[geye1234]

"But each time I become more convinced religious arguments are simply wish fulfillment."

Funny, I feel exactly the opposite, but of course everybody, whether religious or not, sees what he wants to see :-)

"For instance, the "Five Proofs" are basically a variation of the statement: I insist X has to exist, and X=God."

This is false. Or please tell me what work you've read that gives you that impression. It perhaps works as a parody of the ontological argument (which is not one of the 'five proofs'), but no more than that.

The book Five Proofs is not the same set of five that Aquinas very briefly summarises (though there is some overlap). The ontological argument, which I think fails, is not one of either sets.

Anyway, I've pointed you in what I hope is a profitable direction. I recommended the Five Proofs book in particular because one chapter (IMO) successfully rebuts every atheist argument that I've encountered online or in print. These books' arguments are not what you will find in typical pro-religion discourse, much of which I agree is risible. I wish you well!

[sdht0]

> sees what he wants to see

Most definitely. Though I do think (hope?) we humans can rise above our limitations to grasp the actual Truth quite a bit.

> The book Five Proofs is not the same set of five that Aquinas very briefly summarises

Alright I got the actual book now. To correct the mistake, I'll give the book a honest read and post my impressions here in a day or two. I hope you can be around to respond if I got something wrong. If not, nice talking to you!

[geye1234]

> Most definitely. Though I do think (hope?) we humans can rise above our limitations to grasp the actual Truth quite a bit.

Sure. I don't mean to imply I'm a subjectivist or that the situation is hopeless. But seeing things as they are, rather than as one is inclined to see them, takes serious effort and self-training. That's not an argument in favour or against anything; it's true in every aspect of life, from the most mundane to the biggest questions.

Feel free to respond to this comment or some more recent one, and I'll try to remember to check. Regardless of whether you're convinced, you'll at least be responding to much better arguments than what you've likely encountered so far. Enjoy!

[sdht0]

Alright, it took longer than expected. I wasn't able to give full attention to all the arguments of the book, but I think I got the main arguments and counter-arguments.

So the thesis of the book "Five Proofs" is as it says in the intro---the real debate is not between atheism and theism---by trying to show that God, as accepted by theists, definitely exists.

By God, the book means an entity with certain qualities, which I'll divide into two sets:

* impersonal: simplicity, immutability, immateriality, incorporeality, eternity, necessity

* personal: will, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, love

My main criticism of the five proofs is that, even if accepted, they can only used to demonstrate the impersonal qualities above. The book bolts on the personal qualities with thin arguments that don't follow from the proofs. And this has been my observation in many such discussions, that the meaning of the word "God" switches mid-conversation to fit the conclusion.

An impersonal "God" is actually compatible with naturalism, because here "God" is just a word being used to describe the ultimate nature of reality. So whatever the ultimate nature of reality is, if one wants to call it God, that's totally fine. To differentiate my perspective, I'll call that ultimate reality the Theory of Everything (ToE) instead. ToE has all the impersonal qualities, ToE is what sustains the universe, ToE is eternal and immutable, etc.

* ToE is what sustains the hierarchical series at each moment.

* ToE is base part out of all other composite parts of made of.

* I don't see why "there must be a necessarily existing intellect which grasps all of the logical relationships between all propositions". Truth and logic just are. They don't need to be grasped by anything to exist. However, if one wants to call this collection God/ToE, that's fine. But it doesn't follow that such a God is omniscient (as there isn't any will that "understands" in such a collection).

* I don't really see how the Thomistic Proof is different from the Aristotelian Proof, but in any case, I think ToE can be the essence of this universe's existence.

* "There must be at least one necessary being, to explain why any contingent things exist at all". Yes, the First Cause, but ToE and not a personal God.

ToE/God, with the impersonal qualities, can be the final conclusion from all the 5 proofs. But theists need "God" to be something extra. They need God to have the above personal qualities as well. And that cannot be shown with the proofs. Because the reality we observe is consistent with an impersonal ToE creating and sustaining it. ToE doesn't need to have a will, or to be perfectly good, or to love its creation. These qualities don't follow from the proofs at all. So personal qualities can only be accepted if one accepts some revelation to be true. But that is outside the scope of this discussion. All I want to show is that the thesis of the book is incorrect and atheism is back on the table.

To reiterate, something cannot come out of nothing. Cogito, ergo sum. Something (I) exists. Hence there is some brute-force First Cause for this something. Theists call this First Cause God. Atheists can call this ToE (say). I claim that God = ToE at this point. Theists go one step further to give personal qualities to God, who willed this universe into existence (but could have chosen not to) and cares about its constituents, including humans, whose prayers and actions He listens to and judges, and has revealed himself at least once (if not more). Atheists reject this second part. I instead adopt a naturalist viewpoint modulated by Bayesian Reasoning. If I find some strong evidence for a personal God, I'll of course have to change my mind and become a theist.

[sdht0]

There is a lot more I can say of course, given its a book length discourse. I'll just say one more thing. The book criticizes and rejects the idea that "science is the only genuine source of knowledge". I think this is a common misunderstanding of what science is. The books says "The trouble now is that scientism becomes completely trivial, arbitrarily redefining “science” so that it includes anything that could be put forward as evidence against scientism." But that is what science, or more precisely, the scientific method is!

For instance, if the 5 proofs had actually logically and definitively proved that a personal God exists, then yes, that knowledge would become part of science.

Conversely, is it not true that the actual bedrock of religions are the books/revelations. Imagine a world where were no such revelations. Would people have as much faith in a personal caring God just on the basis of proofs?

And if the revelations were actually shown to be true, that would become part of scientific knowledge. Say God appears on Earth today and agrees to undergo scientific observations of His nature (say by turning water to wine or parting the ocean under experimental scrutiny), then naturally His existence will have to be accepted as part of reality.

The scientific method is used by everyone, whether consciously or unconsciously and to the best of their ability, to survive and understand the reality we observe. There is no other way to judge right from wrong. Scientists obviously use it to study physical reality. And theists use it for instance to judge which among the various religions (and which denomination within a religion) is actually true. Yes, that is also an application of the scientific method, looking at the arguments for the different religions and judging which one (or none) seems to be true. The disagreements come in when we don't have enough data to make a definitive judgement between the alternatives. And that's where all the wonderful imaginative ideas continue to exist.

[geye1234]

Much depends on the sense in which we take the term 'science'. Does it mean 'rationally-held knowledge of any sort', or does it mean 'knowledge derived from physics, chemistry, geology, biology and other material things'. You seem to be arguing for the science-in-the-first-sense here, which I'm basically in agreement with (I may quibble here and there). All knowledge, including the content of Divine Revelation, is rationally held to if it is true knowledge. The goal, the purpose of the intellect is the attainment of truth; thus all true knowledge is rational, while all false knowledge is irrational, and is a failure of the intellect to achieve its end.

But quite a few atheists say that claims about anything that is outside science-in-the-second-sense's domain is irrational. Example: Alex Rosenberg states that any knowledge outside of physics' domain is irrational (in line with his reductionist philosophy, he holds chemistry, biology, etc to be physics on a bigger scale). Hume also seemed to be pushing such views with his fork. This claim is trivially easy to refute, I assume you know the arguments already so I won't waste your time with them.

[sdht0]

Yes the first one, if the distinction needs to be made.

I'll even go further and claim that distinction itself is meaningless and only matters when say organizing university departments.

What needs to be kept in mind is emergence. Chemistry emerges from physics, then biology from chemistry, ecology from biology, etc. Experimentally verified God will become the base level out of which physics emerges from in the other direction. In that sense, physics' domain perhaps includes everything. But it all depends on how we define the terms.

> the purpose of the intellect is the attainment of truth

This I wholeheartedly agree. Maybe you'll enjoy reading this blog post [0] that proposes Truthism as life's goal.

[0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious...

[geye1234]

Thanks for the response and taking the time to follow my recommendation.

I'm at work so need to be brief, but I assume you read the discussion of the five qualities you list as personal, on pp.205-229. What did you think were the weaknesses in the argument? If you want to focus on just one or two of the five qualities to keep the discussion within boundaries, that's obviously fine.

Would you agree that the proofs, if successful, prove the existence of something that is other than the universe, even if the arguments for the personal qualities of this entity fail?

[sdht0]

> prove the existence of something that is other than the universe

I'm not sure. I think the proofs show some base entity that is needed to sustain the universe. But is it something apart from the universe? Whatever exists, say God and His creation, all together constitutes the universe. Of course by universe I mean the totality of reality that the proofs refer to.

Perhaps you mean that the something "other" always exists even though the universe might not have. As I say in the other comment, God might not have a choice in creating the universe, so this is an open question that cannot be discussed within the context of the proofs.

[geye1234]

So to give a bit more of an answer to this, and having not heard your thoughts on pp.205-229, which discuss this issue:

First, I don't think "Theory of Everything" is a good phrase for what you're trying to get at. Any theory is necessarily incomplete, since a theory attempts to describe reality using formal symbols, and formal symbols cannot be equal to the reality they attempt to describe. They cannot capture the entirety of the reality. But this is kind of nitpicking.

The very very short summary is as follows:

Omnipotence: if we accept that (at least one of) the Five Proofs succeed, it follows that God causes any given thing to exist at any moment in time. If he causes its existence, he also causes its power to act. Without God, nothing can act.

Omniscience: again, accepting at least one proof succeeds, it follows that God causes everything to be doing what it is doing at that time. Hence any 'state of affairs', like 'the cat sits on the mat', will be caused by God. Therefore he knows about them (yes I know this doesn't logically follow, the book obviously goes into far more detail).

Perfect goodness: this is a bit more complicated, since we hit disagreement about what good and evil actually are. As a premise, let us say that in classical philosophy, any evil (or bad-ness) is a defect, or alternatively, a failure of a thing to instantiate its essence. Hence a tree might be bad to the extent that it's diseased and therefore failing to grow; a dog might be bad to the extent that it has only three legs. With human beings, some defects are moral defects, which are defects of intellect and will: the person fails to perceive his true good, and therefore fails to pursue it. But moral defects are not fundamentally different from the amoral defects of trees, dogs and even artifacts like chairs and computers. This is one area where classical philosophy differs radically from modern philosophy, which posits a fact-value distinction that allegedly cannot be overcome.

To summarise, a defect in classical philosophy is where a particular, concrete example of a thing fails to instantiate its essence: that is to say, it lacks what is proper to it.

Since God's existence is the same as his essence (if you accept the Thomistic proof), it follows that God cannot have any defects, and therefore must be completely good.

Love: God does not have emotions. But to love a thing (and 'person' is included under 'thing') is to will its good: that is, its true end. Since God does this, he loves everything.

Again, all this is the ultra-ultra-cliffnotes version.

More generally, God cannot possibly lack anything, including the 'personal' qualities you describe. Again, you realise this is so when you grasp that God causes everything to exist, and therefore causes all their qualities as well. It would be impossible to cause something that you don't in some sense have yourself (either formally or eminently -- hence the objection "but God doesn't have ears!" fails). Also, remember that evil is a defect, a failure to have something, so therefore God cannot 'have' evil qualities. In a strict sense, nothing 'has' evil qualities, it only lacks corresponding good ones.

[sdht0]

Sorry I couldn't get back sooner.

> pp.205-229

I am on the ebook, but I assume you mean Chapter 6, which I did read but as you can imagine, the arguments are not convincing to me. I think the meaning of the terms omnipotent, omniscience, goodness, etc is quite fluid in the book, so let's try to pin those down.

I posit that an impersonal God, let's call it iGod since you nitpicked ToE, serves as a final answer coming out of the proofs. Let's grant it all the qualities that the proofs need. iGod is what causes and sustains the universe. However, since iGod is impersonal, He did not choose to create the universe. Ultimately, He does not have any will. He just is. Maybe you at least agree that atheism/science is compatible with iGod in this sense.

And that is the key difference from theism, which needs a personal God (pGod) with a sense of will. As the book says (emphasis mine):

* "Since God exists in the fullest possible way, he must have the capacity to act in the fullest possible way."

* "God apprehends all the things that could exist, and causes some of those things actually to exist while refraining from causing others of them to exist."

I don't see how this sense of a will follows from the proofs. iGod, the unmoved mover/unactualized actualizer, may not have any control over actualizing. The universe can just burst forth naturally from iGod without any sort of active decision to bring it forth. The book's defense of this sense of free will, where God is free to choose not to cause the universe, is simply that "the freedom of the divine will is mysterious to us", which I think you'll agree is not any sort of proof. If you can show me how a sense of will arises from these or other proofs, I'll reconsider my position, since this is the keystone to the rest of the qualities I'm calling personal. Without will, the meaning of the rest of the personal qualities become the same as iGod's.

Some quick comments on the rest of the qualities:

Omnipotence: I am not sure if we can extend the quality of iGod causing "any given thing to exist" just from observation of this one universe. More concretely, I am still thinking about whether the purely actual actualizer being unique holds. But in any case, if iGod's omnipotence means that it causes and sustains "any given thing to exist", that is fine. But this is a passive power. If pGod's omnipotence means that He has the power to cause anything but can withhold a subset of them based on a willful decision, then that is not an outcome of the proofs. As I said, the will part matters.

Omniscience: To give a sense of where I am coming from, I'll give two example. Base axioms in mathematics cause all the rest of the theorems to be true or false, in an eternal sort of way (as also discussed in the 3rd proof). But it's absurd to attribute omniscience (about mathematics) to mathematics. And electrons cause emergent phenomenon such as electricity and working computers, yet they don't "know" anything about these emergent levels built of top. Similarly, iGod, in an impersonal way, causes the universe, following a chain of causation. But in what sense can we attribute a sense of knowing in iGod? Again, it just is. Without proving a mind/will, using the word omniscience is I think a mistake and just leads to miscommunication.

Goodness and love: I think these only exist in an emergent level of reality, i.e., in human minds. You'll agree that atoms that constitute our physical bodies don't have these attributes, right? I posit that in the same way, iGod, the impersonal base reality which constitutes everything else, also does not have these attributes. The book (and your comment) is redefining the terms (goodness = lack of imperfection, love = "that God creates things entails that he loves them") to mean something different from how we use it in our everyday conversation and which is why I think using these terms is again a mistake. We're free to use whatever terms we like of course, but it just leads to a miscommunication that makes these discussions more murky than they need to be. In any case, goodness/love in pGod again needs a sense of will to make them useful, because otherwise by the same definitions iGod is also good and all-loving.

> God cannot possibly lack anything ... It would be impossible to cause something that you don't in some sense have yourself

I understand the sense of what you're saying here, but I want to make a distinction between base qualities and emergent qualities. For example, atoms "lack" the quality of being a table, even though a table is constituted entirely by atoms. Tableness is an emergent quality. In the same way, iGod only has the properties needed to actualize the next potential that in the causal chain gives rise to entirety of reality, including our universe. But that does not mean iGod itself can be attributed the quality of being an atom or a galaxy or a human body. Causing some quality to exist down the causal chain does not mean it is meaningful to port those qualities back up the chain. In the context of the proofs, all we can be sure of is that some First Cause base reality iGod exists. But the minimal qualities we need to attribute to iGod do not use terms like goodness, love, evil, etc without entirely redefining those terms. But theists cannot then turn around and use the same words back with their original meaning in the same context.

[geye1234]

Thanks for the response. It will likely be a few days before I get a chance to reply.

[geye1234]

> Maybe you at least agree that atheism/science is compatible with iGod in this sense

I note the equation of atheism and science but make no further comment :-)

>The book's defense of this sense of free will, where God is free to choose not to cause the universe, is simply that "the freedom of the divine will is mysterious to us", which I think you'll agree is not any sort of proof.

Feser is not offering this as proof of the existence of God's free will. He's answering a particular objection: how is it that an unchanging Being can will, given that we, as changing beings, necessarily change from willing to not-willing and back again? He says that using this as a ground against God's having will is to commit the fallacy of accident. And then he's saying we can't understand the full details of how God can will without changing, but that we can nonetheless safely say what is not the case: that God lacks will. (My summary of his argument is below.) Therefore I think your characterization of his argument is inaccurate.

If either A xor B is true, and we can show that A is false, we know that B is true. Perhaps there are implications of B that are impossible to grasp even in theory, but this doesn't undermine the truth of B. Agree?

One way we know that God wills freely is by comparing a lion, a unicorn and a dinosaur (I'm paraphrasing the argument on Will in Chapter 6 here). There is nothing about the concept of a lion that causes it to exist, there's nothing about the concept of a unicorn that causes it not to exist, and there's nothing about the concept of a dinosaur that caused it to exist at one time but then caused it to stop existing. On the contrary: I could describe the concepts of a lion, a unicorn and a dinosaur in infinite detail, and you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary.

What I said about those three animals is true about everything. You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed. There is nothing about a lion as such that makes it real, and nothing about a unicorn as such that makes it imaginary. There is nothing about a lion that makes its existence necessary, and nothing about a unicorn that makes its non-existence necessary. The existence or non-existence is a completely separate question from what it is (its qualities, etc).

Now consider the principal of proportionate causality (described in the book in detail). This basically says that if a thing doesn't have a particular quality in itself, that quality must be caused by something else. Example: I can't lift myself 10000 feet into the air, but an aeroplane can cause me to 'have' this quality. A particular pool of water may be red; it is not the water itself that's red, so something else must be giving it this quality. Etc.

The result of this is that any object that exists must be caused by something else to exist, and that this 'something else' must exist in and of itself. (This is obviously contained in some of the proofs.) Obviously the proofs say that God is such a 'something else'. Therefore, God is causing lions to exist, caused dinosaurs to exist at one point but no longer does, and has never caused unicorns to exist.

But we know that there is nothing in lions that makes them exist, nothing in unicorns that makes them not-exist, and nothing in dinosaurs that makes them stopped-existing. So, assuming the claim that God causes their existence from moment to moment succeeds, if follows that their existence or non-existence is a matter of choice. The fact that He is causing one to exist and not the other two indicates that He is choosing to do this. Given that there is nothing in any of the three that causes it to necessarily exist, it follows that the real things we see are not some sort of 'natural bursting forth' from an impersonal being, but rather exist by the choice of this Being. If the universe 'burst forth' from God, then anything that could potentially exist, would exist.

>> God cannot possibly lack anything ... It would be impossible to cause something that you don't in some sense have yourself

> base qualities and emergent qualities...But that does not mean iGod itself can be attributed the quality of being an atom or a galaxy or a human body. Causing some quality to exist down the causal chain does not mean it is meaningful to port those qualities back up the chain.

I disagree with the reductionist account of a table that is I think implicit here -- I think tables (or at least the wood that constitutes the tables) are metaphysically prior to the atoms that compose them, and the same for all natural objects. By this, I mean that the parts can only be understood in terms of the whole, and must be understood as subordinate to the whole, not vice-versa. But if I understand your objection correctly, I think I can work through it even allowing for the reductionist ontology. The principle of proportionate causality illustrates things well. Could you read the book's account of this principle? It's early in Chapter 6, I think pretty much the first section. I think you're using the 'heirloom principle' to object, which assumes that the Principle says that an effect must exist formally in its cause, and ignores that it can also exist eminently or virtually. The book defines these terms, and attempts to explain why the objection is not valid. Do you think the attempt succeeds?

If you think the attempt succeeds, I will go on to discuss why, given some things in reality (human beings) have a will, it follows that that which causes human beings' existence must also have will, either in the same sense as human beings or in some greater sense.

I'll try to respond to your other post when I get a chance. Some of the points are fairly different from what we're discussing here. I'm happy to talk about whether God revealed Himself, and in what sense he governs our conduct (or has a right to do so), but it's a pretty different conversation.