwin