New proof of the existence of God

[Peter_Plato]

I agree with your interpretation of Ratzinger. This is not the same as e_c’s original characterization, which was:
Indeed, it is exactly the reverse. E_C’s claim was that we can know God exists and is logical because the world is intelligible. Ratzinger is claiming that we can know the world is intelligible because God exists and is logical.

We could sew these two claims together into one tight circle, but the two claims are not the same.

A “tight circle,” hopefully, is not to imply that circular reasoning is in play.

The two claims may not be the same, but if the first implies the second and the second implies the first, independently of each other, that may be precisely what constitutes an irrefutable proof. They are inversely true of each other.

David Berlinski, roughly quoted, points out that Newton demonstrated that the planets are being attracted to the Sun by a force – not just any kind of force but an inverse square force. Then, if you make that assumption the result will be an orbit that conforms exactly to the orbit of the earth, or Mars or any of the planets – a conic section.

The inverse, then, is also true:

If the orbits conform to conic sections then the planets must be attracted to a central source by an inverse square law.

youtu.be/VHeSaUq-Hl8?t=1m1s

So, “exactly the reverse” and both true may constitute irrefutable proof.

 

[goout]

I could ignore the difference, but then I wouldn’t belong in a philosophy forum.

Well, ok.
Philosophy presumes a person is willing to address questions with some specificity.

You just threw up your hands for some reason.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

A “tight circle,” hopefully, is not to imply that circular reasoning is in play.

The two claims may not be the same, but if the first implies the second and the second implies the first, independently of each other, that may be precisely what constitutes an irrefutable proof. They are inversely true of each other.

I strongly disagree with this characterization.

Lets suppose that this argument is correct:

1. We know God exists and is logical because the universe is intelligible.

Does this imply

1. We know the universe is intelligible because God exists and is logical?

It does not. Specifically we can ask the question: “Is a logical God capable of creating an unintelligible universe?” I think the answer is clearly yes, because he has his hands on both knobs (i.e. the knob controlling what we can comprehend, and the knob controlling the laws of the universe.)

In other words:

1. It could be the case that God exists and is logical, but created an incomprehensible universe.

To prove statement 2 and rule out statement 3, we need extra information or assumptions about God, beyond what is demonstrated by statement 1. For example, we need to assume some of the things Ratzinger alluded to (he made the world intelligible because he loved us, had certain goals, etc.)

 

[Peter_Plato]

I strongly disagree with this characterization.

Lets suppose that this argument is correct:

1. We know God exists and is logical because the universe is intelligible.

Does this imply

1. We know the universe is intelligible because God exists and is logical?

I never said ONLY one implies the other, but if each could be independently established then they would both be true necessarily because they BOTH imply the other. They are inversely and, therefore, certainly true.

It does not. Specifically we can ask the question: “Is a logical God capable of creating an unintelligible universe?” I think the answer is clearly yes, because he has his hands on both knobs (i.e. the knob controlling what we can comprehend, and the knob controlling the laws of the universe.)

Except that we are not merely speaking of a “logical” God. We are speaking of the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

The question is whether THAT kind of God is “capable” of creating an unintelligible world. It isn’t clear to me that THAT answer is “clearly yes.”

In other words:

1. It could be the case that God exists and is logical, but created an incomprehensible universe.

That could only be the case if the word “God” is taken to mean something other than omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent AND whether such a “God” – i.e., one NOT omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, but merely “logical” – is even a possible one.

To prove statement 2 and rule out statement 3, we need extra information or assumptions about God, beyond what is demonstrated by statement 1. For example, we need to assume some of the things Ratzinger alluded to (he made the world intelligible because he loved us, had certain goals, etc.)

Actually, I would think that Plantinga’s argument that Maximally Great Being, properly understood, implies that MGB either exists necessarily or is impossible/incoherent COUPLED WITH Aquinas’ argument from contingency that the existence of contingent beings imply the necessity of Ipsum Esse Subsistens (the Necessity of Being or Existence Itself) forms the same kind of inversely true proof that Newton demonstrated with regard to the orbits of the planets.

 

[Qoeleth]

Except that the words of the Preacher are actually self-refuting.

If taken literally, and “all is vanity” that would mean his claim that all is vanity is also a vain claim. Ergo even his claim is devoid of meaning and significance and cannot be a substantive one.

So if his claim is an inspired one, then precisely what does it mean?

It must mean that his capacity to judge all (qualified as all merely human attempts to impose meaning upon reality) to be vanity, must itself have come from a non-vain and not merely human source.

In other words, he can only claim that all is vanity if he is coming from a perspective that can properly judge what is and what is not vanity. Otherwise, his claim is also merely a vain one.

Ergo, the “all” that he refers to is not all in an unqualified sense, but all in the sense of all merely human attempts to impose meaning and value upon reality.

The Preacher, then, is implicitly claiming to be seeing things from a non-vain (divine or inspired) perspective which can property judge the human perspective to be vain.

It is similar, I think, to Socrates’ claim to know nothing. How could he possibly know THAT without having a direct intuition of what it means to know anything (or everything) at all and seeing directly as a result that what he does know is nothing in comparison to what it means to actually know.

Paradoxically, I think this is something like the argument that Qoeleth proposed in the opening post. We can’t know things are meaningless without having some direct insight into what is truly meaningful.

As CS Lewis pointed out, fish don’t know they are swimming in water precisely because they are so totally immersed in it. They have no perspective from which to see themselves swimming in water. Unless we have a perspective that transcends the merely human we cannot know that the merely human that we are immersed in is pure vanity.

If that insight into the human condition is significantly true, then it cannot be merely a human derived insight, it would have to come from a transcendent source. Otherwise, we could not know for certain that it is true, just as fish could not know for certain that they are swimming in water without getting out of the water, transcending it, and looking at themselves swimming in it from an outside perspective.

The term “All”, in the sentence “All things are vanity” needs to be taken in context- obviously God not included within this “All”, but only the visible world, or, more precisely, the writer’s own particular experience of it- having tried riches, pleasure, power, wisdom, etc.

Yet, he still find his spirit unsatisfied, and says, “All things are vanity”.

The conclusion follows, as you said, that there must be a transcendental, unseen element-therefore the existence of God.

So, you are now agreeing with the proof originally proposed?

 

[fisherman_carl]

That is a very convincing proof. For example, there is no possible benefit to humans (from an evolutionary point of view), to be able to write paint like Delacroix, to write like Baudelaire, or to compose like Chopin. These artists (and others) exhibited something ‘God-like’. This certainly proves the existence of something beyond mere visible nature.

This proof is somewhat related to the argument I proposed, since the capacity for a human being to say, “This world is not enough to satisfy my soul”, point to clearly to the existence and operation of something more than this world, something more than nature.

Yes, and the more we philosophize about such things only goes to prove all the more how much we are above the animals. Have you ever seen a monkey build a spaceship and fly to the moon? We are as far above the animals as are the heavens above the earth. Yet, we are not wholly other. Our feet are still firmly rooted in the earth. We resemble the animals as a round mirror resembles a round table. Yet, a mirror can reflect within itself everything else, while the table can only reflect itself. It stands to reason that if we are partly other there must be something that is wholly other, namely God, in whose image we are made.

The world is not enough to satisfy our soul because our soul is made for something more, something that is not of this earth, but in whose image we are made.

 

[goout]

Except that we are not merely speaking of a “logical” God. We are speaking of the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

The question is whether THAT kind of God is “capable” of creating an unintelligible world. It isn’t clear to me that THAT answer is “clearly yes.”

The concept of both/and is very key to Catholicism.

God is both mysterious and intelligible/reasonable.
God can never be fully grasped in his essence, and at the same time what he reveals is intelligible to the competence of our faculties.
There is a combination of mystery and knowledge.
Mystery is closely related to the word sacrament. So the mystery of God draws us in, pointing to or signifying ever deeper realities. The concept of mystery is frequently misunderstood to mean completely unknowable.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Man looks at the stars searching for alien life when all along we find out that we are the aliens. If you look at life on Earth there is only one thing that doesn’t quite belong, and it is man himself.

G. K. Chesterton says, “The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one.”

Man looks to the stars for alien life because in some sense he recognizes he is alien to this world. He looks to see if there are any others like him. And, he looks to see if he has a home some place else.

G. K. Chesterton says, “It is not natural to see man as a natural product. It is not common sense to call man a common object of the country or the seashore. It is not seeing straight to see him as an animal. It is not sane. It sins against the light; against that broad daylight of proportion which is the principle of all reality. It is reached by stretching a point, by making out a case, by artificially selecting a certain light and shade, by bringing into prominence the lesser or lower things which may happen to be similar. The solid thing standing in the sunlight, the thing we can walk round and see from all sides, is quite different. It is also quite extraordinary, and the more sides we see of it the more extraordinary it seems. It is emphatically not a thing that follows or flows naturally from anything else. If we imagine that an inhuman or impersonal intelligence could have felt from the first the general nature of the non-human world sufficiently to see that things would evolve in whatever way they did evolve, there would have been nothing whatever in all that natural world to prepare such a mind for such an unnatural novelty. To such a mind, man would most certainly not have seemed something like one herd out of a hundred herds finding richer pasture, or one swallow out of a hundred swallows making a summer under a strange sky. It would not be in the same scale and scarcely in the same dimension. We might as truly say that it would not be in the same universe. It would be more like seeing one cow out of a hundred cows suddenly jump over the moon or one pig out of a hundred pigs grow wings in a flash and fly.”

 

[fisherman_carl]

“We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact. We can accept him as an animal, if we can live with a fabulous animal. But if we must needs have sequence and necessity, then indeed we must provide a prelude and crescendo of mounting miracles, that ushered in with unthinkable thunders in all the seven heavens of another order, a man may be an ordinary thing." GK Chesterton

 

[Qoeleth]

“We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact. We can accept him as an animal, if we can live with a fabulous animal. But if we must needs have sequence and necessity, then indeed we must provide a prelude and crescendo of mounting miracles, that ushered in with unthinkable thunders in all the seven heavens of another order, a man may be an ordinary thing." GK Chesterton

Yes, indeed. Viewed from a purely naturalistic perspective, the level of human intelligence, imagination, etc. are simply absurd.

There is nothing in the dynamic of evolution which could account for what man is.

Apart from simply intelligence, there is the human sense of the transcendent. From an evolutionary point of view, this seems necessarily to be a disadvantage.

No, the phenomenon of humanity is clear evidence of the existence of a higher reality.

 

[PRmerger]

Yes, indeed. Viewed from a purely naturalistic perspective, the level of human intelligence, imagination, etc. are simply absurd.

There is nothing in the dynamic of evolution which could account for what man is.

Apart from simply intelligence, there is the human sense of the transcendent. From an evolutionary point of view, this seems necessarily to be a disadvantage.

No, the phenomenon of humanity is clear evidence of the existence of a higher reality.

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/sit...l/public/102011/like_button.png?itok=aOi08o5U

 

[Bradski]

Yes, indeed. Viewed from a purely naturalistic perspective, the level of human intelligence, imagination, etc. are simply absurd.

There is nothing in the dynamic of evolution which could account for what man is.

Apart from simply intelligence, there is the human sense of the transcendent. From an evolutionary point of view, this seems necessarily to be a disadvantage.

No, the phenomenon of humanity is clear evidence of the existence of a higher reality.

I’m going to have to recalibrate my Ego Chart.

 

[Aloysium]

I’m going to have to recalibrate my Ego Chart.

Set it to zero would be my suggestion.

 

[Bradski]

Set it to zero would be my suggestion.

Here’s a simple exercise. Put your thumb and forefinger together and hold them up to the light. Now slowly separate them until you can just see the smallest of gaps.

That’s how far we are from reverting to what we actually are.

Here’s another exercise. More of a mental exercise. Imagine that starting at midday tomorrow all law enforcement ceased to exist. There were no rules to follow. There was no-one (except God) who would punish you for anything you did.

I wouldn’t leave the house if I were you.

 

[Qoeleth]

Here’s a simple exercise. Put your thumb and forefinger together and hold them up to the light. Now slowly separate them until you can just see the smallest of gaps.

That’s how far we are from reverting to what we actually are.

Here’s another exercise. More of a mental exercise. Imagine that starting at midday tomorrow all law enforcement ceased to exist. There were no rules to follow. There was no-one (except God) who would punish you for anything you did.

I wouldn’t leave the house if I were you.

Hmm…That might well be true.

Yet, you would agree that there is ‘something’ in the human which is capable of activities which transcend natural necessity? Abstract science, art, self-sacrificial altruism?

Yet, despite this, man is indeed very close to being a pure animal.

So, would you agree that the human being is composed of something which makes him akin to the beasts, and something which makes aligns him to the transcendent?

As an atheist, how would you account for this apparent dualism in humanity?

 

[Aloysium]

Here’s a simple exercise. Put your thumb and forefinger together and hold them up to the light. Now slowly separate them until you can just see the smallest of gaps.

That’s how far we are from reverting to what we actually are.

Here’s another exercise. More of a mental exercise. Imagine that starting at midday tomorrow all law enforcement ceased to exist. There were no rules to follow. There was no-one (except God) who would punish you for anything you did.

I wouldn’t leave the house if I were you.

If we were animals there would be no reverting to anything. We are what we are and would be animals just the same. Fact is that when we behave like animals we don’t become animals; we become demonic. We exist within a moral dimension that does not include animal behaviour. BTW - you appear to have a concept of sin. It is what bogs us down and has transformed a good part of this world into hell.

 

[goout]

Hmm…That might well be true.

Yet, you would agree that there is ‘something’ in the human which is capable of activities which transcend natural necessity? Abstract science, art, self-sacrificial altruism?

Yet, despite this, man is indeed very close to being a pure animal.

So, would you agree that the human being is composed of something which makes him akin to the beasts, and something which makes aligns him to the transcendent?

As an atheist, how would you account for this apparent dualism in humanity?

Actually dualism proposes a separation and sometimes antagonism of the body and soul.
Christianity observes that humanity is unified body and soul. They are inseparable.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Actually dualism proposes a separation and sometimes antagonism of the body and soul.
Christianity observes that humanity is unified body and soul. They are inseparable.

Actually, modern medicine proposes a separation and sometimes antagonism of parts of the body, and other parts of the body. When such a conflict arises, I wonder which side the soul is on.

 

[PRmerger]

Actually, modern medicine proposes a separation and sometimes antagonism of parts of the body, and other parts of the body. When such a conflict arises, I wonder which side the soul is on.

It does?

Can you give an example of what you mean?

(You can disregard the “antagonism” aspect of your assertion. No one here denies that some times there is an antagonism between one’s soul/spirit and one’s body.)

But I’d like to discuss further what you’re referencing by modern medicine proposing a separation of parts of the body (in the sense that it refutes the idea that there is a body/soul composite as is being proposed by Catholics here.)

 

[JapaneseKappa]

It does?

Can you give an example of what you mean?

(You can disregard the “antagonism” aspect of your assertion. No one here denies that some times there is an antagonism between one’s soul/spirit and one’s body.)

But I’d like to discuss further what you’re referencing by modern medicine proposing a separation of parts of the body (in the sense that it refutes the idea that there is a body/soul composite as is being proposed by Catholics here.)

Sure: While the exact ratio isn’t known, the current estimate is that there are slightly more bacterial cells in your body than cells that actually have your DNA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiota
Now you might say “those don’t count as actually part of your body” despite the fact that they are required for the body to function normally. Indeed, to answer that question requires a much more precise definition of what exactly constitutes “the body.”

I will contend that microbiome and the actually human cells are “inseparable” in the sense that neither one can survive without the other, but not inseparable in the sense that it would be impossible to pick out all the non-human bacteria from a body.

Now it seems to me that this must be an approximation of the body/soul composite you’re proposing, given that the soul can exist without the body (or else you must have some news for everyone about what’s currently living in heaven) but that such an arrangement, while technically possible, is not the natural or healthy state of affairs. Just as it would be if we separated the human cells from the bacterial cells.

And so we arrive at an interesting conundrum regarding the transitivity of inseparability. If the soul is inseparable from the human body, and the human body is in the same way inseparable from it’s microbiome, then doesn’t that imply the soul is also inseparable from the microbiome?