Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
I thought I might add to your comment and get youridea from this. I was reading Alvin Plantinga, considered one of our most immanent philosopher, located at Notre Dame in Ohio. He essentially posits a compelling insite. The scientific materialist might respond to the notion of scientism depending on theism as a matter of historical happenstance, but modern science was spawned by theological conviction, but the materialist says they no longer need that theological baggage, and now stand on their own. They say we no longer are haunted by the pandemonium of the spirits, so science no longer requires the tutelage of religion. They say, "We, scientifically, have come of age, and now can put those childish things such as theology aside.
However, this sanguine view does not stand up to careful philosophical scrutiny, as Alvin Plantinga has shown in his Warrant and Proper Function.Here Plantinga demonstrates that scientific materialism, without a designer who intended man to be equipped with an aptitude for truth, leads inexorably to an epistemological catastrophy, the 'epstemic defeat" of all of the materialist's aspirations for knowledge. I will give an oversimpified summary of Plantiga's argument. The materialist has no option but to believe that humanity is solely the product of an undirected and unplanned Darwinian process-random changes culled by natural selection. Natural selection 'cares' only about behavior that produces and promotes survival and reproduction; it has no interest in truth as such. There is no good reason to believe that an aptitude for truth is the only way, or even an especially likely mechanism, for producing survival-enhansing behavior. For example human beings may generally come to believe that fellow human beings have intrinsic dignity and worth and that objective moral values and their attendant obligations exist. Given naturalism, these beliefs would be false-even if holding such beliefs helped humans better survive. The knowledge that the causal pathways leading to our present beliefs lacks any intrinsic propensity to promote truth gives us a compelling and indefeasible reason for doubting all the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, whether of perception, memory,, logical thought, logical reasoning, or scientific inference. Hense, the scientific materialist cannot reasonably, in the end, claim to know that the results of science (or any other human mode of knowledge) are in fact true.
No he doesn't; he just reduces us to a cosmos in miniature...
For humans yes, for bugs no.
Bugs do react to things around them, so they have some degree of cognizance of the world around them.
The bugs were used to demonstrate that to different species and individuals different relaity is "real." To us here the reality of shanty towns of São Paulo are not reality but an abstraction. Likewise, the "cosmic reality" of the Universe is an intellectual recognition that there is a lot more to the world, but we don't really 'feel" it as reality because it has almost no effect on us. I mean, do you really care what's it like at dawn on Io or on a planet in the large Magellanic Cloud?
Human reality is not much different from insect reality, it's a matter of a degree rather than kind. Human beings are aware of things around them, things that have an imminent impact on them, things they can detect, feel, measure, etc., things that hurt, burn, taste good, feel good or bad, etc....that is human reality—here and now; up close and personal. The rest is abstraction rather than reality.
You have a better way?
No he doesn't. But if I am to know what God is, it has to be on human terms by design; it can't be on anyone else's terms. You can't feed chocolate to a cat. You have to feed cat the food cats eat. If God wanted us to know what he is then we would know what he is in terms compatible with our nature and in context that fits our rules of evidence and logical analysis we are capable of processing.
That's not arrogance, betty boop, it's a fact of who and how we are. Try eating soup with a fork. It doesn't work because the nature of the soup requires a spoon; that's how the world is. That's how we are. That's our reality in this world and we can operate only in the way we exist.
No, if God wanted man know what he is he could do that only on man's terms. That ought to be very simple for someone with whom "all things are possible." And, asking to be understood within our capacity is like asking God to speak our language rather than insist on a foreign and unintelligible one.
And no one is subjecting the Creation to our measure except those who propose that God created everything just for us to marvel.
IIRC, Kosta
You once asked for/demanded some sort of ‘proof’ for the God of The Bible.
I realize that in general, folks who are overly impressed with their own constructions on reality are not usually very influencable by even the best of proofs . . . however. . .
FWIW . . .
IN SEARCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD
BY ROBERT CORNUKE AND DAVID HALBROOK
has plenty of proof.
The real Mt Sinai in Saudia Arabia is granit topped with a very charred/blackened granite by intense inexplicable heat—except for Moses’ narrative.
They also discovered convincing evidence of the Red Sea Crossing and other facts in the Moses Narrative.
Cheers.
And thank you, dear brother in Christ, for the book recommendation!
Years ago we had an atheist on the forum who said she'd believe that God is if He would make a bag of M&Ms appear for her.
It struck me as ironic and sad.
God indwells every Christian.
And, ironically, anyone wanting to know God must first believe that He IS.
God's Name is I AM.
Quite so. Quite so.
Thx thx.
Thank you for the reference, Quix. My understanding is that the book is not without controversy (and drama).
I think it will stand up to any fair-minded scrutiny.
Yes, so sad. And pitiable. And basically silly.
Certainly this is an extreme case of making "man the measure" of God.
Thank you so much dearest sister in Christ for your lovely essay/post!
INDEED.
I agree. She could have just as well asked God for a Mercedes Benz while she was at it!
But if this was intended to equate what I said about God having to approach us within the means of our constitution, then that was either a caricature of what I said or a big misunderstanding.
We don't hear things dogs can hear, so trying to communicate with us in frequencies dogs hear but we don't is pointless, just as it is pointless to communicate with us in a language we don't understand.
God has to communicate with us in ways we are equipped to process, and that's not diminishing God by making "man the measure " of God any more than soup is "making" itself a measure of man because we can drink it only with a spoon and not a fork. It's the way the world is—even if we don't understand it.
Thank you both so very much for your encouragements!
The materialist position inevitably leads to self-contradiction, as in the above example. Although the cited immaterial beliefs evidently have survival value (as human history suggests), they have to be false in principle given the presupposition of Darwinist natural selection. But if they're false, then how can they have survival value? It makes no sense.
Indeed as you say Texas Songwriter, "the scientific materialist cannot reasonably, in the end, claim to know that the results of science (or any other human mode of knowledge) are in fact true."
For one thing, truth is immaterial; and so are the laws of nature and the moral laws; so are logic and reason, mathematics, scientific theories themselves, including Darwin's theory. Materialists cannot account for such non-phenomenal, immaterial aspects of reality, so try to ignore them. Yet then they will claim that their scientific findings are "in fact true." But how can anything be true if truth itself is denied?
This is the "epistemic defeat" of which Prof. Plantinga speaks.
It seems to me scientific materialists put themselves in a relentless, vicious epistemic and logical quandary by insisting that only the material exists.
Thank you ever so much, TS, for summing up Alvin Plantinga's argument for us. I think it's spot-on.
A person wanting to know God must first believe that He IS.
And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; - Romans 1:28
But one, like Dawkins, who claims to be atheist but obsessively denies God obviously believes that God IS but deplores Him - otherwise he would be insane, i.e. hating someone he says does not exist.
God's Name is I AM.
A typical example of the logical cul-de-sac atheists like Dawkins try not to notice. Dawkins is fully aware that God exists. Otherwise, why would he expend so much energy denying Him? There's no point at all to denying something that is non-existent.
God's Name is I AM.
Great posts you two.
Thx.
I beg to differ with you there, dear kosta. I would say that human reality is a difference of kind, not of degree, vis-a-vis insect reality. This ought to be self-evident: I haven't noticed any insects around devising scientific theories, for instance, or writing novels, or creating music and other art forms, worshipping God, ceremoniously burying their dead, etc.
If there's "not much difference" between a man and an insect, then why don't we routinely find insects doing such things?
It is true that all living beings have some form of consciousness, or perception, or basic sensitivity. But it appears that only man possesses self-consciousness and rational mind.
Of course, consciousness itself is one of those things we do not and cannot directly "observe." We recognize it from its works — the things man creates, which would not be there if they depended on (material) physico-chemical processes exclusively.
When you say that God "must" communicate with us in human terms, do you mean exclusively on the basis of direct observables, or customary languages?
You wrote:
...If God wanted man know what he is he could do that only on man's terms. That ought to be very simple for someone with whom "all things are possible." And, asking to be understood within our capacity is like asking God to speak our language rather than insist on a foreign and unintelligible one.You seem to be saying that there's nothing man can do to "enlarge" his terms. Even God communicating to us via four great revelations — only one of which is language-based, by the way; i.e., the Holy Scriptures — cannot enlarge our terms?
You have a bad habit of telling God what He ought and ought not to do. Thus you do make of yourself His "measure" — in your own mind.
BTW, I also take issue with your remark that Plato "reduces" man to "a cosmos in miniature." How can this be a reduction, when it vastly expands our concept of man's nature? E.g., that man recapitulates in himself all aspects of cosmic life — psyche, the organic world (animal, vegetative), and the inorganic world (compounds out of which physical bodies are composed). And at the same time that he exists eternally in the tension between the two divine "poles" of Limit (divine Nous, Epikeina) and Unlimited (the unfathomable depth of divine becoming, Apeiron)?
You call that a "reduction?"
They live in their own reality, defined and made possible by their nature.
For the same reason you don't find humans weaving spider webs. It's their nature.
To a greater or lesser degree. I am not sure to what degree a Neanderthal, 60,000 years ago, possessed self-consciousness and rational mind.
It must be something we can detect and understand, in agreement with our nature, i.e. something we can see, hear and comprehend.
Sure he can, within his nature. It can't be something that requires organs he doesn't have, something above his auditory frequency or outside of his visual spectrum, or his mental capacity; it must be in the language he understands, etc. The message must conform to the "measure of man" for man to receive it and understand it.
What four great revelations?
You mean like God cannot lie? Even God cannot be what he is not by nature.
It does?
What cosmic life? Where in the cosmos do you find life except here on earth? Last time I checked, the divine Nous was not part of the cosmos, but rather its maker.
No he can't and it doesn't matter because that's not what he is after. He can know, however, if his model works or not. Science does not claim to make true models; only working models.
That's a heck of a lot more to hang up your hat on than on imaginary models.
Yes, I agree, that's asinine, and immature. So many atheists are angry with God for some unexplained reason, and the only thing that would satisfy them would is, as you say, a 'god' they could command, a 'god' who would place himself at their feet.
I don't have a rational concept of what God is, but I don't see it as disbelief, rather as agnosis (lack of knowledge). I can't disbelieve something I have no rational concept of. She, on the other hand, seems to have a highly irrational notion of what God is and what he "must" do to satisfy her unfounded anger with him.
I, on the other hand, demand nothing from God. I am only saying that if he is to communicate with me he would have to do so in a manner compatible with my human nature.
It's that a priory leap of faith, as they say. When the LDS make a leap of faith that the Egyptian Plates really were written by God, the Book of Mormon becomes "scripture".
Likewise, once the Muslims make a leap of faith that there is but one God, Allah, and that Mohammad is his messenger, and repeat it to themselves three times, they become "born again" Muslims (the triple repetition of these a priori premsies is the actual process of conversion to Islam) , and the Koran becomes "scripture"!
And once you accept that Jesus is the eternal Logos Incarnate who died on the cross and resurrected on the third day, the New Testament becomes "scripture." Otherwise only the Old Testament is "scripture," etc.
The pattern is the same, the names and scriptures change: one must make the first step by assuming that God exists, i.e. believing a hypothesis.
I think they are both in equally bad shape. Anyone who can a priori believe something without knowing what it is cannot possibly know what he or she believes in.
I think you are absolutely right about a "true atheist" (which I don't believe exists; just as every believer has doubts, so does every atheist; we all know that we are not perfect and that we all believe imperfectly; but some of us can admit it, others can't; so there is an agnostic/atheist in every believer as there is a believer in every agnostic/atheist; we all at some time say "what if")
But as far as Richard Dawkins is concerned, his anger is directed as a man-made God, i.e. the philosophy, teachings of the God man created in different cultures, etc. His criticism is more an attack on human doctrines of God and, more so, and corrupt practices of religion.
YES AND NO.
Definitions are important.
"compatible"
and
"my human nature"
are important constructs.
The creature is not likely to be construed by an Almighty God as the one to define either
"compatible"
or
"my human nature"
more . . . defnitively . . . more functionally, . . . more . . . rightly . . . MORE AUTHORITATIVELY . . . more usefully . . . more legally, . . . more operationally . . . more truly . . .
THAN SAID creature's CREATOR--ALMIGHTY GOD does.
Not only does ALMIGHTY GOD have an infinitely greater perspective on
BOTH
"COMPATIBLE"
AND
"MY HUMAN NATURE"
than even I [or anyone else] . . .
ALMIGHTY GOD ALSO HAS THE ROLE, POSITION, AUTHORITY, PERSPECTIVE
to require of the creature whatever level of
cooperation, reaching toward, stretching toward, acceptance on faith, etc. etc. etc.
THAT SUITS THE CREATOR, ALMIGHTY GOD.
ALMIGHTY GOD SETS THE CRITERIA, THE STANDARD FOR THE CREATURE FOR RELATIONSHIP.
The Creature does NOT remotely effectively, functionally, legally, even audaciously
set THE STANDARD, THE CRITERIA
FOR
ALMIGHTY GOD
in the context of the relationship, the dialogue nor for anything else.
Talk about God having such creatures and notions in derision--that's likely putting it mildly.
Besides, Christ came IN THE FLESH. That was the beginning, middle and last word on communicating as God-man to man on man's level.
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