The Human Question

Schoenborn notes that prior to the Renaissance, almost every depiction of the creation of the world represented Christ as Creator rather than God the Father (think of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel).  I don't know the significance of this factoid, but it is interesting.

This helpful distinction, one that I already knew but had no name for, is one that has an elegant formulation in Schoenborn's book. Creatio originalis is the name of a once and for all event that probably happened about 13.7 billion years ago. Creatio continua is the name for God's ongoing conservation of the cosmos in existence.

That's a question worth asking.  But it would be appropriate to ask it only after first asking "Why order, striving and fulfillment?" Especially since the latter three are more prevalent.

Dawkins argues that the most successful scientsts tend to be atheists.  My reply is that the correct comparison is between religious literacy and theism/atheism.  It is worth noting, furthermore, that Dawkins himself seems to both ignorant of serious arguments for theism.

I think the title says it all.

It seems to me that Richard Dawkins' talk of the selfish gene is an attempt both to acknowledge that we act in a manner that--viewed from a first-person perspective-- transcends selfishness but at the same time give a kind of primacy to selfishness in explaining how noble motivations arise from a metaphorically selfish gene.  But isn't it a sign of desperation that he has to resort to metaphor in order to maintain the primacy of selfishness?

In Chance or Purpose , Christoph Schoenborn points out that Adolf Portmann thought it significant that animals sometimes engage in playful activity that is useless but beautiful.  Schoenborn seems to think that this fact is an embarrassment to ateleological evolution or "evolutionism" (his term), but to my knowledge, he doesn't spell out exactly how it is so. My first thought upon listening to Schoenborn's point is the likely retort that what is merely play to the individual (and may be useless for that individual's survival) may be useful to the species.  Such a point is like Dawkins' distinction between the way in which an activity may be viewed by the individual who engages in it (his example is of sex for pleasure) and the way in which it serves the species/gene pool (reproduction).  That distinction seems valid, at least to a point, but to let one's mind rest there would be to miss what I believe is Schoenborn's point. I would develop the poin

I think it worthwhile to point out that reason, as directed toward reality in all of its factors, in seeking to know reality in a more and more encompassing manner, naturally seeks to know truths that could be recognized as such by any other rational being.  So far, nothing new here.  But what would be interesting would be add that any rational creature no matter how evolved, created, constructed (i.e., granting the possibility of strong artificial intelligence for the sake of argument) or otherwise existing may reasonably think these truths false. By construing truths in terms of how any rational agent should be able to recognize it, one highlights just how amazing they are.  They are not constructs, even though we must construct a path to them.  They are not merely part of a coherent system of thoughts or objects of thought -- even though the aspects of reality that they deliver do cohere with each other.  They are not private mental object but ways in which the world in which we l

The atheist may say that he/she can be just as moral, to which I would reply, "Your morality is parasitic upon your upbringing," and then ask: if you found someone living a wicked life, how would you be enabled by your atheism to motivate that person to reform?  If you met an atheist skin-head, how would you you motivate him/her to change his/her way of thinking?

I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to Mary Eberstadt's satire on atheism.  The main benefit I got from it was excellent counter-arguments about theism/atheism and the aesthetic (e.g., Chartres) and moral (see later)high ground.  One point she makes is that abortion is the key issue of our day and the theists have been right on this.  Another is the fact that atheists like Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have argued for infanticide and bestiality respectively.  If these are heinous yet acceptable in principle to atheists, then the claim that an atheist is as likely to be moral is problematic.  Furthermore, she notes an excellent survey that correlates theism/atheism with generosity/selfishness respectively when it comes to giving $$$ to charity.  Finally, her comeback to Dennet's reference to atheists as "brites" is to point out "the woman problem," i.e., that women are more likely to believe in God than men: so the question Eberstadt poses is, does Dennet be

Dawkins has a way of caricaturing Christian beliefs that would be knee-slappingly funny if it weren't so...blasphemous. A good reply would be to describe democracy as absurd using the same modus operandi.  That is, describe the events that characterize democracy without paying attention to their significance.  For example,  after waiting in line, people go behind curtains by the millions and press levers and come out and get a sticker.  Then they gather around televisions and watch someone talk from a convention hall in a hotel and drop balloons and jump up and down or get very sad.  Then in the middle of January some guy in a funny robe tells another guy in a suit what to say, making him hold up his hand as he says it.... Ridiculous! Okay, the parody definitely needs refining, but that's what I'd do to caricature RD's caricature.

Some day we'll be able to explain everything! Yeah.  Right.

The resurrection is the (revelation and) fulfillment of the desire for unending communion, a desire that lies at the base of conscience and all human action.  When we judge human actions, we act as if we were part of the community of rational beings, a community that (we naturally hope) is everlasting.

This argument fails to consider whether the Islanders think escatalogically etc. because they have learned to think thus from missionaries (contaminated sample).  In fact, the "John From" version has a narrative of a character who explicitly discouraged them from listening to missionaries -- sufficient evidence that the escatological flavor of this (and likely other) version of the Cargo Cult borrows heavily from Christian preaching.  Contaminated sample.

An intellectual grasp is frequently called an abstraction.  And in literature and philosophy we talk of abstraction as a kind of diluted colorless version of the concrete... as a concept in the mind rather than something really present to the senses. But to think of tasting food, for example, is to think of something in a way more attractive than this or that food that lies before one's eyes.  In a sense "to taste food" is infinitely more alluring than "this food": for the former gives rise to a kind of creativity that is unlimited: new foods, new ways of preparing old foods, obsession with food, food food food.  Why?  Is a neurological account of an obsession with food able to give an adequate explanation?  No.  An intentional analysis is needed.  And it reveals that there is a kind of unlimited nature to human  activities directed to the enjoyment of food because the object of desire is BEING, and there is something unlimited to being. Maybe this explains

Modern fixation with demonstration began with Luther's need to know that he was saved and Calvin's assurance that he was.  When asked, "How do you know that you are saved?" the best answer is, "I trust in the Lord's mercy": to demand more than this is to focus on oneself rather than on His Goodness.  To the Protestant who thinks his question is unanswerable, I will propose, very non-ecumenically, that seeking the answer is a form of idolatry.

Both sides would grant that if the Old Testament is true then God exists.  But it would be an appeal to ignorance by the theist to simply assert that it is true unless the atheist can prove otherwise.  That is, one may not say, "I am presupposing that the OT is true until you prove otherwise."  And the atheist would be committing the fallacy of denying the antecedent if he or she argued that because the OT is false, it follows that God doesn't exist.  Why?  Because there may be other reasons besides revelation for affirming God's existence: consider, for example, as the reasons that made Plato to affirm the existence of a kind of supreme being, which he called the Good, and the reasons that made Aristotle affirm the existence of a highest being, which he called Thought.  These and other reasons may be marshaled as parts of a longer argument that demonstrates that the same Supreme Being is provident (which is what both theist and atheist mean the word 'God' now

It would be worthwhile to take principles employed by atheists attempting to defeat cosmsological arguments for the existence of God (I'm thinking here of the five ways, but there may certainly be more) and to see what these principles also imply about human nature.  It may be that the very principle that one uses to deny God's existence ALSO implies that human identity and agency (as well as scientific inquiry) are illusory. The form of this point is that if the principles used to attack theism are granted, then they likewise attack humanism (humanism without free will and identity through time would be pretty pointless). The most important thing to say to a humanist atheist is to ask them why they think being human is so great.  If they offer a good reason, it will be one that supports theism or at least openness to theism.  If they offer a weak reason (e.g., one tinged with relativism), then their argument against theism will be similarly weakened.

A worthwhile question to ask is whether one's argument for God would be askable if the only evidence where nature as it was prior to the origination of life?  Or even if both sides (theist/atheist) agree about how evolution took place. Another is to ask whether one could have reasons for thinking there's one Supreme Being even apart from the Abrahamic tradition?

It's starting point is NOT the ID claim that things around us in nature are evidently engineered/designed/programmed things in the past, but Thomas's claim that beings that operate right now are truly acting for an objective purpose (including what is per se good for them). If the way beings operate right now shows true teleology, then talk of "the good" as a kind of transcendental is legitimate.  And our reasoning about goodness points to The Good. Objection: if the way beings operate right now is considered teleological by us through a kind of anthropomorphism, then perhaps the only teleology we might rightly affirm is that associated with human action.  The rest is illusory. My reply is to point to a dilemma: (1.) if human beings themselves have a genuinely objective purpose, our reasoning about human goals may still lead us to affirm The Good.  (2.) if humans don't, then moral reasoning is illusory as well.  Relativism kicks in.  Arguments against God in

By using qualitative change, one avoids objections about momentum. Also worth considering: how qualitative change is correlated with quantifiable changes (e.g. increase in heat is identified with acceleration). Also worth considering is the question of whether there is ever a purely quantitative change (i.e., one with no concomitant qualitative change). Also worth considering is whether qualitative change can be ultimately explained by constants, i.e., laws of nature, and how such laws relate to what Aquinas meant when he said that the accidental is reducibe to the essential.  The combination of laws of nature and incidental facts regarding quantity and quality would predict--but would it explain? Also worth considering is whether an affirmation of the previous question is anti-humanistic (it is). Finally, qualitative change in a human being (e.g., learning, discovering, trying, etc.) how are answers to the previous questions about causality that related to agency? (this is a

It's value lies  -- not in showing that it is prudent to believe in God -- but that a prudent person must take the question of God's existence seriously.

Two extremes sometimes meet.  Or at least we see something like this in the case of fideism and rationalism.  For presuppositionalism (the claim that we have innate belief in God's existence) and rationalism (which, in its theistic form, affirms something like innate knowledge that God exists) seem so similar to each other. More on this later...

It occurred to me that since rational animals are the highest part of the visible world, an argument for God using this fact as the starting point would be appropriate.  Then I realized that it has already been done.  But then  it occurred to me that the cosmological arguments are inseparable from anthropological ones.  For there is an element of self-awareness in our knowledge of nature.  For example, Aquinas's first way talks of act and potency.  This notion has its roots in Aristotle's energeia/dynamis distinction, and those two terms were, before Aristotle developed them for his philosophical project, descriptions of human agency: e.g., energeia means task, job... So the cosmological arguments are already anthropological, and that's a good thing (not a temptation toward any  subjectivism).  The statement that man is a microcosmos and that the soul is all things have a new significance...

RD thinks he can explain unselfish behavior simply by appealing to the metaphor of the selfish-gene.  It's supposed to explain why we FEEL like acting generously.  But how do mutations or whatever cause us to be able to come to JUDGE that such an action is to be done?

This argument for God works only if God is the Head of the rational community.  The difference between divine command ethics and natural law is in the way being the leader of this community is understood.  Perhaps the Eucharist is a kind of completion of this argument inasmuch as God is One Who sits at the table with us.

Regarding Dawkins' central point, that a being that does all that God is supposed to do must be complex and therefore made by another and therefore not God. I may have mentioned this before: in such a case, here we go again: The adequate reply must show how that the arguments for God are arguments for a simple being.  E.g., unmoved mover.  Whatever that is, it can't be complex... otherwise it would be moved. His likely rebuttal is that whatever a first mover is, it can't be a person.  Persons make plans, deliberate, reason, hope, etc.  and doing these things takes a lot of moving parts. The reply to such an objection is to note that there is a kind of simplicity IN human beings that makes agency possible.  We are agents only if we are not the sum of our parts. The RD rebuttal would likely be that this is an appeal to dualism and that dualism is a kind of childish, pre-scientific way of looking at nature. The reply to this might not be rhetorically satisfying but

One really, really interesting point RD makes is that the purpose of selfish-gene theory is to provide an explanation for unselfish behavior.  He really does recognize such behavior, and that it has unselfish motivation.  But it's axiomatic for him that selfishness is at the bottom of things.  So he locates selfishness in the gene.  Of course this is a metaphor.  So I'm not sure what his real point is, except that something analogous to selfishness is going on.  But what could that be?  Isn't this magical thinking?

When Sam Harris debated Bill Craig, he ignored BC's arguments and talked on and on about the Old Testament. A theist could do something similar in a debate... just point to the racist things that Charles Darwin said in the Descent of Man and ask on what basis one would disavow CD.

Re Dawkin's God Delusion and works by other professional atheists.  If they presuppose the modern understanding of free will and individual rights and social justice but fail to give an account of what the practical truths that they embrace, then they are parasites. I remember arguing with CW, a young atheist so very convinced of his own brilliance.  When I asked him to give an account of what he DID believe in, he was unable to say anything without offering affirmations that served to support the claim that God exists.  He supplied the ammo to be used against his own atheism.  Repeatedly. I haven't yet finished reading RD's God Delusion (1/2 way through the audio book), but I am interested in whether he attempts to give such an account later in the book.