Well the author, like anyone, is free to believe in whatever helps them make sense of the world. Having said that, the standard "fine tuning" fallacy and the way they go on to talk about God as...
Exemplary
Well the author, like anyone, is free to believe in whatever helps them make sense of the world.
Having said that, the standard "fine tuning" fallacy and the way they go on to talk about God as something completely different to what is understood when discussing God only to then swing back around to Christianity are weak arguments and reasoning.
When we talk about God we talk about something sentient with direct actual massive power, if we abstract it to quantum fluctuations and "everything" and "the universe is god" then we are having a completely different conversation.
And fair enough you think that's what God is for you and are immediately separating yourself from all laymen discussions of "is there a God" and opinions on morality based on its existence. But do not turn around and say "and this version is totes magotes compatible with Eastern Orthodox Christianity" because it just flat out isn't.
EO Christianity is not talking about some limited God or an Everything or whatever. It talks about a very real very powerful very opinionated God who absolutely is Something and not Everything, who has rules and wishes and the whole shebang. The author is taking small a dogmatic difference between Christian sects and trying to shoehorn his personal beliefs in the existent EO structure which is just incompatible with them.
Quite so, quite so. The author is free of course but yes, you're completely right that he's talking about something entirely different from EO God. Heck even regular old Protestant or Catholic...
Quite so, quite so. The author is free of course but yes, you're completely right that he's talking about something entirely different from EO God. Heck even regular old Protestant or Catholic God.
I now think the evidence points towards a hypothesis that John Stuart Mill took seriously: a good God of limited abilities. [...] God made the best universe they could.
This kind of small g god is indistinguishable from an alien child with advance tech, or me and my poorly optimised fish tank. Definitely not the Eastern Orthodox God. First line of our creed:
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible.
All things invisible include the entire physics engine. It's a much bigger and much less comfortable God who does see the injustice and the suffering, who can do something about it, and is choosing not to do the things you think should be done.
I don't....quite understand the people who are okay with a limited god. If they're going for some kind of cosmic comfort away from atheism, isn't it much more comforting to believe in an entity we can't comprehend rather than one we can?
When my child was a toddler I took them to their vaccines. From their perspective, I am either someone who permits suffering because I am helpless to stop it, or someone who intends suffering because the suffering archives a greater good to the child. Who is the more empowered parent who can be better relied on for optimised outcome?
Edit:
After some thought though, good on the author for finding what he needs. In the end it's going to matter very very very little whose dogma is correct and if we knew or believed in the right things. It's going to come down to if we were kind to those who are hungry and cold and in need. If his faith isn't rational or 100% provable it doesn't matter : that he is captivated by the person and beliefs and works of Yeshua, and for him to emulate Yeshua's works in daily life is the far more important point. If being happier and more kind to others and wanting to mark the seasons bring him to the doors of the Church, if only so as to be better enabled to be happy and kind and observe the seasons better, then that's far better than having all the theology worked out by a long cosmic mile. One Christian is no Christian: even if he believes in some heresy right now, that's okay, he'll do better in a community professing a creed he doesn't hold than if he had all the answers alone in his bedroom.
What is the distinction between the two? Without dogma, a god outside of any organized religion seems to be incomprehensible by definition.
I don't....quite understand the people who are okay with a limited god. If they're going for some kind of cosmic comfort away from atheism, isn't it much more comforting to believe in an entity we can't comprehend rather than one we can?
What is the distinction between the two? Without dogma, a god outside of any organized religion seems to be incomprehensible by definition.
I don't know about other organised religions, but the Christian God is dogmatically incomprehensible: we know some things that are revealed, but we know of nothing that hasn't yet been revealed....
I don't know about other organised religions, but the Christian God is dogmatically incomprehensible: we know some things that are revealed, but we know of nothing that hasn't yet been revealed. Or, the Christian God is supposed to be incomprehensible: but the TULIP people force a limited, hand wringing version that they think is comprehensible and hence better. There's a big difference between saying things like "God has chosen to do x" vs "God had no other choice but to do x". It requires a very strong, unsubstantiated claim to say anyone had no choice but to do x, whereas the first is mere observation.
I think that's where the author went: his god had no choice but to do physics okay stage before stage 2, which requires a lot of assumptions. It is safer to say "we don't know why this was done the way God chose to do it in, but we remember this was done and our faith simply observes/commemorate that it was done."
That's fair. FWIW, I'm in the camp of "There might be a divine watchmaker, but I have no reason to believe that any organized religion has actually figured it who or what that is."
That's fair. FWIW, I'm in the camp of "There might be a divine watchmaker, but I have no reason to believe that any organized religion has actually figured it who or what that is."
Well, before the Magratheans were commissioned by mice to construct the Earth, I suppose there were no humans to ponder the origins of the Universe, but it's creation has nonetheless made a lot of...
Well, before the Magratheans were commissioned by mice to construct the Earth, I suppose there were no humans to ponder the origins of the Universe, but it's creation has nonetheless made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
While many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, it's worth mentioning that the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle 6 firmly believe that the entire Universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. Thus, they live in perpetual fear of a time they call "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief." However, this theory is not widely accepted outside of Viltvodle 6.
:) ahh, it's been years. Splendid. Off topic, I found the text based adventure game a little while ago, and always meant to re-read while playing. Your comment gave another little nudge
:) ahh, it's been years. Splendid.
Off topic, I found the text based adventure game a little while ago, and always meant to re-read while playing. Your comment gave another little nudge
I must say, the biggest bamboozle in any game I have ever played was failing to give that cheese sandwich to the dog. The books are great fun but if you're not up for a read and have not heard the...
I must say, the biggest bamboozle in any game I have ever played was failing to give that cheese sandwich to the dog.
The books are great fun but if you're not up for a read and have not heard the original radio series (eps. 1-12), it's what I grew up with and I highly recommend it!
This is from my upbringing and going to Protestant theology school, but basically god super loves (Unconditional election) some of us (Limited atonement), but we're all so awful (Total depravity)...
This is from my upbringing and going to Protestant theology school, but basically god super loves (Unconditional election) some of us (Limited atonement), but we're all so awful (Total depravity) that his hands are tied and there's no other way than to use his own son as propituarty sacrifice to satisfy his own wrath. Meaning, he can't satisfy his own wrath, and he can't just write off a debt, it must be paid by someone.
Elsewhere in this thread I've expressed my opinion that the ways of God are mysterious and beyond my comprehension; could this be how it's done? Maybe. But it seems wrong to me, to say yes we definitely understand god and TULIP is how he must operate and we must accept that is the only way it could work to reconcile God's love, sovereignty and justice.
I much prefer the model that mankind is a beloved, injured child, and the God who can raise the dead is working to heal us, and in that process, with our participation, turn us into little Gods.
Something that's always struck me about suppositions of a triply omni God (that is, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent specifically–omnipresent is simply consequent to the first and third)...
I don't....quite understand the people who are okay with a limited god. If they're going for some kind of cosmic comfort away from atheism, isn't it much more comforting to believe in an entity we can't comprehend rather than one we can?
Something that's always struck me about suppositions of a triply omni God (that is, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent specifically–omnipresent is simply consequent to the first and third) is how limited it truly is. Such a God is limited to only doing good. You could say that context can determine whether a particular event is "good," and that from a perfect perspective, everything aligns correctly (a la your vaccine example), but what then of omnipotence? That 3-omni God is then limited in His ability to make the inherent goodness of all things appreciable in any frame of reference. We know empirically that some things actually are observable to have the same quality in all reference frames–the speed of massless particles, for example. So why can a 3-omni God create light that goes the same speed in a vacuum in all frames of reference, but he can't create a similarly relative moral fabric of the universe?
I think this gets to why someone would find accepting a limited deity a necessity: empirical evidence seems to logically contradict a Deity possessing all three omnis at once, and while a true zealot might be able to stifle the cognitive dissonance persisting to believe in such a Deity would cause, others can't abide it. So they set arbitrary limits to what a Deity can be and do, simply to arrive at a theological structure that isn't immediately contradicted by experience.
What if the speed of a massless particle being constant is a local event? What if every observable fact in our observable universe only works out like this under these specific equations or...
Exemplary
What if the speed of a massless particle being constant is a local event? What if every observable fact in our observable universe only works out like this under these specific equations or starting cosntants? "Different fundamental equations of physics" (level II) kind of multiverse or "same fundamental equations of physics but different constants, particles and dimensionalities" (level III) as described by max Tagmark, might make statements like "but our universe always works like this" meaningless.
I don't understand anything like remotely enough of all this, for sure. So perhaps the 3-omni god can only work for folks who haven't thought it through enough. :) you weren't being dismissive at all, and I am also not saying every believer hasn't thought it out, but out of all the possibilities, my ignorance is the variable that seems the most likely to me in my own faith.
Actually, the same author talked about the fine tuning thing vs the 3-omni god in his other essay, and that's how he bridged his atheism -- he abandoned the 3-omni and reconciled the evidence for a fine tuned universe.
Something that's made me quite happy in all these thoughts and debates is that nearly all of the time we have differences in beliefs because we all want a kinder and nicer universe. Whether we ultimate abandon god because how could he put parasites in a child's eye, or reduce god to well-meaning helplessness, or embrace the cognitive dissonance, we all started with the premise that Goodness ought to exist and to persist. When we're presented with so much evidence that evil exists, here we all are, all holding the unshakable faith that the universe ought to be good.
Not all of us have the mental capacity to reason things out, and very few of us can push the boundaries of physics, but nearly each one of us can choose to wish good upon another, and most of us can choose to do good every day. And that's extraordinary.
I want to push back against this a little. The supposition that things might work differently in other universes doesn't change what we perceive in ours. Luminal relativism might not be a thing in...
What if the speed of a massless particle being constant is a local event? What if every observable fact in our observable universe only works out like this under these specific equations or starting cosntants? "Different fundamental equations of physics" (level II) kind of multiverse or "same fundamental equations of physics but different constants, particles and dimensionalities" (level III) as described by max Tagmark, might make statements like "but our universe always works like this" meaningless.
I want to push back against this a little. The supposition that things might work differently in other universes doesn't change what we perceive in ours. Luminal relativism might not be a thing in any number of Max Tegmark's universes, but we definitely observe it here. That implies that whatever other experiments might be running in a wider multiverse, we know it's possible for a universe to exist in which some things possess the same qualities in every frame of reference.
Supposing again an omnibenevolent Deity, why is it then that we here in this universe perceive evil? If all things turn eventually to good, and thus despite appearances are ultimately good, why don't we perceive them as such without appeals to context or ineffability? We see that some things can have the same qualities in every context or frame of reference, and surely something that is both good and can be appreciated as such in every context is more good than something that can only be appreciated as good with perfect context.
This implies a few things: either that a Creator exists that is capable of creating a universe in which all things are good and can be appreciated as such in every context, but has chosen not to (and is therefore not omnibenevolent); that a Creator exists that is not capable of creating a universe in which all things are both good and appreciable as such in every context (and is therefore not omnipotent); or that there is no Creator. All of these possibilities render the premise of a triply omni God logically inconsistent, so strongly support the hypothesis that any God that might exist is somehow limited.
Usually when I mention this subjective sub-problem in the Problem of Evil, the answer from the faithful is "God doesn't need to be limited to logical consistency," which is – unsatisfying, to put it mildly. It turns any discussion of the divine into pointless navel-gazing.
It just seems so unnecessary, when all these logical inconsistencies are resolved simply by dropping the insistence on one of the three omnis, and omnibenevolence seems the most likely to me, considering our empirical observations. That it isn't dropped as inconsistent seems to me to be a matter of aesthetics; we simply prefer the notion of an omnibenevolent Deity, despite evidence to the contrary. For some, it's the primary appeal of positing a Creator at all.
Which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that purposely closing one's mind to logic beyond a certain point in the contemplation of the divine has led to so many awful things–dare I say, evil things. We see that now, as a certain segment of Christians claim to embrace a God that can on the one hand love everyone, but on the other, hate people who dress unconventionally or who are sexually attracted to the wrong sort of person. They either see the contradiction and suppress the thought of it, or they've been primed not to consider it at all.
You might say that this is a different thing altogether, but I really can't see how it is. A harmless and well-meaning rejection of logical validity is not substantially different than a pernicious and hateful rejection. It's merely the inoffensive side of the coin.
In a universe where light exists, and one where we only see anything at all when there are photons, we can still perceive the absence of light. evil doesn't exist by itself, it is a failure of...
Supposing again an omnibenevolent Deity, why is it then that we here in this universe perceive evil?
In a universe where light exists, and one where we only see anything at all when there are photons, we can still perceive the absence of light. evil doesn't exist by itself, it is a failure of love, an absence where we somehow instincutally feel there should be. Animals are not much bothered by evils of predation and cannibalism: they survive and reproduce. Some animals mourn, but they are in the minority. That nearly every human mourn evil and lament lack of justice is a very very odd thing in a universe where we have always had cunning deception and violence, since the time we must have been simple single cell organisms.
If all things turn eventually to good, and thus despite appearances are ultimately good, why don't we perceive them as such without appeals to context or ineffability?
Organisms with simple eyes don't conclude a fuzzy dim universe. That bacterium cannot understand a computer doesn't make the invention impossible. The galaxies have existed long before we had telescopes to view them with. The language used in the Bible is more akin to your first probability: we can, but not yet.
"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known."
As for the follow up, why didn't God create beings fully formed in clarity who can discern perfect goodness - He did. They're called angles and demons.
Then the follow up: why create additional beings capable of growth. God is doing something contradictory with humanity: God wants to make created beings become what He is by nature. God's always doing things that make no sense like that though. How can the hands of a creature slap the creator, any more than Iago can strike Shakespeare? How can the person whose dimensions cannot be circumscribed fit inside of a womb, making the woman "more spacious than the heavens"? How can the most ancient being be the great great etc grandson of a man who lived in died in one spot of space time?
It's unsatisfying to say, oh it's all a mystery. And I do think there is value in pushing for answers where we can find any. But I also think it's better to have real uncertainties for some things rather than false certainties. The evils you pointed out happen when evil men become certain of their false certainties, and are willing to commit evil in the name of their local temporal truth.
It isn't cowardly to say I don't know. It's cowardly to say I'll kill you for thinking I might be wrong.
Again though, we're arguing about different things. We're supposing an omnipotent Creator who made everything, including the possibility of an absence of something. If with Him all things are...
Again though, we're arguing about different things. We're supposing an omnipotent Creator who made everything, including the possibility of an absence of something. If with Him all things are possible, then the possibility of an absence of good must be a choice. We think that to knowingly allow a bad thing to happen is itself a bad thing–except, it seems, when it comes to God.
How can that be anything but a post-hoc rationalization for the aesthetic preference for an all-loving/omnibenevolent source of being? Doesn't it make more sense to acknowledge that that's how we wish things were, but that the evidence of experience doesn't really support it?
I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I don't have a counter that makes any logical sense to me or you. Edit: [Other words redacted] Cambridge Orthodox forum's Lecture It's an old topic and...
I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I don't have a counter that makes any logical sense to me or you.
The title of this lecture is “Theodicy and the Book of Job.” What is theodicy and why is it a problem? The English word “theodicy” derives from two Greek words: theos and dikē, which mean “God” and “justice.” So theodicy is an argument that tries to maintain God’s righteousness in the face of an overwhelming experience of evil and suffering in our world.
It's an old topic and I apologize for not having better words to add
You really don't need to apologize. I wasn't actually expecting you to come up with a solution for the Problem of Evil. I just think it's worth contemplating. Such things are the substance of...
You really don't need to apologize. I wasn't actually expecting you to come up with a solution for the Problem of Evil. I just think it's worth contemplating.
Such things are the substance of doubt, and if you never confront that, can you really be said to be faithful?
:) I liked having this conversation with you It's an ancient problem for sure, and I liked what Frost's conclusion was from the book of Job - it's finally an encounter that answers all doubts, not...
:) I liked having this conversation with you
It's an ancient problem for sure, and I liked what Frost's conclusion was from the book of Job - it's finally an encounter that answers all doubts, not reason. From personal experience, when I'm suffering and feel lack of control, I don't respond to reason half so well as I respond to being in the presence of someone I trust and is reassuring. I don't think faith ultimately comes down to ignoring reason: I think it ultimately comes down to a relationship. It's the core of those beautiful bromance films when your buddy calls you up and says shits going down, they've been framed and you have every evidence to believe the bad guys, and no reason to trust bro at all, except you know and love the guy.
And then as an aside, my family was watching a Kurzgesagt video on extreme conditions for life. It used to be that we only found life under conditions ABC, so we concluded all available evidence points to this is how life must work, hence there cannot be life where the conditions ABC aren't met. Then we found other examples where D also enables life, so we said okay life ABC and D but nowhere else. Then E. Then F. Etc. I don't like God in the gaps, but even a broken clock is right twice: it's true we really don't know everything yet. I don't feel happy with "this is how God must work" any more than "this is how the universe works" based on everything we know today. It's not wrong to make hypothesis from what we do know, but it feels wrong to draw definite conclusions, and to dismiss or even hurt other people when we could learn more later. Eg, it's fine if your hypothesis is that the earth is flat or dinosaurs are a trick. Maybe it's even okay (albeit less good) to conclude folks who didnt come to the same conclusion using the available evidence did their morality/reasoning maths wrong. But it's definitely not okay to throw folks in jail or bar them from office [1] or kill them because they looked at the evidence and their hypothesis is something else.
Which circles back to an earlier point: it's far more important to be kind than to be right. Advanced intelligence or rationality doesn't automatically make a good man. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."
1 - kinda not ....I don't know, I have my own biases about people with certain beliefs holding office, especially posts that have to do with science or education or health or economics or...... .... Okay maybe we bar them from office. Sorry. Sort of like how in the OE Church it's not a sin to personally hold heretical beliefs (talk to your priest), but it is not permissible for someone in an ordained position to teach said heretical beliefs
I studied rhetoric in school, which I believe we've talked about before. In the traditional formulation, rhetoric consists of three parts: logos, or logic, ethos, or the character of the people in...
I studied rhetoric in school, which I believe we've talked about before. In the traditional formulation, rhetoric consists of three parts: logos, or logic, ethos, or the character of the people in the dialogue, and pathos, or the emotional content of the rhetoric. That's Aristotle's formulation of it.
I had a great teacher of rhetoric during my time at college who I eventually discovered was an Evangelical Christian (it was not apparent to me until he outright declared it one day, which I think says something). He marked a distinction between "logic" and "reason:"
Logic, he said, is only concerned with validity and soundness, and can thus reach conclusions that are utterly unreasonable. For instance, if a society recognizes a lot of problems being caused by a certain group of people, it's entirely logically valid to solve those problems by eliminating that group of people. That approach maps perfectly to the traditional syllogism (which is to say that the logic of such a Final Solution is valid, though not necessarily sound, but we'll ignore that caveat for the sake of argument). That solution, though logically valid, is not reasonable, precisely because it ignores the ethos and pathos aspects of good argumentation.
But crucially, he argued that reason's demands work the other way, too. It's no more reasonable to ignore logical problems in favor of pathetic or ethical arguments than it is to ignore ethics and feeling in favor of logic. I don't know how he squared that with his faith, which I think likely had some of the same logical problems we've been discussing, but I suspect he settled on something like the following.
I think the important thing is that this tension is recognized and considered. Similarly to how a person can't help but be a product of their milieu, and thus will have internalized some aspects of racialism–in a sense, can't help but be racist to a degree–it's essential to recognize that their behavior and patterns of thinking have been influenced by racism, and actively take steps to consider whether their assumptions are sound and their thinking clear. I think religious thought should follow a similar tack: recognition of logical contradictions should never be stifled, because they're telling you that your conceptions are incomplete, and likely always will be. It may not make one's faith any more logical, but perhaps it can act as a check on some of the more pernicious possible conclusions that can be reached through faith, and maybe even lead to improvements in your understanding of the Ineffable.
I think most people drawn to these sorts of musings find a point at which they go, "good enough," and then never consider it any further. If faith is important to you–as it really isn't to me, except in the abstract as a cognitive toy–then you should dwell in these things without end, because this is exactly the point where faith resides.
Man, Christianity really overcomplicated all its aspects of faith. The more I read and hear about Christianity, and the more I engage in religious debates centered around Christianity; the more I...
Man, Christianity really overcomplicated all its aspects of faith.
The more I read and hear about Christianity, and the more I engage in religious debates centered around Christianity; the more I believe God really sent a messenger to clarify all this weirdness i.e. Islam.
I'll follow woth more of my Islamic perspective, which is predicated on faith in the truthiness of the Quran, i.e. I believe the Quran does contain words from God, and it hasn't been altered by Man. Arguing otherwise is a topic for another discussion.
As Muslims, we believe God created us to worship him Nothing more, nothing less. The word for Worshipper in Islam is synonym with Slave, thus, we are God's slaves, as all beings are, including angels and demons.
God does not claim that he will love everyone, or that he created us in his image or something. God didn't create the heavens and earth for fun or for everything to be nice and good. He also doesn't want that all humans on earth believe on him, if he willed so, he would've made them believe.
While God's mercy and benevolence could encompass everything, he only promised it to those who choose to believe on him, and as powerless, helpless slaves, we can only pray to God that he encompasses us with mercy and benevolence.
The word "Muslim" means someone who has surrendered. As Muslims, we surrender everything to God. We surrender out destiny, our will, and our everything to God. We slaves are not entitled to anything. We are not entitled to his love, or mercy, or forgiveness.
We pray to him that he forgive our sins, and that he grants us his mercy, fully believing that he is the Most Merciful, and Most Benevolent, but understand that we are not entitled to any of that.
There's nothing that makes this idea more more likely than God simply choosing to create our current world in the way it is for a purpose only he knows. To keep the discussion focused, I'm only...
That 3-omni God is then limited in His ability to make the inherent goodness of all things appreciable in any frame of reference
There's nothing that makes this idea more more likely than God simply choosing to create our current world in the way it is for a purpose only he knows.
To keep the discussion focused, I'm only arguing from the Axiom of God being All-Wise and All-knowing. If I believe in God's absolutely wisdom, then it's easy for me to accept that the universe is like this for a reason.
That was the point I was getting at. The Problem of Evil only arises when you insist on an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good God all together. Drop any one of those, and the PoE is no longer...
I'm only arguing from the Axiom of God being All-Wise and All-knowing.
That was the point I was getting at. The Problem of Evil only arises when you insist on an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good God all together. Drop any one of those, and the PoE is no longer a problem. I've always found it strange how tightly the faithful cling to all three premises, considering the logical consequences.
I've found yhat "Good" is unfortunately a loaded, and slightly subjective term. Depending on which definition one ascribes to the term. Does good mean not letting any harm ever happen? Does it...
I've found yhat "Good" is unfortunately a loaded, and slightly subjective term. Depending on which definition one ascribes to the term.
Does good mean not letting any harm ever happen? Does it mean to give everyone equal amounts of wealth?
So yeah, you raised a great point, a particularly illuminating point that I never thought about.
In fact, I had quickly searched through the Quran right now and to my surprise, God never referred to as being "good".
God is referred to as being All just, merciful, wise, knowing, powerful, forgiver, exalted, etc etc etc; but never "The Good"
OK we're in "just shooting the shit" territory but this is very easily reconcilable with faith. God knows what's actually good in the grand scheme of things so everthing he does is good. If you...
OK we're in "just shooting the shit" territory but this is very easily reconcilable with faith. God knows what's actually good in the grand scheme of things so everthing he does is good.
If you want to examine it further, the claim is that God knows what's overall best in the long run, aka The Divine Plan. This is a very very very common belief.
If you want to put it into less metaphysical terms it's like a human taking an action that affects animals with the purpose of conserving them. Say, culling some species so there's not a widespread ecosystem collapse ( I'm not a biologist, sorry). Man knows the goal, the plan, the steps AND the outcome. While the individual deer might not appreciate their partner getting shot, man by definition is doing good by following his plan.
I believe we are in full agreement here, I just decided that the term "Good" os too undefined for taste, and decided to use clearer terms such as "Just" and "Merciful". To reiterate, our ideas of...
I believe we are in full agreement here, I just decided that the term "Good" os too undefined for taste, and decided to use clearer terms such as "Just" and "Merciful".
To reiterate, our ideas of God seem to be in agreement.
The Problem of Evil has been recognized for thousands of years–pretty much from the moment an all-powerful, all-loving God was first proposed. It wouldn't surprise me if that was one of the major...
The Problem of Evil has been recognized for thousands of years–pretty much from the moment an all-powerful, all-loving God was first proposed. It wouldn't surprise me if that was one of the major influences on why Islam developed as it did, considering how influential early Christianity was on the younger faith.
Really I think the issue is the interface between concepts of the absolute, infinite, and eternal and our bounded existence. It means that there must be a breakdown in logical validity when a concept bridges the two regimes. Logic is about limits and boundaries. Definition (literally, drawing limits, de- finitum, "concerning limit") is requisite to perform any sort of meaningful logic. It shouldn't be a surprise that logic breaks down if you insist a premise is unbounded.
As I said elsewhere, it wouldn't bother me much if it weren't for a couple of things: one, many people insist on using the forms of logic to argue for an inherently para-logical concept, which seems to carry some rhetorical weight if you don't think it through thoroughly. I think this has largely fallen out of favor among people who want to discuss divinity in good faith, so to speak, since the disjunct between logical validity and an unbounded divinity is so easy to appreciate and has been recognized for so long. It's still maddening to try to discuss such things using the forms of logic with people who fundamentally reject the universality of logical validity. Angels dancing on pinheads and all.
The other thing that troubles me is that this disjunct between an unbounded God and the logic of our finite existence is foundational. If you accept the premise of a God without limits, you necessarily must run up against a point at which logic breaks down. That particular point will differ for each individual, but that there is such a point is universal among those who have faith in such a Deity. To have faith in an unlimited God is to fundamentally reject the universality of logical validity. You cannot have it both ways. There has to be regime in which either logical validity does not pertain, or belief in an unbounded God is fundamentally illogical.
This primes the faithful to accept that logical validity is not universal; it trains people to ultimately blind themselves to logical inconsistency, because it's necessary to hold the whole edifice together. It may seem like the difference between "logic is inadequate to comprehend God" and "my all-powerful, all-loving God hates fags" is one of kind and not degree, but really they are simply different flavors of "logical inconsistencies and contradictions don't matter in the contemplation of God, because He stands outside such things." Religion or faith like that is a process that trains people to accept cognitive dissonance. I shouldn't need to explain why this can be, inevitably will be, a bad thing.
So is the worry that his God isn't omnipotent? Isn't that the main conceit of his view? Panentheism is a well-established theistic position that isn't exactly new, and Goff here doesn't reduce...
Having said that, the standard "fine tuning" fallacy and the way they go on to talk about God as something completely different to what is understood when discussing God
So is the worry that his God isn't omnipotent? Isn't that the main conceit of his view?
When we talk about God we talk about something sentient with direct actual massive power, if we abstract it to quantum fluctuations and "everything" and "the universe is god" then we are having a completely different conversation.
Panentheism is a well-established theistic position that isn't exactly new, and Goff here doesn't reduce theism to something like Spinoza's pantheism.
The author is taking small a dogmatic difference between Christian sects and trying to shoehorn his personal beliefs in the existent EO structure which is just incompatible with them.
So first, Goff's views are obviously heretical to EO, I think he makes that fairly explicit. Second, this view that we participate in God's energies through theosis, which is something of a radical difference between the EO and other denominations. And yes, plenty of EO hold that God is the ground of everything; this is also the conclusion of many arguments for theism (e.g., contingency arguments.)
There are discussions around God all the time, all over the world. Very very few are as philosophical and low-stakes as to include God as "whatever" in their definitions. It's not wrong but it's...
There are discussions around God all the time, all over the world. Very very few are as philosophical and low-stakes as to include God as "whatever" in their definitions.
It's not wrong but it's completely different from what the discussions around belief or non-belief in God grapple with. It's closer to "I believe I God (btw that's what I name my cat)" than the type of god these conversations include.
While EO might posit that God is everywhere it's absolutely not a limited abstracted God.
In summary, standard cosmological fine tuning argument panpsychism asserted ??? Jesus was real! No, not really? This is poorly argued and unconvincing.
In summary,
standard cosmological fine tuning argument
panpsychism asserted
???
Jesus was real!
We all have to take our leap of faith
No, not really? This is poorly argued and unconvincing.
Goff isn't trying to make a case for theism in this paper, more explaining his own personal journey to faith. The two biggest considerations for him are psychophysical harmony and cosmological...
Goff isn't trying to make a case for theism in this paper, more explaining his own personal journey to faith. The two biggest considerations for him are psychophysical harmony and cosmological fine-tuning, which he develops in detail elsewhere.
Honestly, basically just gibberish as far as I can tell. I would characterize it as an appeal to incredulity more than anything else. One of the weaker arguments out there -- we only observe this...
psychophysical harmony
Honestly, basically just gibberish as far as I can tell. I would characterize it as an appeal to incredulity more than anything else.
cosmological fine-tuning
One of the weaker arguments out there -- we only observe this universe because it is observable. This doesn't preclude the existence of universes that are not compatible with observers.
I don't see how either of these on their own or in combination could ever lead a rational thinker to believing specifically in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There's some motivated reasoning going on there.
Yeah it all actually just reads to me as him presupposing for himself that a belief leads to happiness and other positive things (church communities, etc) and wanting those and just back-filling...
Yeah it all actually just reads to me as him presupposing for himself that a belief leads to happiness and other positive things (church communities, etc) and wanting those and just back-filling whatever he thinks he needs to achieve that. It all just seems like typical apologetics/rationalization nonsense
So psychophysical harmony is an issue that probably won't be a popular argument online, as it take a fair bit of background in philosophy of mind to really get. The paper is probably worth a read...
So psychophysical harmony is an issue that probably won't be a popular argument online, as it take a fair bit of background in philosophy of mind to really get. The paper is probably worth a read though [1].
One of the weaker arguments out there -- we only observe this universe because it is observable.
Cards on the table; I am an agnostic. I'll try to steelman the argument best I can. I just don't think anthropic reasoning really affects Bayesian forms of the argument, as we are concerned with epistemic probability in these cases which leaves something to be explained (e.g. John Leslie's firing squad [2]).
Leslie's firing squad bears a strong resemblance to Hoyle's junkyard tornado, irreducible complexity, and other variations of intelligent design, and the same criticisms apply. In short, all these...
In short, all these arguments make a number of unfounded assumptions about the independence of events and number of trials, but then try to apply high school level statistical calculations to get to a predetermined conclusion.
I would say, philosophers should stay clear of statistical arguments without a firmer grounding in mathematics.
It doesn't seem similar at all to these cases. Either way, the point is the same that it has no bearing on the Bayesian forms of the argument.
Leslie's firing squad bears a strong resemblance to Hoyle's junkyard tornado, irreducible complexity, and other variations of intelligent design, and the same criticisms apply.
It doesn't seem similar at all to these cases. Either way, the point is the same that it has no bearing on the Bayesian forms of the argument.
Doesn't it? Because I think they are all basically the same argument, as I just explained in my comment. And what do you mean when you say it has no bearing on the Bayesian form of the argument?
Doesn't it? Because I think they are all basically the same argument, as I just explained in my comment. And what do you mean when you say it has no bearing on the Bayesian form of the argument?
So intelligent design, irreducible complexity, and the "junkyard tornado" push a pseudoscientific view that the complexity of organisms couldn't arise from chance. But we understand in detail the...
So intelligent design, irreducible complexity, and the "junkyard tornado" push a pseudoscientific view that the complexity of organisms couldn't arise from chance. But we understand in detail the very mechanism from which complexity arises in organisms. It just seems completely unrelated to the existing discussion.
The fine tuning argument is the same thing -- instead of 2000 enzymes, or the DNA to create the components of a bacterial flagellum, or some other physical system appearing ex nihilo, we choose...
The fine tuning argument is the same thing -- instead of 2000 enzymes, or the DNA to create the components of a bacterial flagellum, or some other physical system appearing ex nihilo, we choose some other set of purportedly unlikely events -- in the most common formulation, six dimensionless physical constants. As with the other examples, there are two primary assumptions:
So the argument says nothing about the intrinsic likelihood of us getting any particular value. And I think we can look at specific constants such as the cosmological constant on its own. We don't...
As with the other examples, there are two primary assumptions:
we can assign probabilities to these properties and that they are independently and identically distributed
we can naively multiply these numbers together to prove the likelihood of some event occurring
So the argument says nothing about the intrinsic likelihood of us getting any particular value. And I think we can look at specific constants such as the cosmological constant on its own.
we have no real reason to believe that these physical constants are in fact independent of each other
We don't have to assume this to make the argument work.
we have no idea how many universes exist with different physical constants
We have evidence for the existence of exactly one universe.
This seems like the real point. The statistics you can do with only one sample are very limited, and heavily depend on the model you choose. By choosing various models you can come up with just...
We have evidence for the existence of exactly one universe.
This seems like the real point. The statistics you can do with only one sample are very limited, and heavily depend on the model you choose. By choosing various models you can come up with just about any result you want. Therefore any statistical argument in this domain has to be very weak. (or strongly prove a weak result, I suppose)
I'd also suggest that, by considering likelihood of different values, you're implicitly presupposing that multiple different values could be valid. You can interpret this as some space of hypothetical universes in your statistical model, and you're asking about the likelihood of sampling our universe from that "multiverse".
If you reject that, and say only the one value we see is valid, then we know its likelihood - 1 - but I don't think that's a useful model for this discussion. The creationist might like it, though.
Yeah, we have no idea what the likelihood is from a intrinsic or frequentist notion, this is why such variants of the argument fail. The better forms of the argument argue from epistemic...
Yeah, we have no idea what the likelihood is from a intrinsic or frequentist notion, this is why such variants of the argument fail. The better forms of the argument argue from epistemic probability, rather than these other notions for which we just don't have enough data.
There's a whole field dedicated to evaluating epistemic probability in cases where we don't have access to intrinsic or frequentist accounts of the likelihood of an event: Bayesian statistics. It's used all over the place from finance to medicine, and it's the kind of probability under consideration in Bayesian formulations of the fine-tuning argument.
To apply Bayes you still need a model; you can approximate it, but that requires multiple samples. So to apply it in this domain you have to make an assumption. In doing so, you have the freedom...
To apply Bayes you still need a model; you can approximate it, but that requires multiple samples. So to apply it in this domain you have to make an assumption. In doing so, you have the freedom to obtain any result you want.
If you have multiple samples then you can use Bayes to make some assertions about which models could possibly be valid, and you can actually prove results independent of assumptions. But we don't, so we can't.
AFAIK the strongest claim we can make, even with Bayes, is: the universe which we I observe does could exist. (edit: ie. the observation supports the model). We don't really need Bayes to help us figure that out, though.
There may certainly be other statements you can prove I'm not aware of, but I expect them to be similarly vague. Anything stronger must presuppose a model about the distribution of universes in some multiverse which doesn't necessarily have bearing on our reality.
So generally what is done is throw the law structures in the background and ask what the likelihood of the constants resulting in life-permitting universes is. Multiple samples would be something...
To apply Bayes you still need a model; you can approximate it, but that requires multiple samples. So to apply it in this domain you have to make an assumption. In doing so, you have the freedom to obtain any result you want.
So generally what is done is throw the law structures in the background and ask what the likelihood of the constants resulting in life-permitting universes is. Multiple samples would be something necessary for frequentist, rather than Bayesian, accounts of likelihood.
AFAIK the strongest claim we can make, even with Bayes, is: the universe which we I observe does could exist. We don't really need Bayes to help us figure that out, though.
The strongest claim one could make is, all things being equal, the constants falling in the life-permitting range is better predicted by theism than naturalism.
There may certainly be other statements you can prove I'm not aware of, but I expect them to be similarly vague. Anything stronger must presuppose a model about the distribution of universes in some multiverse which doesn't necessarily have bearing on our reality.
Since we are talking about epistemic probability and Bayesian statistics, we don't need to know the actual intrinsic probability distribution.
It seems clear you have some reference in mind that I'm not aware of. Could you point me toward the argument you're referring to here? It would be helpful to me to see how exactly Bayes' is...
The strongest claim one could make is, all things being equal, the constants falling in the life-permitting range is better predicted by theism than naturalism.
It seems clear you have some reference in mind that I'm not aware of. Could you point me toward the argument you're referring to here? It would be helpful to me to see how exactly Bayes' is applied in the argument and what assumptions the argument may or may not make.
I don't see how this could possibly be true without making unfounded assumptions about how assuming naturalism or theology change the distribution.
Since we are talking about epistemic probability and Bayesian statistics, we don't need to know the actual intrinsic probability distribution.
You don't need to assume the full distribution, but you do need some information about it via the other terms in Bayes' formula. In practice you'd take measurements to empirically approximate those other terms, and that's the real power of Bayesian statistics. But we can't do that in this domain, which is why I say any statistical argument here must be weak (or take unfounded/unfalsifiable assumptions, or prove a weak result).
What information are we missing? Everything plugs into Bayes theorem nicely. Measurements for what? Priors? The likelihood of outcomes on the different hypotheses? This argument doesn't tell you...
You don't need to assume the full distribution, but you do need some information about it via the other terms in Bayes' formula.
What information are we missing? Everything plugs into Bayes theorem nicely.
In practice you'd take measurements to empirically approximate those other terms, and that's the real power of Bayesian statistics.
Measurements for what? Priors? The likelihood of outcomes on the different hypotheses? This argument doesn't tell you what priors to plug in. You can mod this argument just to calculate a Bayes factor to tell you that some hypothesis is more likely given the evidence than another.
Could you point me toward the argument you're referring to here?
Thanks for the link! This clarifies a lot. So the objection I had with "empirically approximate those other terms" was to do with Barnes's Premise 7. Specifically Barnes says physics provides...
Thanks for the link! This clarifies a lot.
So the objection I had with "empirically approximate those other terms" was to do with Barnes's Premise 7. Specifically Barnes says physics provides p(α|LB) - I'm not sure that's true but I am no physicist so I'm out of my depth with regard to what's used in practice. I'll take the background information he provides at face value.
On pages 15 and 16 he gives a description on how physics does this in practice, and does list the kinds of assumptions on distributions that I expected.
For dimensional parameters, there is an upper limit on their value within the standard models. [...] [For example] The Planck mass represents an upper boundary to any single-particle mass scale in our current theories. [...] Within these finite ranges, the obvious prior probability distribution is flat between the limits, as other distributions need to introduce additional dimensionful parameters to be normalised.
These additional parameters would not be parameters of the model, though; they are strictly parameters of the probability distribution and thus the likelihoods. I don't think you can simply discard these when the argument hinges on the likelihoods.
For dimensionless numbers, we have a few cases. Some are phase angles, and so a flat prior over [0, 2π) is reasonable. Some, such as the Yukawa couplings, are connected to masses of particles and thus subject to the Planck scale upper limit. Others vary over an infinite range. But even in the case of a finite range, physicists do not usually postulate a flat prior. Rather, dimensionless parameters are expected a priori to be of order unity. [...] A number of heuristic (read: hand-waving) justifications of this expectation are referenced in Barnes (2018). [...] As we will see below, this is sufficient for the upper-limit estimates
we need.
More assumptions on the distribution. For Physics, reasonable ones, but for this argument I don't think you can disregard them entirely.
My issue with both these points is it holds L fixed. Barnes always takes L as a given in his probabilities. For physics, this is fine, since we're only interested in refining our approximation of our universe's L.
The bounds on α are derived from L, so the arguments on assuming distributions fall apart if you let L vary. Then the bounds vary, and you have no "natural" values or distributions for the free parameters. You can't compute p(α|LB) and the concrete argument falls apart. It's worse if you also consider L with radically different parameterizations (ie if α has high or infinite dimension).
So implicitly, one of the premises of Barnes's argument is that no other L could give rise to life. I disagree.
Now, with that said, I don't think this changes the specific conclusion of Barnes argument that p(U|LNB) << p(U|LGB). Even if you let L vary - especially if you let L vary - p(U|NB) <<< p(U|GB). This seems true by construction; there's an assumption that G has some intent to create life, so of course p(U|GB) is relatively high.
[1] For two theories T1 and T2, in the context of background information B, if
it is true of evidence E that p(E|T1 B) >> p(E|T2 B), then E strongly favours
T1 over T2.
[2] The likelihood that a life-permitting universe exists on naturalism is van-
ishingly small.
[3] The likelihood that a life-permitting universe exists on theism is not van-
ishingly small.
[4] Thus, the existence of a life-permitting universe strongly favours theism
over naturalism.
(Page 6)
The last leap in the argument seems to be that p(U|LNB) << p(U|LGB) implies p(N|ULB) << p(G|ULB). This doesn't follow.
If Barnes is allowed to claim:
I contend that there are not, in fact, ∼ 10^136 possible reasons for God to create that have comparable plausibility to that of a life-permitting universe.
(Page 22)
Then I think I can also claim: N supports many many more universes - life-permitting or not - than G does. Especially so if you allow L to vary or allow α to take higher and higher dimension. p(G|LB) << p(N|LB).
If God is infinite then of course this falls apart; but then I can claim various infinities under N and we're at the same point. (Also worth pointing out a truly infinite God could easily have 10^136 better reasons to create, so then p(U|GLB) isn't necessarily high.)
So to apply the Bayesian flip and make that final leap in the argument, there's an undecidable question: How does p(U|LNB)p(N|LB) relate to p(U|LGB)p(G|LB)? Remember we have p(U|LNB) << p(U|LGB) and also p(N|LB) >> p(G|LB).
All and all I don't find the statistical approach particularly compelling either way.
I think Barnes missed the point with his response to the multiverse objection (Page 24). Yes, the measure problem means you can't calculate certain ratios, but it's a non-issue if you assume that the multiverse exists. It's a set. Set membership is not contingent on the likelihood of set membership. Probability distributions on that set don't even need to exist.
But this seems totally unfounded. We have no reason to think that anything about the laws of physics even could vary; they could simply be a brute fact. And even if they could vary, we have no...
So generally what is done is throw the law structures in the background and ask what the likelihood of the constants resulting in life-permitting universes is.
But this seems totally unfounded. We have no reason to think that anything about the laws of physics even could vary; they could simply be a brute fact. And even if they could vary, we have no particular reason to believe that any particular subset of the constants could vary, or even indeed that any constants could vary: maybe the laws themselves could vary, say, within some space of differential equations. Why choose one model over another?
It may turn out that everything happens necessarily. The laws, the constants, even me typing this sentence out. It turns out the necessitarian view is well accommodated by Bayesian reasoning. We...
We have no reason to think that anything about the laws of physics even could vary; they could simply be a brute fact.
It may turn out that everything happens necessarily. The laws, the constants, even me typing this sentence out. It turns out the necessitarian view is well accommodated by Bayesian reasoning.
We aren't asking what constants are most likely if you turned back the clock and ran it again; we ask which hypothesis better predicts the evidence of fine-tuning.
To motivate this view, imagine I gave you a coin. What are the chances it lands on heads? Well, from both a frequentist and epistemic account, 50%. Now imagine I tell you that it's not a fair coin; it's weighted on one side such that it's guaranteed to always land on the same side, but suppose I don't tell you which side it's weighted on. Now, you have no idea what the frequentist probability of it landing on heads: might be 100% might be 0%. However, the epistemic possibility of it landing on heads is 50%.
The argument is that each of these constants land in particular ranges, which if they were otherwise, would not support life. Then, due to the fact that there are multiple constants and the fact...
So the argument says nothing about the intrinsic likelihood of us getting any particular value.
The argument is that each of these constants land in particular ranges, which if they were otherwise, would not support life. Then, due to the fact that there are multiple constants and the fact that all these individually unlikely events all occurred jointly, it is unlikely to have been random chance.
And I think we can look at specific constants such as the cosmological constant on its own.
Because we don't know how it is calculated, it is arbitrary? Or, what is the justification for this position?
we have no real reason to believe that these physical constants are in fact independent of each other
We don't have to assume this to make the argument work.
This is the central premise of the argument. If one of the constants is correlated with another, then the second constant's value contributes less information about the joint distribution. If one of the constants is a direct function of another, then it contributes exactly no information. If all these constants are dependent, then the argument falls apart entirely -- it wouldn't matter if there were a million constants or just one.
We have evidence for the existence of exactly one universe.
I would say that the argument itself implicitly smuggles in the idea of multiple universes by supposing that there are alternatives to the constants in the first place.
So the only note I'd have here is we could just pick out one and have a good argument, assuming you don't engineer all the rest to somehow keep the universe life-permitting. You could just throw...
The argument is that each of these constants land in particular ranges, which if they were otherwise, would not support life. Then, due to the fact that there are multiple constants and the fact that all these individually unlikely events all occurred jointly, it is unlikely to have been random chance.
So the only note I'd have here is we could just pick out one and have a good argument, assuming you don't engineer all the rest to somehow keep the universe life-permitting. You could just throw those in the background data.
Because we don't know how it is calculated, it is arbitrary? Or, what is the justification for this position?
So this point isn't generally controversial. If, say, the cosmological constant was smaller, the universe would collapse in on itself. If it was much larger, the universe would be filled with only hydrogen, and each hydrogen atom would be light-years away from the others.
This is the central premise of the argument. If one of the constants is correlated with another, then the second constant's value contributes less information about the joint distribution. If one of the constants is a direct function of another, then it contributes exactly no information. If all these constants are dependent, then the argument falls apart entirely -- it wouldn't matter if there were a million constants or just one.
I'm a little less familiar with the whole cumulative case; the cosmology and physics is quite complex, so I personally really only know about the cosmological constant, which is enough to motivate the argument.
I would say that the argument itself implicitly smuggles in the idea of multiple universes by supposing that there are alternatives to the constants in the first place.
The Bayesian argument is merely saying that cosmological fine-tuning is more expected on theism than naturalism. This isn't making any claims about any other universes or something.
Following the link in that quote in that quote, and then the link in the linked page, I don't think it's quite gibberish but I'd never heard it expressed in those terms. The hard problem is a real...
psychophysical harmony
Honestly, basically just gibberish as far as I can tell.
Following the link in that quote in that quote, and then the link in the linked page, I don't think it's quite gibberish but I'd never heard it expressed in those terms. I don't personally find much value in that phrase, I'd rather the author just called it what it seems to be: the hard problem of consciousness.
The hard problem is a real problem, and it is hard; but it is not proof of the supernatural and it is not disproof of the physical. How the author uses it, I'd call it an appeal to ignorance rather than an appeal to incredulity. That's probably splitting hairs. The point is the same, the argument as a whole seems weak to me.
E: Reading more, it doesn't seem to be directly about the hard problem of consciousness.
The harmony in question is the general aligment of subjective experience (psycho) with physcial stimulus/response. The example both articles discuss is pain and pleasure responses; the qualia of a pain response is unpleasant and leads to avoidance behavior; the qualia of a pleasure response is pleasant and leads to seeking behavior.
I really don't understand this argument. It seems totally and completely answered by natural selection (notwithstanding the hard problem, anyway).
The reason I am no longer a Christian is because I finally realized that the evidence that I used to believe without question does not stand up to being questioned. Fine tuning is a silly...
The reason I am no longer a Christian is because I finally realized that the evidence that I used to believe without question does not stand up to being questioned.
Fine tuning is a silly argument. The conditions for our form of life exist, therefore it's not surprising that our form of life can exist. The fact that it does is not proof of something non-natural.
Finally, I will believe in a god when I have good evidence of it. Until then, wishful thinking and a desire for community are not enough of a reason to believe in it.
I understand this viewpoint. I went through an angry new atheist phase, and thought that all arguments for God were terrible. It was after spending some time reading the literature really raised...
I understand this viewpoint.
I went through an angry new atheist phase, and thought that all arguments for God were terrible. It was after spending some time reading the literature really raised my credence in many of the arguments. I'm still an agnostic though.
Fine tuning is a silly argument. The conditions for our form of life exist, therefore it's not surprising that our form of life can exist. The fact that it does is not proof of something non-natural.
I think it's a better argument than many think. They usually have heard some really poor version of the argument.
Finally, I will believe in a god when I have good evidence of it.
Same. Though I try to stay aware of my capacity for self-deception and subconsciously dismissing evidence when I disagree with the conclusion it points to.
Fine tuning is basically "it is what it is", it's defining the word by using the word in its own definition. It's not really a good argument. It's also only looking on the bright side. What about...
Fine tuning is basically "it is what it is", it's defining the word by using the word in its own definition. It's not really a good argument.
It's also only looking on the bright side. What about all the "bad" stuff that happens because of convenient universal constants? Does that prove the existence of an evil universal architect?
Modern arguments ask a pretty common question asked all the time in Bayesian statistics: what was the likelihood that we got the particular result we got, given a few hypotheses? This is called...
Fine tuning is basically "it is what it is", it's defining the word by using the word in its own definition. It's not really a good argument.
Modern arguments ask a pretty common question asked all the time in Bayesian statistics: what was the likelihood that we got the particular result we got, given a few hypotheses?
It's also only looking on the bright side. What about all the "bad" stuff that happens because of convenient universal constants? Does that prove the existence of an evil universal architect?
This is called "the problem of evil" lol, which is something that leads Goff to think God can't be all powerful.
Belief and Evidence are inherently contradictory. I only believe in things I have no strong evidence for their existence. If God allowed for clear evidence of his existence, them all humans would...
I will believe in a god when I have good evidence of it
Belief and Evidence are inherently contradictory. I only believe in things I have no strong evidence for their existence. If God allowed for clear evidence of his existence, them all humans would have no choice but to believe in him.
I will now speak from an Islamic perspective:
If God wanted that all humans believe in him, he would've easily forced them to believe, but he doesn't want so. God doesn't want those who have chosen the path of evil to find their way to heaven. God only guides whoever he pleases, and whoever wants to be guided.
God made this world the way it is for the wheat to separate itself frol the chaff willingly, and sent prophets and messengers to guide those with good on their hearts.
Thanks for sharing this! Goff’s view isn’t too wildly far from something like Open Theism (God intentionally limits Godself to provide more potential for genuine relationship, ish). I’m a full...
Thanks for sharing this! Goff’s view isn’t too wildly far from something like Open Theism (God intentionally limits Godself to provide more potential for genuine relationship, ish). I’m a full bodily resurrection believer, so that’s probably the biggest sticking point. That said, I appreciate his framework for why choosing to believe isn’t ludicrous, and certainly agree with how revolutionary the teaching of Yeshua is.
He mentions in his interview on Capturing Christianity that Max Baker-Hytch finds Goff's view as something of a "backup" for theists if they are struggling with the problem of evil, which I found...
He mentions in his interview on Capturing Christianity that Max Baker-Hytch finds Goff's view as something of a "backup" for theists if they are struggling with the problem of evil, which I found quite interesting.
… Such an oddly uplifting article. Lots of food for thought.
My intellectual hero William James argued that, in situations of uncertainty, when the truth is of monumental importance, it can be rational to choose to believe. He gives the analogy of being stuck in the mountains with the only way of escaping being to leap across an enormous chasm between two precipices. Intellectually speaking, it is uncertain whether or not you can make it. But if you choose to believe you will make it, you raise the chances that you will succeed.
…
Faith is not about certainty. It is fundamentally a decision to trust your spiritual experiences, and to trust a certain framework for interpreting and acting upon those experiences.
Such an oddly uplifting article. Lots of food for thought.
So that link to psycho physical harmony doesn't even link to a page about wtf that shit even is. So...I am gonna go with this has a lot of fancy lookin' words, but there's nothing really being...
So that link to psycho physical harmony doesn't even link to a page about wtf that shit even is. So...I am gonna go with this has a lot of fancy lookin' words, but there's nothing really being said.
Maybe this guy needs to go searching for the eye of the universe.
Well the author, like anyone, is free to believe in whatever helps them make sense of the world.
Having said that, the standard "fine tuning" fallacy and the way they go on to talk about God as something completely different to what is understood when discussing God only to then swing back around to Christianity are weak arguments and reasoning.
When we talk about God we talk about something sentient with direct actual massive power, if we abstract it to quantum fluctuations and "everything" and "the universe is god" then we are having a completely different conversation.
And fair enough you think that's what God is for you and are immediately separating yourself from all laymen discussions of "is there a God" and opinions on morality based on its existence. But do not turn around and say "and this version is totes magotes compatible with Eastern Orthodox Christianity" because it just flat out isn't.
EO Christianity is not talking about some limited God or an Everything or whatever. It talks about a very real very powerful very opinionated God who absolutely is Something and not Everything, who has rules and wishes and the whole shebang. The author is taking small a dogmatic difference between Christian sects and trying to shoehorn his personal beliefs in the existent EO structure which is just incompatible with them.
Quite so, quite so. The author is free of course but yes, you're completely right that he's talking about something entirely different from EO God. Heck even regular old Protestant or Catholic God.
This kind of small g god is indistinguishable from an alien child with advance tech, or me and my poorly optimised fish tank. Definitely not the Eastern Orthodox God. First line of our creed:
All things invisible include the entire physics engine. It's a much bigger and much less comfortable God who does see the injustice and the suffering, who can do something about it, and is choosing not to do the things you think should be done.
I don't....quite understand the people who are okay with a limited god. If they're going for some kind of cosmic comfort away from atheism, isn't it much more comforting to believe in an entity we can't comprehend rather than one we can?
When my child was a toddler I took them to their vaccines. From their perspective, I am either someone who permits suffering because I am helpless to stop it, or someone who intends suffering because the suffering archives a greater good to the child. Who is the more empowered parent who can be better relied on for optimised outcome?
Edit:
After some thought though, good on the author for finding what he needs. In the end it's going to matter very very very little whose dogma is correct and if we knew or believed in the right things. It's going to come down to if we were kind to those who are hungry and cold and in need. If his faith isn't rational or 100% provable it doesn't matter : that he is captivated by the person and beliefs and works of Yeshua, and for him to emulate Yeshua's works in daily life is the far more important point. If being happier and more kind to others and wanting to mark the seasons bring him to the doors of the Church, if only so as to be better enabled to be happy and kind and observe the seasons better, then that's far better than having all the theology worked out by a long cosmic mile. One Christian is no Christian: even if he believes in some heresy right now, that's okay, he'll do better in a community professing a creed he doesn't hold than if he had all the answers alone in his bedroom.
What is the distinction between the two? Without dogma, a god outside of any organized religion seems to be incomprehensible by definition.
I don't know about other organised religions, but the Christian God is dogmatically incomprehensible: we know some things that are revealed, but we know of nothing that hasn't yet been revealed. Or, the Christian God is supposed to be incomprehensible: but the TULIP people force a limited, hand wringing version that they think is comprehensible and hence better. There's a big difference between saying things like "God has chosen to do x" vs "God had no other choice but to do x". It requires a very strong, unsubstantiated claim to say anyone had no choice but to do x, whereas the first is mere observation.
I think that's where the author went: his god had no choice but to do physics okay stage before stage 2, which requires a lot of assumptions. It is safer to say "we don't know why this was done the way God chose to do it in, but we remember this was done and our faith simply observes/commemorate that it was done."
That's fair. FWIW, I'm in the camp of "There might be a divine watchmaker, but I have no reason to believe that any organized religion has actually figured it who or what that is."
:) I saw cut out the middleman altogether and go straight to worshipping the divine watchmaker's maker, whoever that turns out to be.
Well, before the Magratheans were commissioned by mice to construct the Earth, I suppose there were no humans to ponder the origins of the Universe, but it's creation has nonetheless made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
While many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, it's worth mentioning that the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle 6 firmly believe that the entire Universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. Thus, they live in perpetual fear of a time they call "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief." However, this theory is not widely accepted outside of Viltvodle 6.
:) ahh, it's been years. Splendid.
Off topic, I found the text based adventure game a little while ago, and always meant to re-read while playing. Your comment gave another little nudge
I must say, the biggest bamboozle in any game I have ever played was failing to give that cheese sandwich to the dog.
The books are great fun but if you're not up for a read and have not heard the original radio series (eps. 1-12), it's what I grew up with and I highly recommend it!
PS: Sorry everyone for going a bit off-topic!
Honestly, no discussion of religion on an internet forum is complete without mentioning adams and dick.
Why do you think TULIP concludes that an infinite God is full comprehended? In no reformed or Calvinist writings do I gather that.
This is from my upbringing and going to Protestant theology school, but basically god super loves (Unconditional election) some of us (Limited atonement), but we're all so awful (Total depravity) that his hands are tied and there's no other way than to use his own son as propituarty sacrifice to satisfy his own wrath. Meaning, he can't satisfy his own wrath, and he can't just write off a debt, it must be paid by someone.
Elsewhere in this thread I've expressed my opinion that the ways of God are mysterious and beyond my comprehension; could this be how it's done? Maybe. But it seems wrong to me, to say yes we definitely understand god and TULIP is how he must operate and we must accept that is the only way it could work to reconcile God's love, sovereignty and justice.
I much prefer the model that mankind is a beloved, injured child, and the God who can raise the dead is working to heal us, and in that process, with our participation, turn us into little Gods.
Something that's always struck me about suppositions of a triply omni God (that is, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent specifically–omnipresent is simply consequent to the first and third) is how limited it truly is. Such a God is limited to only doing good. You could say that context can determine whether a particular event is "good," and that from a perfect perspective, everything aligns correctly (a la your vaccine example), but what then of omnipotence? That 3-omni God is then limited in His ability to make the inherent goodness of all things appreciable in any frame of reference. We know empirically that some things actually are observable to have the same quality in all reference frames–the speed of massless particles, for example. So why can a 3-omni God create light that goes the same speed in a vacuum in all frames of reference, but he can't create a similarly relative moral fabric of the universe?
I think this gets to why someone would find accepting a limited deity a necessity: empirical evidence seems to logically contradict a Deity possessing all three omnis at once, and while a true zealot might be able to stifle the cognitive dissonance persisting to believe in such a Deity would cause, others can't abide it. So they set arbitrary limits to what a Deity can be and do, simply to arrive at a theological structure that isn't immediately contradicted by experience.
Just my two cents.
What if the speed of a massless particle being constant is a local event? What if every observable fact in our observable universe only works out like this under these specific equations or starting cosntants? "Different fundamental equations of physics" (level II) kind of multiverse or "same fundamental equations of physics but different constants, particles and dimensionalities" (level III) as described by max Tagmark, might make statements like "but our universe always works like this" meaningless.
I don't understand anything like remotely enough of all this, for sure. So perhaps the 3-omni god can only work for folks who haven't thought it through enough. :) you weren't being dismissive at all, and I am also not saying every believer hasn't thought it out, but out of all the possibilities, my ignorance is the variable that seems the most likely to me in my own faith.
Actually, the same author talked about the fine tuning thing vs the 3-omni god in his other essay, and that's how he bridged his atheism -- he abandoned the 3-omni and reconciled the evidence for a fine tuned universe.
Something that's made me quite happy in all these thoughts and debates is that nearly all of the time we have differences in beliefs because we all want a kinder and nicer universe. Whether we ultimate abandon god because how could he put parasites in a child's eye, or reduce god to well-meaning helplessness, or embrace the cognitive dissonance, we all started with the premise that Goodness ought to exist and to persist. When we're presented with so much evidence that evil exists, here we all are, all holding the unshakable faith that the universe ought to be good.
Not all of us have the mental capacity to reason things out, and very few of us can push the boundaries of physics, but nearly each one of us can choose to wish good upon another, and most of us can choose to do good every day. And that's extraordinary.
I want to push back against this a little. The supposition that things might work differently in other universes doesn't change what we perceive in ours. Luminal relativism might not be a thing in any number of Max Tegmark's universes, but we definitely observe it here. That implies that whatever other experiments might be running in a wider multiverse, we know it's possible for a universe to exist in which some things possess the same qualities in every frame of reference.
Supposing again an omnibenevolent Deity, why is it then that we here in this universe perceive evil? If all things turn eventually to good, and thus despite appearances are ultimately good, why don't we perceive them as such without appeals to context or ineffability? We see that some things can have the same qualities in every context or frame of reference, and surely something that is both good and can be appreciated as such in every context is more good than something that can only be appreciated as good with perfect context.
This implies a few things: either that a Creator exists that is capable of creating a universe in which all things are good and can be appreciated as such in every context, but has chosen not to (and is therefore not omnibenevolent); that a Creator exists that is not capable of creating a universe in which all things are both good and appreciable as such in every context (and is therefore not omnipotent); or that there is no Creator. All of these possibilities render the premise of a triply omni God logically inconsistent, so strongly support the hypothesis that any God that might exist is somehow limited.
Usually when I mention this subjective sub-problem in the Problem of Evil, the answer from the faithful is "God doesn't need to be limited to logical consistency," which is – unsatisfying, to put it mildly. It turns any discussion of the divine into pointless navel-gazing.
It just seems so unnecessary, when all these logical inconsistencies are resolved simply by dropping the insistence on one of the three omnis, and omnibenevolence seems the most likely to me, considering our empirical observations. That it isn't dropped as inconsistent seems to me to be a matter of aesthetics; we simply prefer the notion of an omnibenevolent Deity, despite evidence to the contrary. For some, it's the primary appeal of positing a Creator at all.
Which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that purposely closing one's mind to logic beyond a certain point in the contemplation of the divine has led to so many awful things–dare I say, evil things. We see that now, as a certain segment of Christians claim to embrace a God that can on the one hand love everyone, but on the other, hate people who dress unconventionally or who are sexually attracted to the wrong sort of person. They either see the contradiction and suppress the thought of it, or they've been primed not to consider it at all.
You might say that this is a different thing altogether, but I really can't see how it is. A harmless and well-meaning rejection of logical validity is not substantially different than a pernicious and hateful rejection. It's merely the inoffensive side of the coin.
In a universe where light exists, and one where we only see anything at all when there are photons, we can still perceive the absence of light. evil doesn't exist by itself, it is a failure of love, an absence where we somehow instincutally feel there should be. Animals are not much bothered by evils of predation and cannibalism: they survive and reproduce. Some animals mourn, but they are in the minority. That nearly every human mourn evil and lament lack of justice is a very very odd thing in a universe where we have always had cunning deception and violence, since the time we must have been simple single cell organisms.
Organisms with simple eyes don't conclude a fuzzy dim universe. That bacterium cannot understand a computer doesn't make the invention impossible. The galaxies have existed long before we had telescopes to view them with. The language used in the Bible is more akin to your first probability: we can, but not yet.
"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known."
As for the follow up, why didn't God create beings fully formed in clarity who can discern perfect goodness - He did. They're called angles and demons.
Then the follow up: why create additional beings capable of growth. God is doing something contradictory with humanity: God wants to make created beings become what He is by nature. God's always doing things that make no sense like that though. How can the hands of a creature slap the creator, any more than Iago can strike Shakespeare? How can the person whose dimensions cannot be circumscribed fit inside of a womb, making the woman "more spacious than the heavens"? How can the most ancient being be the great great etc grandson of a man who lived in died in one spot of space time?
It's unsatisfying to say, oh it's all a mystery. And I do think there is value in pushing for answers where we can find any. But I also think it's better to have real uncertainties for some things rather than false certainties. The evils you pointed out happen when evil men become certain of their false certainties, and are willing to commit evil in the name of their local temporal truth.
It isn't cowardly to say I don't know. It's cowardly to say I'll kill you for thinking I might be wrong.
Again though, we're arguing about different things. We're supposing an omnipotent Creator who made everything, including the possibility of an absence of something. If with Him all things are possible, then the possibility of an absence of good must be a choice. We think that to knowingly allow a bad thing to happen is itself a bad thing–except, it seems, when it comes to God.
How can that be anything but a post-hoc rationalization for the aesthetic preference for an all-loving/omnibenevolent source of being? Doesn't it make more sense to acknowledge that that's how we wish things were, but that the evidence of experience doesn't really support it?
I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I don't have a counter that makes any logical sense to me or you.
Edit: [Other words redacted]
Cambridge Orthodox forum's Lecture
It's an old topic and I apologize for not having better words to add
You really don't need to apologize. I wasn't actually expecting you to come up with a solution for the Problem of Evil. I just think it's worth contemplating.
Such things are the substance of doubt, and if you never confront that, can you really be said to be faithful?
:) I liked having this conversation with you
It's an ancient problem for sure, and I liked what Frost's conclusion was from the book of Job - it's finally an encounter that answers all doubts, not reason. From personal experience, when I'm suffering and feel lack of control, I don't respond to reason half so well as I respond to being in the presence of someone I trust and is reassuring. I don't think faith ultimately comes down to ignoring reason: I think it ultimately comes down to a relationship. It's the core of those beautiful bromance films when your buddy calls you up and says shits going down, they've been framed and you have every evidence to believe the bad guys, and no reason to trust bro at all, except you know and love the guy.
And then as an aside, my family was watching a Kurzgesagt video on extreme conditions for life. It used to be that we only found life under conditions ABC, so we concluded all available evidence points to this is how life must work, hence there cannot be life where the conditions ABC aren't met. Then we found other examples where D also enables life, so we said okay life ABC and D but nowhere else. Then E. Then F. Etc. I don't like God in the gaps, but even a broken clock is right twice: it's true we really don't know everything yet. I don't feel happy with "this is how God must work" any more than "this is how the universe works" based on everything we know today. It's not wrong to make hypothesis from what we do know, but it feels wrong to draw definite conclusions, and to dismiss or even hurt other people when we could learn more later. Eg, it's fine if your hypothesis is that the earth is flat or dinosaurs are a trick. Maybe it's even okay (albeit less good) to conclude folks who didnt come to the same conclusion using the available evidence did their morality/reasoning maths wrong. But it's definitely not okay to throw folks in jail or bar them from office [1] or kill them because they looked at the evidence and their hypothesis is something else.
Which circles back to an earlier point: it's far more important to be kind than to be right. Advanced intelligence or rationality doesn't automatically make a good man. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."
1 - kinda not ....I don't know, I have my own biases about people with certain beliefs holding office, especially posts that have to do with science or education or health or economics or...... .... Okay maybe we bar them from office. Sorry. Sort of like how in the OE Church it's not a sin to personally hold heretical beliefs (talk to your priest), but it is not permissible for someone in an ordained position to teach said heretical beliefs
I studied rhetoric in school, which I believe we've talked about before. In the traditional formulation, rhetoric consists of three parts: logos, or logic, ethos, or the character of the people in the dialogue, and pathos, or the emotional content of the rhetoric. That's Aristotle's formulation of it.
I had a great teacher of rhetoric during my time at college who I eventually discovered was an Evangelical Christian (it was not apparent to me until he outright declared it one day, which I think says something). He marked a distinction between "logic" and "reason:"
Logic, he said, is only concerned with validity and soundness, and can thus reach conclusions that are utterly unreasonable. For instance, if a society recognizes a lot of problems being caused by a certain group of people, it's entirely logically valid to solve those problems by eliminating that group of people. That approach maps perfectly to the traditional syllogism (which is to say that the logic of such a Final Solution is valid, though not necessarily sound, but we'll ignore that caveat for the sake of argument). That solution, though logically valid, is not reasonable, precisely because it ignores the ethos and pathos aspects of good argumentation.
But crucially, he argued that reason's demands work the other way, too. It's no more reasonable to ignore logical problems in favor of pathetic or ethical arguments than it is to ignore ethics and feeling in favor of logic. I don't know how he squared that with his faith, which I think likely had some of the same logical problems we've been discussing, but I suspect he settled on something like the following.
I think the important thing is that this tension is recognized and considered. Similarly to how a person can't help but be a product of their milieu, and thus will have internalized some aspects of racialism–in a sense, can't help but be racist to a degree–it's essential to recognize that their behavior and patterns of thinking have been influenced by racism, and actively take steps to consider whether their assumptions are sound and their thinking clear. I think religious thought should follow a similar tack: recognition of logical contradictions should never be stifled, because they're telling you that your conceptions are incomplete, and likely always will be. It may not make one's faith any more logical, but perhaps it can act as a check on some of the more pernicious possible conclusions that can be reached through faith, and maybe even lead to improvements in your understanding of the Ineffable.
I think most people drawn to these sorts of musings find a point at which they go, "good enough," and then never consider it any further. If faith is important to you–as it really isn't to me, except in the abstract as a cognitive toy–then you should dwell in these things without end, because this is exactly the point where faith resides.
Man, Christianity really overcomplicated all its aspects of faith.
The more I read and hear about Christianity, and the more I engage in religious debates centered around Christianity; the more I believe God really sent a messenger to clarify all this weirdness i.e. Islam.
I'll follow woth more of my Islamic perspective, which is predicated on faith in the truthiness of the Quran, i.e. I believe the Quran does contain words from God, and it hasn't been altered by Man. Arguing otherwise is a topic for another discussion.
As Muslims, we believe God created us to worship him Nothing more, nothing less. The word for Worshipper in Islam is synonym with Slave, thus, we are God's slaves, as all beings are, including angels and demons.
God does not claim that he will love everyone, or that he created us in his image or something. God didn't create the heavens and earth for fun or for everything to be nice and good. He also doesn't want that all humans on earth believe on him, if he willed so, he would've made them believe.
While God's mercy and benevolence could encompass everything, he only promised it to those who choose to believe on him, and as powerless, helpless slaves, we can only pray to God that he encompasses us with mercy and benevolence.
The word "Muslim" means someone who has surrendered. As Muslims, we surrender everything to God. We surrender out destiny, our will, and our everything to God. We slaves are not entitled to anything. We are not entitled to his love, or mercy, or forgiveness.
We pray to him that he forgive our sins, and that he grants us his mercy, fully believing that he is the Most Merciful, and Most Benevolent, but understand that we are not entitled to any of that.
There's nothing that makes this idea more more likely than God simply choosing to create our current world in the way it is for a purpose only he knows.
To keep the discussion focused, I'm only arguing from the Axiom of God being All-Wise and All-knowing. If I believe in God's absolutely wisdom, then it's easy for me to accept that the universe is like this for a reason.
That was the point I was getting at. The Problem of Evil only arises when you insist on an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good God all together. Drop any one of those, and the PoE is no longer a problem. I've always found it strange how tightly the faithful cling to all three premises, considering the logical consequences.
I've found yhat "Good" is unfortunately a loaded, and slightly subjective term. Depending on which definition one ascribes to the term.
Does good mean not letting any harm ever happen? Does it mean to give everyone equal amounts of wealth?
So yeah, you raised a great point, a particularly illuminating point that I never thought about.
In fact, I had quickly searched through the Quran right now and to my surprise, God never referred to as being "good".
God is referred to as being All just, merciful, wise, knowing, powerful, forgiver, exalted, etc etc etc; but never "The Good"
OK we're in "just shooting the shit" territory but this is very easily reconcilable with faith. God knows what's actually good in the grand scheme of things so everthing he does is good.
If you want to examine it further, the claim is that God knows what's overall best in the long run, aka The Divine Plan. This is a very very very common belief.
If you want to put it into less metaphysical terms it's like a human taking an action that affects animals with the purpose of conserving them. Say, culling some species so there's not a widespread ecosystem collapse ( I'm not a biologist, sorry). Man knows the goal, the plan, the steps AND the outcome. While the individual deer might not appreciate their partner getting shot, man by definition is doing good by following his plan.
I believe we are in full agreement here, I just decided that the term "Good" os too undefined for taste, and decided to use clearer terms such as "Just" and "Merciful".
To reiterate, our ideas of God seem to be in agreement.
The Problem of Evil has been recognized for thousands of years–pretty much from the moment an all-powerful, all-loving God was first proposed. It wouldn't surprise me if that was one of the major influences on why Islam developed as it did, considering how influential early Christianity was on the younger faith.
Really I think the issue is the interface between concepts of the absolute, infinite, and eternal and our bounded existence. It means that there must be a breakdown in logical validity when a concept bridges the two regimes. Logic is about limits and boundaries. Definition (literally, drawing limits, de- finitum, "concerning limit") is requisite to perform any sort of meaningful logic. It shouldn't be a surprise that logic breaks down if you insist a premise is unbounded.
As I said elsewhere, it wouldn't bother me much if it weren't for a couple of things: one, many people insist on using the forms of logic to argue for an inherently para-logical concept, which seems to carry some rhetorical weight if you don't think it through thoroughly. I think this has largely fallen out of favor among people who want to discuss divinity in good faith, so to speak, since the disjunct between logical validity and an unbounded divinity is so easy to appreciate and has been recognized for so long. It's still maddening to try to discuss such things using the forms of logic with people who fundamentally reject the universality of logical validity. Angels dancing on pinheads and all.
The other thing that troubles me is that this disjunct between an unbounded God and the logic of our finite existence is foundational. If you accept the premise of a God without limits, you necessarily must run up against a point at which logic breaks down. That particular point will differ for each individual, but that there is such a point is universal among those who have faith in such a Deity. To have faith in an unlimited God is to fundamentally reject the universality of logical validity. You cannot have it both ways. There has to be regime in which either logical validity does not pertain, or belief in an unbounded God is fundamentally illogical.
This primes the faithful to accept that logical validity is not universal; it trains people to ultimately blind themselves to logical inconsistency, because it's necessary to hold the whole edifice together. It may seem like the difference between "logic is inadequate to comprehend God" and "my all-powerful, all-loving God hates fags" is one of kind and not degree, but really they are simply different flavors of "logical inconsistencies and contradictions don't matter in the contemplation of God, because He stands outside such things." Religion or faith like that is a process that trains people to accept cognitive dissonance. I shouldn't need to explain why this can be, inevitably will be, a bad thing.
So is the worry that his God isn't omnipotent? Isn't that the main conceit of his view?
Panentheism is a well-established theistic position that isn't exactly new, and Goff here doesn't reduce theism to something like Spinoza's pantheism.
So first, Goff's views are obviously heretical to EO, I think he makes that fairly explicit. Second, this view that we participate in God's energies through theosis, which is something of a radical difference between the EO and other denominations. And yes, plenty of EO hold that God is the ground of everything; this is also the conclusion of many arguments for theism (e.g., contingency arguments.)
There are discussions around God all the time, all over the world. Very very few are as philosophical and low-stakes as to include God as "whatever" in their definitions.
It's not wrong but it's completely different from what the discussions around belief or non-belief in God grapple with. It's closer to "I believe I God (btw that's what I name my cat)" than the type of god these conversations include.
While EO might posit that God is everywhere it's absolutely not a limited abstracted God.
In summary,
No, not really? This is poorly argued and unconvincing.
Goff isn't trying to make a case for theism in this paper, more explaining his own personal journey to faith. The two biggest considerations for him are psychophysical harmony and cosmological fine-tuning, which he develops in detail elsewhere.
Honestly, basically just gibberish as far as I can tell. I would characterize it as an appeal to incredulity more than anything else.
One of the weaker arguments out there -- we only observe this universe because it is observable. This doesn't preclude the existence of universes that are not compatible with observers.
I don't see how either of these on their own or in combination could ever lead a rational thinker to believing specifically in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There's some motivated reasoning going on there.
Yeah it all actually just reads to me as him presupposing for himself that a belief leads to happiness and other positive things (church communities, etc) and wanting those and just back-filling whatever he thinks he needs to achieve that. It all just seems like typical apologetics/rationalization nonsense
So psychophysical harmony is an issue that probably won't be a popular argument online, as it take a fair bit of background in philosophy of mind to really get. The paper is probably worth a read though [1].
Cards on the table; I am an agnostic. I'll try to steelman the argument best I can. I just don't think anthropic reasoning really affects Bayesian forms of the argument, as we are concerned with epistemic probability in these cases which leaves something to be explained (e.g. John Leslie's firing squad [2]).
[1] https://philarchive.org/rec/CUTPHA
[2] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Leslie.html
Leslie's firing squad bears a strong resemblance to Hoyle's junkyard tornado, irreducible complexity, and other variations of intelligent design, and the same criticisms apply.
In short, all these arguments make a number of unfounded assumptions about the independence of events and number of trials, but then try to apply high school level statistical calculations to get to a predetermined conclusion.
I would say, philosophers should stay clear of statistical arguments without a firmer grounding in mathematics.
It doesn't seem similar at all to these cases. Either way, the point is the same that it has no bearing on the Bayesian forms of the argument.
Doesn't it? Because I think they are all basically the same argument, as I just explained in my comment. And what do you mean when you say it has no bearing on the Bayesian form of the argument?
So intelligent design, irreducible complexity, and the "junkyard tornado" push a pseudoscientific view that the complexity of organisms couldn't arise from chance. But we understand in detail the very mechanism from which complexity arises in organisms. It just seems completely unrelated to the existing discussion.
The fine tuning argument is the same thing -- instead of 2000 enzymes, or the DNA to create the components of a bacterial flagellum, or some other physical system appearing ex nihilo, we choose some other set of purportedly unlikely events -- in the most common formulation, six dimensionless physical constants. As with the other examples, there are two primary assumptions:
However,
All we know is that this universe exists, and we only know that because it does in fact support life capable of observing the universe.
So the argument says nothing about the intrinsic likelihood of us getting any particular value. And I think we can look at specific constants such as the cosmological constant on its own.
We don't have to assume this to make the argument work.
We have evidence for the existence of exactly one universe.
This seems like the real point. The statistics you can do with only one sample are very limited, and heavily depend on the model you choose. By choosing various models you can come up with just about any result you want. Therefore any statistical argument in this domain has to be very weak. (or strongly prove a weak result, I suppose)
I'd also suggest that, by considering likelihood of different values, you're implicitly presupposing that multiple different values could be valid. You can interpret this as some space of hypothetical universes in your statistical model, and you're asking about the likelihood of sampling our universe from that "multiverse".
If you reject that, and say only the one value we see is valid, then we know its likelihood - 1 - but I don't think that's a useful model for this discussion. The creationist might like it, though.
Yeah, we have no idea what the likelihood is from a intrinsic or frequentist notion, this is why such variants of the argument fail. The better forms of the argument argue from epistemic probability, rather than these other notions for which we just don't have enough data.
There's a whole field dedicated to evaluating epistemic probability in cases where we don't have access to intrinsic or frequentist accounts of the likelihood of an event: Bayesian statistics. It's used all over the place from finance to medicine, and it's the kind of probability under consideration in Bayesian formulations of the fine-tuning argument.
To apply Bayes you still need a model; you can approximate it, but that requires multiple samples. So to apply it in this domain you have to make an assumption. In doing so, you have the freedom to obtain any result you want.
If you have multiple samples then you can use Bayes to make some assertions about which models could possibly be valid, and you can actually prove results independent of assumptions. But we don't, so we can't.
AFAIK the strongest claim we can make, even with Bayes, is: the universe which
weI observedoescould exist. (edit: ie. the observation supports the model). We don't really need Bayes to help us figure that out, though.There may certainly be other statements you can prove I'm not aware of, but I expect them to be similarly vague. Anything stronger must presuppose a model about the distribution of universes in some multiverse which doesn't necessarily have bearing on our reality.
So generally what is done is throw the law structures in the background and ask what the likelihood of the constants resulting in life-permitting universes is. Multiple samples would be something necessary for frequentist, rather than Bayesian, accounts of likelihood.
The strongest claim one could make is, all things being equal, the constants falling in the life-permitting range is better predicted by theism than naturalism.
Since we are talking about epistemic probability and Bayesian statistics, we don't need to know the actual intrinsic probability distribution.
It seems clear you have some reference in mind that I'm not aware of. Could you point me toward the argument you're referring to here? It would be helpful to me to see how exactly Bayes' is applied in the argument and what assumptions the argument may or may not make.
I don't see how this could possibly be true without making unfounded assumptions about how assuming naturalism or theology change the distribution.
You don't need to assume the full distribution, but you do need some information about it via the other terms in Bayes' formula. In practice you'd take measurements to empirically approximate those other terms, and that's the real power of Bayesian statistics. But we can't do that in this domain, which is why I say any statistical argument here must be weak (or take unfounded/unfalsifiable assumptions, or prove a weak result).
What information are we missing? Everything plugs into Bayes theorem nicely.
Measurements for what? Priors? The likelihood of outcomes on the different hypotheses? This argument doesn't tell you what priors to plug in. You can mod this argument just to calculate a Bayes factor to tell you that some hypothesis is more likely given the evidence than another.
In this paper, on page 6 you can find a clean layout of the argument https://philarchive.org/rec/BARARL-3
Thanks for the link! This clarifies a lot.
So the objection I had with "empirically approximate those other terms" was to do with Barnes's Premise 7. Specifically Barnes says physics provides p(α|LB) - I'm not sure that's true but I am no physicist so I'm out of my depth with regard to what's used in practice. I'll take the background information he provides at face value.
On pages 15 and 16 he gives a description on how physics does this in practice, and does list the kinds of assumptions on distributions that I expected.
These additional parameters would not be parameters of the model, though; they are strictly parameters of the probability distribution and thus the likelihoods. I don't think you can simply discard these when the argument hinges on the likelihoods.
More assumptions on the distribution. For Physics, reasonable ones, but for this argument I don't think you can disregard them entirely.
My issue with both these points is it holds L fixed. Barnes always takes L as a given in his probabilities. For physics, this is fine, since we're only interested in refining our approximation of our universe's L.
The bounds on α are derived from L, so the arguments on assuming distributions fall apart if you let L vary. Then the bounds vary, and you have no "natural" values or distributions for the free parameters. You can't compute p(α|LB) and the concrete argument falls apart. It's worse if you also consider L with radically different parameterizations (ie if α has high or infinite dimension).
So implicitly, one of the premises of Barnes's argument is that no other L could give rise to life. I disagree.
Now, with that said, I don't think this changes the specific conclusion of Barnes argument that p(U|LNB) << p(U|LGB). Even if you let L vary - especially if you let L vary - p(U|NB) <<< p(U|GB). This seems true by construction; there's an assumption that G has some intent to create life, so of course p(U|GB) is relatively high.
(Page 6)
The last leap in the argument seems to be that p(U|LNB) << p(U|LGB) implies p(N|ULB) << p(G|ULB). This doesn't follow.
If Barnes is allowed to claim:
(Page 22)
Then I think I can also claim: N supports many many more universes - life-permitting or not - than G does. Especially so if you allow L to vary or allow α to take higher and higher dimension. p(G|LB) << p(N|LB).
If God is infinite then of course this falls apart; but then I can claim various infinities under N and we're at the same point. (Also worth pointing out a truly infinite God could easily have 10^136 better reasons to create, so then p(U|GLB) isn't necessarily high.)
So to apply the Bayesian flip and make that final leap in the argument, there's an undecidable question: How does p(U|LNB)p(N|LB) relate to p(U|LGB)p(G|LB)? Remember we have p(U|LNB) << p(U|LGB) and also p(N|LB) >> p(G|LB).
All and all I don't find the statistical approach particularly compelling either way.
I think Barnes missed the point with his response to the multiverse objection (Page 24). Yes, the measure problem means you can't calculate certain ratios, but it's a non-issue if you assume that the multiverse exists. It's a set. Set membership is not contingent on the likelihood of set membership. Probability distributions on that set don't even need to exist.
But this seems totally unfounded. We have no reason to think that anything about the laws of physics even could vary; they could simply be a brute fact. And even if they could vary, we have no particular reason to believe that any particular subset of the constants could vary, or even indeed that any constants could vary: maybe the laws themselves could vary, say, within some space of differential equations. Why choose one model over another?
It may turn out that everything happens necessarily. The laws, the constants, even me typing this sentence out. It turns out the necessitarian view is well accommodated by Bayesian reasoning.
We aren't asking what constants are most likely if you turned back the clock and ran it again; we ask which hypothesis better predicts the evidence of fine-tuning.
To motivate this view, imagine I gave you a coin. What are the chances it lands on heads? Well, from both a frequentist and epistemic account, 50%. Now imagine I tell you that it's not a fair coin; it's weighted on one side such that it's guaranteed to always land on the same side, but suppose I don't tell you which side it's weighted on. Now, you have no idea what the frequentist probability of it landing on heads: might be 100% might be 0%. However, the epistemic possibility of it landing on heads is 50%.
The argument is that each of these constants land in particular ranges, which if they were otherwise, would not support life. Then, due to the fact that there are multiple constants and the fact that all these individually unlikely events all occurred jointly, it is unlikely to have been random chance.
Because we don't know how it is calculated, it is arbitrary? Or, what is the justification for this position?
This is the central premise of the argument. If one of the constants is correlated with another, then the second constant's value contributes less information about the joint distribution. If one of the constants is a direct function of another, then it contributes exactly no information. If all these constants are dependent, then the argument falls apart entirely -- it wouldn't matter if there were a million constants or just one.
I would say that the argument itself implicitly smuggles in the idea of multiple universes by supposing that there are alternatives to the constants in the first place.
So the only note I'd have here is we could just pick out one and have a good argument, assuming you don't engineer all the rest to somehow keep the universe life-permitting. You could just throw those in the background data.
So this point isn't generally controversial. If, say, the cosmological constant was smaller, the universe would collapse in on itself. If it was much larger, the universe would be filled with only hydrogen, and each hydrogen atom would be light-years away from the others.
I'm a little less familiar with the whole cumulative case; the cosmology and physics is quite complex, so I personally really only know about the cosmological constant, which is enough to motivate the argument.
The Bayesian argument is merely saying that cosmological fine-tuning is more expected on theism than naturalism. This isn't making any claims about any other universes or something.
Following the link in that quote in that quote, and then the link in the linked page, I don't think it's quite gibberish but I'd never heard it expressed in those terms.
I don't personally find much value in that phrase, I'd rather the author just called it what it seems to be: the hard problem of consciousness.The hard problem is a real problem, and it is hard; but it is not proof of the supernatural and it is not disproof of the physical. How the author uses it, I'd call it an appeal to ignorance rather than an appeal to incredulity. That's probably splitting hairs. The point is the same, the argument as a whole seems weak to me.
E: Reading more, it doesn't seem to be directly about the hard problem of consciousness.
The harmony in question is the general aligment of subjective experience (psycho) with physcial stimulus/response. The example both articles discuss is pain and pleasure responses; the qualia of a pain response is unpleasant and leads to avoidance behavior; the qualia of a pleasure response is pleasant and leads to seeking behavior.
I really don't understand this argument. It seems totally and completely answered by natural selection (notwithstanding the hard problem, anyway).
The reason I am no longer a Christian is because I finally realized that the evidence that I used to believe without question does not stand up to being questioned.
Fine tuning is a silly argument. The conditions for our form of life exist, therefore it's not surprising that our form of life can exist. The fact that it does is not proof of something non-natural.
Finally, I will believe in a god when I have good evidence of it. Until then, wishful thinking and a desire for community are not enough of a reason to believe in it.
I understand this viewpoint.
I went through an angry new atheist phase, and thought that all arguments for God were terrible. It was after spending some time reading the literature really raised my credence in many of the arguments. I'm still an agnostic though.
I think it's a better argument than many think. They usually have heard some really poor version of the argument.
Same. Though I try to stay aware of my capacity for self-deception and subconsciously dismissing evidence when I disagree with the conclusion it points to.
Fine tuning is basically "it is what it is", it's defining the word by using the word in its own definition. It's not really a good argument.
It's also only looking on the bright side. What about all the "bad" stuff that happens because of convenient universal constants? Does that prove the existence of an evil universal architect?
Modern arguments ask a pretty common question asked all the time in Bayesian statistics: what was the likelihood that we got the particular result we got, given a few hypotheses?
This is called "the problem of evil" lol, which is something that leads Goff to think God can't be all powerful.
Belief and Evidence are inherently contradictory. I only believe in things I have no strong evidence for their existence. If God allowed for clear evidence of his existence, them all humans would have no choice but to believe in him.
I will now speak from an Islamic perspective:
If God wanted that all humans believe in him, he would've easily forced them to believe, but he doesn't want so. God doesn't want those who have chosen the path of evil to find their way to heaven. God only guides whoever he pleases, and whoever wants to be guided.
God made this world the way it is for the wheat to separate itself frol the chaff willingly, and sent prophets and messengers to guide those with good on their hearts.
Thanks for sharing this! Goff’s view isn’t too wildly far from something like Open Theism (God intentionally limits Godself to provide more potential for genuine relationship, ish). I’m a full bodily resurrection believer, so that’s probably the biggest sticking point. That said, I appreciate his framework for why choosing to believe isn’t ludicrous, and certainly agree with how revolutionary the teaching of Yeshua is.
He mentions in his interview on Capturing Christianity that Max Baker-Hytch finds Goff's view as something of a "backup" for theists if they are struggling with the problem of evil, which I found quite interesting.
That tracks for me based on the article you posted. I can see this being a “backup” option for a variety of pushbacks.
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Such an oddly uplifting article. Lots of food for thought.
So that link to psycho physical harmony doesn't even link to a page about wtf that shit even is. So...I am gonna go with this has a lot of fancy lookin' words, but there's nothing really being said.
Maybe this guy needs to go searching for the eye of the universe.
Here you go: https://philarchive.org/rec/CUTPHA