iwpoe wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

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.

Yes, I myself don't think you can get much beyond the level of Socrates in the Apology, with the argument from miracles:

That is to say, all you've established by way of talking about the divine in experience is that there are divine things, but what you want to show is not angels, demons, henads, gods, etc, but God or maybe the Divine as such- the most divine thing.

I mean, even a demonic possession could be miraculous on the conflict analysys, so one better not think that demonic possession is sufficient to directly establish the existence of God in the sense we want it established. So, at best, I think the argument from miracles can only really effectivly counter atheistic arguments from naturalism. They can't show directly that God proper exists. It could only be a starting ground "So, not you see that there are some divine things, what about the shource of divinity...".

Well one might have a little more wiggle room than that; one might argue, for instance, that a miracle like the Resurrection can only be a truly Divine act, since it involves the uniting of form with matter, and this at least prima facie seems like only the sort of thing God could do.

This would of course require one to cash this line of thinking out with a proof, perhaps, that only something infinite or simple can unite a form with matter.

Then again, by the time you've done that, you've probably already at least implicitly have demonstrated his existence, so this might not be all that useful.

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.

True, if you mean with the shared Abrahamic doctrinal aspects.

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?

Many of the theistic arguments of the Cosmological variety aim to show contingent beings must depend on this necessary being we call 'God'. How do we know said being has any of the classical theist attributes which might loosely justify our calling it by that name? That's the question of Divine Attributes which can be went into once Poe has the write-up.

(This state-the-obvious remark is here for contextual benefit to the next post about dependence and creation)

KevinScharp wrote:

How do you know that something else (not a god) didn't create the universe? Something like Plato's forms?

If we know from the above that a necessary being on which contingent beings depend exists then we assume it to be creator for simplicity reasons - yes, maybe said necessary being created another very powerful being which in turn created the 'universe' but that's messy. Also: if we understand 'universe' in the classical sense of 'cosmos' to mean all contingent beings then the conclusion of its having the necessary being as creator follows analytically (providing of course we can give arguments for said being).

(There are also specifically Scholastic arguments Craig couldn't appeal to to the effect that creation in the proper sense as in creato ex nihilo is impossible on the part of other beings, an impossibility even God could not alter).

As to Plato's Forms, if we are understanding them in anything like the modern sense they are essentially devoid of casual capacity, understood of course as essential casual capacity (Plato himself thought that in their exemplary capacity they were causes per excellence), so lack the power to create anything. If can imagine (in the loose popular sense) something like a maximally shared ultimate Platonic Form with efficient casual powers then that is basically very, very close to the Classical Theist concept of God. 

Last edited by DanielCC (4/21/2016 4:27 am)

Jason wrote:

iwpoe wrote:

I'm not sure. I don't see why God couldn't permit this power to some subordinate divine being- an angel, for instance. God seems to me to reserve entirely to himself only the power of the origination of being itself (being of all kinds, including motion, unity, etc).

iwpoe, would it actually be incorrect to think that even if God permitted this power that He is still the first cause of that power itself?

I'm trying to keep up the distinction between exercise of power and origin of power. Since God is necessarily the origin of all being every power of any sort comes from him, but most positions don't want it to be the case that every power is necessarily exercised by god. If you think that every power is exercised by god then even a man walking down the street would amount to direct evidence for God.

In lack of such a radical move, you're going to want for any given power, an argument for why only god and not some other entity could be doing it. Otherwise, you've at best got a starting point for an argument that will get you to god not an argument directly for him.

DanielCC wrote:

once Poe has the write-up.

I have a rough write-up of the individual sections. The back and forth section is troubling to summarize because it's back and forth.

I'm editing it in to my initial post in the thread:

http://classicaltheism.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?pid=4361#p4361

I invite any corrections Scharp might want to make, and I'll be editing it for style and the discussion content in the future.

If anyone's interested, I have the first section of the discussion up to the moderators interjection, fully transcribed. Actually, I'll go ahead and include these.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/21/2016 2:50 pm)

Fine Tuning

Fine tuning is the claim that there is a very small range of ways our universe could be that would support intelligent life.
Craig argues that fine tuning must be due to natural laws or chance or design, but it isn’t due to natural laws or chance, so it must be designed that way. 
 
This argument should not give us any reason to raise our confidence in theism.
 
First, fine tuning is based on the contrast between physical constants, initial conditions, and the natural laws. However, we have no basis on which to draw this distinction with any confidence because our two best theories of the physically relevant natural laws, quantum field theory – which is the basis for the standard model of particle physics – and general relativity – which together with are the basis for the standard model of cosmology – are incompatible.  We already know they can’t both be true.  So we have no basis for even being confident about what the physical constants and initial conditions are, much less how they might depend on more basic features of the universe. 
 
Second, the fine tuning argument appeals to divine psychology—that a god would create intelligent life. We have no idea how likely this is, so no basis for concluding that design is more likely than the universe arising by chance.
 
Third, we have no theory of the origin of life. Evolutionary theory is the basis for contemporary biology and it is a theory of how life on Earth developed, it says absolutely nothing about how life developed in the first place. So we have no idea how life arises from merely physical processes. So, again, we have no idea how likely life is. All the design argument has to go on is life on Earth. And that might represent a tiny fraction of the diversity of life in the universe.