Thinking Christian Comments
Original Post: Is God a Poor Designer?
"one is that God, in fact, didn't do a terribly good job in the first place; the other is that he built it right but something has gone wrong."
Could he fix it if he wanted to?
Yes!
That's what comes after Genesis 3. Stay tuned.
Tom, I look at the poor design question much more narrowly. It's not about *any* imperfection in the world, or any result we don't like; it's about why we were designed with our windpipe so close to the esophagus that we can choke fairly easily when swimming; or why we have a blind spot in our field of vision because some optic nerves go right through the (?) retina. Etc., etc.
It would be one argument to say that disease and accidents are the result of the Fall back in Eden; it's another to say that God designed us specifically so that we could choke so easily. I think those two arguments are radically different and need to be distinguished. Disease and accidents as a result of the Fall are based on acceptance of a dogma that relies on evidence separate from whether design happened (that is, the specific decisions about how our bodies were put together); putting our windpipe so close to the esophagus is nothing like any evidence or criteria for why the Fall happened, and therefore cries out to ask "why would God have designed us that way?" If IDers can claim intelligent design because of details of intricate and amazing design, then anti-IDers can claim lack of design because of details of incompetency in design, especially when the designer might be claimed to have created the entireuniverse. If you can create space and time, then why couldn't you have designed a human species that wouldn't choke so easily? If your answer is "a wicked sense of humor," then I can't argue.
Of course, if God's purposes are inscrutable, that solves everything, and therefore nothing.
Does [the fact that the world was made good, and is now fallen due to sin] make sense apart from that faith? I think so.
I don't think so. It's not that theodicy has no value, but I think that ultimately it runs up against a barrier that reason cannot get around. In Auden's situation, it's not as if he was convicted to seek the truth by rational arguments - he felt something was wrong, and went looking for solutions to it. I suppose if by "make sense" you just mean, "make sense according to human experience", then the statement is more plausible, but that is basically just a restatement of the fact that we inherently recognize that something isn't right about the world we live in - which implies that it either must have been otherwise at some point, or will be so in the future, or both.
Job is the quintessential depiction of this aspect of man's plight - how can God love us and let us suffer so? And there is no rational answer offered there. There is merely God's assertion of His sovereignty, and our lack of station to question Him. And there is the relationship between Job and God, where Job sees that God does truly love him, despite all his suffering. But we only see that interaction from the outside, we can't rationally explain or defend it. It takes faith to believe that one can have the same relationship with God that Job had.
Dostoyevsky makes the same point in The Brothers Karamazov. The response to the Grand Inquistor's charge that the suffering of one child makes God's creation unjust isn't a rational argument - it's merely Alyosha's return to the orphanage, to care for the orphans whom he loves, and who love him.
Paul has put quite well the point I would have made. It has seemed to me for some time now that, in response, the Christian theist must say that the Fall, in some way inscutable to us now, quite literally rewrote the genetic code of us human beings. Might the Christian theist here put to work their belief in Satan? Perhaps Satan was given a limited dominion over the world after the Fall and with this new-found power began to muck around with human DNA.
The Fall did not merely effect huamans' relation to the world. It effected their very being. In certain respects (perhaps like those mentioned by Paul) it made them different beings than they were before.
I for one find this consequence of Christian theism bizarre. The differences between perfectly-designed pre-Fall humans and imperfectly-designed post-Fall humans would seem sufficient to render them distinct species. I'm curious to know what others here think.
Paul,
Two parts to answering your good question here:
(1) All design involves trade-offs. I'm not going to be able to speak to all possible situations, but in the case of the trachea/esophagus, there are some very believable reasons for making it as it is. Mouths and noses share real estate (considerable real estate, in the case of my own nose) on our faces because they share functions. The mouth is a backup to the nose for breathing when the nose is congested or when we need to breathe more deeply. The mouth is involved in both eating and speaking, combining functions of both tubes down our throats. We smell while we eat, also combining both functions. So it doesn't seem so irrational that they would be near each other.
(2) Could we (if necessary) resort to God's inscrutable purposes as an explanation in this case? Why not? You say it "explains nothing." I think you would be correct if instead you siad it proves nothing: it is utterly unconvincing, in an argument to the reality of God, if we can find such an easy answer to all of our hard problems. But I'm not trying to prove the reality of God through this approach. I'm just trying to say that there is enough coherence in this approach to find it makes sense, and that it makes more sense than a viewpoint that cannot easily (if at all) explain why the world seems so wrong to us. (My answer to Mike, to follow here, will address this further.)
(3) You suggest,
If IDers can claim intelligent design because of details of intricate and amazing design, then anti-IDers can claim lack of design because of details of incompetency in design, especially when the designer might be claimed to have created the entire universe.
I would put the question back to you, then, which has been repeatedly put to ID: what statistically and empirically rigorous tests would you apply to prove incompetence in design, in view of the alternative explanations of design tradeoffs and effects of the Fall? Behe and Dembski have proposed such, and the debate has grounds on which to be carried out as a result. If you were to stack your evidence against theirs, you would need to prove your point as rigorously as ID is being called upon to prove its own.
Mike, I actually did mean "make sense according to human experience." What I wrote here is not intended to function as a theistic proof; it can't carry that much weight. But it can carry some, in that it fits with experience, so that it can contribute a certain amount of plausibility to the belief system. To my mind, it fits better than the alternative view I addressed in the post.
(1) All design involves trade-offs.But surely not for an infinite being like God?
I'm not going to be able to speak to all possible situations, but in the case of the trachea/esophagus, there are some very believable reasons for making it as it is. Mouths and noses share real estate (considerable real estate, in the case of my own nose) on our faces because they share functions. The mouth is a backup to the nose for breathing when the nose is congested or when we need to breathe more deeply. The mouth is involved in both eating and speaking, combining functions of both tubes down our throats. We smell while we eat, also combining both functions. So it doesn't seem so irrational that they would be near each other.But surely not for an infinite being like God?
You say it "explains nothing." I think you would be correct if instead you siad it proves nothing: it is utterly unconvincing, in an argument to the reality of God, if we can find such an easy answer to all of our hard problems. But I'm not trying to prove the reality of God through this approach. I'm just trying to say that there is enough coherence in this approach to find it makes sense, and that it makes more sense than a viewpoint that cannot easily (if at all) explain why the world seems so wrong to us. (My answer to Mike, to follow here, will address this further.)The distinction between proof and explaination is not relevant to my point, which, if restated to blur that distinction, says that if any situation, no matter how rational, irrational, or unimaginable, can be dealt with by saying it serves some purpose of God's that we can't comprehend, then that position can be applied to absolutely any situation, and therefore loses any utility.
I would put the question back to you, then, which has been repeatedly put to ID: what statistically and empirically rigorous tests would you apply to prove incompetence in design, in view of the alternative explanations of design tradeoffs and effects of the Fall?1. God is not subject to the limitations of any tradeoffs. 2. See Franklin's post above about not confusing the Fall with design flaws.
If you were to stack your evidence against theirs, you would need to prove your point as rigorously as ID is being called upon to prove its own.If a perfect, infinite being designs something, any flaw calls into question whether it could *reasonably* be designed by such a being, and you can't ignore the flaws by saying it serves some purpose of God that we can't explain.
Hi Tom:
I just commented on the question of theodicy as it was brought up in the comments to your post: http://reasoningrepaired.blogspo...l-of-
cross.html.
Cheers
Holopupenko
That's a great post, Holopupenko.
(1) All design involves trade-offs.
But surely not for an infinite being like God?
There are some things God can't do. He cannot create a universe where 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 (I don't know whether He could create one where the latter holds, or not, but that's a tangential issue). He can't create beings whom He wants to freely choose to love Him, and not give them free will. He can't be holy and perfect, and create a world with no intrinsic moral laws.
Mike, the question about design concerned biological organisms. Are you saying God couldn't have designed better organism(s)? That all design in nature is optimal?
Paul, you were objecting to the claim that all design involves tradeoffs. I was pointing out that, in principle, this is true even for an omnipotent God.
I'm saying that the fact that organisms don't appear to be perfectly designed is not an argument against God being omnipotent (or against His existence), since there may well have been reasons that constrained His design implementations. To take one obvious tension: if He had designed organisms perfectly, would there be any death or suffering? We often wonder why there is death or suffering in the world, but if one takes it as given the there are good reasons for them, then that would offer an explanation for why organisms are not perfect. Another way of putting it is that you are looking at the design question from the narrow engineering perspective of the efficiency of the organism, but that isn't necessarily the only criteria that an omnipotent designer would consider. Since you can't rule out a priori that such a designer wouldn't be constrained by various tradeoffs between desirable ends, then you can't argue that if God was the designer, and if He is omnipotent, then it automatically follows that He would have created organisms that function perfectly efficiently.
Since nobody has replied to Franklin's comment, I'll take a crack at it.
Paul has put quite well the point I would have made. It has seemed to me for some time now that, in response, the Christian theist must say that the Fall, in some way inscutable to us now, quite literally rewrote the genetic code of us human beings. Might the Christian theist here put to work their belief in Satan? Perhaps Satan was given a limited dominion over the world after the Fall and with this new-found power began to muck around with human DNA.
I'm not capable of fully answering this - all I can say is that the doctrine of original sin is a theological doctrine, and that it most likely does not make sense to try and translate it into mechanistic biological terms.
The Fall did not merely effect huamans' relation to the world. It effected their very being. In certain respects (perhaps like those mentioned by Paul) it made them different beings than they were before.
I think that is correct.
I for one find this consequence of Christian theism bizarre.
I have a lot of sympathy for you on that. Theologians have written on the topic for 3000 years, and it is still a mystery. How can God be a holy, perfect being, yet be responsible for creating human beings who have such a propensity for evil in their hearts? There are certainly in-depth investigations into this issue, which others are no doubt more aware of than I am, but I still think it ultimately comes down to being one of the mysteries of Christian faith.
I tend to look at each question individually: it seems obvious by looking at my own heart, and at the actions of human beings every day, that we have sinful natures. The observations accurately fit the theory. So I have no trouble accepting the claim that we are all inherently sinful beings.
On the question of God's goodness and omnipotence, all of the alternative explanations lack something. First of all, scripture makes it quite clear. Second, denying one or the other leads to a distorted faith. Roughly speaking, if you deny God's goodness, you get Islam, and if you deny His omnipotence, you get secularism (whether Deist, agnostic, or atheist in nature). From my vantage point, both worldviews lack something significant in explaining reality, in particular in explaining the human condition. The evidence is not as easy to point out to a non-believer as the evidence for man's sinful nature, but I think it is there nonetheless.
So, for me, and for most Christians, we have confirmation of two propositions: man is sinful and God is holy. Yet we also believe that God created man in His image, so man cannot be inherently evil. The fact that is not easy, or perhaps impossible, to logically reconcile the two propositions is not a barrier - it's just one of the many things we can't understand.
Dembski's theodicy (second essay - sorry, I don't know how to link to a pdf)
http://www.designinference.com/
deals with the Fall, the Creation chronology, God's benevolence and His foreknowledge.
Mike wrote,
We often wonder why there is death or suffering in the world, but if one takes it as given the there are good reasons for them, then that would offer an explanation for why organisms are not perfect.
I agree. This illustrates well how we can get very confused in trying to figure out what is really good design. Death is typically seen as just bad. Scripturally it is seen as a temporary yet necessary solution to a serious problem (sin). But we can't detour around that word "necessary." It is necessary for organisms to be imperfect in the sense of being subject to death. One could even argue that those imperfections must be varied, scattered, distributed in such a way that no one can predict the time or mode of his or her death until it is nearly upon them. (Imagine a world like ours in all ways except that everyone knew the future of their health and the time of their death.)
So Paul's question about whether all design is optimal has a complex answer. In the original, pre-fall state, the answer would have been yes, though within limitations of design tradeoffs such as we have been discussing. After the fall, we do not need to claim that everything is optimal in terms of our preferences or conceptions of what is optimal, for we are out of tune with God's plan or desires.
So the complaint of poor design does not stand against theism. In order to establish that as a defeater for theism, one would have to show what is really optimal in the mind of God, or (if you prefer) what ought to be optimal in the mind of a putative God if there was one, and that nature fails to meet that standard. But God himself says,
Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Is this a copout, to say that whatever God says is the answer? If I were attempting a theistic proof here that might be an interesting charge to consider. But instead I'm trying to deflect a theistic defeater, and for that purpose this seems perfectly appropriate and adequate. I'm not trying to defend the God that you have in mind, or the God you think there should be, but the God revealed in the Bible.
Mike also wrote:
So, for me, and for most Christians, we have confirmation of two propositions: man is sinful and God is holy. Yet we also believe that God created man in His image, so man cannot be inherently evil. The fact that is not easy, or perhaps impossible, to logically reconcile the two propositions is not a barrier - it's just one of the many things we can't understand.
It is beyond our full understanding, to be sure. Mike's approach here is to stand on two solid knowns and to let the mystery be a mystery. That makes sense.
By my understanding, limited as it is, mankind is not inherently evil, but marred. God did create us with infinite worth, and still views us that way, as witnessed by Christ's sacrifice for us. We still have much of the value, the knowledge, the desires and yearnings of the original pre-fall condition. By rebelling against God we lost the ability to fulfill all those good intentions. Some we can achieve to a limited extent, but never all. It is our glory and our tragedy.
"..if He had designed organisms perfectly, would there be any death or suffering?"
According to Christians, no. Read Tom's post, for example.
"..if one takes it as given the there are good reasons for them, then that would offer an explanation for why organisms are not perfect. "
Unfortunately this is not an option for Christian theists.
"From my vantage point, both worldviews lack something significant in explaining reality.."
Like what?
I would also note that you are avoiding major issues (indeed, contradictions) within your favored explanation by appealing to "mystery", while there does not seem to be such charity toward alternative explanations.
And do any of the theists want to try and explain why it's taking God so much time to fix things, if they're so wrong? Another mystery?
"..stand on two solid knowns and to let the mystery be a mystery. That makes sense."
Tom, can we use this rejoinder when you argue that we must reject materialism because we can't explain consciousness?
Sure, if you stand just on knowns. But consciousness itself has to be one of them.
OK, Mike, forget about *all* constraints. What I can't reconcile is the circumstantial, ad hoc, and just plain bad design apparent in biological design with an omnipotent) designer. The logical impossibilities God is constrained by have nothing to do with my main point, I'm sorry if I had any part in that mistake.
It's a problem unless you're willing to say that God's ways are inscrutable, but in that case you believe in a God that makes no sense (as much as *our* sense and logic must be limited to what we find in our imperfect world).
What I can't reconcile is the circumstantial, ad hoc, and just plain bad design apparent in biological design with an omnipotent) designer.
Paul, it's been explained, hasn't it? Did you read what's here?
The fact that is not easy, or perhaps impossible, to logically reconcile the two propositions is not a barrier - it's just one of the many things we can't understand.The abandonment of consistency is a pretty drastic step. This step requires far better justification than anything I have yet seen backing up the aforementioned "confirmations."
So, for me, and for most Christians, we have confirmation of two propositions: man is sinful and God is holy.What is your confirmation that God is holy? If there is confirmation, can there be disconfirmation? Or is this by definition?
Personally, I think the imperfect design story has nothing but rhetorical (entertainment) value as far as the broader ID debate is concerned. If the design hypothesis were as generic as it claims to be, there's no reason why the designer couldn't be evil or lazy.
Even in the case of Christianity, the bigger issue is the question of evil rather than workmanship. The observed scenario just isn't compatible with our gut sense of right and wrong. Suppose humans sent their infants to live out a Lord of the Flies scenario on some island, then extracted the kids at age 12 (or immediately before death) to live out their lives in an idyllic world. Would this strike you as good parenting?
None of the suffering in our world seems necessary. If we're broke, fix us. Or at least, nurture us. I would not treat my children the way God treats us, and I certainly wouldn't torture them, let alone for eternity.
Of course, none of these arguments are compelling against evil gods (or gods who appear evil to us).
God's holiness is confirmed in his actions. Could it be disconfirmed? This is where positivism meets its match. If it's a necessary truth about a necessary being, there is a theoretical but never an actual possibility of disconfirmation. Or rather, it has to be taken with the whole question of God, not separately.
You're right about this not being an ID issue. I tried not to make it one, but alas . . .
As to the inconsistency of the two propositions mentioned here, there is more than one way to view it. Philosophy in the past 25 years or so, I'm told, has come to accept that the argument from evil (of which this is a variant) has an adequate response in the free will answer. In other words, while I won't go into it on a Friday evening, there's a lot of agreement that this is not a defeater for theism. It was considered such once, but not so much anymore.
There is still that gut revulsion against evil that we all agree on. doctor(logic), I sympathize with your call for fixing or nurturing. But how will God do that? That's what I asked in today's post. There's a Biblical answer, but there I just raised the question for now.
DL:
Help me out here (I’m honestly confused): how does one reconcile a categorically-declared accession to moral relativism here and here with statements like “our gut sense of right and wrong” (how empirical can that be? I thought gut feelings were emotive constructs), “good parenting,” (good? whose good?) “… in the case of Christianity, the bigger issue is the question of evil” (what evil? I thought that was relative: what’s evil to you may be fun for Howard Stern), and “If we’re broke, fix us” (that’s a moral expectation—if not imposed imperative—isn’t it?).
With respect to a deep faith in moral relativism, the latter statements seem like a clear “abandonment of consistency [that] is a pretty drastic step.” Can anyone be faulted for thinking otherwise?
Should all suffering be eliminated? Why should we not do evil? Do not responses to these two questions require (at the very least) an understanding of what the concepts suffering and evil mean? Is an understanding of suffering and evil sufficiently and necessarily captured by the modern empirical sciences? If not, does this necessarily imply such terms are meaningless? Does the fact that Christians do not pretend to understand the infinite mind of God and His ways (meaning: they can’t provide all the answers) somehow argue against the existence of God?
All we’re looking for from you is some consistently applied logic.
“You’re mocking me, aren’t you?” (Buzz Lightyear to Woody in “Toy Story”) Are you mocking the belief of Christians (and people of faith generally) because you can’t understand the existence of evil and God per the rules of the game you impose?
Tom wrote:
Paul, it's been explained, hasn't it? Did you read what's here?Funny, I feel the same way from my prespective. Now what?
Oh well--we'll have to take another run at it, Paul. But we're having a family yard sale today so I can only step aside for a moment to check messages.
Holopupenko, we've been through this many times before.
You seem to think that a moral relativist has no subjective sense of right and wrong, and carries a meta-rule which demands he take no action based on those subjective senses. You are wrong on both counts.
The moral relativist believes that moral sensation is as real and as subjective as one's taste in food, only more important. There's no special rule saying that the relativist should not try to persuade or even impose our moral choices on others. The relativist may judge that he should impose his moral choices on others as long as he deems the outcome of those choices to be moral.
Apart from extreme cases, the moral relativist and the moral realist use the very same moral reasoning. The moral realist simply thinks that his subjective morality is actually an approximation to an objective morality. But both the realist and the relativist feel compelled to follow their subjective goods based on the totality of their experiences.
So, just like the moral realist, the moral relativist has a subjective sense of right and wrong, and is free to act on that sensation.
Do not responses to these two questions require (at the very least) an understanding of what the concepts suffering and evil mean?You are right. Now that you know what moral relativism is, you can see why this is a non-issue.
Is an understanding of suffering and evil sufficiently and necessarily captured by the modern empirical sciences?Yes. At least for relativists. Both in consensus science and in personal scientific inference. I personally know when I feel that something is wrong or evil, and I will (mostly truthfully) tell you so in a survey or an election.
Interestingly, the realist (or, at least, the absolutist) must answer your question in the negative. If there's more to morality than the subjective, if the universe really cares what's right and wrong, why should our subjective moral senses be in accordance with it?
Does the fact that Christians do not pretend to understand the infinite mind of God and His ways (meaning: they can’t provide all the answers) somehow argue against the existence of God?Are you sure that Christians don't claim to know the mind and ways of God? I would have thought that goodness would be part of his ways and mind, but God's goodness is apparently of a type that doesn't correlate with what we might observe. So either God's good isn't our good, or God's goodness doesn't mean what it would mean in other contexts.
This typifies the problems with claims of God's existence. I know what it means for you to exist because I can point to experiences that are your existence to me. The same does not apply to God, for there are no experiences for which I am justified in saying "that was God." God is defined precisely in terms of things we can never experience because there's nothing we could see that could confirm or disconfirm his existence.
For Christianity, the problem of evil is that it is yet another way in which the definition of God fails to mean anything. God exists in a way different from everything else (we don't know what "God exists" means), and he's good in a way different from other goods (we don't know what "God is good" means), and he's powerful in a way different from anything else (we don't know what powerful means in his context), etc. It's not really a question of God not existing, but of the proposition not making any sense because none of the terms in the proposition mean what they mean in other contexts.
There is still that gut revulsion against evil that we all agree on. doctor(logic), I sympathize with your call for fixing or nurturing. But how will God do that?Tom, I only have my own subjective sense of good and evil, and this is all that I can use to judge what good God might do.
In my opinion, God should do at least as well as my mother did. Get involved, interact, cure people who are sick, free people being tortured, teach us about the arts and sciences, give words of encouragement where they are due, scold us when we do wrong, leave no lonely person in depression, give personal space to those who need to have a moment alone, and help us grow to be more than we are.
That doesn't sound like much to ask. Sure, I made mistakes, threw tantrums, skipped my homework, and called people names at school, but my parents didn't cut me off, pull up stakes and leave town with no forwarding address. They persevered, and they intervened to help me get past my mistakes to make me a better person. And, funny enough, my folks never once employed torture in the process.
Sorry, Tom, I didn't see your 05.12.06 - 3:56 pm post, if that's what you referring to in regards to it all being explained before.
I'll try to reply later.
DL:
You’re “sneering” again (in your last comment) when you imply God tortures people. I fail to understand why you place such high expectations on your vision of God, and spent so much time and effort trying to convince us you’re correct, if (for you) God doesn’t exist. Isn’t God kind of a controversy for you that doesn’t exist? If so, why all the emotions and moralizing? But I’ve digress from my main points before even starting…
You seem to think that a moral relativist has no subjective sense of right and wrong, and carries a meta-rule which demands he take no action based on those subjective senses.This is a straw man—reference my comments immediately above and on previous occasions. In fact, what you so succinctly confirm here precisely sums up the position of the moral relativist: it is subjectivist. (The only difference between your statement here and that of previous occasions is that you’ve just come out and said it plainly, whereas elsewhere it’s muddled—I suspect intentionally.) And yet, in spite of the subjective nature of your relativist/subjectivist position, you nonetheless act as if moral judgments could be objectively based.
THAT is the great disconnect in your position: if every moral category is subjective by nature (per your own stated beliefs), then you have no objective basis whatsoever to either to judge anyone else’s actions (why do you so moralize so emotionally over President Bush?), and you have no objective basis whatsoever “to persuade or even impose.” (Please do not confuse moral absolutism with moral objectivism.) In fact, you cannot judge your own actions or base them on anything apart from personal whims or “compelled feelings.”
I’m not disputing (nor have I ever disputed) that you hold to a subjectivist/relativist moral belief. What I repeatedly request is that you be consistent and hold to these beliefs. For example, you note “the moral relativist has a subjective sense of right and wrong.” What, precisely, do “right” and “wrong” mean—what can they possibly mean—to a moral relativist apart from personal—or even group—whims? What possible end could it serve for a relativist to impose moral imperatives or pass moral judgment on another’s actions if all moral actions are subjective by nature, i.e., if the moral categories “good” and “evil” are relative? How can you possibly permit yourself to whine and complain about alleged ad hominem, for example, if from the other person’s perspective it is not ad hominem? How can you possibly justify passing moral judgment on the actions of pedophiles as “evil” if they believe their actions satisfy a “good” for them? It’s all relative, after all. Try to apply your beliefs consistently, please.
And here’s a howler: “I personally know when I feel that something is wrong or evil, and I will (mostly truthfully) tell you so in a survey or an election.” [emphasis added] “Personally know” and “feel”? First, that’s a personal opinion, not a universally-shared, verifiable, and consistent fact. Second, I frankly don’t care what you “feel” (!?!) about your personal, subjectivist moral opinions: they’re irrelevant to me and many other people, and per your own rules of the game they’re quite relative, aren’t they? “Mostly truthfully”? What exactly is the truth content of personal, subjectivist moral opinions that are, err, umm “mostly truthful;” and what morally-imperative weight does something that’s “mostly truthful” carry? Finally, you’ll tell me so [i.e., your “mostly true” vision of good and evil] in a survey or election? Are you seriously suggesting that a majority opinion determines truth content? (In fact, you do.) If on an island of 100 inhabitants, 60 of those people vote on Monday that murder is morally evil… and then on Tuesday a tsunami takes the lives of 30 of those 60, does this then mean another vote determines the moral content of murder to be good?
The moral relativist believes that moral sensation is as real and as subjective as one’s taste in food, only more important.As on many previous occasions, you equivocate between the beingness (the “whatness,” the kind of “thingness”) of moral “sensations” (whatever that means) and objects obtained by the five primary senses. Yet, you have never, ever demonstrated the soundness of such a non-scientific assertion. If the objects of the five primary senses are the same kind of things as the objects of moral reasoning, then surely it must be fairly expected (from the epistemological perspective) that each of these will also be observed and validated in the same kind of way. Dovetailed into your assertions is the further notion that ALL existents are empirically verifiable. Yet such an assertion itself is not empirically verifiable (as are many other things), and your argument collapses.
An “assertion” is an altogether different kind of being than, say, a “rock”. Both exist—otherwise it would not be possible for us to discuss such “non-beings.” (What’s there to talk about?) But, the mode of their existences are fundamentally different. There is not a single assertion, not a single idea that can in and of itself be observed (i.e., verified) by the five primary senses. (Observing on a PET computer monitor the electrochemical signals firing across many brain neuron synapses does not mean one observes “thought” qua “thought”—any more than peering inside an operating film projector permits one so “see” the moral behind the movie. In a similar manner, the printed letters on a page are not the same kind of thing as the moral Aesop would like us to “see.”) And yet, does saying this imply ideas don’t exist in some mode of existence? I understand and appreciate that since you’ve admitted to having no formal philosophical bona fides, that this may all be new to you… but it certainly doesn’t argue against the non-empirical nature of philosophical arguments.
What’s my point? Despite your unsubstantiated assertion, moral categories are not the same kind of thing as objects detectable to the five primary senses. How could they be? One must reason to moral categories (which are universals, and as such intellectual), whereas sensory inputs are immediately available—but only as specific (individual or concrete) bits of sense knowledge. I can support my position quite readily: You may observe “black” and “bird.” Both of these are beings—they exist—but not in the same way. The former exists only in another being (there is no “black” that I can point to or put into my pocket that exists in and of itself), whereas the latter exists in a fundamentally more substantive way. I can place a “bird” in a cage no matter what its color, but I cannot place a color in a cage no matter what its “birdiness.” Both of these are real beings, but whereas the former is accidental, the latter is substantive. A similar argument distinguishes between the “beingness” of moral categories and real beings from whose input data we can reason to these categories, and this in turn puts the kibosh on your assertion that objects of the five primary senses are the same kind of thing as “moral sensations” (again, whatever the latter means).
There is little need to respond to your other assertions. They speak for themselves.
In fact, you cannot judge your own actions or base them on anything apart from personal whims or “compelled feelings.”Hey, hey! We're making progress!
Yes, I view acts as evil when they broadly make me feel bad, and I feel a corresponding moral impetus to do something to prevent or discourage such acts from taking place.
But enough about me, how about you? How do you know, say, that murder is wrong?
Might it be because such acts make you feel bad? If not, could you be persuaded that murder is generally good through pure, logical argumentation?
And yet, in spite of the subjective nature of your relativist/subjectivist position, you nonetheless act as if moral judgments could be objectively based.The only objective facts I assume are that, 1) people have (or act as if they have) moral feelings, and 2) given a shared picture of the world, people tend to agree on what ought to be done.
You seem to suggest that I'm breaking my own rules by trying to persuade others to my views of correct action. This not the case.
One's personal morality is precisely that which one thinks one ought to do. If I think I ought to convince you (or coerce you) to act in a certain way, then that "ought" is also part of my personal morality. Hence, there's no inconsistency in engaging in moral persuasion from a personal moral perspective.
and you have no objective basis whatsoever “to persuade or even impose.”This is either incorrect or irrelevant, depending on how you look at it.
Isn't it possible for someone to convince you to hold a moral position on a particular act without them first revealing whether they are a relativist or an objectivist? Suppose Fred Bloggs convincingly shows you that eating meat causes significantly more net harm to people than does the practice of vegetarianism. Do you care whether Fred is a relativist or an objectivist? What if Fred holds someone hostage in order to coerce you to rob a bank? I put it to you that, narrowly, you do not care in either scenario whether Fred is a relativist or an objectivist.
Therefore, moral persuasion does not rely on the objectivity of morality. Rather, the objective thing in this scenario is the effectiveness of moral persuasion as a tactic. (And this is objective for the moral relativist, too!)
If the objects of the five primary senses are the same kind of things as the objects of moral reasoning, then surely it must be fairly expected (from the epistemological perspective) that each of these will also be observed and validated in the same kind of way.Interesting. So is the red ball you see in your palm the same as the ball you feel touching the skin of your palm? On what basis do you group together the five senses when they are not validated in the same kind of way? You will never be able to hear that the ball is red.
Of course, you can spot correlations between what you see and what you feel and hear, and sew those correlations into a continuous picture of the world. Likewise, you can correlate sensations of the mind with activity of the brain, or with laws of computation. If we are to doubt that the mind and brain are one and the same, we should also doubt that the physical things we see are also the physical things we touch.
Both of these are beings—they exist—but not in the same way. The former exists only in another being (there is no “black” that I can point to or put into my pocket that exists in and of itself), whereas the latter exists in a fundamentally more substantive way.Black and bird are both coneptual patterns. Black is a pattern in visual sensation. Bird is a pattern in visual, aural, tactile, olfactory, and, yes, gastronomic sensation.
However, your claim that they are substantively different seems to omit the fact that, as pure conceptual patterns, birdiness is no more or less realizable than is blackness.
Look at it this way. Suppose I describe two patterns, neither of which can be realized in eachother's domain. Let's say that the first pattern consists of winning Tic Tac Toe boards, and my second pattern consists of major chords on the piano. These two patterns are distinct, but are they really different philosophical kinds? I don't think they are. They are both patterns, and the fact that they are defined as appearing only in two different domains doesn't really say anything special. It is of little philosophical significance that I will never see a winning Tic Tac Toe board while listening to a piece by Chopin.
So what is an assertion or a moral thought? They too are patterns, but in mental experience rather than physical sensation. Yet, I can no more assess the evil of "1 + 1 = 2" than I can put black in my birdcage, so I see no reason to multiply my ontological categories for mental concepts where I opted not to do the same for disparate physical ones.
So Paul's question about whether all design is optimal has a complex answer. In the original, pre-fall state, the answer would have been yes, though within limitations of design tradeoffs such as we have been discussing.Which limitations would not necessitate placing the windpipe so close to the esophagus, right? I don't this this is controversial; I'm just checking.
After the fall, we do not need to claim that everything is optimal in terms of our preferences or conceptions of what is optimal, for we are out of tune with God's plan or desires.1. If this argument means that "any set of conditions, judged by us as optimal or not, is consistent with God's plans or desires," then it is meaningless, because anything would be consistent with God's plans or desires.
2. Or is this argument the idea that God was somehow limited after the Fall, in terms of how He could align the windpipe and the esophagus?
I think you're arguing #1 above, but let me know.
So the complaint of poor design does not stand against theism. In order to establish that as a defeater for theism, one would have to show what is really optimal in the mind of God, or (if you prefer) what ought to be optimal in the mind of a putative God if there was one, and that nature fails to meet that standard.
I think that one has to have a stable definition of what poor or optimal design is. One can't say that the windpipe/esophagus design is poor design in terms of human conception and then say that it is optimal because God's purposes are inscrutable.
So, I'd like a straigtforward answer: are things like the increased choking possibility due to the designed placement of the windpipe and esophagus and the blind spot in our field of vision due to the optimal design, or somewhere inbetween?
My short answer to Paul's questions is that it's not a problem for me - I think evolution is the way God created living organisms. He gave life the freedom to evolve, which means He gave it the freedom to take less-than-optimal design paths. That doesn't address the metaphysical questions about why God chose to create a world like this one, but it, for me at least, answers the immediate question of suboptimal biological design.
DL:
You've made your position abundantly clear—confirming (again) beyond any doubt that you acede to the philosophical doctrine of absolute moral relativism/subjectivism. You further confirm your personal belief that this field of inquiry is itself (allegedly) reducible to being—sufficiently and necessarily—epistemologically captured by the modern empirical sciences. Following upon this, you therefore believe the objects moral philosophy studies (or the objects of morality) are (a) ontologically the same kind of entities as those studied by, say, mathematical physics, and (b) the tools and methodologies of mathematical physics (or any other modern empirical science) alone necessarily and sufficiently capture all that can be known of them. You further believe (as stated previously) that if the modern empirical sciences cannot "see" these objects, they contain no meaningful content and therefore (in your view) do not exist.
Thank you for the clarification, and, as such, you may have the last word.
I am a slow learner.
Holopupenko, this is at least the 4th time you've performed this little maneuver.
You come on real strong (talking about me personally, quoting my blog, baiting me, etc.) until we get to the philosophical details. Then, you briefly summarize my views (in a tone that suggests I've just said I eat babies), and then you say you're giving me the last word.
But once again, I've presented lucid arguments that place your philosophical position in serious jeopardy. I have not left you with "clarification." I have left you with refutation and questions to be answered.
Now, if it were clear that we had reached a philosophical stalemate, your withdrawal might make sense. However, that has not happened because you have yet to make a good-faith effort answer any of my questions.
So, if you want to end this engagement, you have two options. Either concede the debate, or admit that you were never interested in serious philosophical discourse in the first place.
Of course, if you would like to answer my questions, I'll be more than happy to carry on with the discussion.
Now you can thank me for my clarification.
No, thank you. We’re all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view. Besides… the erasers need clapping. Would you mind?
Ahh-ahh-ahh. Tut, now. Don’t touch that “leave a comment” button: my moral relativism is bigger than your moral relativism.
I’m having fun… why aren’t you? Now where did I put that aspirin…?
Mike, evolution implies that there has always been death and suffering in the world. How can you maintain that organisms had an evolutionary origin, and also that there was a period in which there was no death or suffering?
Just catching up with all that's gone on here in the past two days. I apologize if I'm speaking out of sequence here.
dl wrote on 5/13, 11:13 am
The moral relativist believes that moral sensation is as real and as subjective as one's taste in food, only more important. There's no special rule saying that the relativist should not try to persuade or even impose our moral choices on others. The relativist may judge that he should impose his moral choices on others as long as he deems the outcome of those choices to be moral.
Sounds to me like the most powerful wins.
Apart from extreme cases, the moral relativist and the moral realist use the very same moral reasoning. The moral realist simply thinks that his subjective morality is actually an approximation to an objective morality. But both the realist and the relativist feel compelled to follow their subjective goods based on the totality of their experiences.
This, like the rest of this comment, conflates two issues: sensing what's right or wrong, and having the ability to explain what's right or wrong about it. The relativist can do the former but I've never seen any success in their doing the latter. The power play above hardly counts.
Do not responses to these two questions require (at the very least) an understanding of what the concepts suffering and evil mean?
You are right. Now that you know what moral relativism is, you can see why this is a non-issue.
Interestingly, the realist (or, at least, the absolutist) must answer your question in the negative. If there's more to morality than the subjective, if the universe really cares what's right and wrong, why should our subjective moral senses be in accordance with it?
Same problem here. And the reason our subjective senses are in accord with "the universe" is because of the personal God who created us that way in his image.
Does the fact that Christians do not pretend to understand the infinite mind of God and His ways (meaning: they can’t provide all the answers) somehow argue against the existence of God?
Are you sure that Christians don't claim to know the mind and ways of God? I would have thought that goodness would be part of his ways and mind, but God's goodness is apparently of a type that doesn't correlate with what we might observe. So either God's good isn't our good, or God's goodness doesn't mean what it would mean in other contexts.
You misunderstand the point. We do understand some of the mind of God, but not exhaustively or completely.
For Christianity, the problem of evil is that it is yet another way in which the definition of God fails to mean anything. God exists in a way different from everything else (we don't know what "God exists" means), and he's good in a way different from other goods (we don't know what "God is good" means), and he's powerful in a way different from anything else (we don't know what powerful means in his context), etc. It's not really a question of God not existing, but of the proposition not making any sense because none of the terms in the proposition mean what they mean in other contexts.
No, dl. There have been those who have tried to make religious language meaningless in its references, but these attempts do not stand up. God is good, powerful, etc. in ways that are consistent with our best understandings of those terms, though also in ways that transcend. His transcendence does not contradict those meanings.
In my opinion, God should do at least as well as my mother did.
Now, do you mean that according to your mature understanding when you are on a cognitive/emotional level somewhat in parity with your mother's? Or do you mean according to your understanding when you were 2 to 5 years old? Or a teenager? Did your mother's every decision, every discipline she applied, make sense to you? Should God's?
I see by holopupenko's comment of 5/13 at 1:49 pm that these two commenters have a lot of history that must have taken place elsewhere!
From dl, 5/13, 6:11 pm:
But enough about me, how about you? How do you know, say, that murder is wrong?
Might it be because such acts make you feel bad? If not, could you be persuaded that murder is generally good through pure, logical argumentation?
You're on to a good question here. There is no denying, for most of us, that one of the inputs to our opinion about murder is the way it makes us feel. (By the way, I referred briefly a short time ago about my cousin dying senselessly. It actually was murder. I have current feelings about this that are quite strong.)
But in view of Holopupenko's discussion of the island, which demonstrates that feelings cannot reliably rule these decisions, dl has nothing left to offer, while the Biblical theist does: it is that God has spoken.
One's personal morality is precisely that which one thinks one ought to do. If I think I ought to convince you (or coerce you) to act in a certain way, then that "ought" is also part of my personal morality. Hence, there's no inconsistency in engaging in moral persuasion from a personal moral perspective.
Does your moral code approve of coercion in general? Or does it only approve it when you do it to someone else?
Therefore, moral persuasion does not rely on the objectivity of morality. Rather, the objective thing in this scenario is the effectiveness of moral persuasion as a tactic. (And this is objective for the moral relativist, too!)
Pragmatically this may be true. It would apply to the infamous if apocryphal Asian brainwashers, for example. Here's what does rely on objectivity: if one wants to persuade another that a given morality is right or true; or that the persuadee's morality is somehow improved through being persuaded, there must be an objective right, true, or better target for morality. If not, then one simply changes from one opinion to another, not improving at all. And the persuader has accomplished a power play. He cannot claim to have done something good for the other, for there is nothing to say that the other has been improved through changing opinion.
This, by the way, not only seems wrong to me but offensive and dangerous. It leads to a politics of power.
Your comments on red, ball, black, bird lead me to suggest you study substance and property as philosophical concepts. You missed the point of what h. was saying.
Paul, re: your 5/13, 6:33 pm comment:
I don't know we get by discussing whether design limitations necessitate the trachea and esophagus being close together. It's a system question: you can't perturb one part of it without affecting it all. So it's just a really huge question. In principle, it's easy to accept that design limitations in general must lead to situations which, if taken in isolation, seem less than optimal. But we're more than just a trachea and esophagus.
As to arguments 1 and 2, I don't necessarily mean 2 is completely excluded; there may have been changes after the Fall. But I don't think the way you worded 1 is the only other option.
I think that one has to have a stable definition of what poor or optimal design is. One can't say that the windpipe/esophagus design is poor design in terms of human conception and then say that it is optimal because God's purposes are inscrutable.
I leave it to you to construct such a stable definition that can take into account the entire system of each human organism and the ecology into which we fit. Good luck. Our difficulty with this is not just because of God's mysterious ways.
The straightforward answer you seek, in my view, is this: optimal design of the system as a whole must lead to suboptimal circumstances for parts taken individually. I don't think any view of God requires us him to be able to get around that limitation. The Fall is what gave that suboptimality its sting, however.
Mike, evolution implies that there has always been death and suffering in the world. How can you maintain that organisms had an evolutionary origin, and also that there was a period in which there was no death or suffering?
Good question. The short answer is that I don't have a comprehensive explanation (and even if I did, I wouldn't have time to try to write it all out here). The slighly longer version is that I don't interpret Genesis in a literal fashion, so I'm not committed to a literal, temporal Garden of Eden that existed prior to the fall. The important point is that what God created was good, and that man marred what He had created by sinning. But I'll freely admit that I don't have a cleanly worked out theology of natural suffering that reconciles Genesis and evolution. (If anyone knows of such a thing, I'd be interested to hear about it.)
doctor(logic), re your 10:53 am comment:
I don't know the history that you and Holopupenko share on these matters, but I think he has some valid points here, though summarized in few words. It's not just a maneuver. He's summarizing your logical positivism and making reference to your relativism. His point (a) is actually in reference, I think, to your not catching the substance/property distinction. His point (b) is about the positivism.
I agree that in this post he has not captured the reasons he disagrees with these things. He obviously disagrees with you but if you're comfortable with your position, I don't know why it seems that he is stating it contemptuously. The only "sting" words he used, to my view, are the ones he put in parentheses in the first couple of sentences, and if you believe what you are stating here, they shouldn't seem very insulting at all.
Now, Holopupenko, maybe (in my view from the bleachers) you reached the point of sarcasm in your following post, and maybe you've done this in the past, and maybe dl is viewing your 2:13 am comment in that light. I have to say you last comment wasn't, shall we say, filled with insurmountable argumentation . So maybe there's history there to which the rest of us are not privy, and it really would be better to stick to the points at hand.
Mike, I'd also be interested if someone can point us to the kind of explanation you were talking about this evening. It seems to me it may be the strongest Biblical argument against theistic evolution, and it calls for explanation.
Tom,
Sounds to me like the most powerful wins.I'm sure you've noticed that this is the actual case. It might even be tautological. Yet, it's the rationale behind police forces and social justice.
This, like the rest of this comment, conflates two issues: sensing what's right or wrong, and having the ability to explain what's right or wrong about it. The relativist can do the former but I've never seen any success in their doing the latter. The power play above hardly counts.Moral objectivism would be compelling if the objectivist could fit a theory of morality to the data, then make a prediction. However, to my knowledge, this is not what's argued by theists (utilitarians may have a weak case, but whether they are truly objectivists is a separate question). Since explanatory power derives from prediction, theistic moral objectivism has no explanatory power.
Before we spiral into another debate about what constitutes an explanation, let me narrow my claim down to an epistemic one. There's no reason for me to believe in one non-explanatory (non-predictive) claim over another because such claims are inherently untestable. That God made the world does not explain why we see what we see versus why we don't. No act we could observe is too evil to refute your thesis.
You have to admit that debates among objectivists are settled based on case studies that evoke personal emotional responses, e.g., some theists might conclude that God must have given us free will because it would not be consistent with our conception of good for him to have done otherwise. You might say that this is a matter of fitting the theological model to the data. That's fine, but if you don't get a prediction out of the model, you're just re-stating the data.
And the reason our subjective senses are in accord with "the universe" is because of the personal God who created us that way in his image.Again, you give me no reason to believe this. An evil-twin God who wants us to learn evil for ourselves delivers identical explanatory power, i.e., none.
There have been those who have tried to make religious language meaningless in its references, but these attempts do not stand up. God is good, powerful, etc. in ways that are consistent with our best understandings of those terms, though also in ways that transcend. His transcendence does not contradict those meanings.They do stand up, and this is what is taught in most Western philosophy departments. And when the meanings of terms like good and powerful are employed in the intuitive sense, God theories are strongly disconfirmed. That's why the problem of evil is so compelling to so many people.
Now, do you mean that according to your mature understanding when you are on a cognitive/emotional level somewhat in parity with your mother's? Or do you mean according to your understanding when you were 2 to 5 years old? Or a teenager? Did your mother's every decision, every discipline she applied, make sense to you? Should God's?I think this is a copout. It's just another way to make God non-predictive and non-explanatory, because you can point to anything that seems anomalous and claim it's God's mysterious way.
Most of my mother's decisions did make sense to me, I just didn't always want to comply. However, you can only bring this analogy to bear in a limited class of activities. As soon as my pain went above a certain threshold, my mother would intervene to remedy the situation. This intervention came whether I misbehaved or not. Yet, there appears to be no pain threshold above which God intervenes. Indeed, the entire scheme of life on this planet is inherently evil if we could be better off. And we could be. Wouldn't we be better off in Heaven? Would we not be invulnerable and with our friends and family? If so, God should put everyone in heaven. It's that simple. After all, it's not as though everyone who goes to heaven is a saint. Most of them are regular Joes.
So, if I interpret your model in terms of my intuitive sense of right and wrong, it is disconfirmed. No good God would allow the evil I see to persist, even if it means he has to be infinitely merciful. The only escape for your model is to declare that good and evil aren't exactly what I feel, or that God's mystery is sufficient to override the glaring inconsistency. The former robs the model of any elegance it may have had, and the latter renders it non-explanatory.
You're on to a good question here. There is no denying, for most of us, that one of the inputs to our opinion about murder is the way it makes us feel. (By the way, I referred briefly a short time ago about my cousin dying senselessly. It actually was murder. I have current feelings about this that are quite strong.)I'm sorry to hear of your loss.
This, by the way, not only seems wrong to me but offensive and dangerous. It leads to a politics of power.I think you are confusing a relativist account of morality with a prescription for particular action. We both agree that arbitrary use of power to benefit a few individuals at the expense of many is wrong, and our prescription is for something better. However, this prescription doesn't rely on relativism or objectivism. It relies on how we feel. Relativism doesn't change how I feel about these issues. I am no less sickened by corruption as a relativist than I would be as an objectivist.
Let's go back to your earlier statement about feeling right and wrong and explaining it. Your model says you should follow your moral feelings because they are a guide to objective morality, and my model simply says I should follow my moral feelings. To a close approximation, our views will coincide if our feelings do. If our feelings don't coincide, that discredits the idea that moral feelings are a window onto an objective moral world.
Let's look at the evil person and see if objectivism helps. A person might be evil because (1) they act against their moral feelings, or because (2) their sense of right and wrong is different, or even because (3) they cannot see that their actions will result in a situation that goes against their moral feelings.
In case (1), the person is dysfunctional as both a relativist and an objectivist. In case (2), the person's view of objective morality is different, so objective morality won't help him. He will only subscribe to the objective morality of his choice. In case (3), the person is unwittingly evil as a relativist or an objectivist.
Does your moral code approve of coercion in general? Or does it only approve it when you do it to someone else?This is a bit like asking whether I approve of nuclear technology. When asked that broadly, it's difficult to answer. Many people consider nuclear technology morally neutral. The same is true of coercion. The goodness and badness of both is to be found in the consequences (perceived and real) of deployment of the tool or tactic.
Your comments on red, ball, black, bird lead me to suggest you study substance and property as philosophical concepts. You missed the point of what h. was saying.No, I didn't miss anything. It was textbook Thomism.
Tom:
Understood. Agreed. You expanded upon some of the points raised in this exchange more clearly than I could—thanks.
DL is in a difficult position—both with respect to Logical Positivism and his moral relativism. You are also correct that we have a “history” of exchanges. My MO has generally been to repeat back to him his assertions and to point out their self-stultifying nature. That is why, indeed, there was no “insurmountable argumentation” in my 2:13 comment—there was never meant to be. It was merely a concise restatement of DL’s position. If he wants to interpret that as sarcasm, so be it. But I suspect its more uneasiness at facing his own position.
That I’ve employed philosophical concepts (many of them Thomistic), while true, is irrelevant to the immediate point of simply requesting DL be consistent and apply his own criterion back upon himself and his own philosophical views. (The onus is on him: he makes assertions, but can’t seem to back them up without self-stultification or circular reasoning. Is it incorrect for me to point this out—repeatedly if necessary?) DL has never been able to apply his own criteria back upon themselves because of the deep equivocation in the terms he bandies about (for example, to equivocate between moral constructs and material objects accessible to the modern empirical sciences is nonsense—there’s no way around it), which in turn is driven by a clearly-stated faith in the modern empirical sciences as the epistemological arbiters of all human knowledge, a.k.a. scientism. DL continuously contradicts himself by making the metaphysical claim that metaphysics is “meaningless” or non-existent (!), and when this is pointed out, he simply hand-waves in the further assertion that this claim is empirically verifiable (?!?)
Another easily-predicted result of such thinking is a deeply-ingrained Idealism... in his claim that, for example, material objects AND ideas ARE reductively patterns—not realizing the ontological import of such a claim—and essentially implying (per Kant) that the object per se is inaccessible to human knowledge.
Also, although he may complain (without any objective basis to do so per his own moral criteria!) about ad hominem, it is not irrelevant (for the implications of entering into these discussions) that DL has NO formal philosophical bona fides. This does matter—a great deal, in fact.
This is not to imply that people without formal educational and professional philosophical experience (like him) are banned from discussions. But what it does call for is a certain level of humility that such a person may not understand the terms—let alone ideas, let alone philosophical systems—discussed. Yet, we observe otherwise: Thomism, metaphysics, non-empirically-based philosophical positions don’t count or are hand-waved away as “meaningless,” while Logical Positivism and the modern empirical sciences MUST rule the day—they get a free pass. Doesn’t such a position demand a demonstration of its soundness? Does one employ the modern empirical sciences to validate the modern empirical sciences? Can one employ empiricism to validate Logical Positivism? Of course not, because at the least these are circular argument.
There are so many instances of DL’s philosophical misunderstandings of say, Godel’s Incompletness Theorems, the ontological nature of quantum entities, brain vs. mind, morality, that moral categories must be “predictive” in nature to be valid (!?!), not wanting to discuss “explanation” vs. epistemology (which is PRECISELY why we keep going round and round: this issue MUST be resolved before proceeding), constantly bashing God when we’re not discussing Him, forcing (for his own purposes) God to be “predictive” and “explainable” in order to be “valid,” reducing morality to what we feel (?!? where’s the empirical consistency in that?), etc., etc., that invariably focusing on such narrower issues leads to both sides talking past each other. (I offer as references his discussions on this blog, and several others.)
THAT is why I reflect back to DL the presuppositions he brings into any of these discussions, and those are the things that interest me. It is not even that DL would fail any course on philosophy given he can’t defend his positions philosophically, but he would fail any course taught by a secular analytic philosopher. I don’t need Thomism to back up my position: it’s easier to sit back and watch metaphysical positions such as those held by DL collapse under their own criteria.
What I’m suggesting—as earlier—is that sheer will power bouyed by certain metaphysical presuppositions bouy his (and all our) positions. (That is precisely why his moral relativist postion reduces—as you correctly pointed out—"the most powerful wins" over reason.) My point is that these presuppositions, antecedents, a priori notions are not empirical in the modern scientific sense—nor can they be, nor do they require validation by the modern empirical sciences—and that therefore they must be discussed on a philosophical level. DL claims otherwise: that ALL knowledge is necessarily and sufficiently captured and explained by the modern empirical sciences. Yet, when the obvious self-contradiction in such a position is pointed out (i.e., that it can’t explain itself using only the tools and methodologies of the modern empirical sciences), that’s when DL begins hand-waving with MORE and MORE of the same (hence the repetitive nature of his comments). Then, when revealed knowledge is brought into the discussions, DL finds himself even further from understanding such issues. It’s almost not worth the trouble. DL has already agreed with you that the most powerful wins. Not a world I want to live in... hence the St. Athanasius quote in my masthead.
I don't know we get by discussing whether design limitations necessitate the trachea and esophagus being close together. It's a system question: you can't perturb one part of it without affecting it all. So it's just a really huge question. In principle, it's easy to accept that design limitations in general must lead to situations which, if taken in isolation, seem less than optimal. But we're more than just a trachea and esophagus.But how can God be subject to these limitations? These limitations are not at all like the logic that 1+1=2. You're saying that God couldn't have done any better in his placement of the windpipe and esophagus?! He could have given us an entirely different design completely if he wanted to.
As to arguments 1 and 2, I don't necessarily mean 2 is completely excluded; there may have been changes after the Fall. But I don't think the way you worded 1 is the only other option.What's another option?
I leave it to you to construct such a stable definition that can take into account the entire system of each human organism and the ecology into which we fit. Good luck. Our difficulty with this is not just because of God's mysterious ways.Constructing a definition of good or optimal that accounts for the entire system and ecology has nothing to do with changing that definition to account for God's mysterious ways. Your refusal here to accept even a common-sense understanding good or optimal is just a move to avoid the problem of making a judgment on design at all because that would lead to acknowledging sub-optimal designs.
The straightforward answer you seek, in my view, is this: optimal design of the system as a whole must lead to suboptimal circumstances for parts taken individually. I don't think any view of God requires us him to be able to get around that limitation.I just don't understand how the creator of space and time did such a poor job in so many areas. Can you really doubt the contingency, the circumstantialness, the hapazardness, etc., of so much in the natural world? This doesn't require refusal to see so much order in the natural world, by the way; the natural world exhibits great order and great disorder. But you're refusing to acknowledge the disorder.
Hi Paul:
I’m not sure I understand from where you’re coming when you say “I just don’t understand how the creator of space and time did such a poor job in so many areas?”
Doesn’t this presuppose knowing EVERYTHING about the entire universe before passing (what amounts to) a limited technical judgment? (I’ll even grant you—for now—the limitation of entire material universe.)
If I’ve misunderstood you and artificially limited your understanding of "poor" to not include the presence of evil, I apologize... but the question remains. But, if you DO include BOTH good and evil (the privation of good) in your “quality=poor” judgment, then such a judgment falls outside the bounds of the modern empirical sciences, i.e., it becomes (among other things) a value judgment as well. But if it’s a value judgment, then doesn’t it presuppose your understanding the full import of the meaningfullness of the entire universe?
I guess what I’m asking is: on what basis anyone should accept your (implied) authority to judge the “quality” of the entire universe? I’m not asking to belittle you (by any means), nor am I belittling the importance of your question. It just seems to me that a person who is part of the universe should be careful about passing judgment on the “quality” of that universe if that person can in no way step outside the entire universe to view and understand it in its entirety.
Your thoughts?
I wasn't talking about evil, I was only talking about poor design (windpipe/esophagus). And I'm certainly not trying to judge the entire universe.
When I'm choking just because part of my meal went down the wrong pipe, I make no apologies for judging the design of the windpipe/esophagus to be poor. When the brain has to have extra wiring to account for the blind spot in our vision because a nerve goes right through the middle of the retina (?), it is reasonable to judge that design as poor, especially for a being as powerful as God is claimed to be.
Let's put it like this: we only have these options: we judge everything in the universe to be optimially designed: we judge some or all of the universe to be poorly designed; we refuse to judge. I think it's clear that some of nature is as if it was superbly designed, and some of it is as if it was poorly designed, especially the contingency of biological organisms' design.
Mike wrote "..I'm not committed to a literal, temporal Garden of Eden that existed prior to the fall. The important point is that what God created was good, and that man marred what He had created by sinning."
Mike, I don't understand what you intend to convey here. In an evolutionary viewpoint, God created a world with no life, or perhaps with a prebiotic soup. Is this the part of creation that was good?
Anyway, man did not appear for several billion years, so the creation must still have been good. So death and suffering in nature must have been good, right?
Yes, Tom, Holopupenko's thesis is that my arguments carry no weight because it is I who bring them to the table. There's a formal latin name for this fallacy that, er, slips my mind at the moment.
Fortunately, H has taken a special interest in my sad case. He has promised to follow me everywhere I go on the Internet and, um, watch over me. Apparently, I am "worth the trouble."
You may also have noticed that our happy-go-lucky Holopupenko sees himself as a theological Howard Stern figure (his masters degree is in theology, not philosophy). Funny enough, most of us turn to the radio for Stern, and we come here for the discussion.
I do think, though, that H might have devoted one or two of the nine paragraphs in his recent comment to responding to my arguments instead of talking about my shortcomings as an individual.
DL:
Factually wrong again: It’s a Masters in Thomistic PHILOSOPHY from the ICU through Notre Dame [thesis pending]... in addition to a prior B.S. in nuclear engineering and physics from RPI, an M.A. in Soviet Studies from Harvard, and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT. I’m not surprised, though (given your presuppositions), that you automatically and incorrectly equated Thomism exclusively with theology from an earlier discussion. Ignorance, however, is no excuse. The pattern (to borrow your term) is clear: you neither understand Thomism or metaphysics or Logical Positivism… and the mistakes keep flowing.
You, on the other hand, have NO formal bona fides in philosophy whatsoever, and you’ve indicated you feel sufficiently qualified to make philosophical assertions simply because you (allegedly) have a Ph.D. in high-energy physics from an undisclosed university. What’s wrong with that picture?
Instead of focusing on my overall educational bona fides and trying to shift the burden away from applying your own criteria back upon your ideas (the onus is on you: I didn’t make the assertions and ideas you promulgate), try to stay on track. You can call it personal, if you’d like, when I go after your ideas with your own criteria. I call it keeping you honest. But, hey, it’s all relative, according to you, isn’t it? Why all the emotion?
Tom:
An apology after the fact for this discussion descending to where it has may not be worth much, but please accept it. I will no longer participate in this string.
I'm traveling today and won't get to post what I write for a while, so I run the risk of cross-posting with other replies here. I won't have time to look at this once I get there, though, other than pasting it up on the site, so here goes anyway.
doctor(logic),
Sounds to me like the most powerful wins.
I'm sure you've noticed that this is the actual case. It might even be tautological. Yet, it's the rationale behind police forces and social justice.
This reveals a lot. We're talking here about what is moral, and you respond that it is, in effect, totally irrelevant, so much so that morality is tautological with power.
One reason we have trouble agreeing about things is that we can't figure out what the topic of discussion is. Some of us here have been talking about what is good (ethically), what is right or wrong, and how in principle one can decide those issues. You're talking about who has the bigger guns or the most powerful persuasive presence. If you think they are the same question, then we're getting nowhere here, not now or ever. Do you?
That God made the world does not explain why we see what we see versus why we don't. No act we could observe is too evil to refute your thesis.
I'm not putting this out as a proof of theism. I'm putting it out as a defeater of the argument that theism is refuted by evil in the world. This is a theistic defense, not a theistic proof. Now, I do think there is extraordinary explanatory power here in helping us understand why we sense there is something wrong in the world, and I have offered that point as a supporter for the thesis in my blog post. I said that the thesis "makes sense" in those terms, not that there is proof of a belief there. So your objection misses; I agree with this point of yours taken out of context as you have done it but in the context of the discussion, it's not about the things I've been saying.
And the reason our subjective senses are in accord with "the universe" is because of the personal God who created us that way in his image.
Again, you give me no reason to believe this. An evil-twin God who wants us to learn evil for ourselves delivers identical explanatory power, i.e., none.
Let's slay this misconception once and for all now. This is a blog, not a theological library. If it were a theological library, though, one might find books that describe theistic beliefs, that discuss the history, that discuss various assumptions and approaches. Some of them would be philosophical or historical treatises that explore reasons for belief. The ones that do not explore those reasons are not deficient for that reason. I can't, in every post and every comment, give you all the reasons you want for belief. How could I write it? (Who would read it?) I'm trying to explain and elaborate on a belief system, throwing in points here and there to show that it makes sense even in non-Biblical terms, not trying otherwise to prove (here, anyway) that there is a God.
It's what I wrote above: we won't get anywhere if we don't get on the same subject. Your dismissal of the ideas here is unimpressive in view of your apparent unwillingness to engage with what has actually been written.
They do stand up, and this is what is taught in most Western philosophy departments.
They are self-refuting; they prove too much; they do not stand up. But to explain and support that would take us down a whole new direction. I refer you to Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief, the first few chapters.
Yet, there appears to be no pain threshold above which God intervenes. Indeed, the entire scheme of life on this planet is inherently evil if we could be better off. And we could be. Wouldn't we be better off in Heaven? Would we not be invulnerable and with our friends and family? If so, God should put everyone in heaven. It's that simple. After all, it's not as though everyone who goes to heaven is a saint.
These are good questions. I'll be blogging on things like this soon. (Please remind me if I don't cover it in the next several posts.)
I am no less sickened by corruption as a relativist than I would be as an objectivist.
Repeating: this is not about whether relativists have a moral sense. I never doubted it a moment. It's about whether they can explain it in terms other than feelings, power, preference.
Your model says you should follow your moral feelings because they are a guide to objective morality, and my model simply says I should follow my moral feelings.
You're still not engaging what I have really written. But hey, I just pointed it out a couple of paragraphs ago, so I can't expect you to have responded already!
My model not says what you say, it also explains why that leads to right when it does lead to right, and it has the ability to correct such feelings when they are wrong. That is the insurmountable difference between our models. Your discussion following this quote only covers a most pragmatic question: what do we do about the evil person. But it doesn't explain how that person can be decided to be evil rather than just in disagreement. Explain. Not by means of prediction but by means of principles.
No, I didn't miss anything. It was textbook Thomism.
Then speak, man. What's your point? Don't just say a substance is the same as a property! You look silly if you don't at least explain yourself. (And I won't even require that explanation to include a prediction!)
Holopupenko,
Just a clarification (still on the airplane here): dl "agrees" that the most powerful wins--but he's not agreeing with me, he's agreeing that I stated his position correctly.
I have made no secret of the fact that I have minimal formal training in philosophy; it's primarily been independent study. That fact has been out there on this blog from the start. (There's some overlap between philosophy and theology, which I have studied more.) My recourse in view of that is to try to listen well and respond to disagreements for what they are, to engage the actual thing that is stated, and to let myself be corrected if wrong. I've discovered that if I can't support what I write, I'm in trouble! I wrote about it once as "white water writing." I've had to correct myself more than once, and I've learned a lot in the course of doing this.
When people like (doctor)logic keep ducking issues, by changing the subject as I just commented for example, they're not getting anywhere at all.
Repeating: this is not about whether relativists have a moral sense. I never doubted it a moment. It's about whether they can explain it in terms other than feelings, power, preference.
1. Then why, way back when, did you doubt whether I could feel moral revulsion at terrorism if you truly believed that relativists have a moral sense? My best guess is that back then you didn't believe that, and now you do.
2. I've offered many times before that relativistic morals can be explained by feelings, power, preference, *as well as socialization.* You keep forgetting about socialization in an apparent attempt to trivialize the basis for relative morality (it's only what you're feeling right now; it all comes down to power anyway; it's just your whim or preference).
The socialization of morality is somewhere between a mere preference (chocolate or vanilla?), a social custom (knife and fork, or chopsticks?), and language (I'll never speak Japanese fluently).
Paul, your memory can't possibly be that bad.
Do you really think this argument will fare any better than it did when we first discussed the problem of evil, when your faulty world-view followed you to the discussion on "Is God Good", when you brought it to "Animal Morality" or when you wanted to fight against your socialization and "inculcation" in the SSM threads?
Paul, if I ever said I doubted it in the past I did not intend to say it. I'm glad if we can make this correction. My only question has been how to explain that very real emotion, and its fundamental underpinnings.
I remember your points about socialization. It seems to me that it just backs the same question back a few paces. That is, what is it about socialization that is more valid than just feelings, power, preference writ slightly larger? It's a consensus of those things, to be sure (though the consensus exists only to a limited extent in limited times and places--e.g. Charlie's reminder about SSM). But why would a consensus of not-valid foundations for ethics be more valid than the individuals' feelings or power moves?
Tom,
It seems to me it may be the strongest Biblical argument against theistic evolution, and it calls for explanation.
I agree. Even though evolution has been around for ~140 years, I don't think any theologians have dealt with this in a very deep or satisfactory way. John Haught, a Catholic priest, makes an attempt, but from the description & reviews of the book I'm not sure it would excite me too much. As he points out, the materialists can't give a convincing explanation of life in general, but the notions of design and order in nature often stressed by Christians are also incomplete. Haught's perspective is that both accounts give short shrift to the genuine novelty constantly created in nature, which includes (or is dependent upon) the destructive and chaotic aspecs of nature as much as it's orderliness. This is in some sense analogous to the argument that true freedom of choice requires the allowance for truly evil choices; true freedom for nature requires the possibility of destruction and error, which necessarily entails pain and suffering for living organisms. I think he's probably on to something there, but it sounds like he goes pretty far down the process theology route, which from my limited experience with it tends to take people away from Christian orthodoxy rather quickly.
So one answer to AR's query is that God created the Cosmos with the inherent capacity to evolve complex life forms (and who knows what in the distant future), but He wanted it to be genuinely self-creating, not just following some specified program He installed at the beginning. Thus what He created was good from the beginning, even though it contained the potential for death, pain, and suffering (if it didn't, it wouldn't really have true freedom to evolve). But as I said I don't have a fully satisfactory way to incorporate the Fall into this picture. My instinct tells me that trying to reconcile the details of nature with the theological concept encapsulated by the Fall is likely to fail (viz., the earlier comment that our DNA must have been "reprogrammed"), but I don't know how, exactly, the two relate to each other.
Charlie, I don't see anything substantive in your last post, so I don't see how to respond.
Tom, I appreciate your comment, and we can move forward.
I don't want to claim that my morality has validity in the sense that I think you mean the word (which is not an unreasonable sense, either). That sense I could define by adding the adjective "absolute" or "objective" to the concept of validity.
The advantage of socialization over preferences, feelings, etc., is that it removes the critique of "easily changed" from realitve morality. My morals, as relative morals and as socialized into me, are not things I can easily or lightly change, and therefore provide some (not ultimate) stability that preferences don't for realitve morality.
So I readily admit that my morality does not have ultimate or absolute validity. Actually, it would be a contradiction if one claimed that relaitve morals *were* absolute, or provable, in some sense. They wouldn't be realtive any more.
Mike, I don't understand what you intend to convey here. In an evolutionary viewpoint, God created a world with no life, or perhaps with a prebiotic soup. Is this the part of creation that was good?
All of it was good.
Anyway, man did not appear for several billion years, so the creation must still have been good. So death and suffering in nature must have been good, right?
In a word, yes.
Mike, when you said earlier "..man marred what He had created by sinning", what exactly was marred by sin?
Tom,
Some of us here have been talking about what is good (ethically), what is right or wrong, and how in principle one can decide those issues. You're talking about who has the bigger guns or the most powerful persuasive presence. If you think they are the same question, then we're getting nowhere here, not now or ever. Do you?I am in agreement with Paul's last comment. You think morality is absolutely normative. I think it's descriptive. So I cannot provide you with a deep principle of normative morality without refuting my own claim. I can only provide you with my personal opinions and judgements about how to make moral progress. I'll be all too happy to provide you with those opinions upon request, but they're contingent and not central to the debate.
Repeating: this is not about whether relativists have a moral sense. I never doubted it a moment. It's about whether they can explain it in terms other than feelings, power, preference.Again, the answer is no. That's the point, I think. The relativist claim is that morality is nothing more than these things.
Sure, we can establish rules and moral guidelines, but these are just useful formalizations of feelings, power and preference. Such rules are wholly contingent. Presumably, if we were Klingons, the rules would be different.
My model not only says what you say, it also explains why that leads to right when it does lead to right, and it has the ability to correct such feelings when they are wrong.Since this is not a theological library, I will not even touch this one.
Your discussion following this quote only covers a most pragmatic question: what do we do about the evil person. But it doesn't explain how that person can be decided to be evil rather than just in disagreement. Explain. Not by means of prediction but by means of principles.You are right that we're talking past eachother. My claim is that there is no deep principle beyond the descriptive facts of moral practice. Your asking me for a deeper principle is apparently like my asking you for predictive power.
Physics is objective because it is universally agreed that prediction is the thing of value there. However, I do not understand on what basis we should all agree that a certain action is morally correct if not for all feeling the same way about the outcome (and we don't feel the same).
Thus, it seems to me that the substantive issue is the nature and justification of commitments to non-predictive models. You have already said you plan to write on this topic, and I look forward to your post.
This is straying off topic, but might clear up some background points; esp. on my comment about Paul's memory.
You can check out whether or not you ever said that you were repulsed by the thought of terrorism and whether or not Tom doubted it here.
http://thinkingchristian.net/C93...7104/
index.html
What Tom really said about morals and whether or not a moral relativist can have them and act on them.
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/C936247104/ E20050918215613/index.html
"The atheist’s problem is with the definition of evil, or more precisely, the ability to name anything at all as evil. We all have an internal sense that some things are wrong, so we all intuitively use the word; but if there is no God, how is it possible that anything is appropriately described that way? There is a deep problem with it."
(I added the italics).
It (evil) cannot be satisfactorily explained in a worldview that excludes an objective basis for determining the difference between good and evil. ...
The puzzle for me in non-theistic ethics is this: millions of people, including many who are brilliant and thoughtful, live relatively good lives. Many of them, who have thought about it deeply, claim to have a good explanation for the underpinnings of their ethics. Not only is their social behavior pretty good, they also believe they have normative explanations for it.
When I became a believer in Christ, it was partly (as I have written ) because I couldn't find a good basis for ethics anywhere else but in God and his self-revelation. But what of all those brilliant, insightful people who disagree? I've been truly puzzled by this, so I've read a lot of them, looking for their explanations.
...
I'm not saying these people act badly. I'm saying their explanations for doing good don't add up.
"The ability for ethics and morals" does not translate to an explanation of ethics and morals. It fails at the is-ought transition.
The issue is not performance but explanation, since as I said above, many people's behavior is relatively fine. But you would probably agree that not everyone's behavior is. The problem is, how do you explain ethics and morals to them in such a way that it carries more than the weak force of varying social or personal opinion?
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...16102746/ #79870
What Tom actually said on relative morals and terrorism:
We all have ethical systems, and most of us have systems that lead us to do mostly good things to other people.* These systems differ, though, and some of them, like the ones we've been talking about here, are in serious conflict.
What does this conflict mean? The answer I've received here from the atheist perspective is that there is no transcendent answer that says certain things are wrong even for Hitler, Pol Pot, or al-Qaeda (boy, I always have to slow down so much to type that name--it doesn't "lay" well on the keyboard, to use a musician's term).
...
I hope this is clear. Again, I'm saying that in the relativistic system described especially by Paul here, bin Laden has as much right to claim he is doing right as you or I do. The specific comment by Paul was:
"What does it mean to ask if one group is right and the other is wrong when right and wrong are defined by each group? The situation is realitivistic. Both are right for themselves."
Al-Qaeda, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin, the Chinese in the Cultural Revolution, and everybody who has pitched in to help with tsunami or hurricane relief stands at an equal moral standing if this is true.
...
When I said you can't live with the consequences of your belief, Eric, what I mean is not that you cannot have strong ethics and live by them. What I meant is that when push comes to shove, you're going to want to tell someone like bin Laden that he's wrong. But the premises you start from do not allow you logically to place your ethics above his. That has to produce conflict within.
Forget Bin Laden, the moral relativists even wanted to tell someone like God that He's wrong.
It’s not surprising that you remember it wrong, you had trouble getting Tom’s point even at the time:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...16102746/ #79890
Paul:
You must engage my idea that one can *exactly* live one’s morals as if they were absolute (as one commenter said), realizing that, ultimately, they aren’t.
Tom: That was never at issue.
Paul:One doesn’t need to believe that something is absolutely wrong to fully and strongly act with one’s whole being against it.
Tom:Again, I'm not sure where you got the impression that this was at issue.
Paul: Is it or is it not a fact that, viewed from Hitler’s perspective, the Holocaust was fine? I’d like a yes or no answer to that question.
Tom:That was also never in dispute. I hope at some point I can explain what the question is here, because you're not responding at all to what I've expressed as the main problem with relativistic ethics. I'll keep trying as I continue here.
Paul: So how can it be that everyone thinks that their society’s morals are the only true morals (sound familiar?) and everyone else’s morals (to the extent that they are different and non-trivial) are wrong?
Tom: From the fact that there exists an ultimate basis for morals, it does not follow that each society has to understand or interpret morals identically. It does not imply that any one of them has to get it right at all. It also does not follow that any society has to recognize their failure to get it right. This is not a strong objection to ultimate ethics at all.
I've cut out lots of good stuff here in an effort to keep this from being too long but it's well worth reading, IMO.
While many of you will think that this is overly critical behaviour on my part I think it is valuable to note the manner in which many of these issues have been dealt with on this blog already.
Charlie, It's hard to tell exactly what aspect of the quotations above you intend as your topic. It would help me if you chose one or a few specific points and stated exactly what the issue was with them. For instance, what exactly did I "remember it wrong?"
I am more than willing to admit my mistakes, just as I think I am gracious when others, like Tom, have admitted theirs, but I don't know where to start with your post above.
For me, less volume/sheer weight and more clarity and being explicit is better.
Back on topic, here's a summary of my argument against God the designer, based on the poor design of biological organisms:
1. For convenience, let's call the design of biological organisms that is contingent, hapazard, inconvenient, and the like "poor design."
2. Assume a human judgment and consensus (as opposed to a godly judgment) as to what is contingent, hapazard, inconvenient, etc.
3. There are either no examples of poor design in biological organisms, or there are some examples. Unless you're prepared to argue that there are no such examples, then you must admit that there are some examples. Choking due to the close placement of the windpipe and the esophagus, and the blind spot due to an optic nerve going through the middle of the (?) retina are examples.
4. Either God as the designer was forced into such contingent, hapazard, and inconvenient design, or such design was a deliberate choice.
4. A. He could not have been forced because the creator of space and time could surely have also designed biological organism in such a way (even in ways unimaginable to us) to get around such poor design.
4. B. If a deliberate choice, then the purpose of that choice is inscrutable. But inscrutability can be used to justify any design at all, and therefore justifies none of them.
Paul,
This has only been intended as a reminder, not a new topic. You need not admit to anything, and none of you should let it interfere with any continuing discussion.
If its purpose is not self- evident in light of your comment (below) then my head is truly muddled.
Tom:
Repeating: this is not about whether relativists have a moral sense. I never doubted it a moment. It's about whether they can explain it in terms other than feelings, power, preference.
Paul:
1. Then why, way back when, did you doubt whether I could feel moral revulsion at terrorism if you truly believed that relativists have a moral sense? My best guess is that back then you didn't believe that, and now you do.
2. I've offered many times before that relativistic morals can be explained by feelings, power, preference, *as well as socialization.* You keep forgetting about socialization in an apparent attempt to trivialize the basis for relative morality (it's only what you're feeling right now; it all comes down to power anyway; it's just your whim or preference).
The wider point here is that Tom has presented a well-thought-out point of view based on what he sees to be the truth -not merely for the immediate gratification of scoring debate points - and has done so consistently from thread to thread.
The relativists have repeatedly presented the strawman that he is denying the existence of their sense of morality and Tom has graciously continued to set the record straight.
He could have just said "read my posts" but now I have presented some of them so nobody needs to go searching.
(ps. on #2: If you go back to "way back when" you will also find that not only does Tom not "keep forgetting" about socialization, he has addressed it and was probably the one to first introduce it.)
Charlie, Tom wrote:
Repeating: this is not about whether relativists have a moral sense. I never doubted it a moment. It's about whether they can explain it in terms other than feelings, power, preference.I don't think it was unreasonable of me to conclude that Tom forgot about socialization when he failed in to include it in his list with feelings, power, and preference as a term in which realitivists explain their moral sense.
I don't feel like looking up the other times Tom might have forgotten to include socialization, so I will retract the word "keep" (the continual and recurrent nature of the forgetting) from my "keep forgetting" complaint. Forgive me if the "keep* part of my comment was overdrawn.
Paul, re your 11:37 am comment:
4. B. If a deliberate choice, then the purpose of that choice is inscrutable. But inscrutability can be used to justify any design at all, and therefore justifies none of them.
You're taking a wild ride with this word "justify," I think. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that you are correct in saying that nature evidences poor design in organisms; and let us also suppose that God allowed this by choice rather than by design necessity. (Both of those have been challenged here, but I'll set that aside for now. One thing at a time, you know.) Then what you are saying in 4.B. resolves to this:
a) We cannot understand or explain why God would do this.
b) Theists may resort to saying God's purpose is inscrutable, and they suppose that this is sufficient explanation.
c) As explanation, however, this is weak or meaningless because it can be used to explain anything.
d) Therefore God's purposes are unexplained.
e) Therefore God's purposes are unjustified.
There's quite a leap between (d) and (e), and it seems to me it involves an equivocation on "justified." The term can be used in at least two ways:
1) Justified in the sense of being vindicated as right, fair, proper, and "just;" and
2) Justified in the sense of rational justification. Knowledge, in the Platonic view that still mostly prevails, is "justified true belief." In short, for a person to say she knows something, she must believe it to be true: if she said, "I know that Paris is a city in Manhattan, and yet I don't believe it is," then we could stop right there, not having any information on either Paris and Manhattan, and conclude that she did not know that Paris was a city in Manhattan. Also, if she said "I believe Paris is a city in Manhattan," and we had reliable information (as we do) that it is not true, we could also correctly say she does not know Paris is a city in Manhattan.
So far is quite uncontroversial. The next part has only recently come into question, and whether it is adequate or not does not matter; I'm just trying to explain the term "justified." It has to do with whether a belief is knowledge just by virtue of being believed and being true. Supposed Smith said he believed the Detroit Tigers were going to win the World Series this year. Suppose Smith turns out to be right. He has a true belief; but here in the middle of May could it be called knowledge? No; and the traditional answer is that he had no justification for that belief. It's based on a whim, or a message on a fortune cookie, or a dream; whatever it's based on, it's insufficient information to claim that it leads to actual knowledge. What is it that brings about justification with respect to beliefs? That's a matter of contention, and it too does not matter in this context.
I think what you're really saying in (a) through (d) is that God's purposes are unjustified in this sense, that we do not have whatever it takes to turn a belief in God's actions or character into knowledge of all God's purposes, especially in their deep extent of how suffering fits into the plan. This is fine with me.
But you presented this as an "argument against God the designer." In order to accomplish this, you would have to show that there is something inconsistent between what we know or surmise of God in one realm and what we know or surmise of him in another. We conceive of God as being just, as doing the right thing. But how can he be just if his purposes are unjustified? That seems to be your complaint.
It's quite possible if one recognizes that "unjustified" is not equivalent to "unjust." There's an equivocation on the root word, "just." To say that we are not justified in knowledge of the deep extent of God's purposes does not entail that God is unjust in those deep purposes. Your argument misses its target of standing against theism; it merely repeats what we all agree on, that God is not fully and exhaustively knowable by humans.
It seems to me it may be the strongest Biblical argument against theistic evolution, and it calls for explanation.
Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Fall is just as much a problem for ID as it is for theistic evolution. In fact, the problem exists for pretty much any position except for young-earth creationism.
Tom, I wasn't careful in my use of the word "justify." Allow me to explain my intent more fully. I meant something more like "inscrutability can be *consistent with* any design at all. Maybe there's still some aspect of "justify" that is congruent with "consistent with." I might need to modify the exact words even more as we go along.
I kinda don't get a lot of your 05.16.06 - 5:08 pm response; that's either because 1) I'm not able to see how it applies to my edit using "consistent with," or 2) you'll need to change your response to account for my "consistent with" edit. I hope you can use some creative insight to hopefully understand what I'm trying to get at, maybe even better than I can articulate.
Paul, I'm going to have to wait and see if you can explain exactly what you meant by "justified." Do you mean that because we can't satisfactorily explain it, it is necessarily therefore unjust?
Tom, I think what I meant by "justify" was, more exactly, "explain."
Charlie, how many things that are self-evident to a person wind up being contentious or disputed? It's certainly happened many times in the past in the human species, and it will happen again. Something that is self-evident *may* very well need to be explicated, especially upon request.
For instance, I may well conclude that A is the self-evident point that you intended, but how do I know that you're not thinking that B is the point? I'm not saying that you do the following necessarily or not, but for someone to think that that type of misunderstanding could never happen in an discussion between people who disagree is incredible. So sometimes we do need to explicate specifically and exactly arguments sometimes that one might feel is self-evident, especially on request. I see it as a matter of courtesy to everyone in the conversation.
Seeing that we don't yet see eye-to-eye on the idea whether self-evident things should be explicated or not, can't you imagine that we might not see eye-to-eye on which point (A or B) might be the one that is "self-evident" in what you wrote?
Tom, I guess I should expand a little. Let me go back to "consistent." If we see a remarkable design, we might hypothesize an intelligent designer but not an unintelligent designer. If we see a haphazard design, we might hypothesize an unintelligent designer, and not an intelligent designer. In that sense, an intelligent-looking design is *consistent* with an intelligent designer and is not consistent with an unintelligent designer, and an unintelligent design is consistent with an unintelligent designer and not with an intelligent designer.
So if either intelligent or unintelligent design is used to hypothesize an intelligent designer, something's wrong. The deck has been stacked so that *any* design can be used as one piece of evidence that supports the hypothesis that there is an intelligent designer.
Pace Charlie, this seems pretty obvious to me, but contra Charlie, I went ahead and explained it anyway. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
For Paul:
1) Tom said he does not doubt that the moral relativist has a moral sense.
2) You challenged him on this, saying that perhaps he believes it now but didn't "way back then".
3) You provided your example: that Tom supposedly doubted you could feel "revulsion at terrorism"
4) I demonstrated that your challenge didn't reflect the facts and provided examples from "way back then" to demonstrate that i) Tom never expressed any doubt about your averred feelings and ii) Tom explicitly said (repeatedly) that relativists do have a moral sense.
we all have an internal sense that some things are wrong,
We all have ethical systems, and most of us have systems that lead us to do mostly good things to other people.*
When I said you can't live with the consequences of your belief, Eric, what I mean is not that you cannot have strong ethics and live by them.
When you directly challenged Tom on whether or not he thought you had a moral sense, or could act on it, this transpired:
Paul:
You must engage my idea that one can *exactly* live one’s morals as if they were absolute (as one commenter said), realizing that, ultimately, they aren’t.
Tom: That was never at issue.
Paul:One doesn’t need to believe that something is absolutely wrong to fully and strongly act with one’s whole being against it.
Tom: Again, I'm not sure where you got the impression that this was at issue.
Specifically what he said on terrorism had nothing to do with your moral sense or purported revulsion, but this
the premises you start from do not allow you logically to place your ethics above his (the terrorist's).
When I said that your memory was bad/faulty, I meant your recollection of these events was inaccurate and I provided the quotations to refresh your memory.
Paul asked:
Charlie, how many things that are self-evident to a person wind up being contentious or disputed?
I answer, with tongue-in-cheek reference to this
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...08100018/ #88004
In order to really figure this out, you'd have to make a study of all or most
things that are self-evident to a person,including a frequency of how often they
wind up being contentious or disputed,and then set a benchmark as to
how many things that are self-evident to a person wind up being contentious or disputed.I don't see it does much good to just guess short of that type of study. I'm only prepared to say that some
things that are self-evident to a person
*may* very well need to be explicated.
Charlie, it's not worth it to me to try to verify or rebut what you've offered. If it were *Tom* who offered all this, that would be another thing.
If I've mischaracterized the record of what Tom has said, I apologize.
Tom, I see that your blog has a bunch of activity on other topics, but do you have any thoughts about my 05.17.06 - 12:00 pm post?
Paul,
If we see a haphazard design, we might hypothesize an unintelligent designer, and not an intelligent designer.
What could you possibly mean by an unintelligent designer?
Actually, I mean a designer who is not very good.
At some point, the larger gist of what I'm saying is more important than the details of what exactly "unintelligent," "validate," "consistent," etc. mean.
But this word matters, because if you are going to suggest a designer who is not very good, you are still suggesting a designer, a personality, an intelligence--something or someone with the ability to do at least a lousy job of creating the world with all its incredible complexity and diversity. I would not be embarrassed, myself, to be so unintelligent!
Question for Tom: do you think that huskies and border collies are better designed than pugs and chihuahuas? If so, how do you reconcile your acceptance of design standards for some mammals with your rejection of design standards for other mammals? And if not, how do you explain the concerns of dog breeders when they strive to improve breed quality, and refuse to breed dogs that don't meet their standards?
Passerby, I'll take your question as a serious one, though I wonder.
1) The differences between these breeds exist on the surface. At the level of systems, cells, biochemistry, where 99 point a-whole-lot-of-9s % of design is instantiated, they are essentially the same.
2) The differences between these breeds would probably not exist at all, or at least to a much lesser extent, if not for the design-oriented intervention of intelligent breeders.
3) Whether I like one breed better than another, apparently somebody does. Design success is always viewed in terms of the intentions/desires of the designer.
So in view of that, I do not view huskies and border collies as better designed than pugs and chihuahuas, and breeders' desires to shape the breeds is irrelevant (if not supportive by way of illustrative analogy) to ID theory.
But this word matters, because if you are going to suggest a designer who is not very good, you are still suggesting a designer, a personality, an intelligence--something or someone with the ability to do at least a lousy job of creating the world with all its incredible complexity and diversity. I would not be embarrassed, myself, to be so unintelligent!My argument still holds even if "unintelligent designer" is interpreted to be either 1. a being who isn't very good at design, or 2. evolution, which produces designs that aren't very good.
My main point is that the obvious circumstantial and hapazard design in biological organisms argues against an intelligent designer, specifical, a creator who created the universe, time and space, etc.
If you see "obvous circumstantial and haphazard design" as equivalent to "undesigned" then your point may be well taken. I think you have failed, though, to show that this circumstantial and haphazard design is obvious. We still have a strong case out there that says:
1) Some design "flaws" are the result of design trade-offs
2) Some flaws are the result of degradations since the original designing (due to sin and other causes, on a theistic view), and
3) It's presumptuous to label any organic feature as a flaw in the big picture, since we don't see the whole perspective; it's beyond our capacity
I think I said some posts ago that I was assuming *our* perspective, not the "whole [God's] perspective. It's only a flaw as far as we can see, my point relies on that. (But that's not saying much ultimately, because *any* perspective we can hold has to be limited to those perspectives that we can hold. Duh.)
I guess I am eventually and finally trying to mean "undesigned."
I can agree that some design flaws might be the result of trad-offs, and degredations due to sin, but I still think there are more flaws out there than can be covered by just those two categories, and it is exactly those flaws that are crucial to my point.
Tom, it was indeed a serious question. And I wasn't meaning to appeal to shallow aesthetic standards. There are some obvious and severe anatomical flaws in pugs and Chihuahuas: pugs' short faces lead to respiratory problems and overheating, while Chihuahuas break really, really easily (owners are often advised not to let them jump off furniture, because they can hurt themselves that way). By contrast, huskies and border collies are sturdy animals that can withstand varied environmental and temperature conditions.
These design questions are not inconsequential. Many dog breeds are threatened by serious congenital problems: Labs these days tend to suffer from hip dysplasia; bull terriers have a high incidence of deafness; and cavalier King Charles spaniels sometimes have brains that are too big for their skulls (no, seriously, it's incurable and not at all funny). Responsible breeders don't breed dogs with hip dysplasia, or congenital deafness, or too-small skulls. I take it that this is not just a fact about what standards breeders happen to employ: it is morally irresponsible to breed a dog with hip dysplasia, even if you personally happen to find canine hip problems aesthetically pleasing.
So in response to your points:
1) I don't understand what work point 1 is doing. Not to be a jerk; I am genuinely confused.
2) Yes, that's exactly why I chose dogs as an example. You can admit that some dogs are poorly designed without having to stick God with the blame. I'm trying to figure out where you get off the "God is a poor designer" boat -- and to suggest that ditching all design standards is a really weird place to get off the boat.
3) Surely there's something deeply wrong with a person who breeds a line cavs with smooshed brains, and rejoices over the results.
On second thought, my use of moral language in the previous comment was probably unwise. Let me try again:
Part of the usual motivation for believing in ID is that nature supposedly contains so many well-designed structures: the eye seems designed to see things; the heart seems designed to pump blood; the brain seems designed to devise elaborate theodicies; etc. The idea of design or purpose is not confined to IDers, either: doctors think they know when organs are malfunctioning, and they often think they can restore broken organs to their proper function.
Even I know roughly what the purpose of a dog's nose is, roughly what the purpose of its hips is, and roughly what the purpose of its skull is. A good vet can detect how well or poorly the dog's nose, hips, and skull are designed. To deny this seems both to go against common sense, and to undercut the original motivation for ID. And radical relativism about good vs. bad design isn't the answer -- a dog with hip dysplasia has poorly designed hips, whether or not I happen to like that hip shape.
Jeez, I hope I haven't offended any pug breeders.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on what I was doing with point 1, Passerby, but I misinterpreted the intent of your first comment. I'll try to clarify and also fit in a response to what you've added.
I sympathize with your moral opinions, by the way.
What I was saying in point 1 was that different dogs' designs are virtually identical except for very small differences (compared to the complexity of the whole organism, that is) on the surface, so you can't draw any larger conclusions at all based on design differences between breeds.
I'm not sure how to answer where I get off the "God is a poor designer" boat--since I didn't know I was on it. Perhaps you can clarify for me.
But to hazard an answer anyway: first, we have to separate two issues, which I tried to do in the blog entry this thread is based on. For Intelligent Design to succeed as a scientific program, it does not have to demonstrate perfection in design, or even excellence. It just has to show (as it is attempting and some think it has succeeded in doing) that there are design features in nature that could not have arrived there just by unguided natural means. So the point you're raising here has little to do with that program.
But there is still the accusation that if one goes beyond the bare ID research program, to looking at the Christian God as the Designer, then design flaws stand as arguments against God's existence. You have named dogs as a test case because we don't have to "stick God with the blame." That's fair; Christian doctrine does not deny mankind's ability to make a mess of things.
So if you're suggesting there's a problem with theism or ID here, I don't quite understand what it is yet.
I was objecting to your claim that the human body is not, in fact, poorly designed. I thought you were definding this claim partly based on the premise that we can't really identify instances of poor design in nature, and that, hey, maybe the blindspot in the human eye is good for something after all. That claim seemed pretty bizarre to me.
Actually, I don't see how the blindspot could be the result of a design tradeoff, either. There's nothing harmful about putting the photosensitive pigment on the other side of the retina: there are plenty of animals whose eyes are designed that way.
Did the retina get turned inside out after the Fall?
Is the retina really such a poor design? (See also this shorter article.) It is at least plausible, if not even likely, that it is that way for good reason.
This illustrates the difficulty we have in pointing definitively to any feature of anatomy and calling it poor original design. How much would we need to know about the body to be sure of these conclusions? And recall that in this case I'm trying to maintain two positions:
1) ID, which only requires evidence of design, as I said in my last comment, not necessarily of great design; and
2) Theism, for which any objection of this sort bears a strong burden of proof. It is not up to the theist to defend claims of good original design, because we're not using such design to theism. (At least, I don't know of anyone basing a theistic argument on observable perfection of design.) It is up to the objector to positively disprove it if they want to use alleged design flaws as a case against theism.
Tom wrote:
1) ID, which only requires evidence of design, as I said in my last comment, not necessarily of great design;But Tom, why should God only settle for design, and not perfect design (perfect being that he is)? Remember, his inscrutability doesn't provide any evidence for anything, because it can provide evidence for everything.
Is the retina really such a poor design? (See also this shorter article.) It is at least plausible, if not even likely, that it is that way for good reason.Can you really believe that the human body, with all of its flaws (and its excellence is exactly not the issue here) is the best that the creator of space and time could do?!
In fact, why should God have made us material beings in the first place? Why not just create disembodied souls that would require no base, material design trade-offs?
Why should God only "settle for design," and not perfect design? I guess I don't really know if he did just settle; and if he did, I don't know why he would have. I certainly have no idea why he should have made us material rather than non-material.
Do I believe our bodies are the best he could do? Well, I believe that within the constraints of his plan (much of which is veiled to us) and the effects of the Fall, that is a very plausible view. Any argument you might raise against it runs up against the very real barrier of our finiteness. We cannot claim to have a full understanding of all God's purposes, or of the design tradeoffs he may have made, or of just how we differ now from the original design.
You see, we don't have to know these things. There is no successful atheistic argument here, as I said above; and I'm not trying (as I've said a few times) to prove God here. I'm just trying to understand him, and to explain a Biblical understanding of God.
That understanding does not call on us to have a total grasp on all these things. If we could understand all that God does, then we'd be in a position where he ought to worship us rather than vice-versa. But there's no danger of that--because we're nowhere near that level, nor is there any reason that should seem wrong to us.
How childish of me.
To come in and snake the 100th comment again.
In a thread that owes nothing to my participation.
We'd miss you if you weren't here for it!
Tom, you still haven't addressed this problem: *any* state of affairs can be consistent with the idea of God if one's final argument is ultimately "we can't know God's real purpose." That is an all-purpose rejoinder because it can never be refuted. But that means that it is useless.
Another contradiction is that you judge biological design as requiring a designer, but when biological design shows evidence of hapazardness that therefore contradicts the idea of an omnipotent and perfectly inellligent designer, you say "we can't understand God's purposes."
I certainly have no idea why he should have made us material rather than non-material.If a fact can't be incorporated into a theory, that theory is flawed.
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