What would be your reaction?

[dshix]

Well, I have to say I see a huge problem with your argument. Atheists don’t talk to God. lol

Did you not read the first two sentences of my post? I thought I had made my disclaimer entirely clear.

 

[Back2Church]

Did you not read the first two sentences of my post? I thought I had made my disclaimer entirely clear.

Lighten up man, it was a joke!

 

[Qoeleth]

The old saying of Tertullian: “Credo quia absurdum est” is supposed to be apocryphal, though its meaning definitely describes the believer mentality.

I would be delighted to see someone actually live according this “philosophy”… though they would not live very long.

Many “good” atheists- Tristan Tzara, E.M. Cioran, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer- also reject logic, reason and science. It is only the tedious atheists (Richard Dawkins- the ones who think like 19th Century industrialists), who still believe such fairy tales.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

Bagheera Blathering on to Someone Else:

Nonsense. I leave many posts unanswered, simply because they are not worth to contemplate. …

Its just the effect of having to live in time.
If you ask for your future then that future will have to have happened already.
Once your future has been vocalized it then becomes your past. It is unavoidable.

That is, if in your question you left no option to change your mind.
Perhaps you’d be compelled by yourself to fulfill your future as it was told to you.

If you choose to know in advance what you will do using your free will. Then perhaps when you reach that point in your future you will have to complete it unwillingly in order to satisfy what your free will had chosen in your future.

Sort of like the idea that you cannot change your past; it will always have to end as it did.
So too with the future you already know.

 

[Back2Church]

PART 1 This post got huge and the forum didn’t like it, so I’m breaking it into two parts.

You are wrong. It was not reasonable AT ALL.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You wrote: “What this argument fails to recognize is that in order to invalidate God’s knowledge, the person needs God’s knowledge”. The authors of that dogma did not have access to “God’s knowledge”, and yet they made that pronouncement. On what grounds?

You’re trying to bait me into a different question instead of directly challenging my statement.

Your argument claims you will perform an action in contradiction to the action that God sees you performing in His eternal now. In order for you to do so, you must first be informed of what God’s knowledge of said action is. Therefore, as it pertains to your argument/experiment, “in order to invalidate God’s knowledge, the person needs God’s knowledge.”

Do you disagree?

You wrote: “God’s knowledge is not dependent on extra-divine things. God simply has all knowledge of extra-divine things.” Knowledge is the one-to-one correspondence between a mental state and the external reality. The external reality is not part of God, it exists independently from God. Of course if the current state of reality is known, and the system is fully deterministic, then the future can be known before it happens.

Catholics do not believe God’s knowledge of reality comes from observing reality. Augustine wrote, “Not because they are, does God know all creatures spiritual and temporal, but because He knows them, therefore they are.”

Now I understand that, being an atheist, you won’t accept such an idea. But the purpose of this thread is to determine whether or not Catholic doctrine is self contradictory, not contradictory to outside ideas. So, as opposed to the idea as you might be, this is the view of the relationship between God’s knowledge of things and the things themselves that must be used in an argument challenging the internal consistency of Catholic dogma.

You wrote: "Can be implied as this:
“God’s knowledge is contingent upon God keeping it secret.”
or
“God’s knowledge is contingent upon God.”

No contradiction with dogma #33 here. "
Incorrect analysis. We ONLY talk about God’s knowledge pertaining to the free actions of agents. Instead of “God’s knowledge is contingent upon God keeping it secret.” you should have written: “God’s knowledge OF THE ACTION OF A FREE AGENT is contingent upon God keeping it secret FROM THAT FREE AGENT.” And that cannot be changed into: “God’s knowledge is contingent upon God.”

Even when you add in the specific variables, as statement like, “God’s knowledge of the action of a free agent is contingent upon God keeping it secret from that free agent,” still boils down to God’s knowledge being contingent upon God’s own actions.

In your argument, before the free agent can perform an action in contradiction to God’s knowledge, God must first give that knowledge to the free agent. If God does not give this knowledge to the free agent, then the free agent cannot perform the contradictory action. Therefore, God’s knowledge of the action of the free agent is ultimately contingent upon God’s action of giving this knowledge to the free agent.

The point of all of this is, of course, is to point out that even if it was the case that God’s knowledge were contingent on Him keeping it secret, the contingency lies with Himself, not something external, and this does not violate dogma #33.

Continue on to the next post for the rest

 

[Back2Church]

PART 2

You wrote: “God’s knowledge of our actions depends on our actions.” That’s like saying “The answer of 4 to the math problem 2 + 2 depends on the sum of 2 + 2.”. Bad analogy. The answer to a math problem is contingent upon the axioms chosen.

Cute, but I didn’t say “the answer to a math problem,” I said the answer to the specific math problem of 2 + 2. Saying the answer of 4 to the problem of 2 + 2 is contingent upon the action of adding 2 and 2 together by the student is a ridiculous statement. The student determines the answer is 4, but at the same time, the answer always was 4 without his actions.

Of course it’s not a perfect analogy. Don’t let that keep you from getting the point of it, though.

You wrote: “In the same way we can say that God has all knowledge of extra-divine things. His knowledge is of everything and always has been.” Is such an empty, unsubstantiated statement an example of your “reasonable” answer?

On it’s own, out of context, of course the statement seems unreasonable.

It was a follow up to the statements: “The answer was 4 before the student adds 2 + 2 together. It was 4, it is 4, and it will always be 4. The reality of 4 being the sum of 2 + 2 did not come into existence when the first rational being figured out how to count and add. To say so is silly, because that would imply that 2 + 2 did not equal 4 until this primal mathematician caused it to be so.”

I guess rather than, “In the same way we can say that…” I should have said something more along the lines of, “In the same way we (Catholics) say that…” The purpose of this statement was to reassert the Catholic view of the nature of God’s knowledge, emphasizing the idea that God’s knowledge is of our reality, not given to him by our reality.

You wrote: “If one insists that God’s knowledge of extra-divine things is dependent on those extra-divine things, because without those extra-divine things He would not have knowledge of them (only knowledge of the possibility of them), then it should be noted that this concept cannot be a source of contradiction for dogma #33. Obviously God cannot have knowledge of extra-divine things if those extra-divine things did not exists. He would have knowledge of their possibility, but not knowledge of their actuality.” Well, at least this is almost fine. Here the contradiction is with dogma #38.

How so? Knowledge of future free actions is not in contradiction with anything I just stated here. Perhaps there’s is a miscommunication on my part, and misunderstanding on your part, or both.

Besides, for us to have a reasonable debate, I cannot simply accept you saying there’s a contradiction without an actual argument proving the contradiction. Neither should you.

**You wrote:**But to claim this contradicts dogma #33 is to read something into this dogma that isn’t there. I read the dogma verbatim. It says exactly what it says.

I died laughing at this response. Well, not really. I’m still alive. I never even laughed, either, to be honest. I simply wanted to use an example to remind you of the complexities of language, meaning, and interpretation.

What you read, verbatim, was a summarized bullet list of Catholic dogma. I finally found a copy of the book this list comes from and will be reading through it. I’ll share what I find. You shouldn’t assume you know the full extent of meaning of a particular dogma without first studying it fully. Just like I can’t say I fully understand mathematical induction from my brief introduction to it earlier in this thread.

You wrote:

If this is the sense of dependence that dogma #33 was speaking about, then nothing could actually exist. Such an interpretation of this particular dogma only allows for God to have knowledge of possibilities and does not allow anything other than God to actually exists.It is not that simplistic. Knowledge of the future is possible in a fully deterministic system even before the future happens. It is only the free actions of free agents which cannot be “known” until they occur.
Perhaps you didn’t get the full meaning of what I stated here.

I’m simply saying that if God’s knowledge of things is merely a reflection of those things obtained through observation, as you have claimed, which means that God’s knowledge is dependent on these external things, then Dogma #33, using this concept of God’s knowledge, does not allow for anything to actually exist. I’ve already commented that this concept of knowledge is not in accord with the Catholic view, but I’m also questioning if we’re dealing with a sense of dependency that might not be the exact sense of what the dogma is operation under. As I’ve stated, I’m currently digging into the material to find out the full extent of what is meant by “independent.”

Well, I may have wasted about 2 hours on reading and replying to your post. Now the ball is in your court. Are you going to answer to #182

?
Sure, I’ll do that. But you have plenty to respond to here, too. I just spent just as much time responding to your comments here, though, so I’ll come back to it after a while.

 

[Bagheera]

Many “good” atheists- Tristan Tzara, E.M. Cioran, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer- also reject logic, reason and science. It is only the tedious atheists (Richard Dawkins- the ones who think like 19th Century industrialists), who still believe such fairy tales.

Acts speak louder than words. Anyone who says that they reject “logic” and uses “logic” to express his views is either an idiot or a hypocrite. Anyone who says that they reject “reason” and “science” and uses the fruits thereof is either an idiot or a hypocrite. Not that this has anything to do with the thread. It is rather ironic to hear that “reason, logic and science” are “fairy tales” from the mouth of those people who believe in “resurrections”, “walking of water”, “trinity”, “transubstantiation”, “invisible angels and demons”. There is something wrong with this picture…

 

[Bagheera]

Its just the effect of having to live in time.
If you ask for your future then that future will have to have happened already.
Once your future has been vocalized it then becomes your past. It is unavoidable.

That is not exactly right. ASKING about something (be it the future, or anything else) does NOT make the object of the question “real”.

That is, if in your question you left no option to change your mind.
Perhaps you’d be compelled by yourself to fulfill your future as it was told to you.

If you choose to know in advance what you will do using your free will. Then perhaps when you reach that point in your future you will have to complete it unwillingly in order to satisfy what your free will had chosen in your future.

Sort of like the idea that you cannot change your past; it will always have to end as it did.
So too with the future you already know.

The point is that IF the actual knowledge of the future renders the current present to be “past”, then there is no free will. However, the current present is still present, and therefore we have the option to deviate from the “prediction”.

 

[Bahman]

Yes, God knows.
How does it changes your free will what to have for dinner?

Don’t mix up God’s point of view and your point of view.

So in your opinion everything evolves deterministically from God point of view. But that means that things are deterministic in nature and that is our misunderstanding to think are not deterministic. My dinner is already determined in God point of view so there is nothing I can do about it.

 

[Bagheera]

I will only reflect on this part, until I see your reply to #182

Catholics do not believe God’s knowledge of reality comes from observing reality. Augustine wrote, “Not because they are, does God know all creatures spiritual and temporal, but because He knows them, therefore they are.”

Aha. So catholics believe that we are a figment of God’s imagination, or simply puppets, who play out God’s thoughts about us. There is no independent reality. So much for “free will”, which the catholics ALSO believe in. This is yet another internal inconsistency / contradiction in the catholic belief system.

We have two things here: 1) the external reality and 2) God’s knowledge. Also there is the alleged “omniscience” which means that there is an exact one-to-one correspondence between the two. There are exactly 4 ways that this can happen. Let’s call God’s knowledge “A”, and the reality “B” and use an arrow “->” to designate a causal relationship.

1. God knows the reality because he observes it. (B->A)
2. The reality is simply a reflection of God’s knowledge. (A->B)
3. There is some unknown external factor which causes both. (C->A and C->B)
4. There is no causal relationship in either direction, The exact correspondence between A and B is a huge, cosmic set of coincidence.

Looks like you chose #2, which negates the existence of free will. I choose #1. Now, just for the fun of it, in a few weeks or months I suggest you post a poll with those 4 options and see what people will consider the correct solution.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

That is not exactly right. ASKING about something (be it the future, or anything else) does NOT make the object of the question “real”.

…

Asking an omniscient being for the future does make that future real unless you also ask to be able to change your mind.

The point is that IF the actual knowledge of the future renders the current present to be “past”, then there is no free will. However, the current present is still present, and therefore we have the option to deviate from the “prediction”.

There would be still freewill because it is your own freewill decision you are seeing in the future. And unless this was something you didn’t want to happen, and you asked the omniscient being if you can could change your mind, then this future freewill decision of yours is going to be what will happen.

 

[Richca]

1. God’s knowledge is independent of extra-divine things
2. God knows all that is merely possible by the knowledge of simple intelligence (scientia simplicis intelligentiae). (De fide.)
3. God knows all real things in the past, the present and the future (Scientia visionis). (De fide.)
4. By knowledge of vision (scientia visionis) God also foresees the free acts of the rational creatures with infallible certainty. (De fide.)
5. God also knows the conditioned future free actions with infallible certainty (Scientia futuribilium). (Sent. communis.)
   S: I know. And this is the trick. As soon as you reveal the information about the future, I will make sure that it is invalidated. As such your “perfect” knowledge of the future is conditional, it is dependent or contingent upon keeping that knowledge “secret”.
   G: Exactly. And that contradicts the dogma #33.

So, kibitzers, now you have your logical inconsistency among the dogmas. It is up you what to do with it. Now, keep in mind, this little dialog did not “disprove” God at all. It only disproved the concept of God as presented by the church and as described in the dogmas.

It seems the argument here revolves around whether God’s knowledge is the cause of things or beings or whether things or beings are the cause of God’s knowledge. At the outset, to say that things or beings outside of God are the cause that He knows them is absurd. For if God is the cause of all beings outside Him, then His knowledge of them must be prior to their actual existence unless we are to say that God doesn’t know what He causes. It’s like saying that a builder builds a house without knowing what he is building and that the finished house is the cause of his building, where as the idea of the house in the mind of the builder and the actual building comes before the finished house.

St Thomas Aquinas says that God’s knowledge joined with His will is the cause of things. However, God’s knowledge is not the cause of everything that He knows. For God knows evil and sins but He is not the cause of them.

If we say that beings or creatures and the actions of those creatures, even those actions caused by free creatures, outside of God are the cause or source of God’s knowledge, then a number of difficulties result which involve our understanding of God’s nature.

1. God would not be omniscient or all knowing before He even created the universe of creatures. But we understand that God existed for an eternity before He created the world and His knowledge was complete before creation. Consequently, creation cannot be a cause of God’s knowledge, but God’s knowledge joined with His will is the cause of creation.
2. If creatures and their actions are a source of God’s knowledge, then God changes. But God cannot change as James 1: 17 says “with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.”
3. God would not be perfect or possess perfect knowledge. If a creature was a source of knowledge for God, this new found knowledge would add to God’s perfection. But God is absolutely perfect, nothing can be added to Him to make Him more perfect.
4. There would be potency in God, for His intellect would be in potency to new knowledge. But God is pure Act, there is no potency in Him.
5. Since an action or choice made by a human being has being and if God derived knowledge from that being, it would appear that a creature would be a cause of being essentially. But God is the cause of all being and the First Cause of the being caused by secondary causes. For no creature can cause being essentially because whatever powers it has to cause being secondarily, it has received from God. No creature is the cause of itself.
6. God would not be absolutely simple. By one operation of His essence and one act of His intellect, God knows all things. But if God derived knowledge from creatures, this would entail successive acts of His intellect.
7. God would not be eternal. For if God derived new found knowledge from the actions of creatures, this would entail a before and after in God. But there is no before and after in God, He understands everything all at once.
8. If our actions are the source of God’s knowledge, this would seem to inverse the order of First Cause and secondary cause to the secondary cause causing the First Cause which is absurd.
9. God would not be the first unmoved mover. For if our actions are the source of God’s knowledge, then our actions would move God’s intellect, and thus a secondary mover would move the First mover. But the first mover, God, is an unmoved mover.
10. God’s knowledge wouldn’t be perfect if creatures are the source of God’s knowledge. For that which is known through another is less known that what is known through itself. But God knows all things through His Essence and He is absolutely perfect and every defect must be removed from Him.
11. God would not be the Universal and First Cause of being. For the actions of free creatures have being and if they caused new found knowledge in God, this would seem to entail that creatures can cause being independently of God as if they are the cause of their own existence. But whatever powers creatures have to cause being, they have received it from God and they cannot cause being without the influence of the First Cause of all being, God.

From the foregoing, it appears that if creatures or beings outside of God are the source of God’s knowledge, then God is not God.

 

[Back2Church]

I will only reflect on this part, until I see your reply to #182

Aha. So catholics believe that we are a figment of God’s imagination, or simply puppets, who play out God’s thoughts about us. There is no independent reality. So much for “free will”, which the catholics ALSO believe in. This is yet another internal inconsistency / contradiction in the catholic belief system.

We have two things here: 1) the external reality and 2) God’s knowledge. Also there is the alleged “omniscience” which means that there is an exact one-to-one correspondence between the two. There are exactly 4 ways that this can happen. Let’s call God’s knowledge “A”, and the reality “B” and use an arrow “->” to designate a causal relationship.

1. God knows the reality because he observes it. (B->A)
2. The reality is simply a reflection of God’s knowledge. (A->B)
3. There is some unknown external factor which causes both. (C->A and C->B)
4. There is no causal relationship in either direction, The exact correspondence between A and B is a huge, cosmic set of coincidence.

Looks like you chose #2, which negates the existence of free will. I choose #1. Now, just for the fun of it, in a few weeks or months I suggest you post a poll with those 4 options and see what people will consider the correct solution.

Yeah, I guess I should have expanded on this to begin with to avoid confusion.

Yes, option #2 in your list is the closest to what Augustine describes, but you are looking at it from a physical deterministic angle, which is not accurate. This is a bit tricky to explain, as evidenced by the vast amount of discussion and debate over the centuries, but I’ll give it a shot.

Augustine said:

“Not because they are, does God know all creatures spiritual and temporal, but because He knows them, therefore they are. That is, nothing which He would create was unknown to Him. Because He knew, He created; He did not know because He created.”

In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Dr. Ludwig Ott (the book which the summarized list of dogmas you referenced come from), it says:

“As the idea of the artist illuminates and directs his willing and activity in the execution of a work of art, so also the ideas of God which are factually identical with His knowledge, direct His Divine Willing and the Divine Activity in extra-Divine operations. Divine knowledge in association with Divine Will is the exemplary and efficient cause (causa exemplaris and causa efficiens) of all finite things.”

But this isn’t to be understood under concept of strict determinism, where free will cannot exist. God can know all things without undermining free-will, because the free wills themselves are causes. God knows about these causes. God’s knowledge of a thing gives it “being” - existence and its nature. God’s knowledge of human free will means it exists and makes it free - God knows it as free, not determined. Freedom does not mean uncaused, but means self-caused. Augustine says:

“for our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions”

One might understand and accept all of this, yet still claim that ultimately free will is just an illusion, since God knows the outcome of every event and His knowledge is the cause of all creation. On this, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma says:

The dogma of human freedom (D 815) is not abrogated by the dogma of the infallible certainty of the Divine prevision of future free actions. The Fathers point to the eternal character of the Divine knowing and conclude that the Divine foreknowledge imposes as little compulsion on future actions as human remembering does on the past.

Augustine says:

“As thou through thy remembrance dost not oblige that which is past to have occurred, so God through His prescience does not compel that which shall be in the future to happen.”

All of this can be tricky to wrap your mind around, but there it is. Catholics believe that God’s knowledge is the cause of all things, and we believe that God’s knowledge is so vast and comprehensive that it contains more than just a mere static script of our universe. It contains knowledge of a living, breathing universe, with natural laws that bring about effects and rational beings with true free will. Just because he could see all of the choices we made before we made them does not mean he forced us to make those choices.

Can it be confusing? Sure. It’s just one of those things that many people don’t “get”, but eventually it “clicks” and they have that “Ah ha!” moment where it’s no longer confusing. Unfortunately it remains a difficult concept to convey to others.

So no, this is not an internal inconsistency or contradiction. I get that you won’t accept or believe in any of this, but, to be frank, that has no bearing on the discussion of whether or not Catholic dogma is internally consistent.

ps: I’ll respond to post 182 later this evening or tomorrow, depending on time. If I spend too much time at the computer, my kids start pulling out the torches and pitchforks, lol. I just wanted to respond to this first, to help clarify things.

 

[tonyrey]

It seems the argument here revolves around whether God’s knowledge is the cause of things or beings or whether things or beings are the cause of God’s knowledge. At the outset, to say that things or beings outside of God are the cause that He knows them is absurd. For if God is the cause of all beings outside Him, then His knowledge of them must be prior to their actual existence unless we are to say that God doesn’t know what He causes. It’s like saying that a builder builds a house without knowing what he is building and that the finished house is the cause of his building, where as the idea of the house in the mind of the builder and the actual building comes before the finished house.

St Thomas Aquinas says that God’s knowledge joined with His will is the cause of things. However, God’s knowledge is not the cause of everything that He knows. For God knows evil and sins but He is not the cause of them.

If we say that beings or creatures and the actions of those creatures, even those actions caused by free creatures, outside of God are the cause or source of God’s knowledge, then a number of difficulties result which involve our understanding of God’s nature.

1. God would not be omniscient or all knowing before He even created the universe of creatures. But we understand that God existed for an eternity before He created the world and His knowledge was complete before creation. Consequently, creation cannot be a cause of God’s knowledge, but God’s knowledge joined with His will is the cause of creation.
2. If creatures and their actions are a source of God’s knowledge, then God changes. But God cannot change as James 1: 17 says “with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.”
3. God would not be perfect or possess perfect knowledge. If a creature was a source of knowledge for God, this new found knowledge would add to God’s perfection. But God is absolutely perfect, nothing can be added to Him to make Him more perfect.
4. There would be potency in God, for His intellect would be in potency to new knowledge. But God is pure Act, there is no potency in Him.
5. Since an action or choice made by a human being has being and if God derived knowledge from that being, it would appear that a creature would be a cause of being essentially. But God is the cause of all being and the First Cause of the being caused by secondary causes. For no creature can cause being essentially because whatever powers it has to cause being secondarily, it has received from God. No creature is the cause of itself.
6. God would not be absolutely simple. By one operation of His essence and one act of His intellect, God knows all things. But if God derived knowledge from creatures, this would entail successive acts of His intellect.
7. God would not be eternal. For if God derived new found knowledge from the actions of creatures, this would entail a before and after in God. But there is no before and after in God, He understands everything all at once.
8. If our actions are the source of God’s knowledge, this would seem to inverse the order of First Cause and secondary cause to the secondary cause causing the First Cause which is absurd.
9. God would not be the first unmoved mover. For if our actions are the source of God’s knowledge, then our actions would move God’s intellect, and thus a secondary mover would move the First mover. But the first mover, God, is an unmoved mover.
10. God’s knowledge wouldn’t be perfect if creatures are the source of God’s knowledge. For that which is known through another is less known that what is known through itself. But God knows all things through His Essence and He is absolutely perfect and every defect must be removed from Him.
11. God would not be the Universal and First Cause of being. For the actions of free creatures have being and if they caused new found knowledge in God, this would seem to entail that creatures can cause being independently of God as if they are the cause of their own existence. But whatever powers creatures have to cause being, they have received it from God and they cannot cause being without the influence of the First Cause of all being, God.

From the foregoing, it appears that if creatures or beings outside of God are the source of God’s knowledge, then God is not God.

A superb post!

 

[Bagheera]

So no, this is not an internal inconsistency or contradiction. I get that you won’t accept or believe in any of this, but, to be frank, that has no bearing on the discussion of whether or not Catholic dogma is internally consistent.

I will wait until you respond to #182, before giving a detailed response to this post. For the time being all I wish to say that you did not give any actual arguments, you merely quoted the words of some people, who did not offer any arguments either. Of course, the method of “quoting” is not problematic in and of itself, the problem is that those quotes were empty assertions and not arguments. More on this after I see your reply on #182.

 

[Bagheera]

From the foregoing, it appears that if creatures or beings outside of God are the source of God’s knowledge, then God is not God.

Or your understanding of God is faulty. Which is not surprising, considering that one of the dogmas says “7. God’s Nature is incomprehensible to men.”. You guys like to speak of something that is incomprehensible to you. In other words, you have no idea what you are talking about. And then, to add insult to injury, you also assert that this is “rational”.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

Or your understanding of God is faulty. Which is not surprising, considering that one of the dogmas says “7. God’s Nature is incomprehensible to men.”. You guys like to speak of something that is incomprehensible to you. In other words, you have no idea what you are talking about. And then, to add insult to injury, you also assert that this is “rational”.

Most things are incomprehensible at some level. Take QED for example, nobody knows why it works because that notion in QED is incomprehensible. There is no answer to ‘why’ in the reason that allows QED to work there is just that familiar explanation of, it works ‘because thats the way it is’.
Its the same with something as familiar as gravity. You have no idea why gravity works. I have an idea why it works but its impossible to think of a way to test such an idea. It is incomprehensible at a fundamental level.
Its no surprise that this trend continues on even into philosophy and theology.

 

[Bagheera]

Most things are incomprehensible at some level. Take QED for example, nobody knows why it works because that notion in QED is incomprehensible. There is no answer to ‘why’ in the reason that allows QED to work there is just that familiar explanation of, it works ‘because thats the way it is’.
Its the same with something as familiar as gravity. You have no idea why gravity works. I have an idea why it works but its impossible to think of a way to test such an idea. It is incomprehensible at a fundamental level.
Its no surprise that this trend continues on even into philosophy and theology.

I don’t know which meaning of “why” you use here. It could be: “what are the properties of reality which make gravity work”? Or it could be “what is the ‘purpose’ of gravity?”. According to our current understanding, Einstein’s general theory of relativity explains gravity very well. It is not necessarily the final word, it can be enhanced or perfected or totally replaced by something else in the future. But there is nothing “incomprehensible” about the space-time geometry which is just another way to “view” gravity.

When it comes to the (physical) reality, we make observations, create hypotheses, verify those hypotheses, and obtain a working model of reality. We don’t say that we captured a “why”, because it is not relevant. We can make predictions, and act on them. There is nothing “incomprehensible” here, all we have a temporarily useful model or understanding of reality. We don’t care about the “ultimate nature” of reality, because it is irrelevant and useless, even if such “ultimate nature” would exist.

Philosophy and theology do not work this way. Both are speculations. They have only “metaphysical” assumptions, but no “epistemological” methods to find out if those assumptions mirror reality, or not. And in the case of theology, even those “assumptions” are either meaningless, or internally inconsistent, or contradicted by reality.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

I don’t know which meaning of “why” you use here. It could be: “what are the properties of reality which make gravity work”? Or it could be “what is the ‘purpose’ of gravity?”. According to our current understanding, Einstein’s general theory of relativity explains gravity very well. It is not necessarily the final word, it can be enhanced or perfected or totally replaced by something else in the future. But there is nothing “incomprehensible” about the space-time geometry which is just another way to “view” gravity.

When it comes to the (physical) reality, we make observations, create hypotheses, verify those hypotheses, and obtain a working model of reality. We don’t say that we captured a “why”, because it is not relevant. We can make predictions, and act on them. There is nothing “incomprehensible” here, all we have a temporarily useful model or understanding of reality. We don’t care about the “ultimate nature” of reality, because it is irrelevant and useless, even if such “ultimate nature” would exist.

Philosophy and theology do not work this way. Both are speculations. They have only “metaphysical” assumptions, but no “epistemological” methods to find out if those assumptions mirror reality, or not. And in the case of theology, even those “assumptions” are either meaningless, or internally inconsistent, or contradicted by reality.

I’m sorry to hear that your physical models of reality are based on “we don’t care”, “irrelevant and useless” and possibly “nonexistent”.

Your models only work because of these things and it is impossible to understand why they work. The “why” of your physical models is incomprehensible.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I don’t know which meaning of “why” you use here. It could be: “what are the properties of reality which make gravity work”? Or it could be “what is the ‘purpose’ of gravity?”. According to our current understanding, Einstein’s general theory of relativity explains gravity very well. It is not necessarily the final word, it can be enhanced or perfected or totally replaced by something else in the future. But there is nothing “incomprehensible” about the space-time geometry which is just another way to “view” gravity.

When it comes to the (physical) reality, we make observations, create hypotheses, verify those hypotheses, and obtain a working model of reality. We don’t say that we captured a “why”, because it is not relevant. We can make predictions, and act on them. There is nothing “incomprehensible” here, all we have a temporarily useful model or understanding of reality. We don’t care about the “ultimate nature” of reality, because it is irrelevant and useless, even if such “ultimate nature” would exist.

Philosophy and theology do not work this way. Both are speculations. They have only “metaphysical” assumptions, but no “epistemological” methods to find out if those assumptions mirror reality, or not. And in the case of theology, even those “assumptions” are either meaningless, or internally inconsistent, or contradicted by reality.

Now there speaks the voice of ideology. You don’t see the validity because you don’t want to. It is easy to say " show me the meat. " That doesn’t make your ideology correct. You accept inference and deduction when it pleases you, but you don’t when it threatens your personal preferences. Don’t hid behind the " skirts " of science to justify your personal prejudices.

Linus2nd