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 it IS, I believe, the correct one: that besides dualism and reductionism, there is a unity of the human person in a temporal, spatial multiplicity; that in virtue of which a person is ONE is not some ghostly thing that is an effect of the operation of the multiplicity of parts. Nor is it a shorthand for the multiplicity of parts. If it were either of these, then human agency would be an illusion.
RD's objection, I believe, would be that I am preaching a kind of Spinozan pantheism, which is fine with him, but it doesn't look like God.
My reply would be that I am not directly attributing to God the same sort of unity that is found in creatures. Rather, I am arguing that something analogous to created unity is found in God and that the study of the former is the best way to study the latter.. Furthermore, to deny the latter is to attack the former. That is, the very basis for one's denial of the unity/simplicity of God as understood by classical theists... that basis also undercuts other affirmations of unity.
Also worthwhile: to point out how there are relations IN nature where the simpler explains the more complex. The unity of consciousness (aka the bundling problem) is explained, at a certain point, simply by saying that the subject is one. To deny that God can be simple has as its repercussion the rejection of the unity of the person.
Finally, it is worth inserting earlier the possible claim that the laws of nature are simple... I know the rebuttal would be that they are impersonal hence irrelevant...but it still may be helpful to bring them up: a rational ontology includes simplicity.
How about including an analysis of the way we know first principles? Like the principle of non-contradiction? There's a kind of simplicity in knowing that this principle --nothing can both be and not be in the same way at the same time -- is true always and everywhere. Given the way RD looks at things, this must be an exceedingly complex thought. But actually it's simple -- especially in the way that it is actually used, as it were, in the background.
Finally, how about a Platonic approach to first principles themselves? Or even second/third... After all, when any two persons think of the Pythagorean formula, they think of the same formula.... but where is it? Come to think of it, how is it that any two people think of any concrete thing at the same time? If reductive materialism is what is being proposed by RD, then the last question is an embarrassment to his project. But if non-reductive..., then he faces another problem: how could he give an account without abandoning the bull-in-the-china-shop approach to issues that is his tradmark?
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 it IS, I believe, the correct one: that besides dualism and reductionism, there is a unity of the human person in a temporal, spatial multiplicity; that in virtue of which a person is ONE is not some ghostly thing that is an effect of the operation of the multiplicity of parts. Nor is it a shorthand for the multiplicity of parts. If it were either of these, then human agency would be an illusion.
RD's objection, I believe, would be that I am preaching a kind of Spinozan pantheism, which is fine with him, but it doesn't look like God.
My reply would be that I am not directly attributing to God the same sort of unity that is found in creatures. Rather, I am arguing that something analogous to created unity is found in God and that the study of the former is the best way to study the latter.. Furthermore, to deny the latter is to attack the former. That is, the very basis for one's denial of the unity/simplicity of God as understood by classical theists... that basis also undercuts other affirmations of unity.
Also worthwhile: to point out how there are relations IN nature where the simpler explains the more complex. The unity of consciousness (aka the bundling problem) is explained, at a certain point, simply by saying that the subject is one. To deny that God can be simple has as its repercussion the rejection of the unity of the person.
Finally, it is worth inserting earlier the possible claim that the laws of nature are simple... I know the rebuttal would be that they are impersonal hence irrelevant...but it still may be helpful to bring them up: a rational ontology includes simplicity.
How about including an analysis of the way we know first principles? Like the principle of non-contradiction? There's a kind of simplicity in knowing that this principle --nothing can both be and not be in the same way at the same time -- is true always and everywhere. Given the way RD looks at things, this must be an exceedingly complex thought. But actually it's simple -- especially in the way that it is actually used, as it were, in the background.
Finally, how about a Platonic approach to first principles themselves? Or even second/third... After all, when any two persons think of the Pythagorean formula, they think of the same formula.... but where is it? Come to think of it, how is it that any two people think of any concrete thing at the same time? If reductive materialism is what is being proposed by RD, then the last question is an embarrassment to his project. But if non-reductive..., then he faces another problem: how could he give an account without abandoning the bull-in-the-china-shop approach to issues that is his tradmark?
Comments