NGB: Since we seem to agree that a truly omnipotent god is not possible…

Tom: It all depends on just what you have in mind by “omnipotent.” If you mean the ability to do anything ‘conceivable’, then I don’t believe there is such a being, nor do I think such an ability is a great-making property. If you have in mind an "all-determining power," then again I’d disagree that a most-perfect being would exercise such determination of all things. What's perfectly great about that?

What are we left with? You seem to think the only possible alternative is a frog-like being orbiting Polaris. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. But there are other alternatives—yes, alternatives that are inviting, beautiful, and worthy of worship. But I’m afraid you’ve locked yourself out of the party from your side of the door with philosophical and methodological assumptions that won’t allow you to open the door (or even admit there is a door).

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NGB: Can your god lie? If so (and scripture says god can and did lie), how is it worthy of worship?

Tom: Do you really want to get into this? I don’t mind at all. But given your methodological presuppositions, it isn’t going anywhere. I’m aware of the sorts of passages you probably have in mind and I think there are ways of understanding them in context that don’t end up concluding that God’s a liar with little regard—or an arbitrary regard—for the truth. But I don’t see getting into such passages as a helpful discussion. If I were to offer plausible explanations of such passages, it wouldn't move you. You'd likely respond by saying, "How rediculous! You're just desperately trying to avoid the inconsistencies. How stupid." Besides, there are larger philosophical issues that are more important, and we disagree on those. So why delve deeper into issues that are governed by larger questions we disagree over?

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NGB: I do not presuppose the truth of naturalism and then judge everything by that standard… I recognize that the only things we can know about the real world are interpretations of data from external senses.

Tom: Well, it seems clear to me that you assume naturalism. You require any falsification of this to be expressed in naturalistic terms. You rule out all but sense data from the material world as possessing evidentiary value where truth is concerned. On your view, we can only “know” what we can confirm through naturalistic means. So you methodologically presuppose naturalism—that the physical world, matter/energy, is all that’s ultimately real. But this is a purely philosophical move and not even itself naturalistically verifiable!

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NGB: I come to this conclusion not by a guess or a whim, but by comparison of the reliability and applicability of these objective sensations…

Tom: But theists can say this. They don’t necessarily come to their conclusions by guessing or by whim simply because the evidence for their beliefs can’t be verified under a microscope or through purely naturalistic means.

And more importantly, the “sensations” you describe are subjective sensations. There's nothing necessarliy objective about them. Your experiences—even your experiences of sense data provided by laboratory tests—are subjective experiences, the data is subjectively apprehended. Are your reasoning faculties and experience of sense data reliable? There are good reasons to believe they are, yes, but that doesn’t establish the ‘objectivity’ of the experience per se. We can never step outside ourselves, outside the constraints of our own subjectivity so as to observe ourselves objectively to guarantee that the objective world really is as we experience it to be.

NGB: …that any one else can have and corroborate as opposed to subjective internal, emotional and psychological sensations that are not externally applicable, not reliable and cannot be independently validated.

Tom: The distinction you’re making is an illusion NGB. Not only are your experiences of sense date (through the five senses) entirely subjective and subject to interpretation through emotional and psychological faculties and influences, but it’s not true that ‘spiritual’ senses, intuitions, and such experiences are not externally applicable or reliable (if you’re using reliable in the pragmatic sense, which is how I'd use it). As for "independent validation," well, that doesn’t exist for any of us IF (note the ‘if’) you mean a kind of validation that is not subject to personal, subjective experience and interpretation. In that sense, there simply is no independent validation of the objective. All we have, all ANY of us actually has, is our own personal subjective experience and interpretation of the world. The idea that scientific knowledge on the one hand is 'objective' and therefore trustworthy and that psychological, emotional, intuitional or even spiritual knowledge on the other hand is 'subjective' and therefore not trustworthy is just wrongheaded. It’s ALL subjective my friend. All of it. All our apprehension of truth is subjectiveliy apprehended. Time to face it. We do the best we can given the irreducible subjectivity of ALL our experiences and knowledge. Scientific conclusions I make based on laboratory experiments are no less subjectively processed and concluded than any other conclusion I might make based on internal psychological influences, for they are conclusions made by me, the ‘subject’, interpreting data that enters the field of my experience. Now, this doesn't mean none of our experiences are trustworthy guides to truth. I think they basically are, especially if they're repeated in the experiences of many others and confirmed over time (which the fundamental theistic intuition IS but which believe in talking-dancing cats is NOT).

As a naturalist/materialist, you believe sense-data (the five senses) provide an objective basis for knowledge of truth. Data that comes from any other source is ruled out of bounds for philosophical reasons. Hey, that’s cool. If that works for you, fine. It’s obviously not the case from my point of view (because for me there IS NO objectivity, pure and simple).

NGB: I strongly disagree that any true atheist claims to have proof that no god exists. In my comments somewhere you will find my full admission that some kind of piddling god, possibly in the shape of a frog, is even now in orbit around Polaris and will be pissed at you and will smite you for your unbelief in him.

Tom: Well, I’m happy to know you’re not an atheist but only an agnostic. But the point is—you still atheistically rule out the possibility of anything OTHER than the piddling froglike god who gets pissed at people. If that’s the only possibility that’s keeping you out of the atheism camp, hey, go ahead and be an atheist. I’ll agree with you that the likelihood of a pissed-off frog orbiting Polaris is so infinitesimally small it’s not worth considering. The “possible God” I have in mind is something far more robust.

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NGB: Perhaps if you listed the characteristics you think your god has then we can discuss them in detail rather than in such vague terms as “perfect”, “beautiful”, “worthy of our worship”, “captivating”, “powerful”. Here, Ill start the list. Feel free to correct me if I misstate your position on god:

Powerful: Not omnipotent, but powerful enough to create a universe complete with life yet unable to prevent a rape.

Tom: Not my understanding of divine power. Sorry.

NGB: Beautiful: Glowing with a light of love so brilliant that none can gaze upon it and live, except Moses and a few other folks.

Tom: Not even close.

NGB: Omniscient: Knowing exactly every choice we will make before we make them and yet insisting that we have free will and will be judged even though it is impossible for us ever to choose other than what god foresaw.

Tom: Again, this is an understanding of omniscience that I and many other theists reject. It is, sadly, the traditional view, but a view not universally believed by theists. I don’t think God eternally knows every choice we’ll make. I’m convinced such knowledge is incompatible with our choices being free. This doesn’t amount to God’s being ‘ignorant’ (or less than 'perfectly' knowledgeable) however. Ignorance is a privation of knowledge of some truth. And since there is no eternal ‘truth’ stating what choices I “will” make before I make them, it cannot be a privation of knowledge not to know this.

NGB: Am I right?

Tom: Wrong on all three counts NGB. Sorry. If we were playing baseball, you’d have three strikes and would have to go sit down. None of what you describe resembles the sort of God I believe in.

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NGB: Key to this discussion would be the degree to which you hold the Bible inerrant since it is the prime source of assertions about the nature of the Abrahamic god. The secondary key would be, if you believe the Bible inerrant, WHY you believe it is inerrant in the face of thousands of clear and documented errors.

Tom: There are many finely-tuned notions of biblical ‘inerrancy’ that Christians have worked on through the years, NGB. I don’t think I’m happy with any of them. I think religious people who possess texts make a mistake in feeling like they HAVE to insist that their texts are absolutely inerrant. I don’t think that’s as important as we’ve made it out to be since inerrancy became a hot topic, which has only been very recently if you take the whole 2,000 year history of Christian faith into account. I suspect people who ask “Is it inerrant?” are asking the wrong question. Personally, the Bible’s being a trustworthy story about God’s relationship with the world, a story that invites us into the text where we can participate in that relationship and be changed, doesn’t require that it be absolutely inerrant in every conceivable way. My view is simply this: if some biblical truth-claim is verified as true, then I'll take it as true. If it's verified as false, then I'll dismiss it as false. If you have evidence that some claim made by a biblical author is outright false, then let's consider it. If you're right, then I'll agree the Bible is wrong on that score. But this would not mean the Bible would have to be exhaustively wrong, wrong about everything, or wrong about the things that matter (faith, repentance, salvation, hope, loving relationships, etc.). If I test these latter truth-claims and verify them on the testing grounds of life-experience, then that's reason to consider them true. If Luke gets a date wrong, or some geographical place-name wrong, of if Paul misquotes an Old Testament prophet, big deal. But this wouldn't itself falsify the claim that God will save all who trust him and empower those who give themselves to him. That would only be falsified by God's failure to actually do so in the circumstances described.

I appreciate your sticking with this, NGB. Really I do. Do you think we're done?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 9/30/2006 12:25:19 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 9/30/2006 12:34:04 PM (GMT-5)

"[This book] is a collection of essays responding to Alvin Plantinga's thesis that human rationality is unlikely in light of purely Naturalistic Evolution (NE), or in other words, if our cognitive faculties developed in an entirely undetermined manner it is unlikely that our reason is reasonable. This argument has been put forth by Plantinga previously in Warrant and Proper Function." (from a review)

Post Edited (Corey) : 10/1/2006 9:46:46 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (nogodblog) : 10/3/2006 3:40:38 AM (GMT-5)

NGB-

I’d love to keep this up, but unfortunately I’m pretty busy. If anyone else wants to jump in, fine. I’ll just say very—very—quickly:

(1) If divine omnipotence is taken to mean the ability to do all that is logically possible, then I don’t know any theists who believe in omnipotence. This sort of ability has not been the notion of divine power theologians have traditionally attributed to God. Suicide is a ‘logically possible’ act, as is cannibalism, as are taking a crap in the toilet and being a ‘contingent’ being, and on and on. No theist has thought God capable of doing such things just because these are ‘logically possible’ states of affairs. Nor does the ability to do all things logically possible appear to me to be a ‘perfection’ which a greatest possible or perfect being ought to possess.

(2) Omniscience, as well, can be a confusing topic. I take ‘omniscience’ to simply mean “knowledge of all truths.” But this itself doesn’t imply what actual truths there are, especially regarding the future. I agree with you that an exhaustively and definitely foreknown future is incompatible with our choosing freely. I believe we choose freely at least some of the time, so I don’t think the future is exhaustively definite in God's mind. Nor do I think there are any truths about future contingents. Where the future is indeterminate, I think God knows the truth about it being indeterminate, which rules out there being truths about what “will” or “will not” occur in such cases. But contrary to you, I don't say this constitutes a denial of 'omniscience' per se. On the contrary, it's an affirmation of omniscience, as knowledge of all truths, properly understood.

(3) I don’t deny the existence of mind-independent realities. In denying “objectivity” I’m talking about epistemological objectivity. I'm saying we can never step outside our subjective experience of the world, our subjective perceptions, and get in between ourselves and the world to confirm that the world really is the way our experience tells us. That kind of 'objectivity' is by definition not possible for any sentient 'subject'. I'm not assuming the world ISN'T as our experience tell us it is. I'm only insisting that our knowledge of the world is subjecitve, not objective knowledge. This is undeniable. We know only “as subjects.” All our knowledge is subjectively gained, processed, and concluded. We perceive and conclude and believe given our ‘experience’ of the world and our experience is always subjective. It’s all we have. I don’t think this means we have the right to just invent anything we want to believe since we are irreducibly subjective. We want beliefs that consistently make the best sense of our experience. Shared experience is crucial. Reason and logic are crucial. Pragmatism is not a free-for-all. It's just the observation that we universally conclude to be true those claims that best account for our experience of ourselves and the world. "Just inventing" things doesn't best account for my experience of the world, or my experience of others who think reflectively on things.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/3/2006 10:03:02 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Corey) : 10/4/2006 9:17:53 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/4/2006 12:38:58 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/6/2006 10:45:36 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/6/2006 10:06:04 PM (GMT-5)