God Does Not Explain

Ingenium

There’s alternative explanations for everything.

No, the Universe is in the midst of God, but it is not God. I would say that value is justified by the fact that the Universe was made by a Person, who had values and valued things in the Universe first.

Other explanations exist, but I haven’t seen a non-theistic one that works very well.

Well, my answer for why the universe seems beautiful is that it was created by Someone who intended it to be beautful, and we have things in common with that Creator, and so see it the same way to some extent. If your answer is “Well, why not?”, then I’ll have to say I prefer mine. It certainly seems plausible to me that the universe, big and empty as it is, could on the whole appear horrific and terrible to us.

Sounds like you have some sort of logical argument in mind. You going to try to stick the landing?

What I said was, God makes it easy to understand these things. So yes, an explantion that makes difficult things easy to understand (simple) is a good explanation to choose, that’s right. Don’t equivocate on ‘easy’ on me now, and bring in psychology.

Ingenium, instead of just stating that there are better explanations, or whatever, perhaps you would like to present an argument. For example, you claim that there are non-theistic theories that can explain why moral ‘truths’ appear to be necessary, and that they do so better than a theistic model. Incidentally, I agree with you. But, given that this is a philosophy website, it’s probably best that you give some arguments.

Ingenium, I disagree that, even when accept on faith, the God Hypothesis explains anything. It may end inquiry, but it does not increase understanding. I don’t say that because I believe the God Hypothesis to be false: rather, even if the God Hypothesis is correct, the questions that remain are at best isomorphic to the questions that preceded it.

Uccisore, I think that your first point is also answered by what I said in my response to Ingenium: I’m not arguing that you can’t propose it, but that whether or not you hold the God Hypothesis true, the questions that you cannot answer are at best isomorphic. I’m not criticizing anyone, I’m pointing out that the belief does not explain anything more than saying “I don’t know”. Which, I’m glad to note, you have argued against. to the meat!
You say that value is derived from god valuing things. In the abscence of god, value is derived from people who are not god valuing things. So, you have a parallel question for each system: How does a person’s valuing something instill that thing with value. Basically, why is god valuing something more relevant than you or I valuing it?
You say that god created the universe to be beautiful. Here, the question that remains is not as similarly phrased, but is still isomorphic to the question raised in a godless universe: ‘Why did god want the universe to be beautiful?’ The isomporphism is revealed if we dress a godless universe in theistic garb, and rephrase the initial question so: ‘Why did the universe want the universe to be beautiful?’ The question is just as valid, as it similarly attributes human emotion to something that is not human, in the word ‘want’.
You say that god explains why moral truths seem necessary. I assume you mean that god’s creation of the moral truths makes them necesary (please expand if I’m wrong). But at least one equally problematic question still remains: Why did god create the moral laws he created? And a further question one might ask is, if punishment and reward are the only reasons to do good, is there actually a necessary morality involved? I can choose to suffer pain, even eternal pain, to do something I deem right and god deems wrong.

More generally, I don’t see that a cosmic personality can explain anything. It puts all the individual questions (why do I have free will?) into a single, huge, and isomorphic question (why does god have free will?), but this transfer does not legitimately explain anything.

(By the by, can we not side-track this topic with a free-will debate? I think this is important water to tread, and I don’t want it to get lost in such a sea.)

Carleas

Well, the trick there is to remember that God is not 'one of us'.  That is to say, part of the experience of value (I hope you agree) is that values are bigger than us.   That is, if I decide a mountain or a baby or a painting is valuable, I am saying something more than "[i]I[/i] think it's cool". To the extent that we sense* value exists beyond people pointing it out, we need something beyond a person to account for this, which would be God. We may ask why God values this and not that, I suppose, but it does answer the question of values having a 'beyondness' in our experience- and we have no reason to believe that God has that experience of beyondness, so we don't have to account for it in Him. 

Again, it comes to the issue of beyondness, which is not isomorphic at all. I may have phrased my opening post badly. If we sense that beauty is more than you and I stating that something is beautiful, we need a reference beyond ourselves, which is somehow still capable of registering beauty. The question of why God finds this or that to be beautiful would be something else.

Here I disagree pretty strongly- it is precisely that God is a Person capable of conceptualizing Beauty that makes the theistic response a good one, and different than saying the universe wants to be beautiful in itself.

The moral issue Re: God is a complicated and I hope I don’t have to get into it, it might derail your thread. But I will say this, it mirrors the above arguments. Many philosophers (and most regular people) have the sense that if everybody on earth decided that killing children for fun was morally right, it would not make the act right, rather it would just mean that everybody on earth was wrong. God explains very well how moral truths can overrule what anyone or everyone thinks about morals. It is that sense of morals overruling us that I mean when I say they are necessary.

I don’t think He created moral laws, exactly. Like I said, I think I can answer this kind of question very well, but it’s quite a detour.

*- You’ll see me referring to what we ‘sense’ quite often, as opposed to what is true. The reason is this- materialism can account for these senses, and further, it accounts for them by saying they are mistaken. A key point of my argument is that a system that justifies as many universal intuitions as possible is simpler and preferable to a system that we are all subject to many inescapable illusions.

I agree with you. I meant that it explains things to the faithful. Of course it doesn’t increase understanding. When people believed that the gods were responsible for the weather, it was an explanation, even though it had nothing to do with why it rains. IMO, as science has come up with explanations for things formerly in the realm of the gods, we’ve just modified what we believe about the gods or just flat out denied science.

I was responding to Uccisore, with whom I shared some explanations on another thread, but I can take it further. There appear to be universal moral norms, including social responsibility, obedience to authority, solidarity and reciprocity, all arising from our grouping behavior and social strucures. Some of the reasons for certain behaviors are hierarchical/peer relationships or reward/punishment or gaining resources or fostering fitness-enhancing relationships (increasing the chances of surviving, reproducing and propagating one’s genes). With a few notable exceptions, humans somehow collectively renounce their chaotic impulses in order to coexist. We collectively make rules to enhance cooperation and further stability; we penalize members of the group who violate the rules. We indoctrinate our children with these rules and introduce to them a reward/punishment model similar to that of society. “Moral” behavior such as mutual trust allows us to function and get resources, there arise conventions that regulate our dealings with each other and we depend upon each other to abide by them.

Evolutionary theorists offer up that ‘survival of the fittest’ doesn’t always explain certain altruistic behaviors, such as risking oneself to save another from danger. Our brains are shaped by environmental experience so biology could very well set us up to be moral in fundamental ways. Like the way we protect our young. Altruistic behaviors have been observed in animals, not just humans. It may be that there is a biological basis for such ‘morality’ as taking a risk to save somebody, if it’s perceived that there’s a benefit (and even if an animal doesn’t know that) in that the savior is preserving the chances that his saving behavior will be reciprocated at some point in the future. Humans have developed social learning mechanisms that are adaptions which allow us to infer the reactions of others to our behaviors. Darwin offered the “love of praise and dread of blame” as a basis for the evolution of morality. As well, there’s the theory that the ability to make and share moral judgments induces other to behave in ways that foster our own interests.

Dawkins posits that “memes” (ideas and groups of related ideas) behave like genes, replicating across human brains the way genes do across bodies. Perhaps cultural or behavioral memes satisfy human needs, such as the need to value life, without a biologically pre-determined basis.

Carleas,

Ingenium’s description of what materialism has to do to morality is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Actually, the God hypothesis takes us away from created, contingent being and asks us to think of things as having a source which has those things in a higher way. He is not just conscious, but the source of consciousness. Not just loving, but love itself. This is interesting further because if you could define what these things are, it seems to me you could learn more about God.

In your paint example, he created the paint and is the painter. Here I leave the metaphor, since God is not physically red – but then redness is physical wavelengths, and he can create the wavelengths. In a way like this the redness does come from Him too. But as a spirit, I think spiritual qualities could/would come from Him more directly.

Any more questions?

Isn’t communicative discourse always like the blind men and the elephant? How can it be otherwise when we each bring our subjectivity to the object of discourse? I agree that people act differently based on their beliefs. Isn’t that a reflection of our subjectivity acted out in the world? Neither science nor logic explain our subjective personhood.

Subjectivity enters discourse explicitly in "I " statements like “I’d like to stay on the topic” or “I thought…” But it is implicit in every word. If science or logic explain anything, nevertheless they do not explain how the “First Cause” leads to the second. But inter-subjective discourse provides a clue. I understanding that there is a person behind the words I see posted beside the name “Carleas.” Using a similar inferential method, I understand that there is “a person” behind the universe. That understanding opens up a the possibility of what Buber called “an I-thou relationship”, an intersubjective relationship with the creator. This personal connection with the ultimate source of meaning satisfies a human need that is widely if not universally felt.

I don’t think the ancients were unaware that they did not understand the mechanism of the First Cause . What they bring to the discussion is a means of “understanding” through analogy to the human creative act. How does subjectivity ever become object? Only through the creative act. How do we know that any subjectivity but our own exists? Only by inference. Does subjectivity add anything to our understanding of the world? Without a doubt, since it makes understanding the world possible. Does recognition of the subjective creator in her creative works add to the explanation of the works themselves? Undoubtably.

If I understand that the Mona Lisa is the out-working of the subjective vision of Leonardo DaVinci I have a much better understanding than if I see it only as so much paint applied to a canvass. Without intersubjectivity, the portrait is meaningless. The analogy of our creative act to the “first” creative act provides understanding in a way that science and logic have not. Through this kind of understanding I can maintain an inner dialogue with the being of beings.

Felix, is that really understanding or is it a desire to find meaning? You seem to be saying things are richer and more meaningful if there is a creator behind them…this may well work for you, however, it doesn’t make it True. The Mona lisa is amazing, we know it had a creator and my understanding of the painting is enriched by that…the world is amazing therefore I’ll infer the world had a creator as my understanding will be enriched…??

That’s not to say there isn’t a creator, just that we cant know if there is, or what or who that creator might be should there be one. By what right should we assign God to human analogy? I cant see how positing a creative artist and calling it God can really enrich our understanding, I think it’s rather an illusion of understanding.

I completely agree with Carleas that God cant explain anything…giving God attributes like ‘love’ and ‘goodness’ is a human imposition and if we use him as a placeholder for the unknown[I like that!], we are still left with the universal mysteries.

My conversation with you is richer and , more meaningful if I understand that behind the words printed next to “Leda” is a person, i.e. a subjective centered world different than but not totally unlike the subjective world that is my reality. Neither science nor logic explain to me what subjectivity is or how it is possible. Intersubjectivity has been described as an I-You relationship. The I-You dialogue adds another dimension of understanding to the world. Science describes the I-It relationship but not the I-You relationship. Through religion, a believer enters into an I-You relationship with life.

Stated a different way, all human experience is shaped, and constituted by cultural and linguistic systems. Science is one cultural-linguistic system, religion is another. Neither system is necessarily superior to the other. They just satisfy different human needs.

Leda

 To the contrary.  If there are things in this life we find to be rich and meaningful, an explanation that justifies and positively explains that experience is simpler than an explanation that passes it off as an illusion. If  we naturally believe "the universe is meaningful", then an explanation of the universe that explains that meaning is simpler than an explanation of the universe that denies that meaning, and has to in turn propose a mechanism for the illusion. 

The is the proper position of the believer prior to the advent of Christ. Sometimes I think mystics are still back there.

Given the premise that we think there’s meaning inherent to the universe, there is no logical basis for concluding (1) there exists a God (2) that is omnipotent, (3)there exists meaning inherent to the universe and (4)that God creates that meaning inherent to the universe, so that we may perceive it given the right text to instruct us. If we think the Universe is meaningful, then it is reasonable to conclude that we think the Universe is meaningful. Question is why do we see the universe as having a meaning. Where you see a female as having one type of meaning to you, a hungry bear sees something different. Given this comparison, and the fact that we, too, like that hungry bear see the world’s meaning through our needs, it is much more reasonable to conclude that the meaning we perceive the universe to have is linked to our needs to see it as such, and any such values that we perceive the universe to have are about as likely to be inherent to it as any other animal’s perceived value of it. A human female is as likely to be inherently sexy through the the eyes of a horny lesbian, as inherently nutritious through the eyes of a hungry bear. But since we are the evaluators of the situation, naturally we will take precedence over the actual value of the evaluator’s notion of value

edit: in dark blue to get my point across better.

If that is the case, then science can be seen as one way of perceiving meaning according to one set of human needs, logic another and religion a third. One way of perceiving the universe is not superior to another. The different ways of perceiving the universe are dependent on participation in different cultural linguistic groups responding to different human needs and histories.

Tristan,

There's something very wrong with the argument that "We can't logically conclude X on the basis of Y, because I can think of another explanation that doesn't involve Y."   First, your points don't have anything to do with logic, they are evidential.  Second, you didn't address the key of my argument at all.  Yes, we value the universe in terms of our needs to an extent, but under the theistic model, our needs are part of the Created universe as well, so that only makes sense.  It still boils down to your view saying that nothing 'actually' has value, even though we plainly see it does, which is a strike aginst materialism.

Would it be possible that everything actually has value, and at the same time, actually doesn’t? That’s my viewpoint, and it is seemingly accurate. Do you feel it has to be one or the other?

Science transcends those cultural groups…a scientific truth is a scientific truth, irrespective of culture. By contrast a religious truth, or a religious claim, is often dependent upon cultural influence. The Giant Turtle God of some native tribes is not going to be a religious truth to the Jesus worshippers of middle America and vice-versa. Science is not supposed to be guided by need, it’s expected to conform to a set of cold, hard unemotional procedures and it sometimes reveals to us what we dont necessarily want to know. It’s not morally consoling, its discoveries are often not gratifying or elevating or emotionally satisfying, so it’s far less likely to act as a panacea of human needs then religion.

If science is not superior to religion in ‘perceiving the universe’ then why, throughout the centuries, have so many so called religious truths been superceded by it…?

explain this statement I find to be true from experiance, and any christian who has felt it would agree…

The Holy Spirit heals the soul into something simular of that of the innocents and purity of a new soul.

Sorry I’ve been AWOL. Lots to deal with.

Uccisore, placing god as the intermediary between myself and the thing I value does not solve the problem of value. It is really just to say that X has value because god values X and I value god, or god’s value judgements. What sort of beyondness can god really give us, if the link between us and god can never be ‘beyond’?
Similarly, a reference to beauty using god as a beyondness leaves the proximate question “why do we find god’s work beautiful?” or “how does god imbue beauty?”
And especially in the case of beauty (though there is a case to be made for many other senses I can envision: value, morality, even freedom), I don’t think ‘we’ do sense that things are beautiful beyond ourselves. ‘Beauty is in the eye of beholder,’ a truism that squares our sense more as an illusion than a divine work. This is true of morals as well: relativists and nihilists exist who would deny that morals overrule us. The use of ‘sense’ may be a case of chicken and the egg.
Not that it’s relevant (since if neither god nor science explain then god still doesn’t explain), but I would like to comment on your characterization of the materialist assertion that every human intuition is an ‘illusion’. I’ve certainly seen that word used to explain it, but I have my problems with its use. I think that compatiblists have it best: Beauty doesn’t exist on the level of atoms, but that is not necessarily the best place to look from. I am a human as much as I am a skin-sack and organs as much as I am a cloud of electrons. So I would respond that materialism doesn’t necessarily detract anything from my appreciation of beauty or the conviction of my morality. It embraces levels that have been long denied without necessarily denying those levels previously embraced.

MRN, does saying “god explains the origins of love because he is the source of love” really explain anything? Of course, whatever the origin of love, that thing will be the source of love. But that’s not saying anything, even if we lump a bunch of the pseudo-explanations together and labell the haphazard mass ‘god’.

Felix, my initial reaction to the proposition that everyting is just blind men and the elephant is rejection. It seems like people can reason incorrectly, can believe incorrectly and found new rationales on those beliefs and for other incorrect beliefs. The subjectivity of them does not make them as true as all other beliefs. Suppose I learn that the date of a holiday is the 2nd. I tell one person immediately, and then I tell another person a few days later, by which time I’ve forgotten, so I tell the 2nd person that the holiday is the 22nd. These are not alternate interpretations of the same data, and they are not equally correct. If these two people discuss their beliefs, one is right and one is wrong, no elephant necessary.
But if you think there is a case, I am interested to see it. I think I see where you’re coming from, but ultimately I think the evidences holds that people can be wrong.
And though you say “neither science nor logic explain to me what subjectivity is or how it is possible,” I am here contending that neither does god. I don’t see the explanatory power in your line of argument. It seems like a sort of teleological argument ("Using a similar inferential method, I understand that there is “a person” behind the universe), but you are not using the premise that when we look at the Mona Lisa we see personality, but rather that if there is personality, then the Mona Lisa is more powerful, more moving, and so you believe in order to give the same power to the universe. But then it’s not an argument that god explains, but instead that god gives us what we want to see in the universe. But if you look at an abstract drawing, say, and are told it was made by a human, when it was actually made my a machine, what does that do for your explanation of the painting? Did you explain it more because you believed that it was made by a person?

Phil, To me that sounds like “ignorance is bliss”.

Science is the product of a linguistic-cultural group. It employs it’s own language which operates according to language games like all langauges. Scientific language is instrumental to the needs and purposes of the scientific community, commercial interests, etc. The significance of science as a particular language game is not that it corresponds to “reality” but that it is useful in achieving certain ends. Scientific language does not have some absolute non-contextual meaning. Like philosophy and religion, science occurs in an historical setting that is constitutive of it. The pursuit of knowledge always involves human needs, purposes and goals.

The distinction between objective and subjective modes of knowing is illusory. All knowing is personal. It depends on a knowing subject within a valuing community. No less science. The correspondence definition of truth is philosophically unsupportable. Truth is a functional or valuational term. As such it is relative to an intersubjective community. All knowledge is incomplete. More can always be said.

It’s ironic that defenders of scientism have latched onto the symbol of ultimate mystery as if it were their own. Such a symbol was an anathema to the positivism of the recent past. It was considered the last refuge of the deluded mystics. What’s changed? Also please list for me “so-called the religious truths” that have been superceded by science. As I understand it, those were actually science superceding the so-called truths of science including its so-called paradyme shifts. What about that?

Your valuing God, or even having ever heard of God, doesn’t have anything to do with it. The contrary intuitions of value are that,
1.) Values are bigger than us, and real- a baby isn’t valuable just because I say it is, and it doesn’t cease being valuable in a community that says it’s not.
2.) Values seem to only make sense if there is someone to hold them valuable, and since we all have different personalities, this is subjective.

These are completely synthesized in a theory of a Divine Value-r who's values predate ours and are perfect in some sense. That justifies 1.  That God is a Person, and that things get their near-objective value from how that Person percieves them justifies 2.  Not only is this a good explanation, it's a [i]perfect [/i]explanation, and I don't think there is another one that doesn't deny one point or the other. 
 Now, as to why we value the things we do, it's because that's how God made us, which means different things depending on how you take free will.  But the idea of valuing things based on our nature no longer cheapens value, like it does if our natures weren't designed thoughtfully. 

Under a theistic model, the answer to these questions could very well be “We find these things to be beautiful because they ARE beautiful”. I don’t have any idea what you mean by imbuing beauty. There’s no difference between a sunset and a beautiful sunset, all else being equal.

You may have a point with beauty, that really is the uncertain spot in the whole thing, but with morals, I don’t think you have much to stand on. From what I can tell, the relativist and the nihilist who denies the existence of morals are no different from the Pyrrhic who denies the existence of the physical world, and has a bunch of attendants that keep him from walking into the sea or starving to death. The relativist only exists comfortably because the rest of us believe in what he denies, and he takes part in the illusion whenever it suits him to do so. Even if they are right, they are no proof that the illusion doesn’t demand an explanation.

No, maybe not necessarily. But it does practically, until I hear a good materialistic explanation for moral truths (and not just why it seems as though there are moral truths). If the only alternative to illusion-denial is for the materialist to balk at offering any explanation at all, theism is still preferable. I agree with you about the rest of what you said, the most reductivist explanation of things (the atomic level, say) is not the most true one. But then, I think I have a better justification of that than the materialist does.