Atheists - a question

[Gilbert_Keith]

MichaelLewis

I don’t think it is very fruitful to play the motives game Gilbert. You may have been avoiding God when you didn’t believe, but you shouldn’t assume that other non-theists are. Many of us have struggled and suffered a good deal over religious questions, and have simply concluded that we can’t justify belief in God’s existence.

I have to disagree. Since God’s existence cannot be absolutely proven or disproven intellectually to anyone’s satisfaction, the only possible approach or flight from God is through motive … an act of the will, rather than the intellect. People approach God because they want to. People flee from God because they want to. The motives in each case may vary, but the fundamental truth is that they act from motive, rather than from conviction.

Adam and Eve established the precedent. They fled from God’s truth not because they were able or not able to grasp it, but because they wanted to be as God, which the Serpent tempted them to believe was possible.

I think the atheist is following this precedent. Instead of submitting to God’s plan, the atheist wants to be as God by being in charge of his own plan.

To use your own metaphor, that is his game plan.

Believing or not believing in God is ultimately a matter of what one wants, or does not want, to believe.

It does no good for the atheist to insist that he has struggled to believe and would like to believe. There is deep down inside him a desire that he should not believe, rather than that he should believe … and it is up to him to find out what that motive is.

Dr. Paul Vitz has written an interesting book based exactly on this premise, Faith of the Fatherless. He approaches atheism as a psychological issue, rather than a merely philosophical one. You will, of course, find that he has turned the tables on Freud, who believed as an atheist that religion is a neurosis that needs to be overcome both individually and collectively. So it should come as no surprise to hear that Freud in a letter to a friend considered Catholicism to be the great enemy of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Paul Vitz explains why Freud was right at least on that score, and he shows the basis for Freud’s own neurosis and the neurotic base for atheism across the board.

paulvitz.com/

 

[San_Patricio]

I did not dismiss the ability for our senses to describe the physical world… I am saying that our senses do not directly descibe physical reality. Also, I assert that we cannot prove that an event is caused by another event. By acknowledging this, it does not follow that the concept of causality should be dismissed. I, of course, accept causality, but I will reiterate that we cannot prove a causal connection between an event.

I’m sorry, but your assertion that an event does not necessarily have a cause is absolutely false. We may not always be able to accutately identify the cause (or causes), but that does not alter the fact that they exist. This sort of mental gymanastics is entertaining and may play out theoretically, but it just doesn’t work in the real world. Unless you can demonstrate an example of something that hasn’t a cause, I’m going to have to dismiss that argument altogether and insist that you concede the point.

 

[San_Patricio]

The trouble with invoking God, as I pointed out in an earlier post, is that God’s power itself depends upon causality, which depends upon regularities, which are the problem. You might suggest that God has foreseen that induction will continue to hold; but perhaps he is wrong. He has been very insightful concerning past events (we will say), but everything he has foreseen from this point onward is not true. (If God is timeless, we might say that he timelessly does not know that he is mistaken about all moments in time past this one. We have no future he has access to, though he thinks he does.) Of course, God is supposed to be infallible. But if we can stipulate that God is infallible (I don’t think he could in principle even know that he was infallible if he was infallible, though he could still be infallible so long as he didn’t suppose that he knew he was.) why can’t we stipulate other things, like induction always holding?

BTW; I don’t consider myself a full-blown pragmatist, and I’m really not a big fan of James. (I do really like C.S. Peirce though) I think the arguement above is quite consistent with a generally empiricist outlook. It is a way of practically coping with inductive skepticism.

Michael

Before we get too far afield here, I’d like to point out that your arguments here only have to do with what you suppose God’s abilities would be if you believed in Him. None of it is relevent to whether or not He exists. If God had the limits that you propose above, there would still be God. I do not for a moment suppose limits on Him, but even if He had them He would still BE, and therefore the atheist position would be defeated.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

MichaelLewis

The trouble with invoking God, as I pointed out in an earlier post, is that God’s power itself depends upon causality, which depends upon regularities, which are the problem.

Your initial premise is not true. God’s power does not depend upon causality. How could it, since God is the creator of the principle of Causality as we know it? If God created causality, God can interfere with it and suspend it at will. That is the basis for miracles.

 

[MichaelLewis]

tdgesq wrote:

A couple of things at the outset before I reply. I obviously believe that inductive reasoning is a valid way of acquiring knowledge. So neither of us really believes that one day your foot will pop off and start pouring some kind of drinkable liquid. That would be contrary to our past experiences. The question is: do we have have good reason for believing that the past is a reliable guide to the future?

You do understand the point I was making about my foot popping off, right? My point was that even if induction fails, for I know my trying to do what I would normally do will still give me the results that I want, though perhaps in a way that I would never expect.

I appreciate your forthrightness that you have no epistemic justification for this belief. You fairly restate the question as whether you do have reason for ACTING as if induction were true. You conclude that you do. I contend that this is an irrational belief on your part, not just because it is arbitrary, but because it is internally inconsistent with your theory of knowledge.

I gave several reasons why I think it is rational, could you give some details as what your objections are? I would point out that all I really have to do is show that I’m not irrational to act as if induction will continue to hold. At worst, I’m non-rational. But so what? We all make non-rational choices all the time. If an ambidextrous student raises a hand in class, is it rational for him to raise one hand rather than the other? Is it irrational for me to choose butterscotch over vanilla ice-cream if I’m indifferent between the two? I was acting as if induction held long before I ever made a conscious decision based upon induction, it is natural for me to do so, and so why should I stop?

Pragmatism is not an epistemology, at least not the way you are using it here. Empiricism is. If you accept the empirical theory of knowledge, then it is what let’s you know things about the world. The problem is it can’t account for the uniformity of nature, and therefore, cannot account for the validity of inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is inconsistent with empiricism. Rather than explore a new theory of knoweldge to account for this, you have instead tried to cure the problem with pragmatism. Let’s see if it works.

No theory can “account” for causality, unless by “account” you mean stipulate it or something just as arbitrary. Anyway, no one can account for the validity of inductive reasoning because inductive reasoning isn’t valid. It is just useful so long as induction holds. Anyone who does accept induction can consistently reason inductively.

Referring to the very last sentence, neither do you have any basis to choose an inductive course of action. Implicit in every comment you have made here is that induction will remain valid because it has in the past. But this is exactly the issue that Hume raises. It doesn’t help any to claim that your goals will be fulfilled by acting as if induction will remain valid. Why? Because you don’t have any reason to believe it, as you later admit:

I have not assumed that it will continue to hold in the arguments I provided. Where exactly do you think I have done that?

This is a patently irrational. You know that you have good reason to believe induction is a valid way of obtaining knowledge, now go out and investigate the reasons.

On the contrary, I don’t think I do; unless the reasons I’ve provided are good reasons. You don’t seem to think they are.

(cont…)

 

[MichaelLewis]

According to Aquinas, God is the first cause. He is the ultimate cause of all other things. This is the cosmological argument. Unless you can give me some reason why he is bound by the laws that he ultimately caused, I cannot agree with you.

How could God cause the laws of causality if there was no causality before he caused it to exist? You have to understand, my point is that it makes NO SENSE to evoke God’s power to “cause” anything if there is no causation. Even God can’t ensure that the causal relationship between his willing things and the world being as he wills it to be will continue to hold; either that relationship continues to hold or it does not.

If God is in control of these laws in the first place, then his foreknoweldge is not necessary. Furthermore, if he exists outside of time, which makes some sense if you believe that he is the first cause of everything, then he will not be constrained by time. Same objection as above.

I don’t know what it means for something to be conscious, and thus to be God, if it exists outside of all time. But putting that aside, for all you or I know, God is outside of time, but his will isn’t always done within time, because his causal powers happen to not always work within time.

We don’t need to stipulate he is infallible (a term that is widely misunderstood), so long as we understand that he is the first cause. I don’t ask for a stipulation, but here is why I could never stipulate with you that induction will always hold. It is inconsistent with your epistemology. It is also arbitrary in that you request an exception to your own adopted theory of knowledge.

What is inconsistent about it? It doesn’t follow from my epistemology, but that doesn’t mean it is inconsistent with it. I request no exception; I explained the non-inductive reasons I have to continue to act as if induction will hold. You need to explain specifically what is wrong with them, for I have no idea. Remember, so long as it isn’t actually irrational but only non-rational for me to act as if induction will hold, you can’t rightly accuse me of irrationality.

Michael

 

[MichaelLewis]

I’m not suggesting applying them outside of an ordered universe. Applying those very principles to our ordered universe indicates more for God’s existence, than against. The very fact that our universe does appear ordered is argument for God.

I agree tha we can be certain of very little. Belief in God is an act of faith. However, applying the basic priniples of reason and logic (and science) to the world indicate that God does exist. Again, my unanswered question: How do you atheists propose that energy and matter came into being?

But you are applying them outside of an ordered universe, for you are ascribing causal powers to God. Our concept of causation is derived from our experience in a universe where certain sorts of events always seem to occur in conjunction with other sorts of events. Outside of an environment where such order holds, it is senseless to talk of “cause” or “power”. It may very well be that some great mind existed before the universe was formed or outside of this timeline. It might even be the case that he willed the universe into existence, and it came into existence just as he willed it to; but if that is the case, even setting his existence aside, it is just as strange and inexplicable that things would happen as he willed them to happen as it would be if the universe just came into existence from nothing; this is because in principle there can be no explanation for any event or regularity that doesn’t explain that event or regularity in terms of some other event or regularity. In an ordered universe, we don’t appreciate this easily, for we take the regularities that hold for granted. To answer your question (though I’m an agnostic, not an atheist): there doesn’t need to be a reason, but if there is a reason, that is at least as remarkable as matter and energy just beginning to exist for no reason at all! I know this seems counter-intuitive, but if you consider the reasoning carefully, you will see that it is true. When we try to apply notions such as “power” and “causality” outside of a universe with existing regularities, where those notions actually make sense, it is as if we were trying to fix a leaky river with a crescent wrench; it just doesn’t make any sense.
Michael

 

[MichaelLewis]

Before we get too far afield here, I’d like to point out that your arguments here only have to do with what you suppose God’s abilities would be if you believed in Him. None of it is relevent to whether or not He exists. If God had the limits that you propose above, there would still be God. I do not for a moment suppose limits on Him, but even if He had them He would still BE, and therefore the atheist position would be defeated.

I’m not here argueing against God’s existence, but against the notion that his existence could explain causality or give us a reason to believe in induction.

 

[MichaelLewis]

Gilbert Keith wrote:
I have to disagree. Since God’s existence cannot be absolutely proven or disproven intellectually to anyone’s satisfaction, the only possible approach or flight from God is through motive … an act of the will, rather than the intellect. People approach God because they want to. People flee from God because they want to. The motives in each case may vary, but the fundamental truth is that they act from motive, rather than from conviction.

---

*That is quite an assertion. I can’t absolutely prove that I’m not going to have a major heart attack tonight, does the fact that I’m not loitering in hospital waiting room right now demonstrate that I want to die? *
Maybe some folks are motivated to avoid affirming false propositions. Most atheists don’t claim certainty, you know. Agnostics like me certainly don’t. I’ve noticed some theists do.

Believing or not believing in God is ultimately a matter of what one wants, or does not want, to believe.

So you are admitting that you just made a choice to believe? In what sense do you really believe then? You sound like an agnostic who perhaps wants to be a theist.*

 

[MichaelLewis]

Your initial premise is not true. God’s power does not depend upon causality. How could it, since God is the creator of the principle of Causality as we know it? If God created causality, God can interfere with it and suspend it at will. That is the basis for miracles.

If you create something, don’t you cause it to come into being? How did he cause causality to come into being if there was no causality?

 

[MichaelLewis]

tdegsq:

In post 1729178 I make a significant typing mistake:

You do understand the point I was making about my foot popping off, right? My point was that even if induction fails, for I know my trying to do what I would normally do will still give me the results that I want, though perhaps in a way that I would never expect.

This should read:

You do understand the point I was making about my foot popping off, right? My point was that even if induction fails, for ALL I know my trying to do what I would normally do will still give me the results that I want, though perhaps in a way that I would never expect.

 

[mlchance]

What do you say to atheists who believe God is a human invention?

“Prove it.”

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

MichaelLewis

If you create something, don’t you cause it to come into being? How did he cause causality to come into being if there was no causality?

Because God created something, he introduced into that something the principle of Causality. His power did not depend upon the principle of Causality as we know it. Causality as we know it is a created chain of events. But since God is uncreated, how can He depend upon Causality for His power? We certainly depend upon causality for our power, but that’s because we are created by God to depend upon it.

You sound like an agnostic who perhaps wants to be a theist.

I am a Catholic who used to be an agnostic/atheist.

 

[San_Patricio]

But you are applying them outside of an ordered universe, for you are ascribing causal powers to God. Our concept of causation is derived from our experience in a universe where certain sorts of events always seem to occur in conjunction with other sorts of events. Outside of an environment where such order holds, it is senseless to talk of “cause” or “power”. It may very well be that some great mind existed before the universe was formed or outside of this timeline. It might even be the case that he willed the universe into existence, and it came into existence just as he willed it to; but if that is the case, even setting his existence aside, it is just as strange and inexplicable that things would happen as he willed them to happen as it would be if the universe just came into existence from nothing; this is because in principle there can be no explanation for any event or regularity that doesn’t explain that event or regularity in terms of some other event or regularity. In an ordered universe, we don’t appreciate this easily, for we take the regularities that hold for granted. To answer your question (though I’m an agnostic, not an atheist): there doesn’t need to be a reason, but if there is a reason, that is at least as remarkable as matter and energy just beginning to exist for no reason at all! I know this seems counter-intuitive, but if you consider the reasoning carefully, you will see that it is true. When we try to apply notions such as “power” and “causality” outside of a universe with existing regularities, where those notions actually make sense, it is as if we were trying to fix a leaky river with a crescent wrench; it just doesn’t make any sense.
Michael

Nay, I am placing God Himself out of the ordered universe, as well as within, above, beyond, around, etc., it. He IS the first cause, He is without cause, His Own cause. He created causality along with everything else. God is not some super-evolved mind that we can all become, He is God. He can do whatever He wants. In general He leaves us to do as we wish, because He gave us free will to use to love, honor and worship Him.
Your idea that energy and matter could exist for no reason at all as easily as by God’s will makes no sense. Energy and matter follow rules- always have and always will. By the very principle of causality YOU MUST HAVE A FIRST CAUSE, otherwise you end up with an infinite regress, whith is totally irrational as well as impossible. God, being outside of time, infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent is the only logical explanation. You claim not, but the best you’ve offered is that
that there doesn’t need to be a reason. If you mean reason in terms of “why do you prefer chocolate to butterscotch?” you’re absolutely correct, no reason needed; but if you mean “why can’t I run my car with sand in the block instead of oil?”, well, there is a reason and if you reject that reason you’ll have an unhappy car.
As to the leaky river argument, I don’t see any reason why God couldn’t use a crescent wrench to fix one.

P.S. Why are you yelling at everybody?

 

[San_Patricio]

---

*** So you are admitting that you just made a choice to believe? In what sense do you really believe then? You sound like an agnostic who perhaps wants to be a theist.

Of course it’s a choice. God doesn’t force anyone to believe in Him. He gave us free will and it’s up to us if we want to use it to do good and love Him, or if we want to use it for our own selfish gain. Faith is always our choice, but it has no bearing on whether or not there is God. I don’t love or worship the Queen England, but I don’t deny her existence either.

Catholic ex-atheist.

 

[San_Patricio]

If you create something, don’t you cause it to come into being? How did he cause causality to come into being if there was no causality?

…You…didn’t…just…say…that…?
“How did he cause causality to come into being if there was no causality?”
You mean like “How did Henry Ford make a car if there were no cars?”

 

[MichaelLewis]

San Patricio Wrote:
Nay, I am placing God Himself out of the ordered universe, as well as within, above, beyond, around, etc., it. He IS the first cause, He is without cause, His Own cause. He created causality along with everything else. God is not some super-evolved mind that we can all become, He is God. He can do whatever He wants. In general He leaves us to do as we wish, because He gave us free will to use to love, honor and worship Him.

What can it mean for him to create something without causing it? I’d like some account of “cause” or “power” that doesn’t depend upon an ordered universe. God is supposed to have the power to affect reality via an act of will, right? Why do you see a connection between God’s willing things and their coming to be? Isn’t it because every time God tries to make something happen via an act of will, it happens? But WHY does it happen? Does God, via an act of will, make it the case that every time he wills something, it happens? Does he, via an act of will, make it the case that when he wills it to be the case that when he wills something to be the case, it happens, happen? At some point you simply have to say “That’s just what actually happens.” And put the “whys” aside. To ask “why” is to ask for an explanation of something in terms of something else. Outside of a background of regularities, it makes no sense to ask for an explanation of why anything happens, because there are no other regularities in reference to which one might explain the regularity in question.
I never said that we could become God, and I’m not sure what the relevance of the free-will question is here.
*

Your idea that energy and matter could exist for no reason at all as easily as by God’s will makes no sense. Energy and matter follow rules- always have and always will. By the very principle of causality YOU MUST HAVE A FIRST CAUSE

*, otherwise you end up with an infinite regress, whith is totally irrational as well as impossible. God, being outside of time, infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent is the only logical explanation.
How on earth could you know that matter and energy always have and always will follow rules? Because they have in our experience? The “principle of causality” isn’t some logical principle, it is just another product of our observations of what actually happens. There is no reason to extend laws extracted from our experience to everything everywhere. I don’t need to posit an infinite regress; matter and energy could have just begun to exist, for no reason at all. Just as God’s will could have been done, for no reason at all.

*You claim not, but the best you’ve offered is that *

that there doesn’t need to be a reason. If you mean reason in terms of “why do you prefer chocolate to butterscotch?” you’re absolutely correct, no reason needed; but if you mean “why can’t I run my car with sand in the block instead of oil?”, well, there is a reason and if you reject that reason you’ll have an unhappy car.
*As to the leaky river argument, I don’t see any reason why God couldn’t use a crescent wrench to fix one. *
*
I think you have conflated two different points I have tried to make. “Reason” unfortunately is ambiguous; it has a motivational meaning and a explanatory meaning. I can have a “reason” for performing some action, on the one hand. That was the sense in which I was using the word when I brought up different flavors of ice cream. My point was that I’m not necessarily behaving irrationally just because I have no reason for acting in one way vs. another. On the other hand their can be a “reason” as to why something happened, and while that reason could also be a motivational reason, it need not be.
Certainly, like anyone else I’m going to count on the regularities we’ve observed to continue, so I won’t be replacing my oil with sand; but I recognize that there is no non-circular, non-pragmatic reason to suppose they will continue to hold.
There was no leaky river argument, just an analogy. It had nothing to do with God, but with us, and our using our inductive reasoning out of context. Such reasoning presupposes order, it can not speak to the origins of order.
*

P.S. Why are you yelling at everybody?

I didn’t think I was; sorry, I have been careless with my fonts I guess. But I meant no offence, nor did I mean to ‘yell’.

 

[MichaelLewis]

Of course it’s a choice. God doesn’t force anyone to believe in Him. He gave us free will and it’s up to us if we want to use it to do good and love Him, or if we want to use it for our own selfish gain. Faith is always our choice, but it has no bearing on whether or not there is God. I don’t love or worship the Queen England, but I don’t deny her existence either.

Well, I took Gilbert Keith not as saying that he choose to love God, and so on, but as having chosen to believe that God exists. “Believe” is ambiguous, for sure.

 

[MichaelLewis]

Because God created something, he introduced into that something the principle of Causality. His power did not depend upon the principle of Causality as we know it. Causality as we know it is a created chain of events. But since God is uncreated, how can He depend upon Causality for His power? We certainly depend upon causality for our power, but that’s because we are created by God to depend upon it.

All I mean by a causal relationship is a relationship where one sort of thing always follows another sort of thing (there are other conditions set by philosophers of science when considering complex sets of relationships, but when you are talking about the basic laws of physics that explain those relationships, you just have constant conjunctions). If you have some alternative notion of causality that consists in more than just constant conjunctions, I’d love to hear what it is. If you don’t have an alternative notion, then you really can’t use causality as part of an argument for God’s existence.

 

[San_Patricio]

What can it mean for him to create something without causing it?
Please show me where I said He didn’t cause. I don’t see that here.

I’d like some account of “cause” or “power” that doesn’t depend upon an ordered universe. God is supposed to have the power to affect reality via an act of will, right? Why do you see a connection between God’s willing things and their coming to be? Isn’t it because every time God tries to make something happen via an act of will, it happens? But WHY does it happen? Does God, via an act of will, make it the case that every time he wills something, it happens? Does he, via an act of will, make it the case that when he wills it to be the case that when he wills something to be the case, it happens, happen? At some point you simply have to say “That’s just what actually happens.” And put the “whys” aside. To ask “why” is to ask for an explanation of something in terms of something else. Outside of a background of regularities, it makes no sense to ask for an explanation of why anything happens, because there are no other regularities in reference to which one might explain the regularity in question.

Absolutely. I think.

I never said that we could become God, and I’m not sure what the relevance of the free-will question is here.

Me too.

**
How on earth could you know that matter and energy always have and always will follow rules? Because they have in our experience? The “principle of causality” isn’t some logical principle, it is just another product of our observations of what actually happens. There is no reason to extend laws extracted from our experience to everything everywhere. I don’t need to posit an infinite regress; matter and energy could have just begun to exist, for no reason at all. Just as God’s will could have been done, for no reason at all.

As I’ve said before: if you want to discount the principle of causality, I insist you present an example of something without a cause. Non-causality works nice in word games, but is totally unapplicable to the real world.

**
I think you have conflated two different points I have tried to make. “Reason” unfortunately is ambiguous; it has a motivational meaning and a explanatory meaning. I can have a “reason” for performing some action, on the one hand. That was the sense in which I was using the word when I brought up different flavors of ice cream. My point was that I’m not necessarily behaving irrationally just because I have no reason for acting in one way vs. another. On the other hand their can be a “reason” as to why something happened, and while that reason could also be a motivational reason, it need not be.

I believe I was speaking in terms of your second definition, as cause, not motive, but I don’t remember now.

Certainly, like anyone else I’m going to count on the regularities we’ve observed to continue, so I won’t be replacing my oil with sand; but I recognize that there is no non-circular, non-pragmatic reason to suppose they will continue to hold.

Could you give me a non-circular, non-pragmatic reason to suppose they won’t continue to hold?

There was no leaky river argument, just an analogy. It had nothing to do with God, but with us, and our using our inductive reasoning out of context. Such reasoning presupposes order, it can not speak to the origins of order.

Please elaborate. I’m totally clueless as to what you mean by “using inductive reason out of context”, or “reasoning presupposed order, it cannot speak to the origins of order”.

**
I didn’t think I was; sorry, I have been careless with my fonts I guess. But I meant no offence, nor did I mean to ‘yell’.

No problem.