God: what would philosophers do without Him?!

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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It was only when i re-read the rules of the board that i realised i was in enemy territory. The board author seems to believe there is no God (god?). Some of the greatest (the greatest) philosophers have acknowledged the existence of God throughout history – so i would not think belief were inimical to philosophy. I don’t get the athiests on this board, however – not one citation by Fuerbach (the Father of modern athiesm) have i seen yet. It seems that we have for the most part read much different philosophers. Please allow me to lurk and post, even though we may differ on where Philosophy leads, for now.

Anyway, not to rant – I wanted to bring up the question, not directly of whether God exists, but what changes to philosophy must be made to accomodate the concept’s absence.

For example: in political theory, without authority being given from above from a creator, don’t rights disappear and all governments only function by rule of force?

In logic, there seems to be no reason the mind would understand nature unless it were designed to – once this principle is lost, doesn’t our beloved Philosophy then become a series of mind games, not a discovery of things’ inner natures?

The natural sciences lose somewhat of their glory of bringing scientists into contact with the mind of God. They apparently deal with examining chance occurrences.

Ethics – what does one do with that? When the end of life is no longer happiness with God, what are we doing with our lives and why? Isn’t there a better world next door? (to paraphrase e.e.cummings) I guess you could act virtuously for it’s own sake, or for the peace of mind it brings, but it is encouraging to believe there is reward for goodness in the end.

Pascal said the first step of convincing people to believe in the existence of God is to convince them they should wish it were true. Have i helped,… or hindered?

Vale bene,
My Real Name

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Hmm, many theories in philosophy are Atheistic in the sense not that they deny God, but they have simply nothing to do with him.

What you really have to ask yourself, is how does God really help.

For example, if you assume in political theory that authority is derived from God, then the question I ask of you is how does God get his authority? God is used often to somehow end infinite regresses, but I don’t really think it works that well. Second, your setting up a false diacotomy between God and Force, couldn’t a ruler get authority via reason: everyone realizes they do better with a government, they set up some sort of social contract…

Theistic ethics is actually what brought me away from beliveing in God. To do good for the sake of personal reward, to me seems highly egoistic and hedonistic, and in combination I find the two of thouse digusting. Futuremore, to define good based solely on the authority of something bigger than you seems equaly disheartening.

I remember talking to a theist once who told me he would never kill just one person, because if he was going to go to hell anyway he might as well take out many.

From that it seems even brute utilitarianism seems like a better baisis for ethics than God, but I hope for some form of rational absoluteism where somehow we can grasp Good suported by reason alone.

Now who is this man of whom you speak. I ussualy attibute atheism to Hume and well Plato.

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If only he realized hell is self-imposed and not some firey pit one is sent to.

What do you think of this idea. One does good because doing bad sends ones soul to hell. What do I mean by this though? Ever have your concious tear you up inside? “Crime and punishment, Brothers K”. Imagine living with some big sin(mistake) eternally and with no way of changing it. Is this not hell? Is hell not being abondaned by those that love you, ostracized. Heaven and hell are here on earth the frightning thing is if the soul is eternal in which state will it remain.

Some expect to arrive in hell when they die, I’ve allready arrived and I’m still alive.

Looking at it this way is it any wonder I’d rather go to heaven? Is it any wonder I love doing good when it sends my spirit into such beautiful raptures. Lets be honest here, I’m not being virtuos for its own sake but for mine or someone else more important to me; more important then myself. For value I’m free to assign.

A hopeless dream. Good is either absolute or relative. In a relativly moral secular world such as ours for example society decides and constantly changes its mind on what is right and wrong, good and bad. “Reason alone” is always in a constant state of flux. Humans will never be able to develop an absolute morality from reason alone.

Perhaps you think we’re making progress? I think we regress.

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I hope that is a humourism. Not believing in god does not make someone an enemy of God. Athiesm means without thiesm, not anti-thiesm. Technically an enemy of god would be a hostile thiest, as it takes a man born of faith to worship the devil. Athiests may not believe in God, but they don’t believe in the Devil either.

Apart from that ‘my real name’ (if that is your real name :laughing: ), I think you’ve missed the entire point of athiestic philosophy. It is to work out how the world works, which is a much greater puzzle to solve if you don’t start with the thological ‘why the world is here’. (Although thiests havn’t actually figured that out either, only who made it)

I do find the implecations of your array of questions a little worrying though, as your reasoning that without god there is only chaos would imply that religious people are beasts on a theological leash. That is if your reaction to the absence of God would be to run amok. :confused:

Sorry if I’ve offended anyone. I know that’s not the case, but I think you need to give athiests a little more credit. Hah… It just dawned on me that God has imposed all those rules and rewards and punishments on you, meaning that God has given Athiests total free will. Maybe now you know how Angels feel. I’ve had to have offended someone now… :frowning:

I suddenly feel a little enlightened… :sunglasses:

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Lost Guy, Hi.

Good point. If they have to do with God, we can call them Religious or Theistic, if they have to do with “debunking God” we can call them Atheistec, and if they are God-neutral we can call them Agnostic. Though it occurs to me there may be a (big) difference between what they start by assuming and where their argument end up. I think we are discussing the latter.

If force is as good as reason to base a state’s authority on, then that state would seem to be no better than any other. What gives them a right to make a social contract?

Now, is the “man of whom I speak” Fuerbach? He said all religion is anthropology. “Man is the God of man.”

I strongly believe that Plato was not an athiest, but a forerunner to modern Theism. (Some early Christian thinkers, i’ve heard, actually wanted him declared a Saint!) But I can see how he can be read otherwise, i just think it’s a wrong reading. The last thing Socrates did before dying was compose religious songs (Phaedo)!

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i pretty much agree with this; except for myself, i wouldn’t even bother to say i’m an atheist. it doesn’t matter at all to me or to my philosophical thought processes whether god exists or not. god never enters my mind during any philosophical activity that i might be involved in. when do you invoke it? is it an “answer” to a question? i don’t like that, and i never did. its not satisfying to me at all.

at the moment i have no reason to believe in god. and i’ve never felt as though i have any reason to honestly believe in god. though i’m open to changing that attitude (that’s not an invitation to try to “convert” me) should something interesting enough happen. whatever that means :sunglasses:

as far as my own thoughts or theories or whatever are concerned, nothing is fundamentally lacking. i have other concepts that i invoke in place of the concept of god.

and further, it seems to me to be the most simplistic, elegant and (of obviously) parsimonious path to take… to not even bother with god at all. to say basically nothing about god. the concept of “god” is too much of a wild card to be acceptable in any honest philosophical assessment of some phemomenon or experience.

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As LostGuy said, the question of God isn’t relevant to most philosophical questions. It is also worth mentioning, I think, that no one has produced a compelling, reasoned argument for God’s existence yet, probabilistic or otherwise.

Appealing to some sort of supernatural authority for upholding rules and morality may well be useful, but it’s certainly not necessary. Occasionally, an argument is produced to the effect that morality is impossible without an authority figure, but this seems just fallacious. As the old argument goes, that God wants us to do X does not entail that we ought to do X, unless we have an additional premise that says we ought to obey God. This latter is not deducible from the former; we cannot invoke God’s authority in order to support the premise that we ought to submit to that authority. So the foundational premise for such obedience to God cannot come from God.

…or evolved under the pressures of an orderly world in alignment with that order.

I think the elegance and glory of the universe is not dependent on its being the product of design.

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kyry, you are just plain wrong. there have been LOTS of convincing arguments for the existence of “god”. perhaps, perhaps, not a christian god. perhaps, perhaps you don’t buy all of them.

i’m not going to spell them out for you. you can find them. but i think clifford’s watch argument, or aquianas’ different arguments are really convincing that we didn’t happen by pure fluke and that we are not the furthest advancement of nature.

first mover, first cause etc… you know that stuff?

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the first mover/first cause is basically impossible to prove right/wrong so the argument (although i quite like it) is not that strong a one for God’s existence.

Logically we could have just ‘popped’ into existence (although without the sound effect) because given infinite time anything can happen, there could have been a near infinite amount of time/nothingness before the big bang and therefore something as mind bogginly huge such as the big bang could have originated out of chaos/nothingness/fluke. that’s another theory (personally quite a comforting one if not a slightly strange one).

or alternatively the notions of the big crunch could be true and maybe the universe has always been and will forever ‘be’. who knows? (well, God probably)

i think the only one who knows God exists, is in fact God (Cogito ergo sum).

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I think the notion of God is implicit in many things that philosophy and science have taken for granted.

For example the notion of a ‘law’. Why is a ‘law’ a law, ie something constantly valid and applicable for all time and place? What is the justification for believing such to be true or even for such a notion to arise at all? you can say we just assume it is so. If so what are your reasons to assume so? Or you may say it is ‘self-evident’, but then I am not entirely convinced it is so ‘self-evident’, for what are these evidences? I rather attribute such a notion arising from the law having its source in something unchanging, whatever you want to call that source.

And another example the notion of objective reality. Again the implicit but fundamental premise here is that whatever perceived by our senses continue to remain so even when we are not sensing it. In other words the very notion of existence itself is dependent on a notion of continuing constancy, again call it whatever you want.

An alternative way to get insight here is to see/study the development, if at all, of rationality, of science and philosophy in cultures with any notion of God. For example India with its pantheistic notion of God, or Buddhism (which also originate in India) which has no notion of God. I do not think it is accidental that science as we know it today happened in the West, and not elsewhere.

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There are lots of arguments, yes, but none of them is objectively convincing. At best they reinforce prior belief in God, or prior intuitions in that direction. The majority of them are flatly fallacious. Ontological arguments cannot establish the coherence of the thing in question. Cosmological arguments, such as Aquinas’, all rely on versions of the principle of sufficient reason that at best cannot be effectively supported. Finding basic arguments like Aquinas’ convincing is likely due to not having examined them in appropriate detail. Teleological arguments are structurally sound, but are unpersuasive, relying too heavily on ignorance. Moral arguments are pointless, being about as effective as Hegelian ontological arguments. Wager arguments are obscurantist. And so on and so on…

So it is the case that convincing cases have not yet been made for God’s existence

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kyry, its times like this that i wonder what it means to prove something. Plato once likened a proof to a caught bird (in the cage of your mind) that you have a string on. At what point is an argument probable, and at what point is it actually proven? What is the point of moral certainty in an argument? At what point can one put human faith in it?

If an argument follows from “necessary” universals, it is a proof. Then we can argue about which universals are truely “necessary”. (And we do.)

I think the thing about the proofs for God may be that they are more heartfelt than some would want them to be. How do you argue that you contact the Divine Presence when looking at the beauty of a flower? But for the experiencer, it is proof enough. You can play with thoughts and try to deny everything, but there IS a universe, and there IS order in it. Which is more probable, a designer, or immortal particles bumping together?

LostGuy and DarkMagus [are you a DM?], i thought i put in my original post how i thought appeal to a Creator helps philosophy (which was the topic). I may be wrong or not about those points, but i did express them there.

You say, DM, you do not think of a God when you philosophise. If there is an agent cause of the universe, isn’t it important to the love of wisdom to know about it? I would be interested in seeing how you argue agnostically. I don’t know if it can be done very far without coming close to God or denying. I’ll have to read you more on these boards.

It is interesting that you say, DM, that you don’t find such answers as God satisfying. Maybe God seems more like an ultimite cause than a proximite cause.

Warning: about to go theological. Plato says philosophy begins in wonder. I suppose if we didn’t wonder about God, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In the Bible [Wisdom], it says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” that indicates how important, nay, integral, belief in a Creator can be to Judeo-Christian philosophy.

Pax vobiscum.

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It depends on how you define rights. Different forms of government define basic human right differently. Even different governments that may claim to obey the same God will have different rights. The rejection of the use of higher power (e.g. God) in defining basic right is also to reject the use of authoritative dogma in favor of reason.

I think Laplace’s quote can answer this question; namely, we dont need God in this hypothesis. The human mind (or any living organisms’ mind, for that matter) is “designed” to understand (even in the restrictive sense as applied to living organisms) nature because we need it for our very own survival. The force of evolution drives the mind to adapt more to their environment, and in order to do so, the mind must evolve to facilitate the ability that is known to us as understanding.

Quite the contraray, science itself will never claim to have made contact with God (or Gods), unless God can be measured and experimented with. Now there are famous scientists’ quote who mentioned God, but these are
their individual sentiments and are by no means related to science whatsoever. Examining natural (rather random/non-random) occurrences describe science quite well.

Regarding ethnics, your question isn’t precise as to what exactly are you asking for. As for the end of life, it is anybody’s guess and I suppose different people (in regards to the atheists) will have different answers for it.

I think there is a very fine line between wishful thinking and reality. By that I dont mean to claim that God doesn’t exist, but also that God’s existence cannot be confirmed either. Beliefs and facts are not the same thing.

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Sepiraph, thanks for responding. (I don’t suppose you go to the University there in Toronto?)

<<Anyway, not to rant – I wanted to bring up the question, not directly of whether God exists, but what changes to philosophy must be made to accomodate the concept’s absence.

For example: in political theory, without authority being given from above from a creator, don’t rights disappear and all governments only function by rule of force?

It depends on how you define rights. Different forms of government define basic human right differently. Even different governments that may claim to obey the same God will have different rights. The rejection of the use of higher power (e.g. God) in defining basic right is also to reject the use of authoritative dogma in favor of reason. >>

I guess I’m used to the theory of rights which says we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienalbe right…among these are life, liberty and happiness” (& property?). Jefferson’s influences extend back before the Enlightenment period.
I don’t know if those states which believe in rights really believe in different rights, or whether they just implement them in different ways (or not at all) with their laws.

<<Quote:

In logic, there seems to be no reason the mind would understand nature unless it were designed to – once this principle is lost, doesn’t our beloved Philosophy then become a series of mind games, not a discovery of things’ inner natures?

I think Laplace’s quote can answer this question; namely, we dont need God in this hypothesis. The human mind (or any living organisms’ mind, for that matter) is “designed” to understand (even in the restrictive sense as applied to living organisms) nature because we need it for our very own survival. The force of evolution drives the mind to adapt more to their environment, and in order to do so, the mind must evolve to facilitate the ability that is known to us as understanding. >>

Why do we need underatanding or philsophy to survive? Why does survival knowledge have to be abstract and theoretical? How does a (as it were) material essence know abstract things?

<<Quote:

The natural sciences lose somewhat of their glory of bringing scientists into contact with the mind of God. They apparently deal with examining chance occurrences.

Quite the contraray, science itself will never claim to have made contact with God (or Gods), unless God can be measured and experimented with. Now there are famous scientists’ quote who mentioned God, but these are
their individual sentiments and are by no means related to science whatsoever. Examining natural (rather random/non-random) occurrences describe science quite well. >>

There people, like Einstein are quoted, i think, because we think such smart people know more than we of what is reasonable to believe and what the universe is like.
By the way, how can there be a science of the random, when science deals with the unniversal?

<<Quote:

Ethics – what does one do with that? When the end of life is no longer happiness with God, what are we doing with our lives and why? Isn’t there a better world next door? (to paraphrase e.e.cummings) I guess you could act virtuously for it’s own sake, or for the peace of mind it brings, but it is encouraging to believe there is reward for goodness in the end.

Regarding ethnics, your question isn’t precise as to what exactly are you asking for. As for the end of life, it is anybody’s guess and I suppose different people (in regards to the atheists) will have different answers for it. >>

First, I may have gone theological here, saying happiness is with God. Philosophically, Aristotle argues we live for happiness which consists in a life of virtue. Since knowledge of the highest causes is an intellectual virtue, I guess you can get close to this chatachismal answer anyway.

Is it a problem if people have different thoughts of happiness? If you wish to govern according to natural law it is. I suppose “liberal” states have less of a problem there – at first.

<<Quote:

Pascal said the first step of convincing people to believe in the existence of God is to convince them they should wish it were true. Have i helped,… or hindered?

I think there is a very fine line between wishful thinking and reality. By that I dont mean to claim that God doesn’t exist, but also that God’s existence cannot be confirmed either. Beliefs and facts are not the same thing.>>

Beliefs and facts? Which, to you, is philosophy?

Regards.

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Thanks for your reply as well. I am very new to this board and I have to say that the members as well as the topics discussed here are all very interesting. I have just very recently graduated from the University of Waterloo and moved back to Toronto. I graduated in Physics but I am equally, if not more interested in philosophy, history, soical science and psychology.

My original response was to provide a reason why evolution can also be a “designer” of the mind. The understadning that I was thinking was referring more to “unconscious or sub-conscious understanding”, if this is actually possible. The examples that I was thinking were animals’ problem solving abilities.

I seem to get the impression that the understanding you are thinking of is “conscious understanding”. I dare to infer more that you are really thinking of consciousness. If so, you are absolutely right in that it is considered an outstanding and hard question in science as to why our mind is “conscious”.

I hope I’m understanding the question correctly. Randomness certainly “exists” in science–quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, etc. all examine seemingly random events in nature and try to account for these phenomena by using probability and statistics. I think this site that will answer your answer a lot better than I can. Also when you mention the universal, do you mean that in a Platonic sense?

I would be hesitant to use belief and replace the word with opinion. Upon first reaction I’d say both, as a philosopher has to know certain facts but he/she can form any opinion on a given subject matter. Although the philosophical part seems to be just opinions. It seems to me that it is a case of cause and effect. If I have to choose only one, then no doubt in my mind it would be opinion. However, the statement that I like more would be to say philosophy is informed opinions based on some factual experiences. If you wish to see it as a whole, it becomes opinion but if you wish to see it as individual pieces of which it is based, then one can argue for facts.

I hope that made sense.

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<<By the way, how can there be a science of the random, when science deals with the unniversal?

I hope I’m understanding the question correctly. Randomness certainly “exists” in science–quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, etc. all examine seemingly random events in nature and try to account for these phenomena by using probability and statistics. I think this site that will answer your answer a lot better than I can. Also when you mention the universal, do you mean that in a Platonic sense? >>

I mean the universal in a more Aristotelian sense – they are in things and known by the mind.

I scanned the article. I answer that we know forms, and apparently in chaotic phenmena there is less knowability, but what knowability there is is knowledge too.

But it’s a little disconcerting that your description of science sounds more Kantian than Aristotelian – using the mind to make knowledge “fit”. hmmm.

<<Quote:

Beliefs and facts? Which, to you, is philosophy?

I would be hesitant to use belief and replace the word with opinion. Upon first reaction I’d say both, as a philosopher has to know certain facts but he/she can form any opinion on a given subject matter. Although the philosophical part seems to be just opinions. It seems to me that it is a case of cause and effect. If I have to choose only one, then no doubt in my mind it would be opinion. However, the statement that I like more would be to say philosophy is informed opinions based on some factual experiences. If you wish to see it as a whole, it becomes opinion but if you wish to see it as individual pieces of which it is based, then one can argue for facts. >>

This recalls how Plato wished to make the distnction between true opinion and knowledge. Is there knowledge for you? If you say physics, chemistry and biology, aren’t those all founded on philosophic principles, so that philosophy has to be knowledge before “hard science” is?

Vale bene,
(Be well)

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In response to the original question:
What would philosophers do without god

The short answer - They would for a large part cease to exist.

God belief exists soley to explain the gaps in our tangible knowledge. The removal of this ‘belief’ would signify the removal of the gaps.

As mankind learns and advances, it’s need for gods and goddesses diminishes. There was a time the rising of the sun, the growth of crops,and even the conception of children was atributed to gods and magic.
Now, we realize the process behind said phenomenon, and the placing of invisible deities in these scenarios has been eliminated.

Fast forward to today. Our one great unexplained mystery, the origin of space and material, is still the dominion of the unknown. (gods) Once this mystery is unravelled, as it invariably will eventually be, the last vestage and need for gods will fall by the wayside.

Philosophers will then be dealing in fact, not abstract.

The real question is, would that still be philosophy?

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Now that’s more like it, Doc.

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Today’s greatest mytery is when people profess belief in the devil but not in God.

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Hi my real name,
the changes to philosophy that need to be made in order to accomodate the absence of the concept of God are simply an undying urge for knowledge and a willingness to admit and state ‘I don’t know’. In fact, these changes need to be made in all facets of life. That’s the short answer.

About Political Theory: Yes, much political thoughts rests upon religious tenets from the beginning of civilization. This have caused much trial and tribulation. Without such a clenching handicap Politics would mostly likely have treaded a more pragmatic and life promoting route. The authority we would rely upon is that of nature and humankind - a much more tenable and acceptable approach. Without authority from God, governments function doesn’t become rule by force. You are likely referring to such Philosophers as Thomas Hobbes, but just because an athiestic philosopher didn’t get the politics right, doesn’t mean that theistic philosophers are. In fact, I would argue that without the concept of God a person looks to the way things are amongst the people and politics is formed around that. This means that politics accomodates peoples attitudes and ways of life instead of forcing ideals that cannot rationally or logically be met (ideals from a supposed God).

I don’t know where you get the idea that there seems no reason the mind would understand nature unless it was designed to, I assume you are referring to the moribund creation by design argument, but I would argue that we don’t understand nature even till this day. There is continual progression in the fields of Horticulture, Herbal Medicine, and Evolution. New ideas pop up and many old ideas are discarded. For this to keep happening means that we don’t actually contain the whole truth about nature at any point. The understanding we do have is based upon synaptic connections made due to our senses, and not because our mind was designed to understand it. Surely we have a level of innate knowledge, but so much is expected from Evolution, and not from God.

You said:

This is a heavily loaded statement. You assume that natural sciences get their glory from coming into contact with the mind of God (where exactly is the mind of God and what relation does the mind of God have to the rest of God? - are questions you need to address before you make such grand assumptions), you also assume that without the mind of God there remains nothing but chance occurrences…bad boy! Remember, just because something appears to have a pattern, doesn’t mean there is design or God behind it. What appears to have a pattern, appears to have a pattern in relation to US. Many patterns are later shown to not be patterns, and same vice versa.

Regarding Ethics: we would realize that ethics doesn’t actually exist but instead we would realize that it is a social construction based upon bringing masses of people together and inventing rules to help them live together in peace and harmony. With that in mind we would look to culture, psychology, science, etiquette, and other social underpinnings to create a workable system in which we can all live happily. There is no living happily attempting to live by rules you cannot achieve due to being human. Religion makes a mockery of humankind. Religion attempts to make you feel bad for practically every urge we have as humanbeings. Religion, in this way is life denying. A practical approach would lead us to look, understand, and explain to people that we shouldn’t kill others because this leads unhappiness not only to the immediate family but to society in general. We ourselves don’t want to be killed, so we shouldn’t kill others. This is a very laymen and basic understanding of this different approach, but the point remains that this is always better than not killing because you believe you will be punished by God. Ruling by fear has been the rule for thousands of years, and thousands of years of history have shown that rule by fear doesn’t work. What needs to be attempted is rule by understanding. When you can make someone understand your point and agree to it than they will devote their life to your cause, every single day of their lives, not just moments of blind faith which are always picked out and emphasised thousands of times over in order to attempt to brainwash people into believing that we should believe something based on nothing.

Pascal, on many levels, contradicted himself. For instance, Pascal claimed that God was infinitely incomprehensible, yet he assumed numerous things about him, like the fact that God likes people who believe in him without reason. For all we know maybe God dislikes those who believe in him without reason, and adores those who have reasons to believe in him and don’t rely solely on faith. Either way, the point is that Pascal contradicted himself.

What’s your take?