1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875482171/sr=8-1/qid=1140387872/ref=sr_1_1/104-5330907-5136712?%5Fencoding=UTF8
2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/#8
3. http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=50105  (a link to Viney's book if you are interested)
   
   

Sorry I suck at explaining this stuff.  I bet you would never have guessed that I have read Viney's book by my difficult time explaining it.

Post Edited (Modes of Thought) : 2/27/2006 9:22:11 PM (GMT-6)

In the metaphysics of Sinai, the fact that "God is" is identical with "Who God is." God is Who is, Ho On. The Quis is the same as the Qualis. The fact of God is inseparable from the "Who" of God. His being is identical with His existence. This is not some "superior being" speaking to lesser beings. This is Someone who is Being.

It is not human thought, then, that discovers this identification between God's being and His existence, but the pronouncement of the One who responded to Moses' request, "Who shall I say sent me?"

. 

http://www.allsaintsorthodox.org/Ponderings/Pondering_2006_02_26.html

 

.................................................................................

Hey Modes-

Hartshorne’s argument is there for anybody to object to on a premise by premise basis. It’s an argument. It actually makes a series of claims, any one of which you may disagree with. But assuming the premises are true, it looks quite valid to me as an argument. Now, since a lot of arguments for the existence of God are bad ones that don’t work and my faith has managed to survive in spite of that, I don’t think it’ll bother me if you can show this one to be invalid by pointing out one or more false premises. For all the objections people raise to Hartshorne’s modal argument, there’s a conspicuous absence of any actual handling of the argument itself.

Modes: ...it is not an argument but an assertion.

Tom: It looks very much like an argument to me. Of course, all arguments make assertions too. But assertions that are not also arguments are just, plop, made without any argumentation. Here’s Hartshorne's argument: Where "N(A)" means "it is logically necessary that A," "~A" means "it is not the case that A," "-->" is strict implication, "v" means "or," and "g" means "God exists":

1. g --> N(g)
2. N(g) v ~N(g)
3. ~N(g) --> N(~N(g))
4. N(g) v N(~N(g))
5. N(~N(g)) --> N(~g)
6. N(g) v N(~g)
7. ~N(~g)
8. N(g)
9. N(g) --> g
10. g

This looks like an argument to me, not just an unsubstantiated assertion that smuggles God into existence.

Modes: Why grant that God exists necessarily?

Tom: OK then, you dispute premise (1), that if God exists, he exists necessarily. Would you be prepared to offer an argument that God exists ‘contingently’? That would mean God either (a) once did not exist but came into existence, or (less likely) (b) might possibly pass out of existence at some point in the future. Which would you suggest is the case with God?

Now, for myself, I don’t find the traditional ontological argument convincing. It goes something like this:

1. God contains all perfections.

2. Existence is a perfection.
3. Therefore, God contains existence (or God exists.

I don’t think this is valid because I think (2) is false. It makes a value judgment about the preferrabilty of existence to non-existence, and as you point out, that doesn’t seem to be a sound judgment.

But it’s not ‘existence as a perfection’ (the whole ‘Greater Being’ approach) that is in view with Hartshorne’s argument. That weakness is specifically what he succeeded in avoiding. It’s a categorically logical—modal—argument. It doesn’t at all rest on the assumption that ‘necessary existence’ is BETTER than contingent existence (what would “better” here mean anyhow?) or that existence of either kind is BETTER than non-existence. It just assumes that necessary existence is (a) a logically possible mode of existence, and that (b) IF God exists, he exists necessarily. You want to question (b) (or premise 1 of the argument) and that’s fine. I’m just wondering if you actually reject (b) or are just looking for a rationale for it. I suppose for starters one could simply ask if God did ‘come into existence’ (i.e., if God existed ‘contingently’) then what would you suppose is the cause of his existence? Who or what created God?

Modes: Implicit here is the value judgment that it is better to exist necessarily than to exist contingently or to not exist at all.

Tom: I hope you see that no such value judgment is assumed by Hartshorne’s argument.

Modes: Why is it logically superior for God to exist than not to?

Tom: It’s not logically superior for God to exist than not to exist. That’s not at all the argument. There are logical categories for existents and for non-existents, and they’re not empty, and no one category is “better” than another. It just is what it is, logically speaking. If you want to argue that God belongs in some logically possible mode of existence OTHER than “Necessarily Existent,” that’s cool. So argue God exists ‘contingently’ (that he came into existence for example). I’ll then ask you what cause(s) you would posit to account for his coming into existence.

In any case, the categories are right there. You obviously believe God exists. So you have two choices. He exists ‘necessarily’ (viz., is a self-sufficient being who doesn’t owe his existence to anything outside himself, who never ‘came into existence’ and cannot possibly ‘pass out of existence’—not because this is logically “better” than other forms of existence, but simply because it’s what divine existence amounts to) OR he exists ‘contingently’ (in which case he is a creature who owes his existence to someone or something outside himself, something responsible for causing him to come into existence—in which case perhaps we ought to be worshipping God’s creator(s), but that’s something we can talk about AFTER you’ve offered your argument for God’s coming into existence contingently).

Modes: Because we humans have anxiety about existence and we perceive existence to be both precious and precarious. We value it. Our projection of perfection would include overcoming this anxiety categorically. Fine, but logic shouldn't care one way or another about this value.

Tom: You’re right, which is why the traditional ontological argument fails. It includes as a premise the valuation that “existence is a perfection.” Hartshorne’s argument makes no such valuation. It offers four logically possible modes of existence/non-existence without supposing any one of them is “better” than another. But making this concession doesn’t mean we can just toss any existent being in either category. It’s not possible to argue, for example, that I exist necessarily. I don’t qualify, since I obviously came into existence. But without presuming existence is “logically superior” to non-existence (which I agree is nonsense), one still has to face Hartshorne’s argument.

And if you have no use for such arguments in the first place, perhaps there are some honest 'objectors' who might be made 'seekers' in light of the argument. I find it convincing, but I'm not very smart. Hartshorne however, was a pretty smart guy and many find his argument convincing. Perhaps the argument will have some apologetic value for some even if others find it unneccessary. After all, a healthy pharmacist may with benefit offer medicine to another without needing it himself.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/28/2006 12:23:35 AM (GMT-6)

QUOTE:

. . .

 

Leaving aside the question of its validity, the striking fact about this argument is that it never occurred to anyone outside of the data of biblical revelation. Some pagan thinkers adopted it afterwards (the recently lamented Charles Hartshorne being a notable example), but it was Bible-believers, significantly, who thought of the argument first. Nor is there is any reason to believe it would have entered anyone's mind except for that voice on Sinai.

Second, there is God as the cause of all that is not God. This approach to God is more developed in Holy Scripture, which teaches in many places that He is the Maker of all things.

This thesis, too, provided an argument for God's existence, an inductive, a posteriori case known as the Cosmological Argument. This line of reasoning, which is found explicitly in Holy Scripture itself, endeavors to discover an explanation (or efficient cause) for the existence of those things that do, in fact, exist. The existence of these non-necessary things (things that don't have to exist) is sought in some Maker that caused them to exist, and this Maker we call God. We find this argument briefly elaborated in Wisdom 13 and Romans 1.

Both of these approaches to the existence of God are based in the voice from Sinai, which in which God identified Himself as the Existing One, the One Who, needing nothing from us, nonetheless decided to talk to us.

http://www.allsaintsorthodox.org/Ponderings/Pondering_2006_03_05.html

Post Edited (Modes of Thought) : 2/28/2006 1:29:59 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (selah) : 2/28/2006 1:38:59 PM (GMT-6)

QUOTE: 

It is not human thought, then, that discovers this identification between God's being and His existence, but the pronouncement of the One who responded to Moses' request, "Who shall I say sent me?"   

 

http://www.allsaintsorthodox.org/Ponderings/Pondering_2006_02_26.html