For context, Parfit died a few days ago, he was a brilliant man and I read some of his papers as a philosophy undergraduate. As far as the essay itself goes, it's pretty much typical run-of-the-mill anti-theist cosmology with the same arguments that have become status quo for the past 20 years or so.
Even as a Christian, I find both cosmological arguments (theist and anti-theist) wholly unconvincing. For example, if I was a non-believer, I would find it equally hard to believe in a multi-verse or a God. Not only that, but to make these kinds of arguments, we need to make all kinds of pretty serious assumptions: that we know how causality works in a multiverse, that laws of physics are invariant even at the beginning of universes (whatever that might mean), and so on.
But here's where I completely disagree with the position so many philosophers have (a field which I love):
> As these remarks suggest, there is no clear boundary here between philosophy and science. If there is such a highest law governing reality, this law is of the same kind as those that physicists are trying to discover.
As much as I respect Parfit (and many other philosophers of science), I think they're just dead wrong. What philosophers do is very different than what physicists do. This view absolutely permeates academic philosophy: that philosophy of science is, you know, basically science. It's not. I always recommend Barry Dainton's Time and Space[1] for budding philosophers of science, but don't kid yourself: it's merely a very high-level introduction to the physics of space and time. Until you really get down and dirty with the intricacies of (at first) Galilean spacetime and (eventually) Minkowski spacetime, you really won't "get it" -- but alas, many philosophy undergraduates and grad students think they do. And I'm sure that hubris follows them in their postgraduate careers.
I think you're mischaracterizing the relationship between science and philosophy. The philosophy of science is philosophy, and science is more like the applied philosophy of empiricism. God, so far, is not a subject for empirical debate.
I am also not sure that your dismissal of the argument as "run-of-the-mill anti-theist cosmology". This seems like a discussion of cosmology from an empirical perspective, and I can't see how theism is particularly useful there. If you'll pardon me for a blunt characterization, you seem to have an axe to grind about theism. I'm not sure that is either warranted or particularly topical. Parfit may be "dead wrong" but suggesting that this has anything to do with your personal religious beliefs rather detracts from your argument, in my opinion.
> I am also not sure that your dismissal of the argument as "run-of-the-mill anti-theist cosmology".
I didn't mean to be dismissive, just to point out that the article is old (1998) and that most of HN's more learned readers would've already seen these arguments in one form or another.
> If you'll pardon me for a blunt characterization, you seem to have an axe to grind about theism.
Parfit's agenda is pretty clearly anti-theist, I think I'm pretty on-topic. If anything, I have an axe to grind with philosophy of science.
Why is God not a subject for empirical debate? If the miracles described in Bible happened regularly I would consider that as strong empirical evidence for God. Given that no such miracles are forthcoming it reduces the likelihood that God exists.
Because there's no evidence either way. It's valid philosophically to consider the unknown or unprovable statement to be false, but the philosophers of science have pretty soundly rejected logical positivism[0]
Generally speaking the problem is that we can't treat empirical truths as some sort of strictly binary, completely true or completely false statements. Error is inherent to observation, so every scientific truth is a little bit false (or at least potentially so). The less rational part of me does consider that chocolate tapdancing unicorns are unlikely enough to be entirely discounted, but as a general philosophical rule it's more consistent to be a little more humble about what is known and can be known.
Personally I think the question of a god has only one answer: we cannot know.
But the question of the christian god, with the bible and traits like loving, good. That is easily disproven. Killing 100,000 innocent Egyptian kids? Genocide and more promise of genocide? Stoning? Hating homosexuals? Sending good people to hell? None of these things are loving or good. Or just try Mark 16:17-18, a simple test, but I have never seen it demonstrated.
Those are my reasons to not belief, and see it as bronze/iron age people writing down their myths and beliefs.
Would you mind expanding on what convinces you? If not the cosmological argument?
Sure, I believe that man is essentially fallen and we were redeemed by the grace of God through his son Jesus. If the question "why" is meant to be more analytical, I can't be of much help. I profoundly believe that believing in God is by definition non-analytical. That is, you can't "prove" it, nor can you "logic" your way into it.
I have some arguments I find convincing and that I like, but when push comes to shove, it's a personal (and wholly non-rational) choice someone makes.
> But the question of the christian god, with the bible and traits like loving, good. That is easily disproven. Killing 100,000 innocent Egyptian kids? Genocide and more promise of genocide? Stoning? Hating homosexuals? Sending good people to hell? None of these things are loving or good. Or just try Mark 16:17-18, a simple test, but I have never seen it demonstrated.
You're severely oversimplifying here. I think if you work towards understanding the fundamental difference between the Old and New Testament (e.g. Judaism and Christianity), it should become obvious why the OT seems violent and filled with a "just" and "vengeful" God, whereas in the NT, we find a more "merciful" and "forgiving" God. This, theologically speaking, happens because we believe Jesus Christ was kind of a big deal that changed the moral workings of the universe.
As far as the homosexual issue, etc., these are very complicated and are hotly debated both in a political and social context, as well as in theological circles. I'm not sure if homosexuality is a sin or not (to me, it doesn't seem that way), but I just do my best to treat everyone as Jesus would: with love and respect.
> Would you mind expanding on what convinces you? If not the cosmological argument?
As I mentioned, nothing truly "convinces" me -- I think the belief is at its very essence not a rational one. It's sort of like appreciating a beautiful piece of art or listening to Beethoven's 5th; there's no science or math here. However, I will say my favorite argument is the moral one:
I think that there are some cases where we can trivially say "X is morally good" or "X is morally bad". Let's focus on the latter for now. For example, I think most people can agree that it's trivially morally bad to cause pain for no good reason.
I think this intuition points to some sort of "realness" of the idea of good, e.g. some "ideal" of good. I think that this is, in some sense, a whiff of God. We "get" that there's good things and bad things (irrespective of laws), so I think that's indicative that God is a real thing. Now, some people are complete moral relativists. I think that's wrong and it throws out the baby with the bathwater.
> I have some arguments I find convincing and that I like, but when push comes to shove, it's a personal (and wholly non-rational) choice someone makes.
Sure, but was it really a choice? If you were born Hindu, wouldn't you make the same arguments about their pantheon of gods and not Christianity?
> This, theologically speaking, happens because we believe Jesus Christ was kind of a big deal that changed the moral workings of the universe.
Seems strange that he could change the moral workings of God though. Being raised Catholic myself, I get that he is an aspect of God as part of the trinity, but that's such an artificial construct of the Church to retroactively make sense of their mythology.
> I think this intuition points to some sort of "realness" of the idea of good, e.g. some "ideal" of good. I think that this is, in some sense, a whiff of God.
Moral realism doesn't require a deity of any kind. The whole field of ethics in philosophy is concerned with exploring the rational basis of morality. Most philosophers are moral realists, meaning that morals are in some sense "real", that moral propositions can be true or false and that we can come to know their truth values and thus acquire moral knowledge.
See for instance, A Proof of the Objectivity of Morals - Bambrough (1969) [1]. You can bootstrap objective morality with a deity, but there's really no reason to, and if that's your only reason to believe in God, you're better off reading some philosophy.
For the record, I'm a virtue ethicist (I love Elizabeth Anscombe and, for what it's worth, she was a devout Catholic).
And to be clear, I said that good is real (Geach is a great read if you want to find out more about the discussion of 'good'), not that morals are real. You can have a sort of "moral thermometer" built out of all kinds of metrics. Some people are evolutionary moralists (see Dawkins). I frankly just think most of that is nonsense.
> And to be clear, I said that good is real (Geach is a great read if you want to find out more about the discussion of 'good'), not that morals are real.
Doing that which is good is moral, so if good is real then morals are real, unless you're a non-cognitivist.
> Some people are evolutionary moralists (see Dawkins). I frankly just think most of that is nonsense.
It's not nonsense in the sense that evolution can explain our predilection for developing moral beliefs, but the idea that this fact then disproves moral realism is dubious.
> Doing that which is good is moral, so if good is real then morals are real, unless you're a non-cognitivist.
Yep, but that's not a biconditional. If morals are real, that doesn't necessarily mean good is real.
> It's not nonsense in the sense that evolution can explain our predilection for developing moral beliefs, but the idea that this fact then disproves moral realism is dubious.
Dawkins doesn't believe evolution merely explains our predilection for developing moral beliefs, he believes morality is driven by certain evolutionary processes. For example, anti-social behavior (e.g. going on a murdering spree) might be "immoral" because it hurts the population as a whole (thereby hurting its propagation), or something along those lines. I think that's a very reductive position, and although analytically satisfying, it doesn't quite capture the intuitive meaning of "good" and "bad".
> Yep, but that's not a biconditional. If morals are real, that doesn't necessarily mean good is real.
I don't see how you can think that. What's an example of a world with objective morality but no objective good?
> I think that's a very reductive position, and although analytically satisfying, it doesn't quite capture the intuitive meaning of "good" and "bad".
Evolutionary game theory ethics is what it's called. But yes, while it can explain natural facts about what we think is good and bad, it can't explain moral facts like what actually is good and bad. I highly recommend you read the paper I linked, because it covers a lot of ground and plenty of common objections against moral realism, even if you decide to stick with theism in the end.
> I don't see how you can think that. What's an example of a world with objective morality but no objective good?
If, for example, I use minimizing pain as my moral barometer (this is utilitarianism), I believe in an objective morality without believing in an objective good.
I'm not going to punch Jimmy because hurting him that wouldn't be in line with minimizing pain and not because it would be "bad" to do so.
A utilitarian ethics, by definition, is about maximizing or minimizing something. If "pain" is that something, then "pain" is the bad and "not pain" is the good.
> I profoundly believe that believing in God is by definition non-analytical.
Why by definition? There are many people who purport to believe in God because they claim there is evidence that God exists. That claim may be false, but it doesn't seem to me to be logically incoherent.
> For example, I think most people can agree that it's trivially morally bad to cause pain for no good reason.
Sure, but that just begs the question: what is a "good reason"? The Inquisitors thought that they were saving people from eternal hellfire by torturing them. Does that constitute a "good reason"?
While still not religious personally, I think I can see now why it makes sense to side with certain things that fundamentally can't have rational justifications. Concepts can be broken down into a finite set of parts (e.g. relations and types) which form an infinite set--but still don't cover everything (I'm assuming you're already aware of the different classes of infinite sets, some of which are larger than others). Given that, human conceptualizing must be admitted to be limited in the same way that, e.g., human smell is. In that case, it only makes sense to retain an openness, or at least uncertainty, regarding subjects which may fall outside the ken of the human conceptualizing faculty.
> There are many people who purport to believe in God because they claim there is evidence that God exists.
I think faith is the antithesis of proof. I believe God asks us for faith. As opposed to my logic courses, which asked me for proofs :)
> Sure, but that just begs the question: what is a "good reason"? The Inquisitors thought that they were saving people from eternal hellfire by torturing them. Does that constitute a "good reason"?
I'm using a very typical run-of-the-mill "good reason". E.g. it's a "good reason" to hurt someone if they need to get an arm amputated to prevent a cancer from spreading but it's not a "good reason" to crush a baby kitten's skull just because you feel like it.
OK, fair enough, but then how do you know it's Jesus and not Allah (or some other deity) asking for your faith? (That's a serious question, BTW. I'd really like to know your answer.)
> it's not a "good reason" to crush a baby kitten's skull just because you feel like it.
Yes, well, there's a reason I didn't choose that as my example.
Is scientific research a "good reason"? It is moral to vivisect a kitten for research? What about a mouse?
> OK, fair enough, but then how do you know it's Jesus and not Allah (or some other deity) asking for your faith? (That's a serious question, BTW. I'd really like to know your answer.)
This is a great question and I'll answer like I answered another HN user: this is a very nuanced question that can't really be answered on a forum (and I'm not even sure if I'm equipped to answer it). With that said, William Lane Craig (a famous Christian apologist) has tons of debates (vs. Muslims, atheists, Hindus, etc.) on Youtube and I kind of like his arguments. Most of these are pretty long (1hr+) so they require a bit of investment, but his debates are always fun and interesting to watch. Alvin Plantinga (famous philosopher, Notre Dame professor, Christian apologist) also has a few noteworthy speeches and debates.
> Is scientific research a "good reason"? It is moral to vivisect a kitten for research? What about a mouse?
There's a lot of grey area here. I used very clear and intuitive examples on purpose. Is it morally right to euthanize? Is abortion moral? Etc, etc. I'm honestly not sure (but I love a good debate!). Maybe some of these are in the same computational class as the halting problem: undecidable (for us) :)
But the fact that the line is fuzzy doesn't mean there's no line at all.
> Certainly true, but the fact that the line is fuzzy seems to me an indication that it wasn't drawn by God. Fuzziness is more characteristic of nature.
That seems like quite a leap to me, but even if we agree that there's an objective good and an objective bad, then there must be some standard for the good. I think that standard is God.
This isn't meant to be a proof (and it's very hand-wavy), but that's my intuition.
> Then you should read this...
Seems to be in the same vein and Dawkins, et al.: that we somehow evolved this moral intuition. I think that's a faulty position because of a simple thought experiment. Consider a universe where nothing evolved. For whatever reason, there was no Big Bang, and things just popped into existence. Would there be no morality in such a universe (because we didn't evolve it)? I find that very hard to believe.
And there is: good is that which improves the reproductive fitness of the entities that practice it.
> For whatever reason, there was no Big Bang, and things just popped into existence. Would there be no morality in such a universe (because we didn't evolve it)?
That's right. (To be precise, there might be morality, but it would be whatever the entity that created this universe decided it should be.)
> I find that very hard to believe.
Why? We actually have some data points because we actually create such universes ourselves nowadays. We call them computer games or virtual reality environments, and the moral rules at work in some of them are very different from the real world. The poster child for this is Grand Theft Auto, where the disconnect between the moral rules of that world and ours causes some people a great deal of cognitive dissonance.
As long as we're doing thought experiments here's one for you: suppose God told you that it was OK to force people to eat their own children. Would that make it in fact OK? Or is there some moral standard that transcends God that makes it not OK to do certain things even if God says it's OK? (BTW, in case you don't recognize it, this question was first raised by Plato in a famous dialogue called Euthyphro. It's worth reading. And BTW2, if you think that this example is too extreme you should read Jeremiah 19:9.)
> And there is: good is that which improves the reproductive fitness of the entities that practice it.
You can make a barometer for morality out of anything. I could make a theory where "greed is good", to quote Gordon Gekko. But that wasn't my point; rather, my point was that there is a Good, with a capital G, that transcends any artificial barometer. In virtue ethics, this is called "flourishing".
> As long as we're doing thought experiments here's one for you: suppose God told you that it was OK to force people to eat their own children. Would that make it in fact OK? Or is there some moral standard that transcends God that makes it not OK to do certain things even if God says it's OK? (BTW, in case you don't recognize it, this question was first raised by Plato in a famous dialogue called Euthyphro. It's worth reading. And BTW2, if you think that this example is too extreme you should read Jeremiah 19:9.)
The argument is actually Aristotle's, Plato just wrote it down, but yes I'm very familiar with it. It's cute, but I kind of like Ockham's counter-argument. He argues that the only "rule" God is bound by is the rule of non-contradiction. That means that even God can't make "square circles" or "a ≠ a". This doesn't mean he's not omnipotent, just that there's some logical consistency to what is possible. If you buy that premise, then God would never tell someone to do something immoral, as God is the embodiment of all that is good, virtuous, holy, etc.
What you're citing from Jeremiah is a prophecy, and those are notoriously complex to decipher (and much is lost in translation). Admittedly, I haven't studied Jeremiah for a while, but if I remember correctly, some of it is metaphorical.
> You can make a barometer for morality out of anything.
Yes, that's right. That was the point I was making with Grand Theft Auto, where you get rewarded for committing what in this world are considered crimes. That's what you get in created worlds: the creator gets to decide everything: the laws of physics, morality, the color of the sky. Everything.
But in this world, which operates according to the laws of physics (of which evolution is a consequence), morality is not arbitrary. Good is that which results from genes building brains which have moral intuitions that produce behaviors that increase the reproductive fitness of those genes. What is it about this idea that you find so distasteful? I think it's rather beautiful actually. It gets you out of some rather thorny problems (see below).
> The argument is actually Aristotle's, Plato just wrote it down
You mean Socrates, not Aristotle. (Whee! This game of scholarly one-upsmanship is so much fun!)
> If you buy that premise, then God would never tell someone to do something immoral
Well, yeah, because then what God says is moral by definition. If God says forcing someone to eat their children is moral, then it's moral.
BTW, it seems to me that having morality grate on your intuitions like that (the idea that forcing someone to eat their children is moral does grate on your intuitions, doesn't it?) is exactly what you would expect if man is fallen. That's what it means for man to be fallen, doesn't it? That our moral intuitions are unreliable and we have to rely on God for moral guidance? In which case who are we to second-guess the Word of God?
> What you're citing from Jeremiah is a prophecy, and those are notoriously complex to decipher
I dunno, it seems pretty straightforward to me.
"Thus saith the LORD... I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters..."
God is making a promise here, so there are logically only three possibilities: either 1) he's bluffing (i.e. lying) and if push comes to shove he won't actually do the things he says he's going to do, or 2) he will do those things despite the fact that they are immoral or, 3) forcing people to eat their own children is moral. (BTW, compare Jeremiah to Exodus 11:5 where we know that God actually made good on his threat.)
But I didn't have to choose Jeremiah. I just picked that example for its shock value, and because it isn't widely known. There are dozens of other examples I could have chosen. Exodus 11:5, for example, where God actually does follow through (in Exodus 12:29). Or Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (disobeying your parents is a capital crime) or 22:28-29 (the penalty for raping an unwed virgin is 50 shekels).
But my point here is not to rehash the depravities of the OT, it is to make the point that logically there are only two possibilities: either our moral intuitions are reliable, or they are not. If they are reliable, then we don't need God as a moral guide, and if they are not reliable then we would expect any reliable source of moral guidance to be at odds with our moral intuitions (that's what it means to be unreliable). How can this not be the case?
> But in this world, which operates according to the laws of physics (of which evolution is a consequence), morality is not arbitrary. Good is that which results from genes building brains which have moral intuitions that produce behaviors that increase the reproductive fitness of those genes. What is it about this idea that you find so distasteful? I think it's rather beautiful actually. It gets you out of some rather thorny problems (see below).
I think that's where we disagree. I think morality is more than an evolutionary byproduct. I think that's reductive (and probably wrong). For example, what evolutionary value does caring for elders or caring for the handicapped have? What about charity? Yet, we find these things "good".
> You mean Socrates, not Aristotle.
Whoops, duh, brain fart.
> That our moral intuitions are unreliable and we have to rely on God for moral guidance? In which case who are we to second-guess the Word of God?
Not necessarily. In fact many philosophers, including Aquinas, believed that our rationality was divinely inspired. If that's the case, moral intuitions could be correct, and our human nature could be the culprit -- our default tendency to do bad when we ought to do good.
> I dunno, it seems pretty straightforward to me.
Okay, we can get into it.
This is the entire text (Jeremiah Ch 19). It's important to look at context, because I think it's really unfair to cherry-pick a random text, give it a 30-second look-over and pretend we understand it.
19 This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests 2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, 3 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. 6 So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7 “‘In this place I will ruin[a] the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals. 8 I will devastate this city and make it an object of horror and scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds. 9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’
10 “Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching, 11 and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. 12 This is what I will do to this place and to those who live here, declares the Lord. I will make this city like Topheth. 13 The houses in Jerusalem and those of the kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth—all the houses where they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.’”
14 Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the Lord’s temple and said to all the people, 15 “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.’”
From what I can tell, this is the story:
- God is angry because his people (the Jews) have not followed his rules (at the time, the ten commandments)
- He has given them many chances to repent, and yet they still serve idols (Baal being one of them)
- He is therefore punishing them
- The punishment will be the razing of the city (Jerusalem from what I can tell) by some unspecified tribes (probably the Canaanites)
- The siege will be so terrible, the citizens of Jerusalem will have to resort to cannibalism
- He will do this not just as punishment, but also as a reminder for future generations
Now, the idea isn't that God is "forcing people to eat their children", just that this will be the result of the cannibalism occuring due to the terrible siege Jerusalem will be under. Again, cherry-picking texts is unproductive and uncharitable. The "eating of children" is very clearly a byproduct of the punishment of the Jews via the sacking and sieging of Jerusalem.
> But my point here is not to rehash the depravities of the OT, it is to make the point that logically there are only two possibilities: either our moral intuitions are reliable, or they are not. If they are reliable, then we don't need God as a moral guide...
You're attacking a strawman here. I'm not sure if we need God as a moral guide (maybe or maybe not -- there are theories that many pre-Christian people may have been saved without any exposure to Jesus and just by living a fruitful and moral life), my only point was that my moral intuition points to an objective Good (with a capital G). If such a Good truly exists, than God must be the source of that Good.
> In fact many philosophers, including Aquinas, believed that our rationality was divinely inspired.
Sure, but I don't care what Aquinas thinks, I'm interested in what you think.
> I'm not sure if we need God as a moral guide.
Ah, sorry for making that assumption. The vast majority of Christians I've met say we do. In fact, you may be the first self-identified Christian who has denied this. (Um, do you deny it? You're being kind of equivocal here. I don't want to get myself into trouble again by making more unwarranted assumptions.)
BTW, are you familiar with the story of Eliezer and the Carob Tree from the Talmud?
Maybe I should back up and ask: you wrote:
> I believe that man is essentially fallen and we were redeemed by the grace of God through his son Jesus.
What does that mean? In particular, what does it mean to be "fallen" and "redeemed"?
Since you (AFAICT) admit the possibility that the Bible may not be a reliable guide to morality, this is a bit of a moot point, but I just want to respond to this:
> the idea isn't that God is "forcing people to eat their children"
Except that the language is plain: "I [God] will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters...", not "They will..."
> what evolutionary value does caring for elders or caring for the handicapped have? What about charity? Yet, we find these things "good".
That's a long story, which is layed out in detail in Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". But the TL;DR is that there is survival value for humans in organizing into groups. Individual humans cannot survive in the wild. Even breeding pairs cannot survive; the minimal unit of human reproduction is a few dozen individuals (it really does take a village!) In such a group there are divisions of labor, and even poor and handicapped individuals can make net positive contributions, particularly as technology gets more advanced and resources become less scarce. The full story is, of course, quite a bit more nuanced than that. But the point is that this is not a mystery. How evolution gives rise to altruism is well understood, and it is observed in other species as well.
> Sure, but I don't care what Aquinas thinks, I'm interested in what you think.
Aquinas is a lot smarter than I am :) He probably has better arguments.
> In fact, you may be the first self-identified Christian who has denied this. (Um, do you deny it? You're being kind of equivocal here. I don't want to get myself into trouble again by making more unwarranted assumptions.)
I believe God is the source of Good, but I don't think we necessarily need to believe in God to be good (in a moral sense). Maybe I'm being confusing, here's my basic argument in a nicely-animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiAikEk2vU
> What does that mean? In particular, what does it mean to be "fallen" and "redeemed"?
Fallen morally. Simply put, man's nature is one of evil. Since God is good, there's clearly a disconnect between man and God. We are all sinners, and I believe (as the Jews of the OT believed), that a price needs to be paid for our transgressions. In the Old Testament, the High Priest would sacrifice a lamb or a goat and God would forgive the people (this was done yearly). In the New Testament, Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice, and he essentially "stands in" as the symbolic sacrifice of the OT. That's how we are redeemed.
> Except that the language is plain: "I [God] will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters...", not "They will..."
I mean you're not even doing your due diligence here. I clearly quoted the entire text, and outlined exactly what it says. You seem to be stuck on this "eating children" thing -- which is simply the outcome of Jerusalem being sacked. Let me ask again: do you understand the context of the text? Do you understand what the prophecy is saying? Do you understand why it's saying it? I tried to be as clear as possible. You're harping on the semantics of a throwaway sentence (which, by the way, has been translated from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, and to English), so the fine distinction between "They will" as opposed to "I will cause" is just silly unless you look at the original (Hebrew) text.
The Dawkins altruism/evolution stuff I know about and as I said before, I think it's reductive and misses the point. You obviously think otherwise, which is perfectly fine. As an aside, I think scientists doing philosophy is just as unproductive as philosophers doing science.
> here's my basic argument in a nicely-animated video
OK, well, we may just have to agree to disagree on this. It is simply not true that without God there is no objective standard for morality. There is. In fact, it is the exact opposite: with God there is no objective standard for morality because we cannot know God except through faith. The 9/11 hijackers sincerely believed that they were doing the work of God. On what possible basis could you object?
> do you understand the context of the text?
Oh yes.
> the fine distinction between "They will" as opposed to "I will cause" is just silly unless you look at the original (Hebrew) text.
Oh, but I did. I am a native Hebrew speaker, so I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that the translation is accurate. Especially in context it is absolutely clear that God is not predicting, he is threatening. He even says why:
"Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place... Because they have forsaken me... I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth... and I will make this city desolate..."
All of those passages are accurate translations. Everywhere that God says, "I will" the verb is unambiguously first-person. And the verb translated as "I will cause them to eat" is unambiguous too, especially in context. Go look at: http://biblehub.com/jeremiah/19-9.htm There are twenty-two different English translations there, and they all agree on this.
> You seem to be stuck on this "eating children" thing
Not at all. There are dozens of other examples I could have chosen, and I cited a few of them above. I only focused on that passage because of how clear cut it is. There are not a lot of people who will defend forced cannibalism as a moral act (though I have met some Christians who will. I must say I respect them for their intellectual honesty, though not for their moral judgement.)
> OK, well, we may just have to agree to disagree on this.
Yep I think that's where we disagree! Like I said at the very beginning, I don't think this is a question of logic, one can only use these tools as a rough guide. Belief in God is purely non-rational.
Anyway, I enjoyed speaking with you, even though we may disagree :)
You can look at it from different sides. I personally think christians oversimplify more. They only take the most positive look of god, and justify all the bad stuff. In a way that sets precedent, and makes it easier to find exceptions to Jesus his teaching: "do to others what you would have them do to you."
The NT god still does not like homos, women rights, and finds slavery just fine. Would you want to be a slave? No, then don't enslave. It follows directly from Jesus, but not from the bible.
If you take away anything supernatural, Jesus his message works much better. God is all of us. The holy spirit is synergy. Heaven is progress.
Only god may judge people, like a modern state with its judiciary system. People working together are worth more than the sum of the individuals (synergy). And today we made enormous progress, Jesus healed maybe 50 lepers, science healed 5 million.
"so I think that's indicative that God is a real thing"
We get that some things are food and nourish the body, while some things, like rocks, do not. We are just molecules, but in a very specific configuration. We value some other very specific configurations.
Just like how we value food, so do we value people close to us. And more impersonally, so we value a functional society in which we can thrive.
Good is closely related to the golden rule. If somebody did it to you, would you like it, would it make society better off or worse off?
Not the OP, but what convinces me is mostly the historical argument for Christianity - the (historical but not scientific) claims of resurrection and the rapid growth of Christianity despite being severely persecuted.
Christianity spreading in the later years is not a big deal - but it growing so much when it was the one being ostracized is noteworthy. Also, people still converting to Christianity in risky areas of the world - I feel people sticking to their faith is a very common thing, but people changing their religion inspite of risks should give us pause.
> I have some arguments I find convincing and that I like, but when push comes to shove, it's a personal (and wholly non-rational) choice someone makes.
As someone who has a moderate understanding of religious history, I'm always surprised by people who are able to subscribe to a specific philosophy. So, would you mind detailing the arguments? I'm genuinely curious.
So you're asking why Christianity as opposed to Judaism or Hinduism. This is a much more nuanced question. I don't really think I can do it justice in a forum comment (nor do I know if I'm fully equipped epistemically), but I like what William Lane Craig has to say. He's a world-famous Christian apologist and has tons of debates on Youtube.
How can you say that the arrival of Jesus changed the morality of the universe to be more merciful and forgiving with two world wars in the past 100 years?
> Personally I think the question of a god has only one answer: we cannot know.
I usually avoid talking about such things, but since it came up, I'll try once more. When I was in my early teens, I was proudly calling myself an atheist. Because materialism and all. Then, of course, there was stage of agnosticism, because you clearly cannot prove existence or non-existence of transcendental entity. Pretty much by definition. So, yeah, the only correct answer must be "we cannot know".
Now I find both previous statements so primitive, so obviously wrong that it seems almost silly. Of course there is God, I say. It's useless to try to find and describe it, because, first things first: "god" is a mere word. As much as "table", "truth", "yellow" are mere words, i.e. some (very much imperfect!) tools, humans use to try and carry a thought from one human brain to another. To describe something. And "god" is not a thing, it isn't a property, it is a concept. Concept of something ultimately bigger than human can understand. Something that can both "be" or "not be". If your school of thought has some concept you call "God" — God obviously exists. For you and your peers. Because there is such concept. If your school of though doesn't have any meaningful (i.e. consistent) concept of "God" — it doesn't make sense to claim it doesn't exist, because you have to "invent" it first. It's like saying "asdgjhgj doesn't exist". "Dao doesn't exist." Like for some farmer not versed in category theory to say "catamorphism doesn't exist". What does it even mean?
So, surely, for a Christian and a Pagan "god" might have 2 separate meanings (actually, it'd be better to say "they use word god to name 2 different things", words "god" and "god" are "false friends" in their languages), but usually these meanings are consistent within one school of thought. It can be argued, for instance, that "good" and "bad" are highly ambiguous terms all by themselves, and Christian God is in fact good in a way you, an uneducated man, cannot possibly understand. Even such bizzare things as the story of Job have their justifications. And your examples, quite frankly, don't even require any sorts of sophisticated philosophy. I won't go into details, because I dislike the Old Testament and the portrait of "Jewish God" myself, but let me assure you: well-educated priests and theologists have solid explanation for pretty much anything you can think of.
The same can be said about Islamic, Hindu or any other concepts of "God".
But more simple and more popular statement about Christianity is that it isn't about Old Testament at all, and you shouldn't take it too literally. Judaism is Judaism, and Christianity is Christianity, they just happen to share some holy texts for historical reasons. Coincidence, nothing more.
God is not just a word, or just a concept. When (most) people talk about god, they're not doing so in an abstract form.
For instance, when someone says "The car parked the driveway is blocking my exit". They aren't speaking of "car" as some theoretical idea. They're speaking of it as a concrete, real thing, that exists, and has a fundamental impact on it's environment.
"God" to most people falls into this category. It's not just a concept. It's not just a word. God is a supreme being, that exists, and has a fundamental impact on the world.
I think your decision to move from agnosticism to belief, is more your decision to change your understanding of what "god" is... You've re-classified the words meaning.
Every word is just a word. It's kinda tautological, really. Words aren't something that "just exists" — they are invented by humans to communicate, to give names to concepts they share. Some concepts can be perceived as a thing or a property. Like "chair". Pretty much everyone I speak to knows what "chair" is. What they mean by "chair" still varies, but it is more or less similar. The same is true for many "non existent" things, like "blue horse". Because you probably mean by "horse" what I mean by "horse", and you mean by "blue" what I mean by "blue". You could draw it, for that matter.
It is less true and more arguable for more abstract concepts like "true" or "moral". Or "abstract" for that matter. Because it's hard to define them. They are "meta-concepts" so to say. Properties of properties. Meta-things.
It is the least true for "god". Because this concept does not necessarily mean a thing or a property, some people can actually mean by that something that cannot be defined. Of course it can be real, of course it can have fundamental impact on environment, it can be the environment, it can be creator of environment, of both space and time. Or it can be an actual car in the actual driveway, it doesn't really matter. But only extremely ignorant people think that everyone who uses the word "god" means the same thing by "god" as they do. There are hundreds of religions and philosophies, thousands of denominations, millions of opinions. Essentially, it is just people who understand each other using a word understandable to one another, that doesn't (and shouldn't) really make sense to anybody who is of different school of thought. Like "catamorphism" means nothing to a farmer. Except there are much more meanings out there.
In no way it's likely you mean by "god" what I mean by "god". Or somebody else in this thread. Many people are not even sure they know what they mean. Or maybe they mean multiple things depending on whom they speak to. Even within catholic church the understanding of the God varies from "powerful old man sitting on a cloud" to "all of the Universe at all moments of time at once, nothing less, nothing more". And these are only relatively simple meanings — they can be put into words, can be defined, which isn't invariably true.
> Not only that, but to make these kinds of arguments, we need to make all kinds of pretty serious assumptions: that we know how causality works in a multiverse, that laws of physics are invariant even at the beginning of universes (whatever that might mean), and so on.
1. If laws aren't immutable, then either some function governs their changes over time, which makes them immutable when you consider that function, or the laws are entirely random, in which case all science is impossible anyway, and so we shouldn't concern ourselves with this case.
2. The difference is that there is evidence of a multiverse in quantum mechanics, the most well-tested scientific theory of all time. The Many-Worlds interpretation is the most reasonable explanation of QM phenomena.
> What if, for example, it is functions all the way down?
What, an infinite hierarchy of functions? Since that's not very parsimonious, it's a very unlikely option.
> I think reasonableness is still in the eye of the beholder, or has Deutsch convinced everyone who counts?
Sure, there are other possibilities, but the point that there is plenty of evidence that makes many worlds a reasonable conclusion, so the original claim isn't accurate.
I don't see the connection. Parsimony is important for induction by defining a universal prior. Solomonoff induction formalized this notion by ordering all programs that could generate a particular set of observations by increasing Kolmogorov complexity.
Saying that an infinite hierarchy of functions is unlikely is saying that we probably don't live in a world governed by an infinite hierarchy of functions. But that's all it says, and as I pointed out, we have good a priori reasons for believing this conclusion, without having to ontologically commit ourselves to accepting it as necessarily true.
So I disagree, it's still not conflating "things that are likely" with "things that are".
Humans are good at recognizing intent. They want to be. When you let them loose on a question, they will try to find an answer with intent, because the expectation is for there to be intent. Sheer complexity is hard to stomach for us.
We must be clear that the only things that make sense are we ourselves, plus the animals we're surrounded by. The animals too are trying hard to make sense of things. Most cannot afford the luxury of developing advanced brains like we did. We can try and calculate the possibility for other "sensible" things in the universe, but that is just idle speculation. We have not the slightest indication of them existing.
For our current physics, the question of what lies beyond the beginning of our universe is nonsensical, as we are limited to light-speed. We cannot leave the universe expanding outwards at light-speed. Our perception is limited to that bubble within.
When we say that our physical discoveries point to a fine-tuned universe, we're just being proud of our fine-tuned physics. We did figure out a few things about the universe after all. And we're trying really hard to understand something that happened far in the past. Then these intent-people come along and claim it theirs.
TLDR: Who created this fine-tuned universe? We did.
At its end the essay says there will be a part II that will address the question of how much deeper these sorts of causal explanations could go. Is there a link available for it?
My own view is that such causal explanation has to stop somewhere, and we are left with, as Parfit mentions at a few points, sheer awe.
I think this is an example of the larger principle that human understanding is finite. Another example would be Colin McGinn's argument the human mind is not the sort of intelligence that could understand why consciousness (in the hard problem meaning of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness)....
I think that furthermore the finiteness of human intelligence is linked with many other types of finitude, such as our being mortal material bodies with material brains in a material world, and that philosophy is to a great extent the process of determining how finite things are in each area or aspect of reality, and how these various finitudes connect with each other in an overall pattern.
I would add that I think that many if not most philosphical disagreements are based at least in part on differing views about these finitudes. So for instance Platonism holds that many apparent finitudes are in fact delusions, while Aristotle tends to affirm them as real.
The problem raised by the article is one of necessesity and contingency. Why is there something? Why this? A necessary being and a contingent being demand very different questions. That's why the article then goes into probabilities, which are the mark of contingency. The ancient and medieval philosophy/theology insisted on the lack of contingent attributes of God, whereas the Universe has all the attributes of contingency. As Heidegger said (in a quote I read somewhere), necessity can not be explained. That's where our mind will stop explaining things. The difference between a theist and an atheist is in their willingness to accept contingency as being necessary, or, to say that the electron is necessary the way it is and there's no other possible way for it to be this way. It exists necessarily like this and that's it. Or some other material entity that caused it, but the chain ends quickly and stops there.
I think I agree with what you are saying. In terms of the finitudes of human understanding, I would put it this way: the theist thinks things are as they are because that is what God wishes, but why God exists is a mystery. The materialist thinks things are as they are because of the laws of nature, but why the laws of nature are as they are is a mystery. Have I got that right?
And then there is the third option of absolute mysticism , which a human mind merges with the Infinite, and all secrets are revealed to it.
Let me add that I am focusing on the finitudes of human existence because my number one interest is political philosophy, and political philosophy is ultimately about how human beings can best handle those finitudes.
I think there's something to what you're saying here, but there's a slight technical correction I'd make. Human concepts are not finite; they are definitely infinite. However, just because something is infinite doesn't mean it covers everything--e.g. the real numbers are fundamentally more encompassing than the integers. So, human concepts are infinite, but that doesn't mean they cover everything.
One is that we are in a simulation and our higher order universe has no conception of cause and effect.
Two is that we are the side effects of a mathematical system. (This one is harder to explain on mobile.) Consider Wolfram's rule 110. With simple inputs, the results iterated over and over again become arbitrarily complex. Perhaps complex enough to be life like? Perhaps complex enough to simulate a universe?
But consider that if you could actually simulate something complex with a mathematical system, no cause is required, in the same way that no cause is required for the empty cell to have whatever output exists when you iterate rule 110 on it 10000 times. Our universe could just be playing out some mathematical formula already set down.
Sorry, that probably makes no sense. It's a bastardized explanation of something I read on lesswrong ages ago.
> If we find this astonishing, we are assuming that these features should be the Selectors: that reality should be as simple and unarbitrary as it could be. That assumption has, I believe, great plausibility. But, just as the simplest cosmic possibility is that nothing ever exists, the simplest explanatory possibility is that there is no Selector. So we should not expect simplicity at both the factual and explanatory levels. If there is no Selector, we should not expect that there would also be no Universe. That would be an extreme coincidence.
This is the problem with philosophy. Expanding zero information into some information.
I wasn't very good at spotting it before I learned about compression and information entropy, which incidentally gave me a lifelong obsession with encodings.
It is sufficient to believe nothing about the origin of the universe, as with deities, since obtaining data is impossible.
I read Parfit's book Reasons and Persons for a Philosophy class a number of years ago. One large section of the book addressed that age-old question: If you get into a Star Trek transporter, do you actually get transported somewhere else? Or do you die, and a new person is created at the destination who is deluded into thinking that they are you?
The book was very interesting. I'm not sure that I agree with his conclusion, however, which was (1) Yes, you die. (2) So what?
(I.e., there being someone else who is just like you is just as good as not dying.)
From my point of view, if the result is just as good as not dying, then that's what I meant by not dying. But I'm sure I'd have to write just as much as Parfit did to make that claim credible to philosophers.
In the end, it all comes down to Aristotle. We assume that nothing moves unless it is moved by others, and then when faced by the fact that rule necessarily implies a infinity chain of movers, we just and put a unmoved mover at the beginning. Because breaking the rule just one is fine.
I skimmed the article, and it was filled with lots of historical philosophical sorts of things about anthropic principles and "God" and what not. But what I really like is the headline was a question, which reads like a Simple English Wikipedia article. Here's my reaction:
Let's assume that at least "one" existence of "something" is possible, and that it corresponds with the one that you, the reader, are assuming to be experiencing right now. Somethingness.
Okay, then let's make the leap and say it's possible that nothing could be.
At this point, the odds of nothing existing are 1/2, because the set of possible universes is [nothing, something]. And if we go by the assumptions that every possible state in this set of possible states is equally likely (a common assumption in classical probability theory), but that only one state can be actualized, then this is leaving us with 1/2.
But then think about all the possible "existences" that could exist as different combinations of the substance around you. The state space is huge. Nothingness forms a vanishingly small part of that set of possible existences. The thing is that one form of "nothingness" is indistinguishable from another form of "nothingness". By extensionality, the set of possible existences only contains "nothingness" one time.
This is a naive set theory/classical probability theory approach to the question.
Of course, in a multiverse idea of reality, we don't necessarily have to pick one of the possible existences. They can be in some kind of larger superposition, even if they are somehow cut off from one another. Maybe nothingness is compatible with somethingness. We existers just don't happen to experience it. And how could we? What is there to experience and who is there to experience it?
Wow. Enough is enough! I feel like a wide-eyed college freshmen again!
Bye :)
P.S.
It occurred to me that there might be distinguishable variations on non-existence. For example, what if the set of possible realities is: ["Nil", "nada", "null", "nothingness", "pitch black silence", "non-sense", "eternal vacuum", "something"]. Well then in this case, we are sure lucky to be here! There was a 7/8 chance that some form of nothing would be the ultimate reality!
you said there "is no space". How can there be nothing if there is ___. Is "no space" not something that can "be"? I mean, you said there "is" no space, you said it yourself!
:D
But more seriously, why should my reasoning, my set theory/classical probability idea, be required for a nothing reality? It's just a tool I'm using here on hacker news to make a line of reasoning, to communicate about the possibility this sort of nothingness. I have the luxury of such a tool apparently existing, here in this universe of somethingness. But why should that have any bearing on a possible nothing universe?
> And if we go by the assumptions that every possible state in this set of possible states is equally likely (a common assumption in classical probability theory)
I know I am being nitpicky, but despite the fact that yes, it's common to assume equal priors, this often has no basis---especially in regards to this question. With only one observation we know virtually nothing about the distribution of possible observations other than that the state that we observed is in a region with nonzero probability. We can't conclude anything else with any certainty at all.
I was happy to see that in the article the author discusses this point in particular.
I don't know if "tongue in cheek" is the right word, but I'm not exactly being philosophically earnest. There are a lot of assumptions involved in any discussion of these kinds of things, and I've come to see a kind of inevitably foolishness in pondering this kind of stuff. I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
That said, I definitely can relate to the gravity of existential yearnings.
I agree about the futility of trying to answer this question---that is what the entire article is about after all. But I am a practicing statistician so I feel the need to "well actually" sometimes when I see stuff like this. I can't help it.
I get that. I'm not the most fluent in probability theory, but I'm vaguely aware that there are all kinds of ways of going about it. Even just in setting up a probabilistic model, there are assumptions to be made. Then you have to make certain assumptions about what kind of probability theory you are using. Then there is the linking of probability theory to logic... Logics themselves have their own sets of assumptions and rules.
I don't think trying to answer the question is futile, but expecting to find an answer probably is. I think there's a good chance that we are in agreement here.
> At this point, the odds of nothing existing are 1/2, because the set of possible universes is [nothing, something]
An uninformed prior doesn't really make sense in this case. You have observed somethingness at least once but have never observed nothingness--only conjectured its existence. If 1) your observations are correct and 2) somethingness is mutually exclusive with nothingness then your prior distribution should approach [1, 0], not [0.5, 0.5].
Even as a Christian, I find both cosmological arguments (theist and anti-theist) wholly unconvincing. For example, if I was a non-believer, I would find it equally hard to believe in a multi-verse or a God. Not only that, but to make these kinds of arguments, we need to make all kinds of pretty serious assumptions: that we know how causality works in a multiverse, that laws of physics are invariant even at the beginning of universes (whatever that might mean), and so on.
But here's where I completely disagree with the position so many philosophers have (a field which I love):
> As these remarks suggest, there is no clear boundary here between philosophy and science. If there is such a highest law governing reality, this law is of the same kind as those that physicists are trying to discover.
As much as I respect Parfit (and many other philosophers of science), I think they're just dead wrong. What philosophers do is very different than what physicists do. This view absolutely permeates academic philosophy: that philosophy of science is, you know, basically science. It's not. I always recommend Barry Dainton's Time and Space[1] for budding philosophers of science, but don't kid yourself: it's merely a very high-level introduction to the physics of space and time. Until you really get down and dirty with the intricacies of (at first) Galilean spacetime and (eventually) Minkowski spacetime, you really won't "get it" -- but alas, many philosophy undergraduates and grad students think they do. And I'm sure that hubris follows them in their postgraduate careers.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Time-Space-Barry-Francis-Dainton/dp/0...