My goodness, I go away for a day, and look at the posts piling up!
Anyway, back into the mudpit I go...
Therefore, this essentially boils down to picking the simplest assumptions. My assumptions are the postulates of logic. Yours are the existence of not only a god, but a human-like god who interferes in human affairs. Which appear to be more fundamental and can be used to construct the other?
I find this answer rather lacking. Logical argumentation always ultimately follows the form "If A, then B,"and makes this leap using certain principles of rationality component to the human mind. Our minds are built in such a fashion that we must interpret reality in certain ways: "The understanding does not derive its laws (a priori) from, but prescribes them to, nature."
1 For example, our ability to perceive is predicated upon the a priori foundations of space and time,
2 while our ability to understand what we perceive is based upon such concepts as quantity (unity/plurality/totality), quality (reality/negation/limitation), relation (substance/causality/ community), and modality (possibility/existence/necessity).
3 These logical constructs alone are empty, only the apparatus of rationality, not its content. Before reason can begin its work, it requires given conditions to function as a foundation.
It is my contention that an attempt to dismiss theism as irrational as opposed to atheism is unjustified, and that the assumption of an atheistic conception of ultimate reality is equally as irrational as a theistic one. The scientific atheist must, like all human beings, posit initial assertions about the nature of reality, such as
there is no God and all that exists is Nature, before he can begin the task of understanding his universe. These initial assertions amount to one's concept of ultimate reality.
A concept of ultimate reality is essentially a formulation of our beliefs about "how things truly are". It tells us what is the underlying reality behind the world we perceive (i.e. God, Brahman, oneself, mathematically governed energy, nothing), establishes our understanding of the nature of reality, and thereby sets out the paradigm for our understanding of the world we experience. The place of a concept of ultimate reality in an attempt to understand the world is found only in the role of a base upon which to build.
One of the major concerns of any religion, or indeed of Religion in general, is the question of what ultimate reality actually is. This is not its only concern, or necessarily even its primary concern, but it is an integral concern. If religion is to accomplish its primary goals, there must first be an understanding of the nature of the reality in which this problem takes place. Without such an understanding, nothing can be grounded, and no statements can be made about anything.
The most basic thing the human mind does in forming understanding is believe. Any logician, theologian, philosopher, or psychologist will tell you that before the mind carries out, indeed is even able to carry out, any type of reasoning, it must first have some previous extra-rational foundations upon which to build. And so, to understand anything about anything, the mind must have some final, irreducible "truths" upon which all its further understanding and belief is based. These irreducible assumptions form the structure of one's concept of ultimate reality. This structure can be fleshed out by reasonings and beliefs based on these assumptions, but the core lies in the irreducible assumptions themselves.
Our ultimate reality, then, is our basic reality. As we go through life, experiencing the universe, other people, and ourselves, the only way we can understand or find meaning in it all is by interpreting it according to our irreducible truths, or in other words, by integrating the data into the framework of our concept of ultimate reality. We base our understanding on our beliefs about "how things truly are".
It is not so much true that seeing is believing, as it is that to believe is to see. In the search to understand reality, it is our basic assumptions about ultimate reality that inform our conclusions. Insofar as our irreducible assumptions differ, our ultimate realities will differ, and our views of the world around us will differ.
Thus it is that different religious persuasions have vastly different ideas about the nature of the universe, of man, of man's problem, and of its solution. Adherents to a belief system hold to certain concepts of ultimate reality, and thus form their ideas of God (or lack of therein) as part of that. The Judeo-Christian God, the Hindu qualityless Brahman, the Tao of Taoism, the raw nature of atheism, and so on, are each embodiments of ultimate reality as accepted by the followers of the respective religions; and the meaning and significance of, as well as the believer's relationship to, these ideas of God/ultimate reality are as varied as the religions they come from.
Philosophers have long tried to make arguments proving the truth or falsity of various concepts of ultimate reality. These arguments have all, as far as I have ever seen, failed. The primary failure is to be found not in the truth or falsehood of the particular concept of ultimate reality under scrutiny, but in the logical invalidity of the arguments themselves. Any attempt to prove a concept of ultimate reality is an attempt to prove the basic premise upon which it is founded. As a basic, pre-rational belief, a concept of ultimate reality cannot be the conclusion of the argument without begging the question in some fashion.
For example, I have yet to encounter any argument either for, or against, the existence of the Judeo-Christian God which has not at some point assumed, however subtly, the existence or non-existence which it was trying to prove. The strongest argument I have yet encountered for the existence of God is the Cosmological Argument of Keith Yandell as laid out in his book
Philosophy of Religion,
1 but even in this argument fails to actually prove God's existence (although it does do a very good job of arguing that either God exists, or we have no explanation for why anything exists).(I can post this argument if someone is interested in it, but it would take a great deal of typing, so I'll only do it by request
)
Interestingly, the strongest argument that I have encountered aimed specifically against the Judeo-Christian (and Islamic) God, has actually been very weak at disproving the existence of God completely. The argument from the problem of evil succeeds only in making Semitic monotheism more difficult, and does not succeed in actually disproving such a God, let alone in disproving a non-Semitic conception of God. Meanwhile, all arguments, in the author's experience, that actually do try to disprove the possibility of any God have assumed the non-existence of God to make their arguments.
In fact, there are few such arguments that attempt to disprove God. For the most part, there are merely many different theories posited as explanations of the concept of God under the assumption that God does not exist.
5Subjective reality is all anyone can directly know. All our experience and reasonings have to be filtered through our subjective schemas and paradigms to become meaningful to us. Our paradigms are, of course, built in turn upon those irreducible, extra-rational "truths" which we accept as forming our concept of ultimate reality.
The reasonableness of any religious persuasion is not absolute. We cannot look at any religion or concept of ultimate reality and declare it to be utterly ridiculous, nor utterly certain. Each religion is only relatively reasonable, because they are all founded upon extra-rational assumptions. We cannot prove or disprove any of them via logical argument, since each concept of ultimate reality is a premise, and not a conclusion, in an argument.
Whatever the nature of objective reality is, our concept of God, or any other alternative concept of ultimate reality, is not something logically provable. Our concepts of ultimate reality form the basic, extra-rational "truths" by which we live and evaluate all experience and all other truths, and as such form the basis of our arguments and understanding about reality. This is why we cannot discover any certain proof for or against any particular concept of ultimate reality. Therefore, it seems that the charge that belief in theism is irrational can be met with the countercharge that belief in atheism is equally irrational.
While looking for a place where you have actually stated your "first fundamental assumption of logic," I came across this:
Actually, this does not fit in with science at all, as scientific philosophy dictates to disbelieve everything without either theoretical or experimental proof. It may be impossible to prove the nonexistence of a god, but it is then equally impossible to disprove it as well. Unless experimental or mathematical evidence exists (neither does), the idea should be discarded.
I am afriad this falls to the same objection that logical positivism did back in the 1950's.
We ought to discard everything that has neither mathematcial nor experimental proof is a statement which lacks mathematical or experimental proof.
Show me the exact procedures in terms of logic and math constructs that god carries out to perform these so-called miracles, and I will readily accept it. I said this earlier, but I will repeat it: nobody who supposedly experiences these miracles ever tries to formulate mathematical equations, or even thinks about this, because their structure will then fall apart. This "god made a miracle happen" thing by itself is crazy. It is like saying "a computer works because of the laws of science;" many, many more details are needed.
I started to put thse out in a propositional format, but it is getting late, so I will simply summarise in a single paragraph: If God as traditionally understood exists, it is possible that he could act in such a fashion as to alter or insert new elements into the functioning of nature without reference to prior causes in nature. By way of analogy, the laws of physics should allow us to predict the motion of billiard balls on a table following the application of a force upon one of the balls by a cue, but if one should suddenly toss another ball onto the table that was not present before, it is to be expected that the results will not be what we had predicted. In a similar fashion it is possible that God could introduce something new into nature so as to produce results that otherwise would not have been expected. There is no necessity that these new elements would not immediately be subject to the laws of nature, so if we seek to understand the mechanics of a miraculous occurence, we might be well advised to consider what would have been needed to produce the effect discovered, and look for our miracle there.
Again, there is more that I would say, but I do not have the luxury of time that others seem to.
Anyway, until later, my friends.
Sesq.
P.S. Stryke9, I have deep respect for your position and conduct in this topic. I believe you have done an admirable job in trying to maintain an openminded and level-headed perspective. I also found your last set of posts quite refreshing amongst all the slagging and mud in here.
1. Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Classics of Western Philosophy. Trans. Paul Carus, James W. Ellington. Ed. Stephen M. Cahn. 4th ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, Inc., 1995. p. 1019.
2. Kant, pp. 997-998.
3. Kant, pp. 1009.
4. Yandell, Keith E. Philosophy of Religion. New York: Routledge, 1999. pp. 195-202.
5. Durkeim's objectification of social consciousness, Huxley's pre-scientific explanation of the universe, Freud's mental projection, etc.
