Archive for July, 2009

God and Science – Antony Flew

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July 27th, 2009

I recently found a really interesting book called There Is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Athiest Changed His Mind  by Antony Flew.  In it Flew details his journey from a young, unenthusiastic Christian son of a theologian, to an athiest, and eventually back to a theist.  He states that throughout his life he followed the Socratic principle of following the argument wherever it may lead.  This led him initially to believe that God did not exist.  Through years of debates and discussions with religous friends and collegues he finally decided that the evidence of science itself points to a rational mind behind the rational laws of the universe.  He suggests that the laws and regularities of the universe must have an author or agent which set them in place.  It is implausible to suggest that the laws of nature came by chance, especially since so many of them, if changed in the smallest degree, would render the earth lifeless, or cause the stars and planets to spin apart or break up. 

Moving from the macro to the micro aspects of the universe, he suggests that the genetic code by which DNA reproduces is something that could also not have come by chance.  The mechanism for reproduction itself, not simply the information reproduced, suggests an Author.  More later.

Truth and Being

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July 21st, 2009

This might be painfully obvious to those well versed in philosophy, or I may be completely wrong about it, but I think its interesting and fairly foundational to much else.

As I was driving down the Trans-Canada Highway I was thinking about some conversations I’ve had with people who do not believe that there is truth, on the on hand, and those who simply equate truth with Christ(“I am the truth”) on the other.  The most obvious answer to the first is that it is a statement that is claimed to be true that they are giving when they say there is no truth.  In order for that to be true there must be at least that one truth.  However, I thought that some might simply try to redefine truth to suite there purposes and so I started thinking what we mean by the word truth, and(especially since I’m trying to slug through Aquinas and he talks a lot about this) the word being came to mind.  Truth is being, or rather a statement about something that is.  Truth, maybe, is something that is only conceptual or logical, whereas being is what is real.  Existence is a property of all things that exist, truth is the concept associated with them.  If this is so, then to say there is no truth is essentially equivalent to saying there is no being, nothing exists.  This is proved false, at the very least, by Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum.  I can at least know that I exist to do the doubting that I exist: this is truth.  There are a billion other things which exist, not to mention the source of all being: God(“I am”), but I think the cogito is the simplest to prove. 

In addressing the other, particularly Christian, objection to truth, I think one must properly interpret the passage that it refers to.  “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.”  To say that Christ is truth, generically, is equivalent to saying that Christ is the way, generically.  This would mean that if I ask the way to get to Calgary, the only appropriate answer would be “Christ!”  This is obviouly meaningless, since the “way” referred to is qualified in the next clause: “no one comes to the Father but by me.”  This is the same with truth.  It is meaningless to say that Christ is truth generically.  Rather he is the truth about coming to the Father.  This misunderstanding is responsible for much suspicion in the Church of the notion of theological or philosophical truth.  This suspicion, I think, is partially responsible for many young people who reject Christianity because when they question something they are told to just believe and not doubt.

Body and Soul

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July 14th, 2009

A little while back I had a very interesting, yet very speculative, discussion with a friend about the interaction between body and soul.  He suggested that despite the fact that the soul would by definition be immaterial, if it is responsible for our personality, thoughts and emotions, we ought to be able through scientific examination(at least in theory) to observe the point or points at which the soul would interact with the brain, cells, etc.  Descartes suggested, I believe, a penial gland, though I’m not familiar with his argument, and I think it is generally not accepted as plausible.  As I thought through this a little more I think that the problem with getting a scientific observation here is that scientific examination could not confirm that any given point in the body or brain is the point at which the soul interacts because it would probably manifest itself as a change or adjustment whose cause cannot be immediately identified.  Science, however, would not assume or even speculate that this is caused by an immortal soul, instead it would assume that it is a cause which we simply do not understand yet, and would formulate some material theory, even if no material theory could actually fit the facts.  Because of this, I don’t think that scientists could ever really consider the possibility of an immaterial soul interacting with the body on some level. 

One possible solution to this problem could be in the uncertainty principle, though I don’t know the theory behind this very well so it may not be applicable.  Chris, any thoughts?  Or anyone else?

Thoughts on Dawkins Part II

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July 10th, 2009

Continuing my evaluation of Richard  Dawkins’  The God Delusion, I come now to the crux of his argument in the first few chapters. He argues that the question of the existence of God need not be left unanswered by science. To be honest I think most of his argument here is negative. He suggests that religious people or theists in general don’t give positive arguments for the existence of God, but simply say “you can’t disprove it, so it may be true.”. This is entirely not the case, though I’ll deal with that later. He, I think rightly, suggests that the burden of proof is on theists to give reason to believe in the existence of God. If not we could simply say “the boogeyman exists, and you can’t prove otherwise” or like argument for anything we want. He suggests that theists have relied solely on this kind of negative argumentation to prove their point, which is entirely false, a fact he hypocritically admits in the very next chapter when he deals with the proofs for the existence of God. He’s right that the burden of proof by default lies in the proponent of an idea, but once the proponent has provided reasons for their supposition they, it is up to the opponent of the proposition to address those reasons. Dawkins in this part doesn’t mention this, and argues based on the false assumption that no arguments for the existence of God have been given. He suggests that when scientists say that the questions of God are outside the realm of science by nature, the scientists are just ‘being nice’ and they shouldn’t give so much credence to theistic ideas.
The deceptive thing about his argument here is that he mixes up bits of truth and good method(ie. Burden of proof) with false assumptions that can be very convincing if one doesn’t have at least a basic understanding of logic and argumentation. I’ll address his “refutations” of the proofs for the existence of God next time.

Descartes’ Meditations Part II

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July 9th, 2009

Well, I think that(ironically) Descartes’ criterea for truth discussed in the last post is, I think, quite vague. However, even if that is not valid, his method od doubt deserves some attention, and does not depend on that criterea for its own validity. I’m not sure that I agree with him that the views that we grow up with must be torn down completely in order to build them back more truthfully. I’m not sure that’s even possible, never mind desirable. I guess I think that if we are going to evaluate whether our opinions which we’ve grown up with are true or not, rejecting them first isn’t going to help. I think understanding them as held opinions and evaluating them(ie. Know thyself) is imperative. I would love comments, as I’m sure I’m wrong about something here. Next time I’ll discuss the method of doubt, which I think has some interesting things in it.

Descartes’ Meditations

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July 9th, 2009

I was recently listening to an audiobook of Rene Descartes’ ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ while driving through Ontario’s northland, and thought it worth some words. I’m only through the first two meditations, but there’s still much food for thought there. I’m not exactly sure what to make of his assrtion that anything “clearly and distinctly perceived” must be true. I think it all depends on what he means by those two words. Distinctly seems to mean something that can be isolated from other ideas and taken as an argument or proof of an idea which doesn’t beg questions, and doesn’t require proofs of something else to validate it. Not sure if there’s more to it than that, but most likely I’m missing something. Clarity, I guess, is the absense of vagueness or ambiguity in the argument or idea. Anybody have thoughts on how these two criterea would or would not constitute knowledge of something true?

Thoughts on Dawkins Part 1

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July 8th, 2009

I recently got to a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time, but haven’t gotten to.  I’ve been a bit afraid to be honest.  The book is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.   The difficulty, and fear, is in the fact that if I am to truly understand what he’s saying I must consider the possibility that he’s right, open mindedness they call it.  This opens me to the possibility that all that I’ve lived for and believed all my life is a delusion. 

However, in this case the fear was certainly unfounded, though at first I was taken aback a bit by his linguistic ability.  He is certainly a first rate rhetorician, or maybe more accurately, sophist.  When I first read chapter 3, his refutations of the proofs for the existence of God, I did not see any errors in his reasoning.  On further reflection, however, I realized that every one of his “refutations” is either provably false, or at least doubtful.  More later.

The aspect of his writing that struck me most, however, was his use of invective and pejorative language.  He seems to be trying not to disprove the existence of God, but simply to discredit it and make the reader feel that he/she is a fool if they believe in God.   He uses some examples of things which most Christians would find abhorrent to show that Christianity is corrupt.  In particular things like the use of high degrees of fear to motivate children to accept Christianity.  He also seems to attribute evil things that some Christians do to religion itself, not to human failure, and fails to recognize that the three most brutal regimes in the 20th century were all atheist: Hitler, Stalin and Mao.  From what I have been told, Mao killed more than 100,000,000 of his own people during his reign, Stalin 10,000,000 or some such thing, and Hitler 6 or 7 million.  Some would argue that Hitler was not atheist, but even if you take him out of this group you still have an appalling record of violence. 

He also suggests that parents should not be allowed to teach their children to believe in any specific religion because they are too young to make a decision themselves.  This I find to be quite preposterous.  The notion that a child could grow up in a belief vacuum, being told not to believe anything until they’re older, is ridiculous, and dangerous in my opinion.   It is true that there comes a time when most children ought to be given the freedom to question and find their own understanding of their faith, but if he feels that it is illegitimate for a child to believe in God or follow a religion, then what is the point at which they should?  He wants to argue that a child doesn’t have the capacity to evaluate the facts and draw a conclusion, but I would suggest that most people never really reach the point where they fully understand Christianity, all the other religions, and atheism and agnosticism and are able to make an informed decision based on all that.  Certainly Dawkins himself doesn’t fit that criterea.  He demonstrates a remarkable lack of understanding of theology and Christian reasoning.

This blog

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July 6th, 2009

Well, I’ve decided to delve into the world of blogging.  If anyone actually reads this, its up to you whether what I have to say is worthwhile or not.  This is mostly for me to just get my thoughts down somewhere, to see if it helps me to think things through more clearly, and remember things.  If my resolve holds up I would like in the coming months and years to explore many issues of philosophy, theology, knowledge, wisdom, science and faith in order to better understand the world around me and post my thoughts for feedback and to teach and be taught, to impart understanding and be corrected.  A lifelong process. . .yet definitely a worthwhile one.  More on this later.