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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/18/2006 2:49 PM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/18/2006 2:56 PM (GMT -6) | | From the second site I posted:
Descartes' ontological argument is simpler than Anselm's, but unfortunately is more question-begging also. His argument is:
1. God contains all perfections.
2. Existence is a perfection.
3. Therefore, God contains existence (or God exists.)
The second premise is highly questionable at best. Generally, one would think that bringing something into in existence would cause an imperfection in the object; one does not see how at first why God would be any different. For example, if one thinks of a perfect hill (such as the one just outside of Buchanon VA), the conception of the hill would be more perfect than a hill in existence; hence bringing something into existence does not make it more perfect, and therefore existence is not a perfection. So Descartes argument also fails.
Hartshorne's ontological argument is based on Anselm's second argument and claims that God's existence is logically necessary. Hartshorne's argument is given here, 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 argument is valid. Furthermore, given an Anselmian conception of God, premises one and five are sound. Premise two is just the law of the excluded middle, and premise three is a law of the modal logic S5. Premise nine is obviously sound, so this leaves premise seven as the only premise to question. Premise seven says that it is logically possible that God exists.
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Nothing in it entails EDF. God can exist necessarily while some of his knowledge exists contingently.
Tom
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/18/2006 3:30 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom: Nothing in it entails EDF. God can exist necessarily while some of his knowledge exists contingently.
Jeff: I don't see how it implies that God is omniscient at all, though. I'll read the links when I get time. Hopefully, they'll give me insight into how the argument generates the attributes of God. That is where process thought and other theologies part ways. I would think.
Also, I could see how one could conclude that God NECESSARILY exists without supposing that God is a NECESSARY being. Those are two different claims. God could be a created being that created us, for example.
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/18/2006 3:35 PM (GMT -6) | | 1) God can be analytically concieved, as eternal necessary being, without contradiction.
2) Therefore God is not impossible,(because no contradiction).
3) By defintion God cannot be contingent (becasue eternally necessary).
4) Therefore if God exists, God's existence is necessary, if God does not exist, it is because God is impossible.
5) God is not impossilbe (from 2) therefore, God is necessary.
6) Whatever is necessary by the force of Becker's modal theorum must necessarily exist.
Above is the proof from one of the links. Now, 1) is something posited by a human mind. It is not NECESSARILY true. Hence, the subsequent logic is not necessarily true, either. For it is ALSO conceivable that God is a created being that created us. To rule out THAT possibility, we have to resort to another philosophical argument, I would think.
Here is what followed below:
1) God can be analytically concieved without contradiction.
2) Therefore God is not impossible.
3) By defintion God cannot be contingent.
4) Therefore God is either necessary or impossible.
5) God is not impossilbe (from 2) therefore, God is necessary.
6) Whatever is necessary by the force of Becker's modal theorum must necessarily exist.
But here, 2) doesn't seem to follow from 1). How can we know that an internally consistent concept is necessarily possible? Wouldn't we have to know the attributes of God FIRST to conclude what is possible? It's analytically CONCEIVABLE that God could forgive without atonement, isn't it? But that doesn't mean it's ACTUALLY possible. There might very well be, as Rom. 3 indicates, something about the NATURE of God that precludes that possibility. Same with God's inability to lie, etc.
We have to know what God's attributes are to legitimately posit 1). But 1) is a premise in the ontological argument. It seems circular.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 2/18/2006 2:44:16 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/18/2006 8:01 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok, here's what the other site said:
This argument is valid. Furthermore, given an Anselmian conception of God, premises one and five are sound. Premise two is just the law of the excluded middle, and premise three is a law of the modal logic S5. Premise nine is obviously sound, so this leaves premise seven as the only premise to question. Premise seven says that it is logically possible that God exists. If you were to change it to:
7'. It is possible that God does not exist.
Then using premise one, and 7', one gets this conclusion:
10'. God does not exist.
Therefore, one must have a good reason to prefer "it is possible that God exists" over "it is possible that God does not exist." However, there does not seem to be. Therefore, with two premises of equal prior (epistemically) likeliness leading to opposite conclusions, I conclude that Hartshorne's argument cannot succeed.
But to say there is "good reason to prefer 'it is possible that God exists' over 'it is possible that God does not exist'" puts the question back to this: Where do humans even get the idea of God in the first place? It would seem that a possible solution to this is that humans are "wired" to think in terms of means and ends just as categorically as they are to think in terms of cause and effect. Apart from the relation of means-to-end, would we really even conceive of God at all?
If, on the other hand, that relation is truly intuitive, then God is known as the correlate of the created universe. His attributes, then, would be inferred FROM the creation, like Rom. 1 says; not by merely positing them.
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/18/2006 11:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: I don't see how it implies that God is omniscient at all, though.
Tom: It doesn't imply that he's omniscient. Nobody claims it does.
Jeff: A book recently recommended by Alan is about the ontological approach. It talks about God's great-making attributes. Do these not include omniscience?
Tom: If God is a created being then he doesn't exist necessarily but rather exists contingently. If he exists necessarily, then he's a necessary being. These ARE one and the same claim. Jeff: They are the same claim IF the word "necessary" is being used in the same way. I know a car "necessarily" comes about by intelligent design (to the best of my knowledge). But that doesn't make the car "creator" a "necessary" being. That's the distinction I'm getting at. Philosophy can legitimately conclude that there is a creator, but I'm not sure it can prove that the creator is a NECESSARY being without appealing to something like parsimony or some other argument. For it IS conceivable that God is a created being that created our universe.
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/19/2006 12:10 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Jeff: A book recently recommended by Alan is about the ontological approach. It talks about God's great-making attributes. Do these not include omniscience?
Tom: Sure, omniscience is a great making property. But Hartshorne’s modal version of the ontological argument doesn’t begin with great-making properties. That’s Hartshorne’s criticism of Aquinas. Hartshorne doesn’t argue from ‘great-making’ assumptions to God’s existence. We’re just talking about the existence of a necessary being who is the explanation for all else that exists. That’s all Hartshorne’s ontological argument is designed to do.
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Tom: If God is a created being then he doesn't exist necessarily but rather exists contingently. If he exists necessarily, then he's a necessary being. These ARE one and the same claim.
Jeff: They are the same claim IF the word "necessary" is being used in the same way.
Tom: And it is.
Jeff: I know a car "necessarily" comes about by intelligent design (to the best of my knowledge). But that doesn't make the car "creator" a "necessary" being.
Tom: True. “Necessary” is used in different senses here.
Jeff: That's the distinction I'm getting at. Philosophy can legitimately conclude that there is a creator, but I'm not sure it can prove that the creator is a NECESSARY being without appealing to something like parsimony or some other argument. For it IS conceivable that God is a created being that created our universe.
Tom: You're missing the point. The logic that you say legitimately tells us there is a creator of our universe would apply to that creator if that creator were not a necessary being. Sure, it doesn’t tell us that the direct explanation for our material universe has to be a necessary being. Logically speaking, God could be a created being who created our universe. But in that case all we do is inquire (by the same logic) into the cause of God’s existence? The logic kicks in again and we end up positing the same sort of argument regarding God’s creator as we are now positing about God. And if THAT creator of God was also created by some other being, then we just keep pushing it back until we land on the one necessary cause of all other contingent existents.
There are the categories (conjointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive):
1) That which necessarily exists (what is actual and necessary)
2) That which contingently exists (what is actual but contingent)
3) That which necessarily does not exist (what is necessarily non-actual)
4) That which contingently does not exist (what is contingently non-actual)
(2) and (4) aren’t options for God (that being who is ultimately responsible for the existence of all contingent beings and objects but whose existence depends only upon him/herself). With respect to this God, either (1) or (3) is true. Nobody to date has succeeded in arguing (3), the incoherence and thus the impossibility of a necessary God. That leaves (1).
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 2/18/2006 11:15:22 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/19/2006 9:47 AM (GMT -6) | | | Tom: Logically speaking, God could be a created being who created our universe. But in that case all we do is inquire (by the same logic) into the cause of God’s existence? The logic kicks in again and we end up positing the same sort of argument regarding God’s creator as we are now positing about God. And if THAT creator of God was also created by some other being, then we just keep pushing it back until we land on the one necessary cause of all other contingent existents.
Jeff: Well, it seems conceivable to me that one could opt for an infinite chain of creators into eternity past. But regardless, if OUR creator is not the NECESSARY being that the ontological argument is after, then that arguement doesn't necessarily tell us anything about OUR creator. Which brings me to the seeming circularity of the ontological argument.
I think the ontological argument really is trying to get at something true, though. That something is the FACT that virtually all people CONCEIVE of God. This, alone, seems to imply that our conceiving of God is a result of somthing intuitive or very close to intuitive.
The best explanation I've heard is that God is conceived of as the subjective DESIGNER of the objective adaptations of the ORDERED universe. But the subjective designer is simply the correlate of the objective adaptation. Thus, God is the correlate of the created ORDER just like infinite is the correlate of finite.
This explains why God must be conceived sometime AFTER birth when the human mind can apprehend that relation, just like the concept of infinity is. But BOTH concepts will inevitably be conceived if one's intuitions are functioning properly.
But this approach implies that the great-making attributes of God are those ENTAILED in the created order, itself, plus whatever attributes we learn of by revelation. We are not warranted to suppose any great-making attributes we wish. This is what Paul seems to imply by saying that the "invisible things" of God are made known by the created thing. I.e., what we know of God's power is precisely that which is ENTAILED in the act of creation. To attribute INFINITE power to God is not warranted by that approach.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 2/19/2006 10:36:38 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/3/2006 11:10 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: Well, it seems conceivable to me that one could opt for an infinite chain of creators into eternity past.
Tom: I'd be very interested in seeing you attempt it. I personally find it inconceivable. A creator for each creator, with no original first cause
Jeff: Yes, Tom, that would be difficult for the same reason trying to understand an infinite past about ANYTHING is difficult. But we have that problem whether God is a necessary being or not IF time is eternal into the past.
That's why I think process theology is onto something. God might have been in a dynamic relational existence throughout all time. But our minds boggle at trying to understand ANYTHING (even consciousness) going on into the infinite past. That's an inherent limitation to our minds. But positing attributes that can not be understood is no solution either. Much better, for my mind, to take reason as far as it can go, add on revelation, and be content.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 3/3/2006 10:23:37 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 3/4/2006 10:02 AM (GMT -6) | | | Here's a paper by Stephen Hawking on The Beginning of Time. I'm inferring that it's about 15 years old, so may need updating.
One aspect I've not heard discussed on this board is the two-dimensional nature of time. What implications might that have for us?
Post Edited (Corey) : 3/4/2006 9:05:11 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/4/2006 11:18 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom, I would say that an infinite series, in of itself, is not hard to conceive. HOWEVER, I would also say that to posit an infinite series of creators into the past, though conceivable, is BIZARRE. First, because it seems like a creator could only create "smaller" than itself. Hence the infinite series gets WILD. Second, the human mind knows the absolute of THIS UNIVERSE to be an intelligent, volitional cause. Such a cause is sufficient to explain it's eternal existence with all the metaphysical principles of process thought. But the human mind's desire for parsimony and unification COMPELS it to converge towards a necessary being, I think. I just think the infinite creator series is LOGICALLY conceivable. It's just too bizarre for me, like infinite omniscience.
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