The current issue of Christianity Today contains an article by William Lane Craig entitled God Is Not Dead Yet: How current philosophers argue for his existence. Craig is a Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology of Biola University, an evangelical Christian college near Los Angeles. His website is Reasonable Faith.The article is a defense of theology in the face of attacks by "New Atheists."
You might think from the recent spate of atheist best-sellers that belief in God has become intellectually indefensible for thinking people today. But a look at these books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, among others, quickly reveals that the so-called New Atheism lacks intellectual muscle. It is blissfully ignorant of the revolution that has taken place in Anglo-American philosophy. It reflects the scientism of a bygone generation rather than the contemporary intellectual scene.Craig defends the idea that there are rational arguments for the existence of God. In other words, believers do not need to fall back on revelation as their only defense of superstitious beliefs.
The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God's existence apart from divine revelation. The goal of natural theology is to justify a broadly theistic worldview, one that is common among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and deists. While few would call them compelling proofs, all of the traditional arguments for God's existence, not to mention some creative new arguments, find articulate defenders today.What's interesting about this claim is that the arguments (see below) are the very ones that Dawkins discusses in The God Delusion. You might recall that there are many theists who argue that there are much better, more sophisticated, arguments that Dawkins ignores.1 I thought it would be fun to list the arguments here so we can see how the modern theist justifies belief in God. You'll have to read the article to see how Craig deals with objections to each one.
The cosmological argumentThere you have it. These are the rational arguments for the existence of God from a Professor of Philosophy at a Christian college. Read 'em and weep, all you heathen atheists!The kalam cosmological argument
- Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
- If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
- The universe exists.
- Therefore, the explanation of the universe's existence is God.
The teleological argument
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The moral argument
- The fine-tuning of the universe is due either to physical necessity, chance, or design.
- It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
- Therefore, it is due to design.
The ontological argument
- If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
- Objective moral values and duties do exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
- It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.
- If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
- If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
- If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
- Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
- Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
- Therefore, God exists.
1. We are never told what these arguments are, only that they exist somewhere.
[Hat Tip: Jason Rosenhouse]
Is this supposed to be "sophisticated" theology? I can never tell.
ReplyDeleteI do hope that, one day, Craig will take a pause from talking about the revolution in theology and let us know the details. These arguments look like they've been dead for centuries.
The very title of the piece, "God is not dead yet," is very Tinkerbelle. It implies that if someone is still arguing for His existence, the God exists.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey Shallit dealt with Craig's interpretation of time and infinity in May 2008: Reply to William Lane Craig
ReplyDeleteThose are all such silly arguments. The only arguments that stand even the remotest chance are arguments that attempt to recast science as not being epistemologically fundamental enough - i.e. this is a dream (science and all), or the idea that mind and consciousness are more fundamental than anything else, etc. And even ideas such as those are not actual arguments for God (especially the abrahamic God), although they might allow for the existence of an unknown God in ways that science does not.
ReplyDeleteThe arguments are presented by many Christian apologists. But they are not meant to be specific to the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim God. You are correct they are arguments to show cause for belief in a god. It is through other arguments and theology that the different religions argue then who or what that god is. But this doesn't necessarily make the arguments for the existence of a god invalid. Also, there are some prepositions missing in the outlines presented here. However I would say it is a fair outline. As for the details Craig has presented them in various books, and other authors have also. Dawkins failed in his book to deal with the current presentations of these arguments. He just gave them a cursory analysis and not a detailed philosophical analysis that has been done on many of these arguments presented in peer review journals. With that said I'm not saying these arguments are invalid or valid. My point is go to a good library at a university and look up the peer-review stuff pro and con if you want to know the latest on these arguments and how the prepositions follow. Some of the philosophers who have done the latest work on this stuff have actually presented sound and rational cases.
DeleteThis passage on the ontological argument left me dumbstruck:
ReplyDelete"Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then he must exist. So the whole question is: Is God's existence possible? The atheist has to maintain that it's impossible that God exists. He has to say that the concept of God is incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. But the problem is that the concept of God just doesn't appear to be incoherent in that way. The idea of a being which is all-powerful, allknowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent. And so long as God's existence is even possible, it follows that God must exist."
I can't even conceive of the thought process that would allow someone to believe all that.
I can't even conceive of the thought process that would allow someone to believe all that.
ReplyDeleteWhat about "modal realism" (Lewis, Tegmark), or multiverse theories of various types (many worlds QM, string theory, etc)? In an infinite number of universes, anything may be possible, including God, heaven, and hell.
For my part, I really like the following refutation of the ontological argument, which is silly but not much sillier than the original argument. It is not original with me.
ReplyDelete1. Our admiration of an achievement is directly proportional to the difficulty of the achievement itself, but inversely proportional to the ability of the achiever. (For example, if we hear an Ysaye violin sonata played well, we admire it, but we reallyadmire it if it is played by a 9-year-old girl.)
2. The creation of the universe is the most admirable achievement of all time.
3. Such an achievement would be even more admirable if it were done with the greatest possible handicap.
4. The most formidable handicap for a creator is non-existence.
5. If we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator, we can conceive a greater being - namely, one who created everything while not actually existing.
6. Therefore, God does not exist.
Part of the passage that Qetzal quoted:
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a being which is all-powerful, allknowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent.
In every possible world? Such as a world where every child experiences torture for example?
It seems to me the every possible world scenario raises the "problem of evil" to the modal level, and this should be enough to refute at least that version of the argument, or perhaps even to propel it in reverse?
In an infinite number of universes, anything may be possible, including God, heaven, and hell.
ReplyDeleteAre such supernatural entities to be considered part of a universe? We are frequently told that God is outside the universe. Particularly when it comes to discussion of scientific provability, physical evidence, etc.
I readily admit that I'm philosophically naive, but I think there's a huge difference between claiming this:
ReplyDelete"In an infinite number of universes, anything may be possible, including God, heaven, and hell"
versus this:
"[I]f God's existence is even possible, then he must exist."
or this:
"The idea of a being which is all-powerful, allknowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent."
If "all-powerful" is so coherent, why doesn't one of these poseurs get off their butt and say precisely what this means. Exactly what can God do, what can't God do, and how might it be accomplished, detected or tested?
ReplyDeleteThese sort of maunderings, disconnected from reality, wouldn't pass muster in any undergraduate physics class so it blows my mind that full professors should get away with it. Standards must be very, very different in some disciplines.
Note that he is another one in a seemingly infinite set apologists who never tries to answer Dawkins actual argument.
ReplyDeleteNoteworthy is also his description of Plantinga as the originator of modern theism in US academics. I would have thought it was simply the effect of US religions social power?
Btw, when Craig describes "verificationism" he describes the philosophical version of positivism, doesn't he? There are many realists or positivists (for example Cosma Shalizi, IIRC), or even realist platonists (Tegmark) among scientists, because science is founded on verification. But against facts, not philosophical Truth.
"Sophisticated" arguments are ones that dismiss the need of physical evidence for God's existance?
ReplyDeleteThis argument concedes there's no need for evidence that God's ever left the minds and stories of his creators (human beings): There is a God because we can conceive of what a God might be? Just like Batman, then?
Most Christians dismiss the idea of a non-revelatory God, and believe that the Bible is the literal truth, and that miracles have occurred, and continue to occur. Arguing for a God in this more popular fashion is still unprovable if evidence for miracles is disputed, but it seems to me to be a far more sophisticated argument. After all, proponents can always hope for some future, unquestionable miracle.
Jeffrey, LOL! I assume that a similar dumb argument works against omniscience. "God is able to know everything. Therefore he must be able to know that he can't exist. But he can't know that without it being true. Therefore he doesn't exist."
ReplyDeleteWhat about "modal realism" (Lewis, Tegmark), or multiverse theories of various types (many worlds QM, string theory, etc)? In an infinite number of universes, anything may be possible, including God, heaven, and hell.
- Modal realism type Lewis isn't consistent with physics but with logics - i.e. you can posit non-closure of energy, supernatural actors, Santa Claus et cetera.
- Tegmark's multiverse type IV isn't modal, it is mathematical, and so consistent with physics.
- Tegmark's "multiverse" type II (many worlds QM) is actually one universe with unboundedly many dimensions for quantum wave functions, so decohered systems exist in the same space with no access to each other.
Wikipedia [unreferenced]:
Also, it is a common misconception to think that branches are completely separate. In Everett's formulation, they may in principle quantum interfere with each other in the future,[21] although this requires all "memory" of the earlier branching event to be lost, so no observer ever sees another branch of reality.
- String theory is consistent with physics so far. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be used.
What is your direct observational evidence for "God, heaven, and hell", or at least indirect theoretical evidence that they are physically possible?
ReplyDeleteIf the universe never had a beginning, then the number of past events in the history of the universe is infinite. Not only is this a very paradoxical idea, but it also raises the problem: How could the present event ever arrive if an infinite number of prior events had to elapse first?
As Shallit notes, Craig's understanding of math and physics hasn't reached the 20th century yet. Here he actually denies velocity in the same way as Zeno.
Just for kicks, let me analyze the remaining points of his argument here and with Shallit. It will be lengthy, unfortunately.
- A big bang expansion cosmology doesn't need to start globally with a singularity, it can start locally with the end of inflation. This is such a natural extension of trying to describe observed inflation, so it is hard to see that these theories hasn't "commended themselves to the scientific community." They are in research, so they have been fruitful so far. In fact, this years CMBR update from WMAP was explicitly used to constrain inflation models for the first time.
- The singularity theorems of Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin doesn't claim that "any universe that is, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have had an absolute beginning". It claims that worldlines in an expanding volume of spacetime will extend backwards into a singularity. (Since blueshift going back will mean that test particles eventually hit light speed, which they can't - so Hubble expansion is bounded.)
Vilenkin's interpretation is parochial. Craig could have picked another reference, like Guth in the link I gave:
There is of course no conclusion that an eternally in model must have a
unique beginning, and no conclusion that there is an upper bound on the length of
all backwards-going geodesics from a given point. There may be models with regions
of contraction embedded within the expanding region that could evade our theorem.
Aguirre and [49, 50] have proposed a model that evades our theorem, in which the
arrow of time reverses at the t = 1 hypersurface, so the universe \expands" in both
halves of the full de Sitter space.
Another eternal model has also been given later by Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance. Moreover, there is no upper bound on the set of bounded geodesics - there is always a finite possibility that a geodesic goes further back. Exponential inflation has made universes of those in the forward direction.
Another general type of eternal past models which isn't constrained by the singularity theorem is cyclic models. Guth describes those as well.
- There is a difference between idealized mathematical infinity and the unboundedness of physics. That is why those geodesics are unbounded, why Craig is wrong about Poincaré vs physics, and why it is perfectly all right to go from here unboundedly towards infinity backwards (or frontwards) while observing prior events.
- Finally, the point 1 of Craig's kalam argument doesn't make physical sense. We can observe a universe, and by help of its physics, say string theory, construct a distribution of similar universes. But we don't know what "no universe" is - it falls outside the distribution. So when someone asks "why do the universe exist" ("which is its, or its physical laws, cause") the only physical answer is "why not?"
ReplyDeleteThere is of course no conclusion that an eternally in model must
Uups, my postscript extractor bugged out. It was "There is of course no conclusion that an eternally inflation model must" of course.
I readily admit that I'm philosophically naive, but I think there's a huge difference between claiming this:
ReplyDelete"In an infinite number of universes, anything may be possible, including God, heaven, and hell"
versus this:
"[I]f God's existence is even possible, then he must exist."
That's pretty much what modal realism says. If it's conceivable, it's actually real. But I make no truth claims about that. Certainly "I" don't perceive anything as real, but that would depend very much on who "I" am, and on the definition of reality, wouldn't it?
Modal realism type Lewis isn't consistent with physics but with logics - i.e. you can posit non-closure of energy, supernatural actors, Santa Claus et cetera.
ReplyDeleteWhat is consistent with physics is what is observed to be consistent with physics. That would depend very much on an observer, wouldn't it?
Tegmark's multiverse type IV isn't modal, it is mathematical, and so consistent with physics.
Mathematical idealism is thus consistent with what is observed. What is the need for matter or "substance" or realism then? Isn't something missing?
Tegmark's "multiverse" type II (many worlds QM) is actually one universe with unboundedly many dimensions for quantum wave functions, so decohered systems exist in the same space with no access to each other.
(as I rememeber, that's type III). But what then is the difference between non-existence and no-access? And in any case, why are "you" (yes you, torbjorn - this is quite personal) in the system that you're in? What's the physical explanation?
I talk about Plantinga's modal ontological argument in some detail: Modal Logic
ReplyDelete"In an infinite number of universes, anything may be possible, including God, heaven, and hell"
ReplyDeleteIs this Neil B again? His dribblings have been dealt with ad nauseam on Pharyngula, for example here by commenter JT quoting David Lewis:
"There are an infinity of gods, but none of them are our worldmates."
That's pretty much what modal realism says. If it's conceivable, it's actually real.
ReplyDeleteReally? Modal realism says that anything that's conceivably true for some possible universe is necessarily true for our universe?
I find that hard to believe. I'm willing to bet that's either an inaccurate description of modal realism, or an inaccurate description of what "most philosophers would agree."
Is this Neil B again? His dribblings have been dealt with ad nauseam on Pharyngula, for example here by commenter JT quoting David Lewis:
ReplyDeleteAnyone who quotes a pharyngula comment as authoritative is wise indeed. Btw, is "windy" a reference to your biological or mental flatulence?
That's pretty much what modal realism says. If it's conceivable, it's actually real.
ReplyDeleteReally? Modal realism says that anything that's conceivably true for some possible universe is necessarily true for our universe?
But I never actually said that, did I? If you believe in other universes, than you must necessarily believe in things that can never be observed.
But I never actually said that, did I?
ReplyDeleteAre you the same "anonymous" that posted at 3:26PM, and again at 6:08PM? Then, yes, you did say that.
I understand you're not necessarily defending modal realism. But you did cite it as a possible basis for the thought process behind the passage I first quoted, and you did say it means anything that's conceivable is actually real.
Of course, if what you said isn't really what you meant, feel free to clarify.
Anyone who quotes a pharyngula comment as authoritative is wise indeed.
ReplyDeleteThat comment expressed succinctly how you misuse modal realism. No "authority" is required, just credit where credit is due.
Btw, is "windy" a reference to your biological or mental flatulence?
As gentlemanly as ever, I see. Is "anonymous" a reference to your dishonest cowardice?
ReplyDeleteWhat is consistent with physics is what is observed to be consistent with physics. That would depend very much on an observer, wouldn't it?
No, it would depend on the physics (which the observer is part of). A physics without symmetries has no rules, for example. (Which we know is impossible, btw, from Ramsey theory - a large enough set must have order.)
Note on the next comment that I address this: We can observe a universe, and by help of its physics, say string theory, construct a distribution of similar universes. But we don't know what "no universe" is - it falls outside the distribution.
That is an example of another logical universe that is impossible under both your (observer) and physics (observability) description of an actual universe.
What is the need for matter or "substance" or realism then?
That is Tegmark's question. His answer: it is parsimonious to make mathematical objects as physical objects. IIRC he refers to this as platonic realism, not Plato type idealism. ("Shadows".)
(as I rememeber, that's type III).
I stand corrected. Thanks!
I forgot that he ordered the multiverse theories before quantum theories.
But what then is the difference between non-existence and no-access?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Decoherence is a physical process, so there isn't any "no-access". And as regard non-existence I can but repeat that it makes no physics sense, it isn't part of an distribution based on observations.
The bottom line is that when people, either philosophers or theologists, say that "anything is possible", they must demonstrate exactly what "anything" is and how it is possible. Because otherwise it won't lead to a physics of a possible universe.
This is how for example Tegmark's universes (mathematical logic) differs from modal (logic).
ReplyDeleteIf you believe in other universes, than you must necessarily believe in things that can never be observed.
Not necessarily, if you mean that they will not interact with our universe. Note the MW quote I gave (" it is a common misconception to think that branches are completely separate"). That won't leave evidence for the other branches, but they will not be unobservable on account of later interference.
I don't trust that Wikipedia page, but it is perhaps a possibility.
More evidential, physicists are looking into what happens when bubble universes collide. IIRC there is at least one paper, AFAIK as of yet unanswered, that it can possibly leave voids. They speculate that this could explain a statistically large void in the CMBR radiation others have found. (They need to resolve exactly what happens before making firm predictions.) I'm sure I can find the reference with some effort.
So here it is possible that we won't only interact with another universe, but that we also obtain evidence.
Btw, theories allow for entities that may not be observed. Vacuum energy was thought to be unobservable until the Casimir effect came up, I think. Other examples would be perception and motor function of the brain, that may never be observed in every detail, IC circuits that have unobservable nodes, or even simpler system models that have the same.
The purpose of a theory or model is to predict observations, not to have each and every constituent observable and/or predictive. Yet it would be impossible to deny that those constituents may exist - if they didn't, the theory wouldn't work.
(The theory may be wrong, though. But that is another problem. Obviously vacuum energy existed.)
@larson,OM
ReplyDeleteHelp out this functional illiterate!
What does OM stand for? In the acronym finder I get only 2 plausible responses. Old Man. Ordained Minister. Is it one of those.
I once suffered over FCD as well, but managed to solve that one on my own.
OM stands for the order of the Molly from Pharyngula and is named in honour of the late Molly Ivins. It is voted on monthly by the site's regulars for posters who they feel have made an impact with their contributions.
ReplyDeleteJohn Phillips, FCD
Thank you John.
ReplyDeleteI should have known!
BTW, that was not me above, I wouldn't go as "anonymous." But windy's pretense that my "dribblings" have been "dealt with" is quite pretentious, the arguers haven't resolved anything one way or the other. BTW this is the best argument for why Something has to intervene in the modal-realist ultimate ensemble: our Bayesian expectation would be only to find ourselves in world just orderly enough to allow our existence, and even then only to the present moment. Why? Because there are more worlds (possible "descriptions") with slight variations, disorder, and that begin to diverge after any benchmark moment, than a coherent and highly consistent one like ours.
ReplyDeleteSure it isn't a proof., but I ask you: why is there something rather than nothing (if such distinction is coherent at all), and why is it like this? What is your alternative, since you can't use the existing laws to circularly explain themselves?