iwpoe wrote:

I mean, we all here think that we're talking about the same God, though I think that my Christian, Muslim, and Jewish friends are mistaken in some respects about him. We simply don't subscribe to your way of construing religions as talking about any number of different gods. We think many have the same reference.

I agree except for obvious reasons I think my friend iwpoe is mistaken about the Christian God I am missing Scott's witty responses here.

Jason wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

Jason wrote:

Neither did I claim it to be in the account of the miracle, which is why I said "in my opinion". As I mentioned earlier I can only speculate on what processes were used or not used.

Right. I don't have to speculate. I have tons of solid evidence for my account, which is: nothing miraculous happened.

 Unfortunately, I think we are going around in circles here (which would not be productive). Science can only emulate into its theories what happens in nature (which is awesome) and hence by definition cannot constitute God into them (which is fine). So when you bring the evidence that cannot constitute God into it's models and theories that would obviously not allow for miracles so I think you would need something more than just our best scientific theories to prove that miracles cannot happen. 

KevinScharp wrote:

Jason wrote:

[God explains a lot in terms of the miracles themselves, I think I would not believe a "miracle" story if a supernatural cause was not involved in it, that would just amount to a plain old mystery.

Excellent. I agree with you on this. But that means you can't appeal to the miracle as evidence that God exists. After all, without already assuming that, you should believe only that it is a mystery, not a miracle.

Please do not assume that the miracles are my evidence that God exists. This is just a part of the cumulative case that convinces me of the truth of Christianity. Unless you change the actual meaning of the word miracle I do not know how you can get "away" from pre-supposing a supernatural agent and since all this while we have been discussing miracles and not mystery I do not see how that will work.

I'm trying to do my best given what you say and what I've heard frequently. I don't know you personally so it's hard to tailor my replies to your specific position. But either way, let's say you have a story in an ancient text about something that, if true, would be a miracle. How do you decide whether to believe the story?

iwpoe wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

The Kalam is a version of the cosmological argument. I'll do writeups for contingency and fine-tuning next.

I'll grant you the construal, but I'm interested in the arguments from motion and the arguments from literal tele. The argument from contingency is close to the first, but not the fine-tuning argument which is merely and basely empirical.

KevinScharp wrote:

Well, I wasn't giving the presentation to you!

Aye, but you are now, and I was asking about those arguments for me and us here, not for Craig.

Though that said, Craig clearly thought he was doing mere natural theology. I mean, I don't have the summary up and I don't want to misquote anybody, but I recall a number of times where he was confused why you thought he was arguing for Christianity as such. I recall a point where you said something like "it saying capital G God means you're talking about the Christian God". He was confused at you, as was I.

He usually appeals to the empirical strengths of the Bible when he wants to argue outside of natural theology.

I mean, we all here think that we're talking about the same God, though I think that my Christian, Muslim, and Jewish friends are mistaken in some respects about him. We simply don't subscribe to your way of construing religions as talking about any number of different gods. We think many have the same reference. There's a good write-up on this here:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/12/christians-muslims-and-reference-of-god.html

And here:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/01/canine-theology.html

You're right, he was confused by that. I find it helpful to keep track of the strength of the conclusions of these arguments. Craig's overall objective is to argue that God -- the Christian god -- exists. I took it we were arguing about that. One aspect of that argument is whether there's any reason to believe that any God exists.

I agree with you that Muslims should be interpreted as worshiping the same god as Jews and Christians. But that doesn't change the fact that there is a big gap between the conclusion of the Kalam argument and any particular religion. Kalam doesn't justify believing in the god shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Overall, it might turn out that the divine psychology objection doesn't affect YOUR use of the Kalam. I'd have to hear more about what you think the god that exists is like. How much can you know about its mind? How do you know that something else (not a god) didn't create the universe? Something like Plato's forms?

DanielCC wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

Jason wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

Jason wrote:

Neither did I claim it to be in the account of the miracle, which is why I said "in my opinion". As I mentioned earlier I can only speculate on what processes were used or not used.

Right. I don't have to speculate. I have tons of solid evidence for my account, which is: nothing miraculous happened.

 Unfortunately, I think we are going around in circles here (which would not be productive). Science can only emulate into its theories what happens in nature (which is awesome) and hence by definition cannot constitute God into them (which is fine). So when you bring the evidence that cannot constitute God into it's models and theories that would obviously not allow for miracles so I think you would need something more than just our best scientific theories to prove that miracles cannot happen. 
Please do not assume that the miracles are my evidence that God exists. This is just a part of the cumulative case that convinces me of the truth of Christianity. Unless you change the actual meaning of the word miracle I do not know how you can get "away" from pre-supposing a supernatural agent and since all this while we have been discussing miracles and not mystery I do not see how that will work.

I'm trying to do my best given what you say and what I've heard frequently. I don't know you personally so it's hard to tailor my replies to your specific position. But either way, let's say you have a story in an ancient text about something that, if true, would be a miracle. How do you decide whether to believe the story?

I think we need to go into other issues before that can profitably discussed beyond a certain level. Suffice to say that though many here accept miracles classical theists are not in general very keen on arguments for God on the basis of them.

Okay, that's helpful -- thanks.

I invite all kinds of criticism of the following post because the point I'm trying to make is very important and must be stated clearly and correctly if we're to get anywhere vis-a-vis natural theology in the traditional manner. It took me a long time to grasp it, and I imagine many people never grasp it, let alone come to be able to state it well.

KevinScharp wrote:

You're right, he was confused by that. I find it helpful to keep track of the strength of the conclusions of these arguments. Craig's overall objective is to argue that God -- the Christian god -- exists. I took it we were arguing about that. One aspect of that argument is whether there's any reason to believe that any God exists.

Craig is arguing that there is reason to believe THE God exists: the God of gods, that on the basis of anything could even be "a" God. This is what most of the classical natural theologian/philosophers from Plato through to Kant are arguing about. That argument entails directly that *some* God exists, but arguments for *any god at all* won't directly entail that THE God exists, and an argument for THE God won't entail that there are no other gods of any sort. Nor, for that matter will arguments for Christ's divinity (or Zeus'/Thor/etc) existence entail that THE God exists, except trivially, since the tradition says he is, but if it turns out that the trinity is a contingent and not necessary being who draws his being from something else, then you have something like mormonism and this will necessitate a metaphysical argument about what what "God's" God is like.

God's not a super-entity, or, at least, that better not be all he is.

Again, there is something of a write-up of this in response to the common stupid "one god further" atheist objection (I'm not arguing that you're making this stupid objection, but that it's the vulgar way of parsing the way you're talking about God):

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/04/one-god-further-objection.html

This is why classical theologians like Aquinas don't start from scripture or history when giving argument.

I mean, I don't know how versed on history of philosophy you are, but did you never find it queer that, say, Aquinas and some of the early moderns could take up versions of Aristotle's arguments without difficulty even though one is a pagan, another Catholic, and the third Catholic, Protestant or whatever someone like Rousseau is?

KevinScharp wrote:

I agree with you that Muslims should be interpreted as worshiping the same god as Jews and Christians. But that doesn't change the fact that there is a big gap between the conclusion of the Kalam argument and any particular religion. Kalam doesn't justify believing in the god shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

No, you're on the wrong level I think, the merely historical level: I think, for instance, Proclus and Plotinus (and other so-called Neo-Platonists) as well as, though badly, early modern so-called deist thinkers are also talking about the same thing as Jews, Christians, and Muslims are. They all have the same reference for their claims.

If Jews are to live up to Isaiah 44:6:

“I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god."

Or Christians are to live up to Acts 17:28:

for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Or Muslims are to live up to the Shahada:

There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.

It better not turn out that they are ontologically dependant on anything else for their motion, or being, or goodness, and etc or else that thing they were dependant upon would be more properly called God and they would be some subordinant particular being that just happens to exist and make things.

We think that the only thing that could live up to monotheism is whatever is at the end of something like the cosmological argument and so do most theologians in these major religions up until the nineteenth century. The task for these religions is to justify thinking that the God of revelation is the God of Gods (which, incidentally, is much of the stuff Aquinas is busy doing after the first few pages of the Summa). Everything else is pseudo-monotheism, where "God" is "God" only by accident- because there happen to be no others or he has killed all of them or he's king of them in some mythological or analogical sense. This is what I mean when I say that certainly the monotheistic religions and say Plotinus share the same reference when they're talking about God.

KevinScharp wrote:

Overall, it might turn out that the divine psychology objection doesn't affect YOUR use of the Kalam. I'd have to hear more about what you think the god that exists is like. How much can you know about its mind? How do you know that something else (not a god) didn't create the universe? Something like Plato's forms?

The Kalam argument is a very particular argument starting from the fact that the universe had a beginning at a finite point in time. Your objection may or may not affect the Kalam argument as such. I've never thought about it, but we aren't reliant on the Kalam, since we have, for instance, the 5 ways of Aquinas, which don't include the Kalam (because aquinas thought no one could know that the universe had a beginning in time by reason), as well as (for many of us) the ontological argument, the platonic argument from unity, the argument from the principle of sufficient reason...

Also we don't know he created the world directly. The neo-platonists think it worked through intermediate beings (and some Christian thinkers put angels in this role). We just know that whatever did the work is ontologically dependent upon Him. I don't know that we know about his "mind" in any person-to-person sense, and while the eide are closer ontologically to what he's like, he can't be a form because, first, he's one and the forms are plural, and second because the forms are still in being and are thus dependent on something else for their being anything at all. Thus Plato says the form of the Good, unlike all the other Forms, is "beyond being". Thus Aquinas characterizes God as subsistent being itself.

I wanted to go ahead and finish my summary of the talk before I said any more critically, but I think you're simply in error about what natural theology tries to show. Not that you don't have an argument that affects some claims or maybe even that would affect Craig (we all probably part company with Craig in the direction you're going), but that it's not a particularly threatening way of objecting to us.

I mean, the easiest case, and I seem to remember you saying it has a divine psychology problem, but maybe I'm wrong, is the ontological argument. Let's assume it's sound. What the hell does divine psychology have to do with 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived'? Nothing, unless you've got a very odd understanding of "psychology".

Also we don't know he created the world directly. The neo-platonists think it worked through intermediate beings (and some Christian thinkers put angels in this role). We just know that whatever did the work is ontologically dependant upon Him. I don't know that we know about his "mind" in any person-to-person sense, and while the eide are closer ontologically to what he's like, he can't be a form because, first, he's one and the forms are plural, and second because the forms are still in being and are thus dependant on something else for their being anything at all. Thus Plato says the form of the Good, unlike all the other Forms, is "beyond being". Thus Aquinas characterizes God as subsistent being itself.