First, Felix, I would like to make clear what I mean by explain. I used the term “isomorphic”, which is a term I borrowed from mathematics, and means that there is a one-to-one map for all members of a set onto another set. If one set is isomorphic to another, they are in an important sense identical. I then used it to negatively define explanation: whatever it means to explain, a hypothesis that leave a set of questions that is isomorphic to the previous set of questions does not explain. I then proposed that god does just that.
For example, if we ask “why is the sky blue?”, and the given hypothesis is “because god made it that way”, a question that remains is “why did god make it that way?” This question is isomorphic to the previous question because god is set up to be the reason for everything that ‘is’; something that ‘is’ must be something that ‘god made’, so to replace “is” in the question with “did god make” is to preserve the question.
In contrast, if we say “the sky is blue because the atmosphere refracts blue light to a greater degree”, the question “why does the sky refract blue light to a greater degree” is not isomorphic, because the phrase cannot be mapped into any question in which the word ‘is’ appears.
That said, I think that I shall ignore it while I am addressing Uccisore’s points. I think, Uccs, that you are playing fast and loose with #s 1 and 2. I will accept them as stated (though I think they may be worth exploring and qualifying if this were a discussion about moral truth and not god’s explanatory power). I think that what god does is to propose that, in fact, #1 is false (ironically similar to materialism as you characterize it). You state “people can be mistaken about moral claims”, but then propose a person who cannot be so mistaken. You mention Hitler as an example of wrong morals, but for many in Germany at the time, Hitler fulfilled the role of god: he was a person whose moral dictates were defined as the moral truths. In a less drastic and more widespread example, we see children who unquestioningly obey their parents, and agglomerate their parents orders into the code of moral right.
We can avoid the isomorphism principle because attempting to use god to explain actually un-asks the question: There is no dilemma between #s 1 and 2, because #1 is false.
The if you ask “why is the sky blue?” and I reply “because God wanted to make it pretty for people on earth”, that’s not isomorphic. According to your definition, it’s an explanation. There are plenty of statements about God in the Bible that qualify as explanations according to your definition.
First, I should clarify that the definition is negative, which is to say that nothing is shown to be an explanation simply because it passes the isomorphism principle. Rather, it identifies a certain class of things which are not explanations. I’m using this principle because I think it’s enough to show that god is non-explanatory.
But that’s not to say that your answer does not set up an isomorphic set of questions. Your answer can be applied to every question (“why are there flowers?” “Because god wanted to make the earth pretty for people”), and if the explanation is questioned, the resulting questions are members of a set that is isomorphic to initial set of questions (“whydid god make the sky blue in order to make it pretty for people on earth?”)
A couple things I’d like to point out: * The attempted explanation need not always include ‘pretty’ to maintain the isomorphism. If it is of the form “God wanted to make it X for people”, where X is the value or emotion that people apply to ‘it’, the formula is still the same for all things, and the subsequent question set applies a formula containing X, thereby creating an isomorphism.
Sometimes resultant questions may appear to be the same, and so one could claim that the attempted explanation has eliminated questions. For instance “Why is the sky blue” and “Why are there stars in the sky” could both be answered with “Because god wanted to make it pretty for people on earth”. But I would like to suggest that this is an artifact of language: though they may use the same words, there are non-explicit but still important intentions in the questions that differ. In the previous instance, one could ask specifically “Why did god put stars in the sky to make it pretty”, which is different from “Why did god make the sky blue in order to make it pretty.” They are relevantly different questions, because their answer sets are relevantly different: one would include an answer such as “because god know that people thought blue was pretty”, and the other would not.
The reason I like this test for explanation is that it immediately eliminates hypotheses that attempt to explain too much with not very much (like ‘god did it’. I’m not accusing, just pointing out one hypothetical attempt at explanation that is disallowed by my isomorphism principle).
Well, crap Carleas. I re-worded that Intuition 1 like three times, trying to convey want I wanted to, I knew the emphasis was all wrong, but I couldn’t make it work. Let me describe what I mean in more detail.
I said
There’s two ways to read this. The first is that there’s something about people, such that we can be mistaken about morals. That’s what you seem to be responding to with your point about God’s not being mistaken. But that’s not what I wanted to emphasize. What I’m really trying to say is, there’s something about morals such that they can be mistaken about. That is, moral claims seem to have a true/false value- Hitler’s moral actions and beliefs were wrong, in a real sense.
Taken that way, your point about God doesn’t address what I wish to emphasize about the first intuition- in fact, that God is always right in His moral beliefs underlines my point, that moral beliefs are something one can be right (or wrong) about in the first place.
So 1 is,
1.) Moral beliefs seem to be the kinds of things that can be correct or incorrect, or posses some value analagous to correct/incorrect.
2 remains,
2.) Moral truths arise from values, we seem to be subject to change.
The paradox being that if moral beliefs are dependant on our values, which are subject to change, there shouldn’t be anything correct or incorrect about them. On 2, they should be like “Chocolate Ice Cream is the best ice cream”, but we intuit and operate as though they are like “Elephants are bigger than pigs”. Theism allows them both to be true in a very straightforward way.
Your cultural theories leave me cold. Sounds like you’ve been hanging out with those stale postmodernists too long. It matters little what linguistic cultural group science emerged from, nor what language it employs or even what uses it’s put to. The fact of the matter is, science gets results. The science versus religion debate is done to death I know, but I just cant stand this equal value refrain and have to reject your claim that religion and science are of equal value in ‘perceiving the universe’. Religion might be of equal, no, better value, in lots of areas…giving comfort, providing inspiration, fostering charity etc, etc…but in ‘perceiving the universe’ it AINT as good as science. Any knowledge about the universe we have today, we have got through scientific inquiry and some airy fairy notion of God as Leonardo da Vinci with wings just doesn’t seem as likely to increase our understanding of the universe as the Hubble telescope.
Science…vast body of knowledge.
Religion…vast body of conjecture.
Yes, what about it? There were literally dozens of religious claims made about the universe that were supposedly facts. Claims made long before the scientific revolution was born, that had nothing to do with scientific procedure and principles. Zeus’s lightning bolt…how about that? Genesis…? Humans created instantaneously from dust and breath? For a long time it was believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and flat. Now if this wasn’t regarded as a religious truth, why was Galileo villified by the church? Similarly why did the church get into such a flap about Darwin? If these faulty claims were just ‘bad science’ why should it matter so much to the church? It mattered because they were considered religious truths. Even today there are those who wont let go of absurd religious claimss…young earth creationists come to mind.
Science makes mistakes and theories get superceded, it’s true…but its always in the process of correcting itself. If all we had were religious truths, well we wouldn’t know squat about anything much.
At one time the Greek scientists explained lightning by referring to Zeus’ lightning bolts. Hebrew scientists taught that humans were a combination of dust and breath. Medieval scientists taught that the sun revolved around the earth. Prior to Darwin, scientists taught that flies spontaneously generated. After Darwin, scientists told us that eugenic ethnic cleansing would produce a superior race. 150 years ago science taught that space was filled with ether. Less than 100 years ago Nebuli were thought to be made of gas. Scientists taught that the universe existed in a steady state. Scientists claimed that electroshock treatment and frontal lobotomies would cure mental illness. Scientists told us we would have better living through chemistry ignoring the toxic polluting side effects.
Organized religion’s big mistake throughout history was to confuse eternal truth with the ephemeral “facts” of the science of it’s day. Sometimes they were so commited to these erroneous “scientific facts” that they persecuted people for teaching otherwise. Religion, science and political power are a toxic brew when they are mingled together. Fundamentalism is one more example of that concoction.
I don’t think we are any better off uncritically accepting science as religion than we are accepting religion as science. Those who wish to end religion in the name of science are no better than those who wish to end science in the name of religion. So I refuse to give one absolute primacy over the other.
Simply labeling those who held such beliefs as “scientists” doesn’t make it so. Were those “scientists” following the “scientific method.” Are you aware of what the scientific method consists of? If so, do you know when it came about? I assure you it was long after ancient Greece, and even the medieval era…
Was Eugenic ethnic cleansing confirmed by the scientific method, or for that matter, even closely related to Darwin’s theory (if you did the research, you’d find that it was a seriously flawed and misconstrued view of Darwin’s theory).
Yes, science has been wrong in the past. Yes, human beings are imperfect, and do make mistakes. But as has been tirelessly mentioned in previous posts, the difference between science and religion is that science is self-correcting. The scientific method proactively looks for flaws and mistakes, and is always striving to achieve correctness. Do you still hear scientists today claiming space is filled with ether?
Who’s accepting science uncritically? Science is continuously under criticism BY SCIENCE ITSELF. Clearly religion in our culture, however, cannot be criticised, as we should all be free to “believe what we wish.”
They were using the scientific methods of their time, just as they were practicing the religion of their time… The scientific method of today won’t be the scientific method of tomorrow.
Eugenics was very fashionable during the latter 19th and early 20th century. Darwin’s half-cousin, the English scientist Francis Galton, is considered to be the founder of eugenics. Galton himself was “a meteorologist, the founder of differential psychology, the inventor of fingerprint identification, and a pioneer statistician in the field of correlation and regression techniques.” He promoted selective breeding “…to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.” huxley.net/contexts/index.html
Science criticizes itself and so do many religious institutions. For example liberal Christianity has subjected the Bible to historical criticism for centuries.
My point in mentioning the ether is that the scientific facts of yesterday are not the scientific facts of today, and today’s aren’t tomorrow’s. Shall we fault religion for its past errors and ignore science’s?
That’s supposed to be true of the American government any way. Apart from that it’s criticized freely by people inside and out.
When I said to Uccisore, “my suggested explanations for morality are at least equivalent to yours”, I meant that he should consider opening himself to giving mine more weight. (I wouldn’t expect that to happen, but it’s a point to be made.) As for me, I don’t equate mine with his, because supernatural explanations are worthless to me. Thus I don’t view his statement as even half as useful as, say, explanations offered by people like Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, et al. Especially since it appears we’re getting better at understanding why people have that need to believe stuff in the first place.
But beyond that, IMO, the reason you’re sidetracked, and will likely continue to be, is because Uccisore’s explanation is useful to him. That can’t be denied, God is his explanation and, given that, only God can unexplain himself to Uccisore, or any other God believer. I may not give much creedence to the claim that there was an actual event during which God filled someone’s heart, but I find it credible that they really think it’s true. For whatever reason, some people accept supernatural explanations for things in some concrete way and, while that may not work for others, that doesn’t negate those explanations for theists.
You can try to make your case to someone after they’ve made the commitment to accept as truth what is to others a belief (or perhaps it feels closer to the truth than anything else for them), but do you really think that can succeed? At some point, someone took that step along that God path and all reason flowed from there.
We still argue the points, of course, but I don’t know why. Something to do, I guess.
But how do you know God values the baby? And which baby? Babies routinely get badly hurt, shaken to death even, by their parents. Does that mean God values some babies over others? And if he does, then why? (If you wish, you can reduce your risk of carpal tunnel by not answering, because we’ve traveled this circular route before.)
On a side note, didn’t the Pope just excuse babies from limbo after, what, a thousand years of that belief? Or was that purgatory, I get the two mixed up.
Dang, have you perceived my inner demon?
I can agree with that, since without sufficient human lives around, there’d be no need to govern anything, not to mention anyone to do the governing…but that has nothing to do with God. The word “God” doesn’t even appear in the U.S. Constitution, for that matter.
The word “perfect” doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is who’s defining “perfect”. If it’s you (which I think it is), then nothing transcendent has occured. So I’ve not arrived at the stage of paradox which your belief has led you to. I think it’s your subjective value, and the fact that other people share that value that makes it ‘immutable.’ Call it categorical imperative, if you will. My view is that there are explanations for why people share universal values other than that God possesses them himself and also has proclaimed them to be the right ones for humans.
I could just as easily claim that absolutism is motivated by a need to justify theism or to deny the truth of impermanence and interdependence. Because absent a deity setting the rules, there’s not much of a case that can be made for moral absolutism, because it cannot allow contradictions based on the circumstances of events and the ability of humans to make reasoned choices when faced with moral dilemmas. We know humans can make rational choices without God because they did so long before God was thought of. So there must be other explanations.
Sure you do, because at best you’ve decided that it’s useful to you, and you’ve already accepted God as the beginning and end. That doesn’t mean it’s a good explanation for anyone else, it just means it’s useful to you. If it were an explanation that could be equally accepted by, say, Buddhists, Taoists and Humanists, then I’d say it has more going for it. By contast, explanations offered by evolution, anthropology, etc., can be accepted by non-theistic groups without contradicting their fundamental doctrines.
Yet belief is always subject to the conditioning of the believer. I think what you’re alluding to are some absolute Capitol-M Morals floating around out there that you claim are God’s proclamations as to what individuals should believe. But actually, it’s you (or whomever) who are the one claiming they’re God’s. So then who’s actually the proclaimer? In other words, there’s no God and, especially, no God’s Absolute Values, without you to say so.
It’s actually the other way around, values are beliefs in which individuals invest emotionally (‘for or against’). Morals are those individuals’ perceptions of right and wrong, they provide the motivation for the beliefs. So values arise from our morality.
As I said, I think it’s the other way around, our values are beliefs, which are motivated by our moral view of right and wrong. But assuming that we mean the same thing, then why exactly is that a paradox? If a person deems something to be morally ‘correct’, then it is to that person. Another person may disagree; society may disagree (and that first person may pay a price for his belief if he acts on it).
So theism equates, or does not distinguish between, opinion and fact?
Your position is new to me. The Buddhist I know are not anti-religion, anti-deism, or anti-Christian. They are not really anti-anything except for killing sentient beings. They don’t hold no-self as a doctrine. If fact they are not dogmatic. So I am curious because you seem to be setting your belief over against Uccisore’s. So if you are a Buddhist maybe your a different kind then I am familar with. Do you consider yourself both a Buddhist and an atheist?
Well, perhaps you don’t understand God. But based upon the bulk of your posts you think He exists, and presumably created the Universe. Many of your posts lead me to conclude that you think he’s a bearded, omnipotent white man, too. None of those things is a tenet of Buddhism.
You’re right I don’t understand God. In my posts I have maintained that most if not all statements about God are metaphorical. Words and pictures are like fingers pointing at the moon, not to be confused with it. Christianity and Buddhism have tenets, but their essences are not tenets. The essence of Christianity may be called Presence. The essence of Buddhism may called Mindfulness. Are these two or one?
Why do I have to know? How do you know there’s any such things as babies? What I ‘know’ is that the intuition that things are valuable beyond our opinions of them is powerful and commonplace, and the existence of a divine valuer explains that intuition very well. Again, that’s as far as I need to go within the scope of this argument.
And yes, I invoke the Principal of Carpal Tunnel on the rest, since the Problem of Evil has nothing to do with this thread, and doesn’t wind up ending well for you in general.
Yeah, I heard recently the Pope has decided that limbo doesn’t exist after all. I think it was a decision long in coming, the previous Pope got the ball rolling, from what I hear.
Super!
Of course I define all my words when I’m the one speaking them. Hopefully I define them in a way my audience can relate to. I told you how I was using the word ‘perfect’, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get past the word and address the concept now.
Neat! I could explain to you that my whole point in speaking up was that my belief system resolves the paradox, and that nearly every ethical system in existence, religious or otherwise, has been about addressing it in one way or the other, but let’s make it about me. Clearly I just made the paradox up, and the fact that morals seem truthful on one hand, and subjective on the other hasn’t bothered the thinking community at large.
Yeah, no doubt there are other explanations. I wouldn’t deny that for a moment.
Go ahead and claim all that if you want! I still don’t think you’re seeing that all of that has nothing to do with Carleas’ argument, or my refutation of it.
That’s just rediculous. I mean, this STILL has nothing to do with Carleas’ argument, but I can’t help but address it. You just told me, in essence, that theism isn’t a useful explanation because a person can’t accept it while remaining non-theistic. My fingers are starting to ache- do you see why this isn’t the…best argument you could have made?
As far as my two intuitions go, I’m not ‘alluding’ to anything, and I’m not interested in how your conclusions differ from them. I’m just pointing out the fact that the intuitions are there, and that an explanation of the world that allows them both to be true is preferable to a system that denies one or both of them. A system that denies the truth of a powerful, universal intuition, is very…what’s the word…counter-intuitive. Really, the only wiggle-room I see for the argument would be for you say that the intuitions don’t exist (most people really don’t have the intuitions I’ve described), or that my explanation doesn’t satisfy them both.
Well, if there is such a thing as God I imagine s/he or it is incomprehensible to the human mind. We could only understand symbollically or metaphorically, or we could hope to catch some shadow of his “essence” gnostically or mystically. If there is no God, then there simply isn’t anything to understand.
I’m no expert on Buddhism by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve read a bit, including a couple of the Dahli Lhamma’s books including Freedom in Exile which isn’t really much about theology. The basics that I have gleaned is that while Buddhism will allow that there may be creatures or entities greater than humans, they’re not really Gods nor did they create the universe. And they were probably once tied to the same cycle of weal and woe that we are. Human life is suffering, and our attachment to it leads to greater suffering. Gurus may be able to help lead you towards the path towards Nhirvana but ultimately it’s a solitary journey that we each must undertake for ourselves. The best advice I get from Buddhism is that all deserve compassion because we are all dying.
I agree that God is incomprensible. I don’t think that the essence of Buddhism is belief in this or that. Neither is Christianity. So the more we talk about this and that, the more people are misled. They take positions on either side of this and that. Some say its this; others that it’s that. They offer proofs, advance evidence, construct syllogisms to support this or that. Sometimes they get angry. They carry banners some saying THIS! others THAT! Eventually they go to war: THIS>><<THAT. All of this and that is a huge distraction from what is essential whether it be called this or that, Presence or Mindfulness.
Yes, well Christianity has had to critically examine itself because so many of its claims conflict with what science has revealed to us. Serious and widespread criticism of Christianity really only began with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment…a movement which held reason as the basis for authority, rather than religion… Do you really think religion would have been self-correcting on its own initiative, without the revelations of science and the persistence of rationalism? It hasnt self-corrected anyway…it’s just shifted Biblical claims from fact to metaphor. There’s a difference between self-criticism and self-correction. Religions are not big on either.
You dont seem to get it. The point is, religion does not self-correct the way science does and when it does redine itself it’s usually science and reason which is driving the change. The conclusions of science may alter but the fundamental principles of the scientific method remain constant. It’s these principles which allow knowledge to advance.
You seem to get only half of it. There seems to be a dialectical process going on in history. Before the enlightenment could take place a religious movement known as the reformation had to set the stage for it. The principle of self criticism that became part of the scientific method was preceded by the emergence of the autonomous conscience of Protestantism. Protestantism was “big on” conscientious individualism.
For the Reformation, the Biblical text itself, rather than the opinions of the church fathers, became the final authority in questions of interpretation. This freed people to turn to the empirical world itself as the final authority in questions about physical reality.
Calvin emphasized the will of God rather than the reason of God. This led to a conception of natural law by which laws could only be discovered by experimentation.
Francis Bacon’s vision that science promised to lighten the human burden, to provide domination over nature, appealed to reforming German Protestants who wished, like Bacon, to include natural knowledge in the millenarian reforms promised in the coming age.
So you see religious developments were important precusors to the emergence of modern science. It wasn’t and isn’t a one sided process wherein science informs religion from a superior epistemological position.
By the way, you are mistaken about Biblical interpretation shifting to metaphor in response to modern science. The so called Church Fathers like Augustine, Origen etc. used a metaphorical-allegorical interpretation extensively 17 centuries ago and this practice continued until the reformation. The Reformers sought more concrete interpretations probably in the pursuit of doctrinal purity for their respective sects. The radical literalism of the fundamentalism was a 20th century reaction against trends in the liberal church.
None of those things is a tenet of Buddhism. 