christian

Jesus and the Stable: A Theory

The Christmas season is upon us and I have been contemplating much of the story of Christ’s birth.  Apologetically, I’ve decided to focus this season upon a few questions about Jesus.

One argument I have heard is that the account of Jesus’ birth in Luke 2 is inaccurate. The charge is made because it seems unfathomable culturally that Joseph could have gone to his hometown and found no family who would accommodate he and his betrothed. Luke 2:7 says “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” The latter part of the verse is that to which the objector points, saying that surely one of Joseph’s family members would have provided a bed for them.

There are a few important points to be made here. First, the text actually provides for the possibility of Joseph’s family providing lodging. The Greek word translated “inn” in this verse can also be translated as “guest room” which implies that Joseph did seek lodging with family, but all of their guest rooms were full. This is reflected in the NIV translation, which states that “there was no guest room available to them.”

Second, while those who make this objection focus on the cultural significance of hospitality, they also ignore the cultural significance of adultery. That Mary was pregnant was a pretty big deal. She would have been seen as an adulterer–possibly with Joseph (though some anti-Christian literature from the second century suggested that Jesus was the illegitimate child of Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera). The penalty for adultery was death by stoning. Joseph had stayed with Mary and protected her. It doesn’t seem unlikely that this could have incurred his family’s wrath to the point where they simply didn’t allow him to stay with them for the census. Treated like the family member no one talks about, everyone’s door was shut when Joseph came knocking with his pregnant bride-to-be.

It should be noted that this later theory is just that; a theory. The textual evidence could easily support my first point (that all the guest rooms were full). I think that my own theory is plausible. Either way, the objection fails.

SDG.

This is part of a series I’ve entitled “Jesus: the Living God,” which explores Jesus from Biblical, theological, and apologetic levels. View other posts in the series here.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation and provide a link to the original URL. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Arguing for Deism?

One curious objection I have seen and heard to arguments for the existence of God is that these arguments apply to deism, not Christianity. For example, Michael, an atheist blogger, writes, “Note that these are effectively arguments for deism, not Christianity!” about the Moral Argument (here). Another example is found in the irrational and rather virulent attack on theistic argument (laughably, they use Dawkins as the primary source for saying that all arguments for God’s existence have been refuted) can be found here. The author, confused about the implications of the cosmological argument, writes, “YECers actually deny the Big Bang, but Craig appears to be a deist.”

I must confess at least a little confusion about these comment and others which I have seen and heard. The objection seems to be that an argument for the existence of God (such as the cosmological argument) that could be utilized for deism doesn’t help the epistemic justification for belief in the Christian God. This objection is completely misguided, however, for a number of reasons.

First, Michael objects in this way in his discussion of the Moral Argument. But deism is the belief in “a creator who has established the universe and its processes but does not respond to human prayer or need” (Honderich, 195 cited below). Clearly, then, this god of deism cannot be the God towards which the Moral Argument points. The moral argument places God as the objective standard of morality for the universe (note, it doesn’t place God as the arbitrary decision maker for what is right or wrong–but argues that God has objective goodness necessarily or essentially, thus avoiding the Euthyphro dilemma Michael presses). It is hard to see how a god which doesn’t care about or respond to human need could be the objective standard of morality.

Second, the classic arguments for the existence of God don’t each point specifically to the Christian God, but serve as a cumulative case to demonstrate His existence and attributes. The Moral Argument argues for omnibenevolence; the teleological argument demonstrates omniscience and omnipotence (along with omnibenevolence, to a lesser extent); the cosmological argument illustrates omnipotence, transcendence, and necessary existence; the transcendental argument shows God’s transcendence and necessity; the ontological argument combines all of the attributes into its first premise (usually); the argument from consciousness demonstrates God as mind; the argument from reason demonstrates the rationality of God; the list could continue. Furthermore, almost all of these arguments show that God is personal, and therefore, by definition, not deistic but theistic. The objection is specious already.

Furthermore, how is it an objection to these arguments to say that they don’t each individually demonstrate the Christian God is the one true God? This seems to be a confusion about how arguments work. Argumenst for the existence of a god, as long as they don’t contradict the God of Christianity, can be taken as evidence for the existence of the God, namely, the Christian God.

Take an example of a case in court. A man is accused of committing murder. The victim was found hung in his room. The prosecuting attorney argues that the accused had the means–he recently bought some rope. He then argues the accused had motive–the victim had recently gotten a promotion for which the accused was vying. He also shows that the accused has rope marks on his hand and scratch marks on his face, which show the struggle which occurred as the accused allegedly hung the victim. He argues, finally, the accused had opportunity–he was in the room at the time the victim died and he was also the only other person in the room.

Now imagine how ridiculous it would be if the defense attorney stood up and complained that these arguments don’t really apply to the case at hand, because none of them demonstrates the accused committed the murder! They just show, individually, that he had means, motive, and opportunity; not to mention the strong evidence for the accused being involved in a struggle with some rope and another person. But to demonstrate the guilt of the accused, the defense continues, the prosecution must come up with an argument that demonstrates all of these things at once! Otherwise, they just demonstrate the other things individually!

Obviously, the defense attorney has something wrong here. But then the atheistic objector also has something wrong. The Christian philosopher of religion has argued that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, transcendent, necessary, etc.; the atheist responded by saying “those arguments individually only demonstrate a deistic God!” [Discounting, for the moment, that a deistic God wouldn’t share some of these attributes.] But that isn’t how the arguments work. Any argument which demonstrates that a God exists, as long as that God is not contradictory to the Christian God, can serve as evidence for the existence of the Christian God.

Source:

Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Guide to Philosophy (New York, NY: Oxford, 2005).

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation and provide a link to the original URL. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Our Longing For God

Recently, I had a discussion with my fiancée about the idea of Song of Songs being utilized as an analogy for Christ and the Church. Song of Songs is clearly a book about love, even erotic (eros) love. There are verses like 1:4 “Draw me after you; let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers” or 6:3a “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” If we are to apply such verses to the life of a Christian and his or her relation to God, we can see it sometimes as an almost uncomfortably close relationship. We aren’t comfortable thinking of our love of God as this kind of intimate desire; a desire for union, to be brought into the chambers of our God.

Yet it is exactly this kind of intimacy–this kind of eros love–which God has planned for us. Song of Songs is such a beautiful book because of this exact thing. It teaches us that we need not be ashamed of the kind of union we desire with God. We are sheep lead astray, and our one desire should be to return to our Lord, in whose arms we find peace and love.

There are other verses in Scripture wherein we can see this idea. Psalm 84:2 states “My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” Psalm 63:1 puts it eloquently, “Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you.”

My favorite exposition of these ideas is found in Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, of all places. In this monumental work, Plantinga discusses the very idea of God’s love as eros. I feel compelled to quote him at length:

This love for God isn’t like, say an inclination to spend the afternoon organizing your stamp collection. It is longing, filled with desire and yearning; and it is physical as well as spiritual… It is erotic; and one of the closest analogues would be with sexual eros. There is a powerful desire for union with God… What is to be made of this phenomenon? Most psychiatric literature has tended to follow Freud in understanding religion as a kind of neurosis, the ‘universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.’ From this point of view, the religious eros is to be understood as a kind of analogue, displacement, or sublimation of (broadly) sexual energy…

From a Christian perspective… here (as often) Freud has things just backwards. It isn’t that religious eros, love for God, is really sexual eros gone astray or rechanneled… It is sexual desire and longing that is a sign of something deeper: it is a sign of this longing, yearning for God that we human beings achieve when we are graciousliy enabled to reach a certain level of the Christian life. It is love for God that is fundamental or basic, and sexual eros that is the sign or symbol or pointer to something else and something deeper.

[S]exual eros points to two deeper realities… human love for God… [and] a sign, symbol, or type of God’s love. (Plantinga, 311-318)

Those who have had religious experiences in which they felt a kind of union with God can attest to what Plantinga is describing. The kind of mystical union we experience when we are granted the chance to commune with God in a relation of creature-creator is beautiful, to the point of being even sensual. It is something which we long for; something we look forward to in the hereafter.

This also serves to help describe the kind of feelings involved in religious experience. It is a kind of fulfillment of a yearning and a quenching of thirst. Our longing for God is part of humanity. Plantinga argues it is part of our sensus divinitatis–our inborn sense of divine reality. Only when we submit to God and experience relation with him can our deepest desires be realized.

Source:

Alvin Plantinga. Warrented Christian Belief (New York, NY: 2000, Oxford).

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation and provide a link to the original URL. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The Case for Dualism: Against Monism

Substance dualism seems to be the most reasonable position when it comes to consciousness. I’m going to be exploring the reasons for this throughout several posts.

Substance dualism is the idea that our conscious self is a combination of both a physical and non-physical reality. That is, our consciousness is not just neurons firing in the brain, but also some kind of phenomenal self, which is separate from the physical realm.

One reason for holding to substance dualism is that it avoids the problems of monistic physicalism. Physicalism argues that our conscious self is literally the brain. There is nothing but neurons firing in the brain (okay, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the general idea is that our brain is our “self”).

Physicalism, therefore, leads to a kind of monism–everything is matter. Depending on which physicalist philosopher one prefers, this can lead to all sorts of problems. We can see this when we examine what exactly composes a “thought.” On dualism, a “thought” is a non-physical, phenomenal experience of the “self”–which is generally referred to either as “mind” or “soul.” On physicalism, a “thought” is identical with a brain state.

In other words, on Physicalism:

Brain state A => Mental state A’

Brain state B => Mental state B’

And so on.

When I experience thought A’, it is because of a prior brain state, A. My mental states are either identical to, or supervenient upon, the physical state of my brain. The problem with this is that it relegates mental states to epiphenomenalism. That is, if a mental state is wholly dependent on a brain state, the mental state is superfluous. This is because the mental state is entirely dependent upon (or identical to) the brain state. On physicalism, a mental state does not occur without a brain state occurring prior to, or in conjunction with, it.

This, in turn, leads to epiphenomenalism because the mental state is, as  I said, superfluous. If it is always the case that Brain state A=> Mental state A’, then Brain state A causes whatever actions we take, for the brain state entails the mental state, which itself is identical to or supervenient upon the brain state to exist. But then, if we cut mental state A’ out of the equation, we would still have Brain state A and the action. Thus, consciousness is entirely superfluous.

Another problem with this is that it also means consciousness doesn’t have to have any connection with the actual world. Our brain states could be causing all kinds of wild mental states which are completely unconnected to what is happening outside of our “self,” but we would never know it or act differently. I could be having the mental states of pigs flying and eating buffaloes as I write this, but it wouldn’t matter because the brain state is what is causative. The mental state is simply a byproduct of the brain state. Or, we could all be zombies, without any kind of phenomenal consciousness, and yet still be performing the same actions.

Yet another problem, on the physicalist perspective, is that there seems to be no reason for our mental states to line up with reality. Why is it that despite the fact that our brain state is causing all of our actions, or mental state seems to line up with those actions? There doesn’t seem to be any reason our mental states should line up with reality. One response could be that we have no reason to suppose they do line up with reality, but then we have no reason to trust anything we “think” and should give up whatever positions we do hold.

Of course, monistic physicalism actually argues that there is no mental state A’ generated by brain state A, but I don’t see any reason for believing this is true, for they are of two completely different kinds. One is gray mush, the other is a phenomenal image of a cat. One is composed of neurons shooting impulses to and fro, the other is the idea that “I wish I had eaten breakfast.” The law of identity states that A = A. But, according to monistic physicalism, my gray mush/neurons firing = image of cat. This is simply false.

So, I have no reason to accept physicalism on any of these formulations, and every reason to reject it. Physicalism is epiphenomenal, gives us reasons to doubt our basic intuitions, and makes any thoughts we have completely arbitrary.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation and provide a link to the original URL. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

“The Christian Delusion” Rebutted

Those interested in whether “The Christian Delusion” actually has anything useful to say (hint: it doesn’t) should check out “The Infidel Delusion,” a free book which rebuts it point-by-point. By the end of “The Infidel Delusion,” the atheistic “Christian Delusion” has been totally destroyed. Not that this was any surprise to me. The authors of “The Infidel Delusion” do a fantastic job, and it is a very, very worthy read.

Here ya go.

The Past, Probability, and Teleology

This post has been expanded, edited, and published in the journal Hope’s Reason. View it in full here.

I have run into the idea more than once recently that we should discount things like the teleological argument due to the fact that it happened in the past. The thinking goes that, because an event (the existence of the universe, for example), has happened, the probability of that event happening is 1/1. Thus, people like Dawkins can say, “The fact of our own existence is perhaps too surprising to bear… How is it that we find ourselves not merely existing, but surrounded by such complexity, such excellence, such endless forms so beautiful… The answer is this: it could not have been otherwise, given that we are capable of noticing our existence at all and of asking questions about it” (here).

There are a number of ways to take such sentiment. The first is quite trivial. Of course, if an event e happened, the probability e having happened is 1/1. That’s, as I said, trivially true.

The problem is when people try to use this thinking against something like some forms of the teleological argument. Statistically, some people assert, the odds that the universe would be life-permitting (like the one we observe) must be 1/1, because, we are here, after all, to observe it!

Now, imagine the following:

d: The chances of any one side coming up are (granting a fair die and surface) 1/6. I toss a die (I really just did here) and get a 1.

Now, the equivalent claim of saying that the universe must have been life permitting because we are here to observe it is saying that d must happen, given that it is what did happen. Some people have no problem with asserting this, and indeed say that this should be the case. The fact that something is true, they may argue, means that the probability that it would happen was 1/1.

We can, in fact, reduce this whole discussion to symbolic logic. It is the case that:

□(p⊃p)

Which tells us that, if p is the case, then necessarily p is the case. Those who are arguing as above, however, need a much stronger conclusion, namely, □p. But this simply doesn’t follow from reality. It is the case that p, therefore, necessarily, p. But it is not the case that necessarily p.

The distinction is a simple de re verses de dicto fallacy. It is an elementary error philosophically, but it is easy to commit. I’ve done so in the past (see here for a post in which I caught myself in this confusion). Now, de dicto necessity is “a matter of a proposition’s being necessarily true” while de re necessity is “an object’s having a property essentially or necessarily” (Plantinga, v). De dicto necessity ascribes necessity to a proposition, while de re necessity argues only that each “res of a certain kind has a certain property essentially or necessarily” (Plantinga, 10).

Returning to the idea of past events, such as the universe coming into existence or rolling a die and having it come up as a 1, we can see where this error occurs. Those who deny with Dawkins that we can work out the prior probabilities of the universe being life-permitting because “it could not have been otherwise” are actually committing this basic error. They have assigned the proposition that the universe exists de re necessity, when in reality it is only a de dicto necessity. It is, in other words, true that whatever has happened, necessarily has happened. It is not true that whatever has happened has happened necessarily.

(This post is a very miniature version of a journal article I have under review for Hope’s Reason right now.)

Sources:

Plantinga, Alvin. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford University Press. 1979.

Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:God-dice.jpg

Thanks to Dr. Timothy Folkerts and Dr. Stephen Parrish for some enlightening correspondence on the above points.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author.

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

One of my personal favorite areas of philosophy of religion is studying the arguments for existence of God. One type of argument for God is the Cosmological Argument, and one of these arguments was developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

The Argument

A simple version of the argument, in syllogistic form, goes as follows:

1) Everything which exists has an explanation of its existence

2) If the universe has an explanation for its existence, that explanation is God

3) The universe exists

4) The universe has an explanation of its existence

5) Therefore God exists (Craig, 54ff)

Now I think this outlining of Leibniz’s argument is a little forward. Premise 2 may be a bit strong. I’ve edited it some, though I’m sure many others have outlined it similarly, to become:

1) All entities which exist have explanation of their existence. This explanation is either their own necessity or (for contingent entities) an external cause.  (P1)

2) The universe exists (Axiom [A] 1)

3) The universe’s existence is not found in its own necessity (P2)

4) Therefore, the universe has an external cause (P1, P2)

5) There cannot be an infinite series of non-necessary causes (A2)

6) Therefore, the cause of the universe is transcendent (external) to it and necessary (4, A2 [I’m skipping a few steps here, but it would end up here eventually, as follows from 4 and A2])

What the Argument Demonstrates

I’m content with settling for the conclusion found in 6). Demonstrating that an external, necessary entity caused the universe is as close as to God as many arguments can go. A being which causes the universe would obviously be exceedingly powerful, the argument itself states it is transcendent to the universe, and the being exists necessarily. Many (most?) theists tend to agree that the other attributes Classical Theism has generally assigned to God follow quite easily from the acknowledgement that such a being exists.

The question must now turn towards reasons why we should believe that this valid argument is true.

Defense of the Premises

1) seems as though it should be accepted simply as a given. I don’t think I should need to defend 1). If we abandon the idea that everything which exists has an explanation (either contingently–from something outside of itself, or necessarily–from its own necessity), then we should expect any number of utterly random things to pop into and out of existence for no reason whatsoever! After all, it would be the height of self-delusion to think that, while all things require reasons to exist, it just so happens (how fortuitously!) that our universe is the only thing which exists for no reason. I’ll leave it at that for now… such ideas are more important for the Transcendental Argument, after all.

2) simply doesn’t need a defense.

Step 3) is alongside step 1) as the only two premises which are capable of being denied (for 2 is, again, obvious, and 4) follows simply from the first 3; we will discuss step 5 shortly) to avoid the conclusion. Denying step 1), I think, is clearly unacceptable, so denying step 3) is really the only way to go for the anti-theist. But what reasons do we have for thinking the universe exists necessarily? I think this is patently not the case. After all, everything which exists necessarily exists (necessarily) forever! Therefore, a necessary universe must have existed for an infinite amount of time (for time is part of the universe). But if this is the case, we run into the insurmountable problems which an infinite past brings up (these problems are also important for the Kalam Cosmological Argument).

I’ll pick just one problem to demonstrate: if the past is actually infinite (as it must be, granting a necessary universe), then we could never get to the present moment, for we would have had to traverse an actually infinite amount of time to get here! Not only that, but as time passes, there is no time being “added” to what came before. Infinity is infinity and it cannot be increased by adding to it or decreased from taking away from it. Therefore, every second which seems as though it is lengthening our lives is actually not doing anything of the sort, despite every commonsense notion with which we have lived out whole lives saying otherwise! The universe, on this view, is a deceptive place, in which nothing is as it seems.

Not only that, but if the universe were necessary, then it seems as though hard determinism–that is, the view that there is no freedom of the will whatsoever–must be the case. For, if the universe exists necessarily, then it has possessed all of its parts necessarily, forever.

Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any reason as to why the universe could not have been different. To assert the universe exists necessarily, once again, means to assert that no part of the universe could have failed to exist. Think of it this way: the universe in which I ate breakfast this morning (as opposed to this universe, in which I did not [shame on me, I know]) is logically impossible. Why? Because things which exist necessarily cannot change!

Worse yet, the explanation of a necessary universe leads to the question of why exactly everything is as it is. The anti-theistic view of such a universe is that, necessarily, the universe exists as it does, which happens to have an extraordinary amount of order, laws of nature which happen to allow for life, etc. (this objection was brought to my attention through Stephen Parrish’s God and Necessity, 241).

Thus, even if we grant that it is possible the universe exists necessarily, the individual properties of the universe still call out for explanation: why is it that the universal constants are what they are, and don’t deviate by the infinitesimal amount which would have prevented the existence of life? Ultimately, then, the necessary universe theory falls victim not just to objections against the idea of a necessary universe, but it also falls victim to the objections against the universe existing for no reasons whatsoever.

This means that we have established 1-4. Step 5 is an axiom which I have proposed, because it seems to me quite clear that an infinite regress of contingent causes is a vicious regress–an impossibility. Everything in such a chain would have to, by 1), have a cause outside of itself. If we take C1 to be caused by C2, but both are contingent, then C2 calls for an explanation, C3, which calls for C4, which calls for C5… ad infinitum. I don’t see any reason to deny that this regress is vicious.

Thus, 1-5 have been established. If this is the case, however, then 6 follows, simply because at some point the series of causes C1…C5… would have to be terminated in N1 (a necessary cause). Furthermore, this cause would be external to the universe, from step 1). Thus, the Leibnizian Cosmological argument provides us with powerful reasons to think that a transcendent, powerful, necessary entity brought the universe into existence. I don’t see any reason to call this entity anything but God. There  are many reasons to think that an entity with these properties (namely, necessary existence, transcendence, omnipotence) would possess many or all the other properties generally assigned to God.

Therefore, God exists.

Sources:

Craig, William Lane. On Guard. David C. Cook Publishers. 2010.

Parrish, Stephen. God and Necessity. University Press of America. 1997.

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The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author.

Process Philosophy: The Unity of Science and Religion

This post is part of a series on Process Philosophy. View other posts in the series here.

Perhaps the highest goal of Process Philosophy is the  attempt to unite science and religion into a cohesive whole.

There are, according to David Ray Griffin (author of Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism, review here) two major sources of conflict between science and religion: 1) religion’s association with supernaturalism, on which the natural process can be interrupted for any reason by a deity, and 2) science’s association with atheistic, sensational materialism, on which God is methodologically rejected (Griffin, 23).

Process Philosophy seeks to eliminate these conflicts by proposing naturalistic theism, which seeks to be “supportive of the necessary presuppositions” of both “scientific and religious communities” (29). Part of this program is to appeal to our “hard-core commonsense notions”–our most basic assumptions under which we must function in order to make sense of reality. As such, anything which defies these notions is to be rejected, which means that “[a]ny scientific, philosophical, or theological theory is irrational, accordingly, to the extent that it contradicts whatever notions we inevitably presuppose in practice” (30, emphasis his).

This notion, according to Process Philosophy, builds the bridge to unite science and religion. Science, it is argued, cannot operate under the atheistic variety. It must, furthermore, assume mathematical and logical truths, which science cannot ground in sensory experience. This opens up the possibility, for one, of religious experience. This religious experience, which is nonsensational in nature (I’ll be writing on this in an upcoming post) is not to be ruled out, for the ground of all things, on Process Philosophy, is experience, not sensation.

Science also must allow the possibility of a naturalistic form of theism, for the “basic order of the world, the upward trend of the evolutionary process, the novelty that has appeared in this process, the world’s ‘excessive’ beauty, and the objectivity of normative ideals and other ideal (nonactual) entities, such as those of mathematics and logic…” must appeal to naturalistic theism in order to explain their existence (48, 169ff).

This relationship must, however, be mutually beneficial, and religion cannot operate without allowing modifications to come from science. There must be “mutual modification” (51, emphasis his).

Now, it is of vast importance at this juncture to explain exactly what naturalistic theism is, on Process Philosophy. The God proposed by Process Philosophy is in the world, not outside of it. As such, God is part of the processes of all things. God, as it were, is the prime mover and prime motivator. Because of the basis of all things in experience, God is seen as interacting with all things in a non-coercive way–God acts through persuasion to bring about good, and to bring order from chaos (129ff). Thus, God is, in some sense, natural–God is part of the order of all things.

Now I turn to the question I always ask of anything I read: What can the Christian learn from this?

Initially, it may seem the proper answer is “nothing,” however I do think we can learn some things from Process Philosophy here. First, it is important to note that the two problems which cause clashes between science and religion are real problems which need to be addressed by the thinking Christian. Second, God, on classical Christian theism, can be seen in some sense as working through nature to bring about those things which we call miracles. The parting of the Red (Reed?) Sea is often seen as one example of this–gale force winds which parted the sea are often cited. Similarly, the plagues on the Egyptians are often seen as having natural explanations, but these explanations do not exclude God from the equation. Perhaps the lesson Christians can learn here is that God does indeed utilize the physical process to bring about many of His goals. Christianity, however, must almost certainly reject any notion which says that God cannot interrupt the natural process, unless  one argues that it is logically impossible so to do (the definition of God’s omnipotence is almost universally acknowledged to mean God can do what is logically possible). Thus, at best, Process Philosophy’s view of Deity can show how God generally works, but it oversteps its bounds in suggesting that God cannot do otherwise.

The idea of God acting persuasively rather than coercively has much to commend it, particularly in light of recent trends in Christian philosophy of religion. Namely, this idea is highly beneficial to the freedom of the will theodicy, as well as in versions of Christianity which are non-deterministic. This is one of the great interactions Christians can have with Process Philosophy–a dialogue about human freedom and divine interactions with the world.

What of science and religion in mutual modification? I must admit I am more friendly to this idea than some–perhaps even most–but I am wary of how Process Philosophy wields this idea. Process Philosophy explicitly denies any kind of special revelation in the form of Scripture (257), which Christians cannot accept, in my opinion, for it undermines the central beliefs of Christianity. I don’t think Process Philosophy is even capable of arguing for their denial of special revelation (and oddly enough, many process theologians argue for the uniqueness of the incarnation of Christ). Science cannot operate over and above religion, rather, the truths of God and His unique Revelation describe reality as such. Science serves to explain how this reality operates.

The Christian has much to learn from those who are outlining Process Philosophy and Theology. We learn to sharpen our intellect and better defend our beliefs. Process Philosophy offers some insights about how God works, though it also features many ideas about God that Christians explicitly reject. I think we have some things to learn here, but we must be careful to analyze these things in light of the truth revealed in Scripture.

Source:

Griffin, David Ray. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion. Cornell University Press. 2001.

Image source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raindrop_on_a_fern_frond.jpg

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Book Review: Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism by David Ray Griffin

Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion by David Ray Griffin (hereafter RWS) is a vast work. because of the nature of this book–namely, its place as, essentially, an outlining and explication of a religion–I feel it is necessary to continue discussion of this work past the present review. I’ll be doing a series on Process Philosophy.

RWS covers an incredibly broad range of topics. Summing up a work of this scope would take too much space, so I’ll give only a brief outline. The central doctrines of Process Philosophy are (quoted at length):

1) “The integration of moral, aesthetic, and religious intuitions with the most general doctrines of the sciences into a self-consistent worldview as one of the central tasks of philosophy in our time” (5)

2) “Hard-core commonsense notions as the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position” (5)

3) “Whitehead’s nonsensationist doctrine of perception, according to which sensory perception is a secondary mode of perception, being derivative from a more nonsensory ‘prehension'”(5)

4) “Panexperientialism with organizational duality, according to which all the true individuals… have at least some iota of experience and spontaneity (self-determination)” (6)

5) “The doctrine that all enduring individuals are serially ordered socieities of momentary ‘occasions of experience'” (6)

6) “[A]ll actual entities have internal as well as external relations” (6)

7) “[N]aturalistic theism, according to which a Divine Actuality acts variably but never supernaturally in the world” (6)

8 ) “Doubly Dipolar Theism” (7)

9) “The provision of cosmological support for the ideals needed by contemporary civilization as one of the chief purposes of philosophy in our time” (7)

10) “A distinction between verbal statements (sentences) and propositions and between both of these and propositional feelings” (7)

Whew! And that is just the introduction of a 425 page work!

These doctrines I’ll let speak for themselves, but it is immediately clear that Process Philosophy can be identified as a religion, either on its own, or in conjunction with another religion of the world. These doctrines are enough to support a robust naturalistic theism which differs in many ways from classical theism.

Process Philosophy affirms that sense experience is not primary (see esp. 55). It also rejects both physicalism and dualism, calling instead for panexperientialism, which is the idea that everything in the universe–down to the smallest entity, has experience of some sort. In other words, the basic units of “stuff” in our universe are neither ideal (as in some forms of dualism) or material (as in materialism and other forms of dualism), but experiential (94ff).

God, on Process Philosophy, is in the world. It is panentheistic as opposed to theistic or pantheistic. God is not supernatural, but is rather a necessary part of the universe (131ff). God created the world not ex nihilo, but out of chaos, which Griffin argues is the correct reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly Genesis (I disagree strongly here, for it seems like there is much evidence for the use of bara to refer to creation ex nihilo).

I can’t resist veering off the summary path here and critiquing this view specifically. The problem with affirming that God created the world out of some existent finite entities (see 216) is that that leaves both God and these finite entities with no explanation for their existence. God, argues Griffin, exists necessarily, but there is no reason I could find given for this. Furthermore, there is absolutely no explanation of how these other finite entities came into being. It seems as though they are asserted to simply exist forever, but this runs into the many problems with an infinite past. I simply don’t think Griffin has adequately defended this doctrine of Process Philosophy, and most of it hinges around this idea. I’ll get into this more as I continue my series, however.

Not only that, but Process Philosophy upholds the idea that there are two distinct “ultimate realities” in our universe; namely, a personal deity, and an impersonal, “creativity”. This is one of the more interesting affirmations of Process Philosophy: that all major religions are true in a qualified sense (247ff). In affirming that all major religions are in some sense true, Process Philosophy also argues that they must all learn from each other to work towards a religion that more adequately reflects reality (more on this later in the series).

Process Philosophy affirms the possibility of an afterlife, but doesn’t seem to take it as terribly likely (204ff). Furthermore, it asserts that morality can be done from the point of an “ideal observer”, namely, God (314-316).

Thus, Process Philosophy is a religion distinct from the others I have read about in some very important ways. The affirmation of both naturalistic (but not atheistic) science and theism is very interesting. Furthermore, Process Philosophy, according to Griffin, can be allies with the major religions of the world. He favors Christianity as walking hand-in-hand with this philosophy.

I personally don’t think this is a live option for Christian theists, however, because it involves rejection of, among other things: creation ex nihilo, omnipotence in the traditional sense, the ability of God to interfere with nature, the primacy of Christ in world religions, the life after death–which entails a rejection of the resurrection (though, as above, Griffin says this is possible)… furthermore, it means Christians must accept, among other things: the idea that Christianity is true, but only in some sense compared to to other religions, that God is only the arranger, not the creator (in the traditional sense) of the world, an entirely different ultimate reality that is similar to the impersonal, immutable Brahma as existing alongside of and coequal to God.

So what can the Christian take from RWS? That is a question that will take me some time to think about and digest. I hope the further posts in this series will help outline this more. I think there are valuable insights in what Griffin has to say, but it is more probable, in my opinion, that the Christian will find, not a “Reenchantment” so much as a chance to sharpen their philosophical blades against arguments which undermine the central tenants of the faith.

That said, RWS is a fantastic read. Griffin covers a simply massive range of topics with clarity from the perspective of Process Philosophy. The book is a page-turner. Like a fantastic novel, it exposes new ideas and forces the intellect to work in new ways. It is a work that essentially outlines the creeds of a different religion, albeit a religion which is syncretistic by nature. It touches on nearly every area of philosophy of religion, from religious language to natural theology. I highly recommend this book, if one has a good background in classical theism. The reason is because the ideas are alluring, but faulty. One can expose the faults, but only if one is grounded in truth. It’s a thought-provoking book, but I regret to find it so off the mark.

Source:

Griffin, David Ray. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion. Cornell University Press. 2001.

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The Life Dialogue: Theistic Evolution 4

This is part of a series of posts on the “Life Dialogue” within Christianity. Check out other posts in the series here.

I recently read a very interesting article on theistic evolution by Loren Haarsma and Terry M. Gray entitled “Complexity, Self Organization, and Design.” Interestingly, I found what I think are some of the most interesting arguments for the theistic evolutionist position, but I also found some of the hardest objections to the position (scientifically) that I have stumbled across.

I’ll start with the interesting evidence for their position. First, they note that the word “design” doesn’t belong exclusively to the Intelligent Design theorists, because theistic evolutionists argue that God designed the initial laws which gave rise to evolution and eventually humanity. In other words, God foreknew and intended for mankind to evolve, and set up the laws such that we would (or at least that some sentient beings with which God intended to interact would arise, 289).

They further argue that “With the right set of rules, a random, iterative process can start with a simple environment and self-assemble a complex environment” (293, emphasis theirs). The arguments for this position are interesting to me, and I am no scientist, but it seems to me that the three ways from which they argue for this possibility make more sense to me if there is some kind of intelligence behind the process.

The three strategies for self-organized complexity they argue are:

1) Preprogrammed self assembly– “…pieces are designed so that random interactions between them eventually lead to assembly of the desired complex object(s)”

2) Information transfer from the environment– objects incorporate information from the environment through “a process of random exploration and feedback”

3) Interaction among agents– “random interactions and feedback” lead to “increased productivity or survivability” (290)

It seems to me that 1) could be simply incorporated into laws at the beginning of the universe  (but these laws would have to be designed, as the authors point out). 2) seems to me as though it simply couldn’t be totally random. For evolution to work, on the understanding I’ve gleaned from my readings, the complexity would have to aid the survivability of the entity. I think a problem here is that there is no way to determine when/why/how the random interactions suddenly latch onto those things which are helpful. If it truly is a random process, then it would randomly continue to select for characteristics, casting off old ones and making room for new ones.

Incorporating natural selection doesn’t seem like it would help much here either, because then those random selections which are negative would terminate the species. So my problems with 2) are twofold (even granting that God Designed the laws such that these interactions would occur): 1. there doesn’t seem to be an explanation for the process stopping the random selections (and therefore keeping the trait); 2. we aren’t talking about computer algorithms here, we’re talking living entities–if they select the wrong traits, they die.

Ultimately I found these arguments interesting reading, but I just don’t see how they support Theistic Evolutionism more than, say Intelligent Design. The authors do make the interesting point that it could have been the case that God set up/designed the laws such that life would arise, but the ways that complexity is integrated into the process seems to me, at least, to demand further explanation.

Source:

Haarsma, Loren and Terry M. Gray, Complexity, Self-Organization, and Design, in Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, edited Keith B. Miller, p. 288-309.

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