- Miguel
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Re: How to speak with atheists
Dry and Uninspired wrote:
Interesting thread so far.
As a new Christian, I talk to my atheist parents and sister on a regularly basis, so I need some help with this as well.
One thing I was talking about with my dad the other day was scientism. I was trying to show him how disastrously self-refuting it is, that science itself can’t really establish the position. His response was that scientism is simply axiomatic.
I found that rather bizarre, and didn’t know quite how to object to it.
It's bizarre because it makes no sense. Calling it an "axiom" won't change the fact that scientism is self-refuting and is therefore incompatible with belief in scientism itself. If we really ought to believe that natural science is the only appropriate means to finding the truth about reality, then we cannot accept scientism because it has not been established by natural science; we are forced to reject scientism on its own basis. Calling it an axiom won't change that, scientism is anything but an analytical or self-evident proposition.
Besides, it is completely irrational to believe in something that is neither self-evident nor traceable to self-evidence. Why accept scientism? "Because it is an axiom"? That's completely irrational; that's believing in something without any evidence for it whatsoever; there is no evidence for scientism, it has not been shown to follow logically (not even with any real probability) from any self-evident facts. What's real evidence for scientism? Why should we think it true?
Besides #2, scientism isn't just irrational and self-refuting, it has also been shown to suffer from severe counter-examples. As a mather of fact, we know that science cannot fully explain phenomena in the universe. We know there's such a thing as qualia, for example -- instances of phenomenal consciousness, "what it is like" to see, eat, do, etc something; what it's like to see red, to eat chocolate, to listen to music, etc. Science can't even begin to explain these real, first person perspective phenomena, because science can only tackle phenomena from a "third person point of view". Arguments such as the zombie argument, or Mary the neuroscientist ahow that there is no logical supervenience between physical facts and consciousness facts. If Mary were a brilliant neuroscientist who knew everything there is to know about the brain, physics of light, light perception etc, but happened to always have lived in a black and white laboratory with no color whatsoever until one day she left it and saw a red apple for the first time, she would learn a new fact -- how it is like to see red, the quale of red -- even though she already knew all the physical facts. A blind person can, in principle, learn everything there is to learn about physics -- all the physical facts -- and he still won't have the slightest idea of what it's like to see things. There is no logical supervenience between physical facts and facts of consciousness. But we know consciousness is real, we know qualia are real; it is not however reducible to any natural science, it is not something we can study and know through natural science even though we DO know it.
- Miguel
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Re: How to speak with atheists
Thank you very much for taking the time and making the effort to write such comprehensive explanation.
I hope I am not guity of being dismissive, but to me it seems that you are basically saying why should something remain in existence.
If this is the case, then I think the first way is wholly irrelvant to the discussion.
I think a materialist can just resort to brute fact and says that the universe as a whole essentially exists (its pure act in the sense of existence)
The argument I made is based on conditioned existence, so it is not the first way, strictly speaking. But as I explained, motion can figure into the argument, because "act" and "potency" can be used to investigate the idea of existence and essence; the first way is "neutral" in a sense, motion can be applied to existence, the relation of parts and oneness, the idea of form and matter, etc.
"I think a materialist can just resort to brute fact"
Of course a materialist can do that. But that would require a rejection of PSR, and part of the argument involves establishing PSR. Therefore it would beg the question unless the atheist can defuse my arguments and also show how it would be acceptable to settle for a brute fact here. I have yet to see how anyone can even do that.
"The universe as a whole essentially exists (its pure act in the sense of existence)"
That would grant that there is a self-sufficient being. The problem is that identifying it with the universe is absurd, and I've argued why we cannot hold that any material being is self-sufficient, see some of my other posts discussing this here. The atheist would have to defuse these arguments. Moreover, he cannot say that even though the parts of the universe (individual material beings) are conditioned existents but the universe as a whole is not, because the system depends on its parts, is made up of them, and is therefore not self-sufficient -- and that is even if a "higher mode of being" emerges from the parts. And to add yet another problem, it is widely acknowledged that spacetime seems contingent with its properties and there are different models of the universe with different spacetime structures; it seems absurd to suggest the universe as a whole, or any material being, can be self-sufficient and simply exist independently of any conditions whatsoever. This would require it to be a necessary being of some sort.
As I said, the materialist has only two options: 1) deny PSR or 2) take the self-sufficient being as something non-divine. Both are dead ends and face serious problems.
Last edited by Miguel (12/19/2017 6:47 pm)
- joewaked
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Re: How to speak with atheists
I’d like to return to something more basic. If you can indulge me here, it would go a long way in helping me with my approach to atheism. I have read the philosophical explanations several times but I’m struggling to wrap my head around this:
Can one of you gents please walk me through the argument for things to exist here and now, they must be here and now sustained in existence by God?
There’s a stone sitting on the ground right now in front of me.
For that stone to exist at this moment, God must be causing it to exist at this moment.
Treat me as someone who is not educated in philosophy. How would you explain that to me?
Last edited by joewaked (12/20/2017 1:17 am)
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Thread Starter- nojoum
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Re: How to speak with atheists
Thank you very much for taking the time and making the effort to write such comprehensive explanation.
I hope I am not guity of being dismissive, but to me it seems that you are basically saying why should something remain in existence.
If this is the case, then I think the first way is wholly irrelvant to the discussion.
I think a materialist can just resort to brute fact and says that the universe as a whole essentially exists (its pure act in the sense of existence)
The argument I made is based on conditioned existence, so it is not the first way, strictly speaking. But as I explained, motion can figure into the argument, because "act" and "potency" can be used to investigate the idea of existence and essence; the first way is "neutral" in a sense, motion can be applied to existence, the relation of parts and oneness, the idea of form and matter, etc.
"I think a materialist can just resort to brute fact"
Of course a materialist can do that. But that would require a rejection of PSR, and part of the argument involves establishing PSR. Therefore it would beg the question unless the atheist can defuse my arguments and also show how it would be acceptable to settle for a brute fact here. I have yet to see how anyone can even do that.
"The universe as a whole essentially exists (its pure act in the sense of existence)"
That would grant that there is a self-sufficient being. The problem is that identifying it with the universe is absurd, and I've argued why we cannot hold that any material being is self-sufficient, see some of my other posts discussing this here. The atheist would have to defuse these arguments. Moreover, he cannot say that even though the parts of the universe (individual material beings) are conditioned existents but the universe as a whole is not, because the system depends on its parts, is made up of them, and is therefore not self-sufficient -- and that is even if a "higher mode of being" emerges from the parts. And to add yet another problem, it is widely acknowledged that spacetime seems contingent with its properties and there are different models of the universe with different spacetime structures; it seems absurd to suggest the universe as a whole, or any material being, can be self-sufficient and simply exist independently of any conditions whatsoever. This would require it to be a necessary being of some sort.
As I said, the materialist has only two options: 1) deny PSR or 2) take the self-sufficient being as something non-divine. Both are dead ends and face serious problems.
I agree with you that we cannot simply say that it is brute fact. i think that it just lazy. However, when it comes to saying that universe cannot be self-sufficient being, I'm not really convinced. The heart of matter is that I have problem with the metaphysics behind. To me it seem that the problem of change as posed by Parmenides and Heraclitus and solved by Aristotle is not actually a problem within the framework of modern physics. Therefore even the basic notions of potentiality and actuality seems simply irrelavant. The notion of formal cause, final cause as well.(Although I would admit that we have difficulty with explaning consciousness but I dont think Aristotle came with such notions to deal with the problem of consciousness)
You were mentioning before that matter in itself is mixture of potentiality and actuality and therefore needs actualizer. But this is to me erroneous because matter still can be actual in terms of existence but no in other aspects and therefore would not need anything to actualize its existence. In terms of other changes that matter go through, you can simply refer to laws of physics of how matters interact to bring forth change and thus nothing is left unexplained.
Anyway to make the story short, I dont think I would be convinced by your idea regarding universe not being self-sufficient, until I look in depth into metaphysics. However, since I am not really interested in having proof for God existence, I think I would have postpone it to future! :D
Thanks for your time anyway!
Last edited by nojoum (12/20/2017 3:07 pm)
- Johannes
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Re: How to speak with atheists
I’d like to return to something more basic. If you can indulge me here, it would go a long way in helping me with my approach to atheism. I have read the philosophical explanations several times but I’m struggling to wrap my head around this:
Can one of you gents please walk me through the argument for things to exist here and now, they must be here and now sustained in existence by God?
There’s a stone sitting on the ground right now in front of me.
For that stone to exist at this moment, God must be causing it to exist at this moment.
Treat me as someone who is not educated in philosophy. How would you explain that to me?
There are explanations at two levels: physical and metaphysical.
Immediate and mediate physical explanations do not require God: the stone is there now because it was there a moment ago, and the universe is like it is now because it was like it was a moment ago, and so on all the way back till the big bang, when God is required as a supernatural ultimate physical explanation. Clearly in a cyclic cosmology, where the big bang was actually a big bounce from a previous big crunch, God is not required as an ultimate physical explanation.
God is required as a metaphysical explanation, irrespective of whether the universe started in time or existed from an infinite past. In both cases the universe is a contingent entity, it does not exist by necessity, therefore its existence either is a brute fact or is explained by the creative action of the Subsistent Being, whose essence is existence itself.
- joewaked
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Re: How to speak with atheists
Can one of you gents please walk me through the argument for things to exist here and now, they must be here and now sustained in existence by God?
There’s a stone sitting on the ground right now in front of me.
For that stone to exist at this moment, God must be causing it to exist at this moment.God is required as a metaphysical explanation, irrespective of whether the universe started in time or existed from an infinite past. In both cases the universe is a contingent entity, it does not exist by necessity, therefore its existence either is a brute fact or is explained by the creative action of the Subsistent Being, whose essence is existence itself.
I’m sorry for being dense here, but I don’t follow why the stone is remaining in existence. I can understand that it needed a creative action because it’s contingent. But, to me, that does not account for why it remains in existence.
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Thread Starter- Miguel
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Re: How to speak with atheists
I'll reply to nojoum later.
Can one of you gents please walk me through the argument for things to exist here and now, they must be here and now sustained in existence by God?
There’s a stone sitting on the ground right now in front of me.
For that stone to exist at this moment, God must be causing it to exist at this moment.God is required as a metaphysical explanation, irrespective of whether the universe started in time or existed from an infinite past. In both cases the universe is a contingent entity, it does not exist by necessity, therefore its existence either is a brute fact or is explained by the creative action of the Subsistent Being, whose essence is existence itself.
I’m sorry for being dense here, but I don’t follow why the stone is remaining in existence. I can understand that it needed a creative action because it’s contingent. But, to me, that does not account for why it remains in existence.
The stone's essence is distinct from its existence. Not only does this mean that the stone is a contingent being which needs an explanation for why it exists instead of not existing (since it doesn't have to exist), from which we can give a leibnizian cosmological argument, but it is also the case that it needs to be kept in existence at all times.
Why? Because if the essence (what the stone is) is completely distinct from existence (that the stone is), as we can clearly think of a stone without knowing whether it exists or not, it means that the essence has no inherent tendency for existence. There is nothing in the essence that makes the stone exist, and therefore nothing in the essence that could keep the stone in existence; the stone would have to be kept in existence by something else. The essence of the stone -- what the stone is -- has no inherent tendency to remain in existence, there is nothing in what the stone is that could imply it exists. Therefore there is need for an explanation as to why that stone exists and is kept in existence, which of course can't be found in the stone's essence. If the explanation is another thing whose essence is distinct from existence (another contingent thing, say), we obviously won't have explained anything. Since we know the stone is kept in existence right now, there must be a first cause whose essence is not distinct from its existence, something that, by its own essence, by virtue of what it is, the type of thing it is, has existence, and an inherent tendency to exist.
You can also say that the stone's existence is conditioned by other conditioned existents, going all the way to atoms and subatomic particles etc. But it can't be conditioned existents all the way down, otherwise the conditions for the existence of the stone (or anything else in the chain) would never really be in place and thus the stone would not exist. But we know the stone exists. The whole series of conditioned existents must terminate in a being whose existence is not conditioned by anything else; a self-sufficient being.
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Re: How to speak with atheists
In other words, since the essence of the stone is distinct from existence and does not include/imply existence, it never properly has existence by itself. It only "borrows" existence (by participation, in a more metaphysical analysis). So it needs to be caused to exist (to "remain in existence") just as much right now as it did when it was first brought into existence, because the essence by itself does not have existence; it constantly needs to be kept in existence by an existence landlord who rents existence to it
If the nature of the stone was not capable of making it exist, it would also not be able to keep itself in existence once it is caused in its first moment.
Last edited by Miguel (12/21/2017 11:43 am)
- Johannes
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Re: How to speak with atheists
[...]
the essence (what the stone is) is completely distinct from existence (that the stone is), as we can clearly think of a stone without knowing whether it exists or not, [...]
What the emphasized fact shows is that the understanding of an essence is distinct from the knowledge of the actual existence of entities of that essence. It shows a conceptual distinction between essence and existence, not a real distinction. I say that based on the following notions, which for me are self-evident:
- The understanding of an essence is not the essence, but a mental representation thereof.
- An essence is actually present only in an actual, existing entity of that essence. E.g, once mammoths became extinct, the essence of a mammoth was not present anywhere.
IMHO, it is best not to base proofs of the existence of God on the real distinction of essence and existence, since Twetten [1], in the best treatment of this subject that I am aware of, concludes that "All nine of Aquinas' arguments for the Real Distinction that we have reviewed seem vulnerable to the Question-Begging Objection. Aquinas seems never to have been aware of the objection." (p. 80).
To note, I do hold that real distinction, but because it is the only way to provide a satisfactory explanation at the philosophical level for the Incarnation/hypostatic union [2].
[1] David B. Twetten, Really distinguishing essence from esse. Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, Volume 6, 2006. Pp 57-94.
Available:
[2] I stated my position in two posts on this thread:
- Miguel
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Re: How to speak with atheists
[...]
the essence (what the stone is) is completely distinct from existence (that the stone is), as we can clearly think of a stone without knowing whether it exists or not, [...]What the emphasized fact shows is that the understanding of an essence is distinct from the knowledge of the actual existence of entities of that essence. It shows a conceptual distinction between essence and existence, not a real distinction. I say that based on the following notions, which for me are self-evident:
- The understanding of an essence is not the essence, but a mental representation thereof.
- An essence is actually present only in an actual, existing entity of that essence. E.g, once mammoths became extinct, the essence of a mammoth was not present anywhere.
IMHO, it is best not to base proofs of the existence of God on the real distinction of essence and existence, since Twetten [1], in the best treatment of this subject that I am aware of, concludes that "All nine of Aquinas' arguments for the Real Distinction that we have reviewed seem vulnerable to the Question-Begging Objection. Aquinas seems never to have been aware of the objection." (p. 80).
To note, I do hold that real distinction, but because it is the only way to provide a satisfactory explanation at the philosophical level for the Incarnation/hypostatic union [2].
[1] David B. Twetten, Really distinguishing essence from esse. Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, Volume 6, 2006. Pp 57-94.
Available:
[2] I stated my position in two posts on this thread:
I disagree with your notions, they are not self-evident to me at all and actually seem false. The understanding of an essence is *mediated* by a representation, but it is not itself just a representation. When we understand something, we understand its form; the form we have in our minds is one and the same form that is instatiated in matter outside our minds. It just so happens that in our mind this one form is intentional, not informing a material substance. Likewise the essences of mammoths have never disappeared; they are not instantiated as substantial forms anymore, but they still have being "intentionally" and are present in our intellect, this is why if we somehow see a mammoth tomorrow (that e.g. had been cloned) we would be able to recognize it, because the we know the essence of mammoths. Our concept of a mammoth and the substantial form of a mammoth are not two different essences; they are the very same essence that have being in two different manners.
Moreover, it is still the case that what-a-stone-is, its essence, is distinct from the existence of the stone itself. If it weren't, then the stone would be a necessary being. The mere fact that a stone was a stone would be sufficient for it to exist. This isn't just a conceptual distinction, it is a real distinction and our conceptual distinction is made possible by the real distinction, not the other way around.
Last edited by Miguel (12/21/2017 12:51 pm)