Laika

I'm thinking the kid with the broken ankle mentioned by Semeia may be the subject of this story. 

CAS are systems made up of agents (which themselves are CAS).  Somewhere there's atomic elements used as building blocks and these elements need to be adaptable themselves, but how?  Cells, for example. 

Laika

I'm thinking the kid with the broken ankle mentioned by Semeia may be the subject of this story. 

Semeia: Tom, quick question: is your belief in God inextricably woven with your belief in other spiritual beings?

Tom: Naw.

Semeia: Your questions come across as suggesting that the belief in Satan is somehow logically tied to a belief in God.

Tom: Belief in the existence of Satan isn’t entailed in the belief in the existence of God, so far as I can see. But—and this is why I’m asking you and Iconoclast about causation across the immaterial/material worlds—it seems to me that one of the reasons you guys are giving for not believing in Satan and other incorporeal beings (apart from God), is that the idea that these beings could interfere with or otherwise be causal agents in the material world is, well, sorta silly and premodern. I’m asking, why is it silly? One main reason I'm hearing is that we should only explain physical events by appealing to physical causes. Why believe that? Iconoclast seems to think that we really don’t take science seriously at all if we don’t limit our explanations to merely scientific, or naturalistic, ones. As he says, “we either accept scientific evidence or not.” There you have it. So it looks to me as if he’s arguing for a naturalistic worldview when it comes to causation—physical events and effects can ONLY have physical causes and thus merely physical explanations—but not when it comes to metaphysics—you obviously believe in an incorporeal God. So you have a material universe that’s a closed system not open to influence from immaterial sources/causes. Is this your view? If so, what are your beliefs about incarnation and resurrection? Those appear to be physical/material effects of immaterial causes (God). But if you believe in incarnation and resurrection, then what happens to your insistence upon purely naturalistic explanations for everything that occurs in the material world?

I’m saying that as theists, we already believe God to be an incorporeal being who has acted as a cause of and in the material world (assuming we believe in creation, incarnation, and resurrection). So the notion of causation from immaterial cause to material effect, or causation across the material/immaterial divide, can’t be a problem for you. But it sounds to me like YOU think such causation is problematic and therefore a reason why we shouldn’t think of Satan and demons as causal agents in the material world.

I was just trying to clear the record. If you don’t believe in Satan and demons, it’s not because the idea that their being immaterial causal agents in the material world involves a problematic understanding of causation per se. You already believe in one immaterial causal agent who effects the material world—God. So causation across incorporeal/corporeal realities is a given.

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 8/7/2007 8:12:45 PM (GMT-5)

Tom: I’m saying that as theists, we already believe God to be an incorporeal being who has acted as a cause of and in the material world (assuming we believe in creation, incarnation, and resurrection). So the notion of causation from immaterial cause to material effect, or causation across the material/immaterial divide, can’t be a problem for you.

Jeff: They've consistently based their argument on the lack of evidence. I've read of people who were unbelievers in demons who later became convinced. Have you witnessed human behavior that you think is best explained in terms of demonic influence as opposed to brain malfunction? I haven't, but if what I've read is true, I would interpret some cases that way. No need to be either/or. It can be both/and.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 8/7/2007 9:40:02 PM (GMT-5)

Tom

Better yet, back to my question about you're suggesting that the burden of proof was on ME to prove that God (or any other non-corporeal being) can be a causal agent in the material world. You're requiring such proof of me suggests you deny that God is such an agent.

…

I’m saying that as theists, we already believe God to be an incorporeal being who has acted as a cause of and in the material world (assuming we believe in creation, incarnation, and resurrection). So the notion of causation from immaterial cause to material effect, or causation across the material/immaterial divide, can’t be a problem for you. But it sounds to me like YOU think such causation is problematic and therefore a reason why we shouldn’t think of Satan and demons as causal agents in the material world.

Iconoclast

Let me try to clarify my thinking on this. I do believe that God is a causal agent in this material creation. I think He has absolutely exquisite control over anything He chooses to affect. Nor do I disbelieve in Satan or demons because of any concerns related to supernatural agents causally impacting our world. I do not believe this is impossible I just do not believe that there is any evidence for it. My reading of the Bible leads me to the conclusion that this language is metaphorical not literal and points to a much deeper truth with more actionable meaning than a literal interpretation. Moreover, a metaphorical understanding illuminates many other aspects of the Bible that make it more meaningful. I also believe the evidence from scientific inquiry supports this conclusion.

I do believe that prayer is effective. I just do not believe that “external petitionary” prayer is effective. More specifically, I do not believe that praying to God in order to influence Him to take some particular action to heal someone or some such thing is effective. Even more specifically, I do not believe it changes God’s mind about how He has decided to act in this world.

I believe prayer is primarily about getting ourselves in alignment with God’s will. I believe it is very effective in changing our hearts and opening ourselves up to God’s influence. I believe that God speaks to us when we are open to Him. I believe that He “opens doors” for us in the sense that He guides us as we let Him.

I also believe that corporate petitionary prayer has some effectiveness to the extent that it influences people to either take action or be more open to God’s will. The Quakers have a saying that goes something like this: “pray with your feet moving.” Petitionary prayer that causes us to take action to make that petition come true is effective to the extent that our action is effective.

I believe this for the following reasons:

1. The Lord’s Prayer does not teach us external petitionary prayer. Jesus did not teach us to pray this way. He taught us to pray in such a way as to be more in alignment with God’s will and to be more open to his influence. It seems to me that prayer is more about building our relationship with God.

2. It really does not make sense to me that our prayers would cause God to decide to do more to help someone than He has already decided to do. Yes God has given us “say so” but that “say so” seems to me to be all about what actions we take rather than about what prayers we pray to Him. I believe He is already doing everything He has already decided to do to help us based on His purposes and the logical entailments of those purposes. I believe that God has already chosen to limit suffering as much as is possible given the logical constraints that His purposes require. Love entails entropy and entropy means there is going to be some amount of suffering. Why would God not already be acting to limit this as much as is possible?
   
   
3. There is no measurable evidence that external petitionary prayer has an impact. People have tried to measure this. If it was effective it would be measurable. There would be effects that we could reproducibly measure. I cannot see my way around this. Greg likes to say that “it would have been worse if we did not pray.” That is a testable statement. All measurement to date has shown no measurable difference. Now, it could be that after enough measurements one could do a meta-study like what was recently done with telepathy to show a measurable effect. However, just like with telepathy if there is a measurable effect it is very small - telepathy being just 51% when the expected value was 50%. And if this number does come out that way then I would wonder if it wasn’t the same sort of underlying phenomenon: specifically that our external petitionary prayer was not actually changing God’s mind such that He acted in some particular way but that we have some very small power ourselves to affect outcomes in this way.

thanks,

Iconoclast

I said this in the last post:

“My reading of the Bible leads me to the conclusion that this language is metaphorical not literal and points to a much deeper truth with more actionable meaning than a literal interpretation. Moreover, a metaphorical understanding illuminates many other aspects of the Bible that make it more meaningful.”

I think that most people understand neither what a “metaphor” is nor how we use metaphors to reason and to communicate.

I would guess most people would say they believe in a literal Satan and demons because Jesus spoke about them as “literal” beings in the New Testament.

I would guess that if I asked somehow how they knew that Jesus was using this language to mean literal beings or using this language metaphorically they would just say that they can tell when someone is being literal or not or some such thing. To me this just means that person does not understand the nature or usage of metaphors in language.

Now, I don’t have much interest in trying to convince anyone that it is actually exceedingly difficult to determine whether someone is using the “XXXX is an agent” metaphor or whether they actually believe that XXXX is a literal being unless you directly ask them, however, I do have some energy to try and convince people to actually research what a metaphor is and how they are used. There is a great book on this called “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson. This book not only goes into what metaphors are and how they are used but also goes into how our physical environment shapes our thinking. Before reading this I also would have made the argument that, of course, Jesus is talking about a literal Satan and literal demons – duh! After reading this book and becoming aware of what people are saying and how their words actually carry meaning it suddenly became clear that it is not possible to determine whether Jesus was using these words to signify literal beings or using them as metaphors to signify something else. When I went looking for what that something else could possibly be that would justify using this metaphor it was pretty obvious. Moreover, it suddenly illuminated exactly why God can’t just get rid of Satan - because to get rid of “Satan” would be to get rid of us. Moreover, it suddenly became clear why love overcomes Satan, why love is really our only “weapon”. It is because the enemy (Satan) is us. It illuminates why the most powerful action God can take "against Satan" is to die on the cross. It is because the most powerful action is to show "Satan" (really us) that we are loved unconditionally. Only love can overcome Satan. Only love can change us being Satan into loving beings. It illuminates why Jesus said to Peter, "get behind me Satan". Peter really was acting out of his "Satan" at that moment and Jesus called him on it. The only way around this is to say that Peter was demon possessed by Satan at that moment and Satan was controlling his mind. Or to say that Jesus was using Satan metaphorically in this instance. I won't even bother to address the first objection but to the second objection I would ask you how do you know this? I think the only rational answer is to say that you already know that Satan is a literal being and that you are sure that Peter is not Satan and thus Jesus must be using this metaphorically. But doesn't anyone see the problem with this? Doesn't this show that to determine whether He is using it metaphorically requires a presupposition about whether it is literal or not to begin with?

After thinking about all this. I don't believe anyone could possibly agree with the "Satan is a metaphor" unless they understood what a metaphor really is. I certainly would not have accepted any of these arguments without that understanding.

thanks,

Iconoclast

I don't think people have a problem with the examples of where Jesus spoke possibly being metaphoric, it's the examples of observations of Jesus' actions that are problematic.

Laika:

OKay, here's another question for Iconoclast and Semeia.

All around the world, groups of people have been insular enough and separated and distinct enough from other groups in order for disparate languages, sartorial styles, food preparation, customs about marriage, child-rearing, etc etc etc to develop.

Yet Frazer, by example, shows the commonality of folk beliefs in these disparate groups.  Not necessarily similar in their maps, but similar in what they map to, the supernatural, a spirit world.

Are there any primitive cultures that didn't conjure up a spirit world?  Wouldn't that commonality point to something that might really exist?

Semeia: Sure the commonality points to something that really exists: unseen agents. The difference between then and now is that we have scientific methods to test our hypothesis for any particular unseen agent. So, for example, something like epilepsy, considered throughout history by many different cultures in many parts of the globe to be some sort of evil spirit or demon possession, can now be understood because we have ways of measuring what goes on in the brain. Today we can even determine if something that looks exactly like an epileptic seizure is really an emotional problem called conversion disorder. The way in which the ancient cultures were correct is that an unseen agent was causing the problem. But you can pray all day long, and you can do whatever rituals you want to do to chase the demons away, and it won’t help someone who has epilepsy. (Although, oddly enough, I could see some kind of “exorcism” helping someone with conversion disorder, depending on the psychological cause of the seizures, if the “exorcism” somehow convinced the victim’s subconscious that things were better.)

I would also say that the ancient customs that concerned things that were observable without technology – like the example of the “coming of age” ceremonies – that they would be more likely to have some accuracy. But anything that was beyond the scope of the knowledge of the day was almost universally explained with magical thinking. But the fact that many different people groups across the earth thought that something supernatural (and bad) was happening during an eclipse, because they didn’t understand it, is not evidence that in fact something bad is happening during an eclipse.

The Golden Bough is filled with stories of fertility rites, rain dances, superstitions related to disease, scapegoating, and chasing evil spirits away. Because those things were done across the world and across cultures may point to the commonality of problems, but it certainly does not point to the reality of the beliefs. If it did then we would have discovered that rituals improve fertility and cause rain to fall. Instead, we have discovered many unseen agents in biology and climatology, and not one of them is supernatural.

Frazer describes the similarity in rituals for driving evil spirits away: running through town with pitchforks, locking all the windows of a house except one in the roof, then running through the house waving knives and pitchforks to chase them out the attic and off the roof. And of course the evidence for the evil spirits being there is usually that things are going badly. The fact that people all over the world experience difficulties that they attribute to unseen agents, to me is not evidence that supernatural beings exist.

Laika:

So why can't the commonality of all these spirit beliefs prove the reality of what they map to?  A real spirit world?

Semeia: I don’t think they prove the reality of what they map to because science has proven over and over and over that things that were once attributed to supernatural causes have natural causes. Ancient belief systems attributed supernatural causes to pretty much anything that wasn’t understood: the weather, illness, psychological problems, the movement of planets and stars, animal behavior, good fortune, bad fortune; the list is almost endless. Now if scientific methods have uncovered thousands upon thousands of “unseen agents” and they have all been natural in origin, and explainable, at what point does one give up on the idea that ancient people believing in evil spirits has any bearing on reality?

I think the driving force behind the persistence of these beliefs comes from a kind of judgment about God – that God could not be responsible for this kind of universe. The judgment is based on a utopian ideal that refuses to accept the reality of the material world as something God might have desired to create.

Laika:

I don't think people have a problem with the examples of where Jesus spoke possibly being metaphoric, it's the examples of observations of Jesus' actions that are problematic.

Semeia: Are you talking about Jesus driving the “demons” into the pigs? Because let’s say Jesus understood more deeply what was afflicting the man, and he also knew that the perceptions of the time limited understanding of unseen agents to “demons.” In what way could he have communicated to a person the nature of what was happening when that person didn’t even possess an understanding of the subconscious mind or the most basic understanding of the human body? A good parent or doctor communicates to a child at the appropriate level of the child’s development. The symptoms that the man displayed (in the demons/pigs story) show profound mental illness of the kind that wouldn’t be understood for thousands of years. If part of the cure requires the man to believe he is cured, a demonstration of the demons leaving him could be a necessary element of the cure at that time. NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) uses techniques to “trick” the mind all the time. So do hypnotists and magicians and sometimes parents and therapists.

It is not possible for Jesus to have educated the people of the time about unseen agents – the tools for understanding such things wouldn’t be discovered for thousands of years. So the fact that he worked within the framework of the time has no persuasive power for me concerning the existence of malevolent spirits.

Sometimes seeing something as an enemy can be useful, such as a person fighting cancer visualizing cancer cells being attacked and destroyed by the body. The metaphor of Satan and demons and angels certainly served a purpose. But in the age in which we live, after all that science has demystified of the ancient fears that plagued humankind, isn’t it time we look deeper to uncover what is really going on, with the amazing tools and knowledge we have gained? Do we still want to be driving demons out of the mentally ill because there is an example of Jesus doing such a thing? And if it is clear that that is not how we respond to the mentally ill, why do we still cling to the remnants of that anachronism as explanatory of anything?

Thanks,

Semeia