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Is God Designed?

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  • #46
    Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
    So classical theism, which is meant to tell us about metaphysics and theism, is a problem because it doesn't tell us about areas that it was never meant to tell us about but falls to other bodies of knowledge.....

    That makes sense.
    Ask Galileo if theism is concerned with the real world. Ask Bruni. Why do young earthers and biblical creationists and ID proponents persist if not because they find the explanations, albeit wrong, satisfy their need for a theism that shows its hand. Classical theism is unsatisfying to most of your fellow adherents.

    That's a nice assertion. Do you have a reason why I should believe it?
    Surely you jest.
    Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.

    Physical forces require physical parts.

    You brought up Paley. Not me.
    v.

    Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
    I’m not a proponent of Intelligent Design, but sometimes in this discussion ...
    I beg to differ. I can understand if you're not familiar enough with the genre to see the connection. I do.

    Perhaps if you take the universe for granted. I don't. If I also see the nature of who this man was and how He rose again as very different, then yeah, it's a big deal.
    Only if you take the universe for granted can you ignore fifty orders of magnitude. This isn't a response, it's word fodder sent off in a rhetorical children's crusade.

    So once again, classical theism doesn't do what it was never meant to do and therefore is falling short?
    If classical theism is an organizing principle, what does it organize?

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    • #47
      Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
      The explanatory regime of the scientific revolution has methodically whittled away the ambit of classical theism. If it's not defeated by science, it's because it fails to engage, leaving the ever-widening sphere of human knowledge to secularism. Classical theism cannot tell us where, or when, or how we became a species that worships gods across the millions of years since we shared a common ancestor with our nearest cousins. It can't speak of the supernova that gave birth to the elements that make up our solar system or the isotopes that point at its explosion five billion years ago.

      Classical theism is unsatisfying.
      I'm not sure how Apologiaphoenix is defining "classical theism," but the theism I would defend concerns itself with meaning, purpose, subjectivity and intrisicness, none of which the "explanatory regime of the scientific revolution" is fitted to explain, I believe.



      Because making changes in the real world requires parts.
      Again, perhaps this speaks to AP's theism, but for me, theism is not static but evolving and growing like any body of knowledge. It's not the natural theology of Paley. Theology has shifted in the last two hundred years or so from one of a conception of design through making to design built into the rational potentiality of the universe. The Humean criticism of natural theology of treating God's creative activity as the unseen analogue of visible human craft is seen as naive anthropomorphism. There's no human analogy for the endowment of matter with the potential for rational order.

      Science, as effective as it is within its domains, is explanatorily limited.

      Comment


      • #48
        Originally posted by JimL View Post
        Well regardless of what the thing is, whether a god or a universe, if it's eternal, it has to be. Hope I'm not getting lost in the discussion here.
        Endless duration is a mere fact, not an ontological category.



        I believe the philosophical notion of god is that of an entity not made up of parts, but what you describe is how i think about the universe, its form can change but its substance could never be as if it had never been. That is what I meant when previously I quoted Spinoza. The finite forms are temporal with respect to themselves, but eternal with respect to their cause. Though he believed in god, I could never understand Spinoza's conception of god. He seemed to equate god with the universe.
        That's what i understand of Spinoza. Is it necessary to involve him in this?



        Sure, that I think is just common sense, but I think god would be any different in that respect. I just don't believe that anything that does exists, ceases to exist, excepting the forms that it takes of course.
        It depends on how you define an "object" or a "thing." I'm not a reductionist, so I would tend to think that my cat, eg, is an object, and when he dies, that unique object will cease to exist. He is more than just his constituent parts.



        What I mean is that just like ex nihilo nihil fit, "nothing can come from nothing" I believe that nothing(ness) can not come from something.
        Individual things cease to exist, IMO, so local instances of 'nothingness' can occur. Adler is arguing that because the universe could be other than it is, it could also not have been at all. This works for individual things, but perhaps not for everything.

        Comment


        • #49
          Originally posted by Juvenal View Post
          Ask Galileo if theism is concerned with the real world. Ask Bruni. Why do young earthers and biblical creationists and ID proponents persist if not because they find the explanations, albeit wrong, satisfy their need for a theism that shows its hand. Classical theism is unsatisfying to most of your fellow adherents.
          Those are positions that can be held under classical theism but are not entailed by the position of classical theism. So once again, this critique falls short.



          Surely you jest.
          I don't. I prefer people give reasons for their arguments.

          Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.

          Physical forces require physical parts.
          That is just an appeal to ignorance. Because all you know if is physical causes causing change, that doesn't mean a non-physical cause couldn't cause change. If the arguments of classical theism are true and they show that such a being exists, then ipso facto, He can cause change.







          I beg to differ. I can understand if you're not familiar enough with the genre to see the connection. I do.
          And really I don't care. ID can burn in flames for all I care. My position doesn't depend on it.



          Only if you take the universe for granted can you ignore fifty orders of magnitude. This isn't a response, it's word fodder sent off in a rhetorical children's crusade.
          I don't take the existing of the universe as a given. What keeps it in existing? I also think getting the man to come back can be far more amazing in some cases.



          If classical theism is an organizing principle, what does it organize?
          I don't think I ever referred to it as one.

          Comment


          • #50
            Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
            Endless duration is a mere fact, not an ontological category.
            Not sure what you mean by that, but to me it sounds like a contradiction. Perhaps by ontological category you mean the "why" of existence? If so, the assumtion you're making is that there is a "why."




            That's what i understand of Spinoza. Is it necessary to involve him in this?
            No, I just thought that quote of his would make clearer my perspective.




            It depends on how you define an "object" or a "thing." I'm not a reductionist, so I would tend to think that my cat, eg, is an object, and when he dies, that unique object will cease to exist. He is more than just his constituent parts.
            The unique object, your cat, will cease to exist, but, in my opinion, the substance out of which your cat is formed will never cease to exist. You might say that from the dust he came and to the dust he will return.




            Individual things cease to exist, IMO, so local instances of 'nothingness' can occur.
            Individual things cease to exist, yes, but that is because the nature of the substance out of which they are formed is transformitive. I don't know much about his philosophy, but I once heard Deepak Chopra say that those living today could be breathing the substance that once formed Jesus. In other words that the object Jesus ceased to exist, but not the substance out of which he was formed.

            Adler is arguing that because the universe could be other than it is, it could also not have been at all. This works for individual things, but perhaps not for everything.
            But who says the universe, that is the greater cosmos, or better yet, the stuff of existence, could be other than it is. I think that in theory it could possibly have not been at all, which reminds me of J Lockes query as to "why is there something rather than nothing." In my opinion the answer to that question is that it's just a brute fact that something is, and that something is the substance out of which all existing things are formed.
            Last edited by JimL; 01-01-2020, 08:35 PM.

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            • #51
              Originally posted by JimL View Post
              Pure actuality simply means perfection,
              No, and I don't blame you if you don't recognize the term. It's from a scholastic ontology, where what exists has either actuality and potentiality, what they are and what they can be. Something that is pure actuality has no other thing it can be, it just is what it is, at all times.

              Since God is pure actuality, there is no beginning or end for Him. In other words, He does not need a cause for His existence. On the contrary, there is a classical proof for the existence of at least one thing that is pure actuality, since if no such thing existed, nothing else could exist since all other things would have their actuality actualized from something else. So for instance if we imagine an eternal universe, then because it has both actuality and potentiality it must have its actuality actualized by something else, so beneath even the universe, at the bedrock of metaphysical reality, there would have to be something purely actual. The universe would have this pure actuality as its cause, but this cause would not have any other.

              And that is what we call God.

              so all you're doing is defining god as perfect existence
              No, I was answering your question. We can debate the answer, but I didn't define anything. I simply gave you the answer and not the reasoning behind it.

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              • #52
                Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                No, and I don't blame you if you don't recognize the term. It's from a scholastic ontology, where what exists has either actuality and potentiality, what they are and what they can be. Something that is pure actuality has no other thing it can be, it just is what it is, at all times.

                Since God is pure actuality, there is no beginning or end for Him. In other words, He does not need a cause for His existence. On the contrary, there is a classical proof for the existence of at least one thing that is pure actuality, since if no such thing existed, nothing else could exist since all other things would have their actuality actualized from something else. So for instance if we imagine an eternal universe, then because it has both actuality and potentiality it must have its actuality actualized by something else, so beneath even the universe, at the bedrock of metaphysical reality, there would have to be something purely actual. The universe would have this pure actuality as its cause, but this cause would not have any other.

                And that is what we call God.



                No, I was answering your question. We can debate the answer, but I didn't define anything. I simply gave you the answer and not the reasoning behind it.
                Okay, gotcha. The problem is that you can say the same about the substance of all existent potentialities as well. In other words the finite temporal forms of substance may not in themselves be pure actuality, but their cause, the underlying infinite substance itself out of which the finite things are formed, is, or at least, as in the notion of god, could just as well be, defined thusly.

                Comment


                • #53
                  Originally posted by JimL View Post
                  Okay, gotcha. The problem is that you can say the same about the substance of all existent potentialities as well. In other words the finite temporal forms of substance may not in themselves be pure actuality, but their cause, the underlying infinite substance itself out of which the finite things are formed, is, or at least, as in the notion of god, could just as well be, defined thusly.
                  Well, yes, that's how the demonstration works. You point out that all existing material substances have potentiality and actuality. The argument then proceeds to show that there must be some pure substance of pure actuality in order for anything to be actualized (since anything that is a composite of potentiality and actuality, are always actualized from something else that is already actual).

                  But what you end up with is a rather interesting causal substance. It is omnipresent in so far as anything that exists has it at some fundamental level as its ultimate cause. It is all-powerful since anything that is possible receives its actuality from it, meaning it can ultimately actualize anything metaphysically possible. It is changeless and timeless since it has no actuality of its own.

                  We already here have many of the properties of classical theism, and the old Deists of Ancient Greece and seventeenth-century Europe would be quite comfortable considering this substance God.

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                    Well, yes, that's how the demonstration works. You point out that all existing material substances have potentiality and actuality. The argument then proceeds to show that there must be some pure substance of pure actuality in order for anything to be actualized (since anything that is a composite of potentiality and actuality, are always actualized from something else that is already actual).

                    But what you end up with is a rather interesting causal substance. It is omnipresent in so far as anything that exists has it at some fundamental level as its ultimate cause. It is all-powerful since anything that is possible receives its actuality from it, meaning it can ultimately actualize anything metaphysically possible. It is changeless and timeless since it has no actuality of its own.

                    We already here have many of the properties of classical theism, and the old Deists of Ancient Greece and seventeenth-century Europe would be quite comfortable considering this substance God.
                    Sure, one can call the substance whatever one likes, but it doesn't equate with the usual notion of god as being a creator in the sense of being other than that which he created. Considering an uncreated eternal universe the finite things would simply be temporal forms of the eternal and infinite substance. I other words the two, the temporal and the eternal are one and the same thing, one and the same substance. That's what would be called a universe or cosmos, not god. God would require a being distinct from the creation, distinct from the substance and would require that substance to have been created out of nothing, ya know like spoken into existence, "let there be light" Ex nihilo nihil fit!
                    Last edited by JimL; 01-05-2020, 10:09 AM.

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                    • #55
                      Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      Sure, one can call the substance whatever one likes, but it doesn't equate with the usual notion of god as being a creator in the sense of being other than that which he created. Considering an uncreated eternal universe the finite things would simply be temporal forms of the eternal and infinite substance. I other words the two, the temporal and the eternal are one and the same thing, one and the same substance. That's what would be called a universe or cosmos, not god.
                      Except the cosmos cannot be this substance since it undergoes change, and since it undergoes change, it is having one potential configuration of itself actualized after another, and this has to be done by something else that is already actual. Any essentially ordered chain of causality (as opposed to accidental - or temporal - chains of causality) has to at any time be actualized. So in order for anything to actually be happening at all there has to be something purely actual. This pure actulity, cannot undergo change, which already puts it on another plane compared to the whole of the cosmos. He is not in the same category at all.

                      God would require a being distinct from the creation, distinct from the substance and would require that substance to have been created out of nothing, ya know like spoken into existence, "let there be light" Ex nihilo nihil fit!
                      I'm not sure I understand what sort of argument you're making here. Why would this pure actuality require this?

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                        Except the cosmos cannot be this substance since it undergoes change, and since it undergoes change, it is having one potential configuration of itself actualized after another, and this has to be done by something else that is already actual.
                        And why does a change in the forms that an actual substance takes need be done by a distinct actual substance? Why can not a change in the form of a substance be inherent in the substance itself? I mean that is what we observe in the existent world which is one of a constant change of forms within one and the same substance. The atoms that make up a tree today may be same atoms that make up part of cat in the future.

                        Any essentially ordered chain of causality (as opposed to accidental - or temporal - chains of causality) has to at any time be actualized. So in order for anything to actually be happening at all there has to be something purely actual. This pure actulity, cannot undergo change, which already puts it on another plane compared to the whole of the cosmos. He is not in the same category at all.
                        Same question. Why? I think what you're saying is that an existing substance which has a nature of change within it, said nature would need be actualized by something outside itself. If so, why is that necessary?


                        I'm not sure I understand what sort of argument you're making here. Why would this pure actuality require this?
                        I'm saying that in order for the universe to be created it would require that it be created out of nothing a la the bible, just spoken, or thought into existence. That I find to be the biggest problem with the notion of god and creation. (Ex Nihilo nihil fit.)

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Originally posted by JimL View Post
                          And why does a change in the forms that an actual substance takes need be done by a distinct actual substance? Why can not a change in the form of a substance be inherent in the substance itself?
                          Because any substance that has a potential actualized has a potential actualized by something else. There's no such thing as a potential book that writes itself into existence. You would have to give a coherent description of a situation where something actualizes itself.

                          I think it is obvious there is no coherent way for a non-existing teapot to actualize its own existence.

                          Now there are two different kinds of causal chains in this matter, accidental (or historical) causal chains, and essential causal chains.

                          Essential causal chains are chains where each cause has to exist together in order for a certain result to be a certain way. Take for instance a teapot at rest on the flat surface. What prevents the teapot from falling into the core of the Earth is that this surface constantly actualizes the potential for the teapot to remain at that position. How does the surface derive those powers? It does this from its mechanical structure, and so on down through various levels of explanatory layers for how that surface can have those powers at that time.

                          Note this chain implies nothing about time, but only what is true at any moment that the table is holding up something. I am not making an argument about the beginning of the universe. Note also that this chain cannot go on forever, or nothing would be actualized. Each term, because it consists of actuality and potentiality, has to have its potentiality actualized by something else that is already actual.

                          They're all such essentially ordered causal chains have to terminate in a particular cause: Something that is purely actual without any potentiality at all.

                          And this we call God.

                          This pure cause is a soliton without any peers, it is purely simple without any parts, it is omnipresent at all places and times, and because it is the ultimate cause of anything that happens it is omnipotent.
                          Last edited by Leonhard; 01-19-2020, 06:40 AM.

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                          • #58
                            Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                            Because any substance that has a potential actualized has a potential actualized by something else. There's no such thing as a potential book that writes itself into existence. You would have to give a coherent description of a situation where something actualizes itself.

                            I think it is obvious there is no coherent way for a non-existing teapot to actualize its own existence.

                            Now there are two different kinds of causal chains in this matter, accidental (or historical) causal chains, and essential causal chains.

                            Essential causal chains are chains where each cause has to exist together in order for a certain result to be a certain way. Take for instance a teapot at rest on the flat surface. What prevents the teapot from falling into the core of the Earth is that this surface constantly actualizes the potential for the teapot to remain at that position. How does the surface derive those powers? It does this from its mechanical structure, and so on down through various levels of explanatory layers for how that surface can have those powers at that time.

                            Note this chain implies nothing about time, but only what is true at any moment that the table is holding up something. I am not making an argument about the beginning of the universe. Note also that this chain cannot go on forever, or nothing would be actualized. Each term, because it consists of actuality and potentiality, has to have its potentiality actualized by something else that is already actual.

                            They're all such essentially ordered causal chains have to terminate in a particular cause: Something that is purely actual without any potentiality at all.

                            And this we call God.

                            This pure cause is a soliton without any peers, it is purely simple without any parts, it is omnipresent at all places and times, and because it is the ultimate cause of anything that happens it is omnipotent.
                            And how does god actualize the potentialities if in god himself there is no potential for change?

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Originally posted by JimL View Post
                              And how does god actualize the potentialities if in god himself there is no potential for change?
                              What problem would there be in this?

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                                What problem would there be in this?
                                If the universe were defined, the way you define god, i.e.as immutable, could it actualize anything?

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