Help re: a debate

[kantus12]

Hello, everyone.

I may have gotten myself into a spot of bother. I engaged someone’s criticism of Catholicism as “superstitious nonsense”, and ended up getting wound into a debate about Scholasticism and why God (on this person’s view) can’t exist, because he can’t have X, Y, Z traits…

Anyway, my knowledge of Scholasticism is somewhat limited (I have no formal philosophy training or education, and honestly all that I’ve got is my time spent perusing Edward Feser’s blog), so what should I do? Should I admit that I can’t provide him with exactly the answers he wants, and leave the matter lie? Should I ask some of you guys here, so that you can help me unpack an answer to his criticisms? What do you all think?

 

[balto]

Hello, everyone.

I may have gotten myself into a spot of bother. I engaged someone’s criticism of Catholicism as “superstitious nonsense”, and ended up getting wound into a debate about Scholasticism and why God (on this person’s view) can’t exist, because he can’t have X, Y, Z traits…

Anyway, my knowledge of Scholasticism is somewhat limited (I have no formal philosophy training or education, and honestly all that I’ve got is my time spent perusing Edward Feser’s blog), so what should I do? Should I admit that I can’t provide him with exactly the answers he wants, and leave the matter lie? Should I ask some of you guys here, so that you can help me unpack an answer to his criticisms? What do you all think?

Well if he is waiting for an answer you could just politely say that you don’t have the answers yet but will get back to him. In the meantime, maybe you could post the specific argument he is making here so we can help you respond to it? Without knowing the argument there’s not much we can do. I know there are posters around here that can provide satisfactory answers to the objections.

 

[TheWhoFreak]

I definitely agree that if you don’t know the answers, there’s no shame in admitting so and following up with the person. That said, the following points might help you answer his objections:

• Ask him how he knows that God can’t have X trait. If he gives an example, provide a counter-example that shows that God does have the trait. The point is to show that arguing against God’s existence by saying He can’t have certain traits is inconclusive.
• It’s also important to realize that God’s attributes aren’t separate entities which add up to form God. God’s “attributes” are simply names for how God acts in certain situations.
• Therefore, saying God can’t have goodness (for example), doesn’t prove anything about God; it only shows that the person has never observed God do anything that he would describe as good.
• Ultimately, your partner’s line of argumentation fails. As long as you can provide examples to show that God does indeed have X, Y, Z traits, he can’t say anything to disprove your examples, because you are discussing your individual perceptions of God, and not God Himself.

 

[stephe1987]

Always say you’ll get back to the person if you don’t know the answer. Anything else and they will believe their false ideas about God are correct.

And studies show that Christians are actually less superstitious than unbelievers. Christianity actually helped people leave superstitions when it first began to spread.

 

[Trebor135]

And studies show that Christians are actually less superstitious than unbelievers. Christianity actually helped people leave superstitions when it first began to spread.

Interesting. Could you elaborate?

(Unfortunately, I can’t help the OP. Responding to atheism isn’t my strength. Islam is what I feel called to deal with.)

 

[PietroPaolo]

Ask him if, when he says God doesn’t exist, he means that God doesn’t exist anywhere in all of time & space. When he says “yes” point out that in order to know that he would have to know all of time & space. But to know all of time & space he’d have to be God. Therefore, either he doesn’t know there is no God or he is God, in which case there would be a God (him).

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Hello, everyone.

I may have gotten myself into a spot of bother. I engaged someone’s criticism of Catholicism as “superstitious nonsense”, and ended up getting wound into a debate about Scholasticism and why God (on this person’s view) can’t exist, because he can’t have X, Y, Z traits…

This person you are dealing with isn’t going to change his opinion no matter what you say. “Superstitious nonsense” is clearly a catchphrase he has read at some atheist website, or a remark dropped by his atheist uncle. It doesn’t indicate that this person knows very much about Catholicism, or wants to know. Perhaps it would be wisdom on your part to “know when to hold them and when to fold them”?

 

[kantus12]

Thanks, guys. I’ll get back to him with a message of impending suggestions. Hopefully he doesn’t take this as an admission of defeat and consider the debate closed

Posted here is his comment:

(WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMING)

QUOTE
Comment: "My definitions :
religion : An attempt to explain the universe and regulate human behavior, based on assumptions that are held as dogmas
philosophy : An attempt to explain the universe and regulate human behavior, based on reason and conjecture
science : An attempt to explain the universe and regulate human behavior, based on reason and empirical data

Philosophy developed as a way to purify religion and clean it from its superstition.

Science developers as a way to rid philosophy of its conjecture and replace it with actual data.

The scientific method – when applied correctly – does not allow conjecture. It does allow for hypotheses. A hypothesis is a testable statement that is considered a possible explanation for a phenomenon with a likelihood that can vary between 0.0001% and 99.9999% but should never considered factual, unlike conjecture.

Also, note that any attempt to prove or disprove the existence of a “God” would first require a proper definition for “God”. Pandeistic or Panendeistic notions of “God” make perfect sense to me and are perfectly compatible with the current scientific data, but such a “God” would not have any interest in religion and would even be perfectly compatible with an Atheist perspective.

The notion that the universe is one giant quantum computer is something that can be validated scientifically is fully compatible with an Atheistic, materialistic notion of the universe. Yet, it’s but a step away from the notion that “God” is equal to the universe if you’re willing to consider “God” a suitable reference to such a gigantic quantum computer… and that would be the Pandeistic perspective. The difference is purely semantic, really.

A Panentheistic perspective would be a perspective that adds an impersonal computer programmer into the mix… which I consider a possibility but not necessarily a requirement as the quantum computer universe could be the product of emergence. We simply don’t know whether emergence can or can’t explain the existence of the universe itself.

The Christian “God”, however, is an entirely different issue. The Christian “God” has quite a few characteristics that must all be true to say that the Christian “God” is real :
It must be omnipotent
It must be all-knowing, wise and benign
It must have incarnated itself in the form of a human named Jesus
It must have sacrificed that incarnation to himself and have it risen again after death
It must want human beings to prey for forgiveness and respond to prayer
It must have used the Bible as an exclusive means to spread its wisdom across humanity
It must have used miracles

There’s quite a few problems with those characteristics. There’s a lot of evidence suggesting that the Bible mixes myths and history together. There’s quite a lot of evidence that the tales about Jesus are embellished at best. Quite a few New Testament scholars (most notably G. A. Wells, Richard Carrier, Earl Doherty and Robert M. Price) even regard the question of whether Jesus existed as open.

QUOTE

…cont…

 

[kantus12]

(continued)…

I responded thus:

QUOTE
“Philosophy arose as a way to purify religion of its superstition” - You may be surprised to hear that I actually agree with you on this topic. Greek philosophy arose as a means of seeking the highest truth, the “real answer” to the riddle of the world. As part of this it sought to debunk the superstitions and anthropomorphisms of Greek polytheism. However, what is often forgotten by some atheists is that Xenophanes, for instance, wanted to replace polytheism not with atheism but with monotheism. He saw that truly following out his ideas to the end did not preclude this, but in fact required it. (See :edwardfeser.blogspot.ie/2…)

Also, I would strongly object to your characterisation of philosophy - it does not use “conjecture”. It uses logic. Logic is a non-scientific approach to truth, but it is perfectly valid. Empirical proofs apply only to physical objects, the things that make up what the ancients called “the World” and what we call “the Universe”. Logical proofs are just as capable of establishing truth as empirical ones, they simply do so by different means, and in different fields.

For example, one method of logical proof is the deductive argument - it presents premises, connects these logically, and derives a conclusion from them. If the premises are all factually true, and the logic connecting them is valid, then the conclusion must be true, it cannot fail to be true any more than four can equal five. The classic example would be:

"PREMISE: “All men are mortal”
PREMISE: “Socrates is a man”
CONCLUSION: “Socrates is mortal”.

The only way you could falsify this argument would be by undermining the premises (such as showing that not all men are mortal, or that Socrates is a god, or something like that), or by invalidating the connecting logic (which is impossible to do in this case, since obviously if all members of Group X have trait A, and person Y is a member of Group X, Y must by definition have trait A).

I know many modern scientists like to ridicule philosophers, but the thing is that philosophy is so fundamental to our mental lives that the only way to not perform philosophy is to be dead or asleep. The only choice is between doing philosophy well and doing it poorly. Yes, science gets great results by ignoring the subjective world, the self, and the philosophical assumptions upon which it rests. It is perfectly justified in doing so, in the realms with which it deals. However, to take from this that the things you chose to ignore do not exist, is pure hubris.

A big problem arises in the question of defining God (insomuch as a human can do so). The Catholic Church, with her theologians, had a great and fine definition worked out, and it made (and still does make) a heck of a lot of sense. This definition is ipsum esse subsistens, or subsistent being itself. If that statement doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s probably because of history: When the “Moderns” (Descartes, Bacon, et al) were alive, they unjustly ridiculed the Scholastics (Church theologians), dismissing their arguments unfairly. Since then, the definitions used by the Scholastics (essence, essential, accident, accidental, being, form, matter, etc) have had their meanings changed so much in common usage that when you read a Scholastic argument it at first seems to be ridiculous and easily refuted, when in fact this only seems to be so because the two of you are using the words to mean very different things - it is as if you heard someone insist that plants cannot have leaves, only to discover that what he calls “leaves” you call “noses”. His argument wasn’t wrong, but it appeared to be.

To your points about what the God of Abraham must be - two of these points are wrong or incomplete. The Bible is not the only source of solid knowledge about God, according to Catholicism. It is important, yes, but so is the Tradition of the Church Fathers and those who composed and compiled the books of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. In addition, the Church holds that much (though not all) about God can be known through human reason alone (this would be theology).

Secondly, using miracles as an argument against Theism, and Catholicism, is question-begging, since miracles are only impossible if Theism is false, and you can’t establish that Theism is false by assuming that it’s false. If, however, Theism is true, there’s no reason why miracles couldn’t happen.

To your first two questions (the Divine Attributes, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence), I do not have the answer off-hand. However, Thomas Aquinas wrote extensively on the subject, and in his works proved logically that there must be a purely actual being, and that such a being must possess the three attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence). You can disagree with him, but his argument is not a hypothesis, it is not subject to refutation by new evidence.

QUOTE

He responded thus:

QUOTE

The God of Xenophanes is the God of Spinoza and Albert Einstein. Such a God is a Pandeistic God, which – as I pointed out – is actually compatible with Atheism… and a concept of God I can agree on.

Further, philosophy uses logic applied to an initial set of conjectures/assumptions. Take away those conjectures/assumptions and what remains is science (I know there’s something wrong with this - kantus). In fact, the pre-cursor of the natural sciences was refered to as natural philosophy.

With regards to the attributes of the Christian God, I noticed you didn’t care to address any of my arguments. Please address at least some of them first. Maybe then I’ll debunk the deductive logic of Thomas Aquinas for ya.

QUOTE​

 

[empther]

All that stuff is snowballing. He’s overwhelming you with subjects, but not in an organized manner. That’s snowballing.

It also ignores the proof of God’s existence: the universe itself. The universe could not have existed through an infinite past. It had to start. Therefore there had to be a God to start it.

Aquinas proves God’s existence and characteristics in an organized manner.

newadvent.org/summa/
newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

Question 2. The existence of God <<<---- begin here
newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm
Is the proposition “God exists” self-evident?
Is it demonstrable?
Does God exist?

Question 3. The simplicity of God
newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm
Is God a body?
Is He composed of matter and form?
Is there composition of quiddity, essence or nature, and subject in Him?
Is He composed of essence and existence?
Is He composed of genus and difference?
Is He composed of subject and accident?
Is He in any way composite, or wholly simple?
Does He enter into composition with other things?

Question 6. The goodness of God
newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm
Does goodness belong to God?
Is God the supreme good?
Is He alone essentially good?
Are all things good by the divine goodness?

Question 4. The perfection of God
newadvent.org/summa/1004.htm
Is God perfect?
Is God perfect universally, as having in Himself the perfections of all things?
Can creatures be said to be like God?

Question 7. The infinity of God
newadvent.org/summa/1007.htm
Is God infinite?
Is anything besides Him infinite in essence?
Can anything be infinite in magnitude?
Can an infinite multitude exist?

Question 8. The existence of God in things
newadvent.org/summa/1008.htm
Is God in all things?
Is God everywhere?
Is God everywhere by essence, power, and presence?
Does it belong to God alone to be everywhere?

Question 9. The immutability of God
newadvent.org/summa/1009.htm
Is God altogether immutable?
Does it belong to God alone to be immutable?

Question 10. The eternity of God
newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm
What is eternity?
Is God eternal?
Does it belong to God alone to be eternal?
Does eternity differ from time?
What is the difference of aeviternity, as there is one time, and one eternity?
Is there only one aeviternity?

Question 14. God’s knowledge
newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm
Is there knowledge in God?
Does God understand Himself?
Does He comprehend Himself?
Is His understanding His substance?
Does He understand other things besides Himself?
Does He have a proper knowledge of them?
Is the knowledge of God discursive?
Is the knowledge of God the cause of things?
Does God have knowledge of non-existing things?
Does He have knowledge of evil?
Does He have knowledge of individual things?
Does He know the infinite?
Does He know future contingent things?
Does He know enunciable things?
Is the knowledge of God variable?
Does God have speculative or practical knowledge of things?

Question 19. The will of God
newadvent.org/summa/1019.htm
Is there will in God?
Does God will things apart from Himself?
Does God necessarily will whatever He wills?
Is the will of God the cause of things?
Can any cause be assigned to the divine will?
Is the divine will always fulfilled?
Is the will of God mutable?
Does the will of God impose necessity on the things willed?
Is there in God the will of evil?
Does God have free will?
Is the will of expression distinguished in God?
Are five expressions of will rightly assigned to the divine will?

Question 25. The power of God
newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm
Is there power in God?
Is His power infinite?
Is He omnipotent?
Could He make the past not to have been?
Could He do what He does not, or not do what He does?
Could He make better what He makes?

Do you see how beautifully Aquinas organizes everything?

Begin with Question 2 God’s existence at the top of this post. If your friend doesn’t agree that God exists, is there any point of going on?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Begin with Question 2 God’s existence at the top of this post. If your friend doesn’t agree that God exists, is there any point of going on?

And while you’re at it, ask your friend how he knows for a fact that God does not exist.

 

[hicetnunc]

Hi Kantus12;

My advice to you would be to narrow the field of discussion with him considerably. Your interlocutor is using a scattergun approach on you, which will have you running in every direction. It’s nigh impossible to make progress in these kind of discussions because, first of all, he’s covering such a wide-range of related and unrelated arguments of varying kinds that you will forever find yourself fighting spot fires every time you try to deal with one of his objections. This is precisely what he is doing with you in his response to your very thoughtful and detailed reply to a series of his earlier objections. He simply ignores all your points, and doesn’t concede any ground to you at all, and instead introduces a new (and totally incorrect) argument about the nature of philosophy and logic. It seems like he’s just trying to bate you and set you up; his final taunt (“Maybe then I’ll debunk the deductive logic of Thomas Aquinas for ya”) indicates he’s already anticipating your answers, and set to go with his pre-packaged responses.

If you have the patience and stomach for the battle ahead, I would not let him frame the impossible parameters of the discussion but instead ask him to focus on one aspect of the discussion and stick to it. For example, why is pandeism compatible with atheism? What constitutes this compatibility and what kind of compatibility is he referring to? Why would pandeism be more compatible with atheism, and not simply deism, since the former implies the latter? Frankly, I think when you start probing here you’ll find he’s in a totally indefensible position, and I wouldn’t let him get away with this absurd claim, while he tries to throw you off with a surplus of red herring along the way.

There are a number of indefensible claims he makes so I would pick one and hammer away at it.

Good luck to you.

 

[balto]

My advice to you would be to narrow the field of discussion with him considerably. Your interlocutor is using a scattergun approach on you, which will have you running in every direction.

Agreed. Rather than try to answer every single one of his objections at once I think you would be better served starting with arguing for God as ipsum esse subsistens and/or pure actuality as you mentioned. Forget about the divine attributes until you can establish this point. I would use some version of the cosmological argument (the Uncaused cause). We can help you out if you need it. Look over the links that empther provided though because they will be helpful. Also, bringing in the Bible and questioning its veracity seems to be a popular atheist tactic but it is of no importance to this argument unless you were trying to prove that Christ was God which is much further down in the argument.

For example, why is pandeism compatible with atheism? What constitutes this compatibility and what kind of compatibility is he referring to?

I also found this to be very confusing and contradictory. I don’t understand how you can claim to not be a theist (atheist) while at the same time claiming to be a type of theist called a pantheist . Another curious claim is the claim that science doesn’t make assumptions. Science makes quite a bit of assumptions including, but not limited to, the assumption that an objective world exists, that this world is knowable through our senses, that our senses are reliable, that experimentation and induction is a valid method of ascertaining information about this world, that the world behaves in regular and definable patterns, etc. Science used to be called “natural philosophy” yes but it still involves rational thinking and philosophy nowadays. Look up any scientific publication and go straight to the discussion section and you’ll find plenty of philosophy (of course it’s mostly if not all inductive reasoning but still reasoning nonetheless).

 

[balto]

And while you’re at it, ask your friend how he knows for a fact that God does not exist.

Probably because the notion of God he has is not the notion of God that kantus has. Many atheists seem to have a rather underdeveloped notion of God where they suppose He is some kind of super Zeus or Odin. In other words, a complex super human that has power over the universe. That is not the classical theistic God. The God of classical and medieval philosophy is absolutely simple and contains no distinctions or limitations.

 

[kantus12]

Hey guys,

After several days of avoiding/ignoring the issue, I got around to responding to him, giving him, roughly, Aquinas’ first way. He responded thusly:

Comment: "Why can’t the universe itself be emergent?

And if there really must be a first cause to our universe, consider any of the following alternatives to the theistic God :

• a pandeist God : the universe as a dream, with the dreamer as passive observer of his dreams who doesn’t interact with characters or other elements of the dream
• one or more panendeist Gods : the universe as a computer simulation created by one or more external programmers who programmed the initial conditions of the universe, then pushed the “run” button and subsequently has been watching the simulation at a distance without interacting with it

I can see why some might argue that a pandeist or panendeist God is a minimum criterium to explain the universe, but going from there to a theistic God and especially the Christian God requires quite a few logical steps that simply aren’t warranted."

 

[empther]

And if there really must be a first cause to our universe, consider any of the following alternatives to the theistic God :

• a pandeist God : the universe as a dream, with the dreamer as passive observer of his dreams who doesn’t interact with characters or other elements of the dream

• one or more panendeist Gods : the universe as a computer simulation created by one or more external programmers who programmed the initial conditions of the universe, then pushed the “run” button and subsequently has been watching the simulation at a distance without interacting with it

In both of these cases, we have a god or gods who don’t interfere with the universe.
But that’s impossible.

There is an extremely narrow margin between a universe that doesn’t just collapse back onto itself or expands so thinly there are never any stars and galaxies (*** ) and therefore never anything but hydrogen, and forget about life like ourselves.

Only an omnisicient and omnipotent God could “stack the deck” in favor of the universe as we know it today.

(*** In fact, the visible universe of stars and galaxies is only a small fraction of the total amount of matter. Most of it is thinly and uselessly dispersed hydrogen. Phew! It was a close call! Or was it? )

 

[Gorgias]

Hey guys,

After several days of avoiding/ignoring the issue, I got around to responding to him

To tell you the truth, his first message to you was a non-starter, right from the beginning. I would strenuously disagree with him in his ‘definitions’ of philosophy, religion, and science! If you accept those definitions – and the laughable explanations that he gives for these endeavors’ particular beginnings! – you’ve already stacked the deck in his favor!

Comment: "Why can’t the universe itself be emergent?

I might answer that there has never been any empirical evidence for something to have come from nothing. If he’s truly an empiricist, as his reliance on science seems to indicate, then empirically, this suggestion fails on its face. Unless there’s any example of an ‘emergent’ anything ex nihilo, then it’s necessary to fall back on what we know empirically: all things have a cause.

And if there really must be a first cause to our universe, consider any of the following alternatives to the theistic God :

DANGER! DANGER! WARNING, WILL ROBINSON!

He’s just changed the playing field on you. If you’re debating the existence of God, then debate the existence of God. If he’s willing to accept the existence of God, then the two of you should agree that he’s accepted that truth, and then move on. Otherwise, he’s gone from “Is there a God?” to “What is God like?”. As a tactic in an argument, that’s not cool…

 

[balto]

I might answer that there has never been any empirical evidence for something to have come from nothing. If he’s truly an empiricist, as his reliance on science seems to indicate, then empirically, this suggestion fails on its face. Unless there’s any example of an ‘emergent’ anything ex nihilo, then it’s necessary to fall back on what we know empirically: all things have a cause.

I think what he’s trying to claim is that the universe exists unconditionally and there’s no need to argue that God exists unconditionally. But that claim is easily defeated by proving that God is metaphysically simple and contains no parts. The universe is not. If the OP has already argued the First Way then he could easily show that the universe contains act and potency and the potencies must be realized by something outside of the universe, otherwise they would not be potencies and the universe would not change.
Georgias:

He’s just changed the playing field on you. If you’re debating the existence of God, then debate the existence of God. If he’s willing to accept the existence of God, then the two of you should agree that he’s accepted that truth, and then move on. Otherwise, he’s gone from “Is there a God?” to “What is God like?”. As a tactic in an argument, that’s not cool…

Agreed. It sounds like he has already accepted that something like God must exist. OP, get him to acknowledge that first before moving on.

 

[ccmnxc]

Hey guys,

After several days of avoiding/ignoring the issue, I got around to responding to him, giving him, roughly, Aquinas’ first way. He responded thusly:

Comment: "Why can’t the universe itself be emergent?

And if there really must be a first cause to our universe, consider any of the following alternatives to the theistic God :

• a pandeist God : the universe as a dream, with the dreamer as passive observer of his dreams who doesn’t interact with characters or other elements of the dream

*** one or more panendeist Gods : the universe as a computer simulation created by one or more external programmers who programmed the initial conditions of the universe, then pushed the “run” button and subsequently has been watching the simulation at a distance without interacting with it
**
I can see why some might argue that a pandeist or panendeist God is a minimum criterium to explain the universe, but going from there to a theistic God and especially the Christian God requires quite a few logical steps that simply aren’t warranted."

The bolded example demonstrates that the guy you are dialoguing with simply doesn’t understand the first way. One of the main points of the first way is that God cannot simply be a casual observer who presses the “run” button. The first way shows that God holds everything in existence as an essential cause. Whomever you are dialoguing with seems to be under the impression that the first way is arguing for a termination to an accidental series, a series in which the previous members do not have to be present for the series to continue. However, the first way argues for an essentially ordered series, in which each member of the series must be present for the series to occur. For example, an accidentally ordered series is a father betting a son, begetting a son, etc. Once the father has the son, the father can die while the son can continue the line. An essentially ordered series is a hand shaping a clay pot, the hand is being held in such a way due to muscles and tendons, which were moving due to neurons, etc. If the more essential act (the neurons firing) stops, so does everything after.

Also, did he just advocate solipsism for the first option?

 

[polytropos]

religion : An attempt to explain the universe and regulate human behavior, based on assumptions that are held as dogmas

1). This definition is stacked against religion because it presupposes that it is false and baseless.
2). There is not a phenomenon of “religion” in the abstract. There are particular religions. “Religion” is a term something like Wittgenstein’s “game”; there is no set of features that are common to all religions. We can offer an ostensive definition: if we say that Christianity and Buddhism are religions, but philosophy is not a religion, given that we know some things about Christianity, Buddhism, and philosophy, we can get a decent idea of what religion is. But it is unlikely that we can extract a single set of features (necessary and sufficient conditions) that apply to all things we term “religion.”

philosophy : An attempt to explain the universe and regulate human behavior, based on reason and conjecture
science : An attempt to explain the universe and regulate human behavior, based on reason and empirical data

I wonder at the suggestion that science is meant to “regulate human behavior.” I understand that facts uncovered by science might add to our considerations of human behavior. (Example: What we know about a zygote might lead us to conclude that it is a human substance, and therefore dignified. Without scientific means, we might not have known such facts.) But I do not see how one gets to the regulation of human behavior without some other philosophical premises.

Philosophy developed as a way to purify religion and clean it from its superstition.

Science developers as a way to rid philosophy of its conjecture and replace it with actual data.

I think the first point here is either false or trivial, and the second point is false.

In the Western tradition, at least, there have always been properly philosophical conclusions that were not directly related to religion. To say that Plato and Aristotle, for instance, were trying “to purify religion and clean it from its superstition” seems to be false. They both arrived at conclusions that were religious and conclusions that were non-religious. It seems more reasonable to view philosophy as a method of inquiry which they made use of and applied to various aspects of the world and society, which included religion. Phrasing it as a dialectic between religion/superstition and reason seems inaccurate.

Modern science has not replaced science. The founders of modern science did not construe it that way. Logical positivism attempted to construe it that way, and is regarded as a failure.

Also, note that any attempt to prove or disprove the existence of a “God” would first require a proper definition for “God”. Pandeistic or Panendeistic notions of “God” make perfect sense to me and are perfectly compatible with the current scientific data, but such a “God” would not have any interest in religion and would even be perfectly compatible with an Atheist perspective.

I don’t think that this is the way that a philosophical demonstration of God’s existence must proceed.

Take Aquinas’s First Way. It begins with motion in the world and a premise about the nature of essentially ordered causal series. It claims that given those facts, a purely actual being must exist. Further analysis of what the nature of a purely actual being must be like leads one to conclude that the purely actual being is unique, metaphysically simple, omnipotent, good, etc. etc.

The Christian undertaking such a philosophical process probably has some idea of God in mind as he does so. But to say that it must be fully articulated prior to the investigation is not correct. The Christian is saying, On the basis of these facts F1, F2, F3,…, it is the case that there exists an x such that P1x, P2x, P3x,… He then claims that x is relevantly similar to the Christian God, but he isn’t arguing that as a point of logical necessity.

A Panentheistic perspective would be a perspective that adds an impersonal computer programmer into the mix… which I consider a possibility but not necessarily a requirement as the quantum computer universe could be the product of emergence. We simply don’t know whether emergence can or can’t explain the existence of the universe itself.

I am not sure how “emergence” is being used here. “Emergence” from what substrate, exactly?

The Christian “God” has quite a few characteristics that must all be true to say that the Christian “God” is real :
It must be omnipotent
It must be all-knowing, wise and benign
It must have incarnated itself in the form of a human named Jesus
It must have sacrificed that incarnation to himself and have it risen again after death
It must want human beings to prey for forgiveness and respond to prayer
It must have used the Bible as an exclusive means to spread its wisdom across humanity
It must have used miracles

I think that characteristics dependent on revelation must be separated from those that are not. Qua philosopher, the Christian is interesting in demonstrating that a being like God exists. I think a philosophical case supports that such a being does, and that it is “more than” panentheistic, pantheistic, etc.

Qua theologian, the Christian is interesting in demonstrating the consistency of claims made by revelation. For instance, he need not prove that a miracle occurred, but that it is possible, given the nature of the world and the uncaused cause, that the uncaused cause could have produced a miracle. Since the uncaused cause actively sustains the universe at every moment, and a miracle would be a case of the uncaused cause acting directly rather than mediately on the world, this seems to be prima facie possible.