Classical Theism

Agondonter · Jun 4, 2016

Mestemia said:
No need for an "argument" against an argument from incredulity.

Quite right, which is why the OP was aimed at theists who presuppose a Deity of some kind. Not every theist adheres to classical theism. "The problem for the [atheist] is that there is nothing in classical theism to disseminate, nothing to argue against."

sayak83 · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
Why do you insist that God is something outside nature?

Because the blog is separating God from nature. If you say God is this entire matter-energy-space-time conglomerate that is nature (including us), then I have no issues. But then why use two terms?

There's that superman hypothesis again

Click to expand...

Never heard of it. Expand on the hypothesis please.

And I'm asking why is it comprehensible. So far, all I've seen is a toddler's response.

Toddler like non-arguments get a toddler like response.

That's kinda the point: there is nothing for you to refute. Classical theism doesn't need an argument. Like my signature says, "if one understands what the actual philosophical definition of 'God' is in most of the great religious traditions, and if consequently one understands what is logically entailed in denying that there is any God so defined, then one cannot reject the reality of God tout court without embracing an ultimate absurdity." The OP was aimed not at atheists or atheism, which are totally incongruent with the subject at hand. I was looks for a response from theists.

I disagree. Specifically on classical theism, I am seeing a lot of claims about this classical God that can be refuted by many skeptical arguments.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/god-west/#H3
I am seeing classical theism as defining a God who is :-

1) The most perfect being ever possible

2) Fully consistent with the revelation of the corresponding holy book

3) Incorporeal

4) Simple:- God has no parts or real distinctions. The neo-Platonist Plotinus regarded God as therefore characterless, but Christianity generally recognizes the legitimacy of talk of attributes. For Aquinas, to be simple God must be (among other things) incorporeal as well as identical to his nature, not a member of a class that shares a common nature. Aquinas said that God has the perfections we ascribe to him, but that they exist in him in an incomprehensible unity such that we cannot understand the reality behind our statements.

5)Unity:- Monotheism maintains that there is one God. To this Christianity adds that there is a threefold distinction within one God. Stated roughly, God is one substance in three persons.

6) Eternity. Biblical authors spoke of God remembering the past, knowing the future, and acting in the present. According to early Christian thought, God exists forever, without beginning or end. For him events are past, present, and future. Later Christian thought, under the influence of Platonism it is said, held that God exists not inside time, but outside it. God is atemporal in that for him everything is simultaneous, there being no past, present, or future. This later view was held by Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas; and classically expressed by Boethius, "Eternity is the complete and total possession of unending life all at once" (Consolation of Philosophy, V, vi). Boethius regarded a timeless being as superior because it does not lack a past and future; its entire existence is in a timeless present.

7) Immutability. Those who accept the view that God is outside time are able to argue that God cannot change because any change would have to take place inside time. The view that God is an absolutely perfect being can also lead to the conclusion that he cannot change: if he is perfect he could change neither for the better nor for the worse.

8)Omnipotence. The claim that God can do anything has been the subject of a number of qualifications. First, many affirm the biblical view that God cannot do what is morally contrary to his nature. Similar to Anselm (Proslogion 7), Aquinas says that God cannot sin because he is omnipotent, since sin is a falling short of perfection (Summa Theologica, Ia.25.3). Nelson Pike says that it is logically possible for God to sin but he would not do what is against his nature. Aquinas also says that God cannot do other things that corporeal beings can do. And, he cannot do what is logically impossible, such as make a square circle.

9)Omniscience. While a few like Avicenna and Averroes seem to have held that a God who lacks certain types of knowledge would be more perfect, most have claimed that God knows everything. This is sometimes refined, for example, to the claim that God knows everything that is logically possible to know.

10)Impassibility. Various views have been held as to whether God can be affected by outside influences. Because Aristotle regarded change as inconsistent with perfection, he concluded that God could not be affected by anything outside himself. Furthermore, God engages not in feeling, but thinking, and he himself is the object of his contemplation. God is thus unaffected by the world in any way.

11)Goodness. Whereas classical Greek religion ascribed to the gods very human foibles, theism from Plato onward has affirmed that God is purely good and could not be the author of anything evil (Republic). In Judaism divine goodness is thought to be manifested especially in the giving of the law (Torah). In Islam it is thought to be manifested in divine revelation of truth through the prophets, especially as revealed in the Qur'an. And in Christianity it is manifested in the gracious granting of Christ as the way of salvation.

That is a LOT of claims being made about this classical theos that are very very very ripe for refutation. The blog poster you quote tries to run away from how classical theism actually has always defined God to dodge Graham Oppy's refutation of classical theos.

Further citation of the actual definition of God on Classical theism
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/god-concepts-of/v-1/classical-theism

ROFLMAO!!! WHY? No toddler's response, please.

Its a one liner response. Consider any reality whatsoever. Any feature that could exist in that reality can be converted (ontologically) to strings of information bits. X or not X? If X then 1 , if not X then 0. Y or not Y? If Y then 1 or not Y then 0. Z or not Z?..... (you could use a qubit if the string goes to infinity). Thus the ontology of ANY reality can be converted to bit strings and manipulated by standard mathematics. Proved.

Mathematics and Logic is the study of all possible structural relations between entities. So its a tautology that observed interactions within entities in any reality whatsoever will be mathematically tractable.

McBell · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
Quite right, which is why the OP was aimed at theists who presuppose a Deity of some kind. Not every theist adheres to classical theism. "The problem for the [atheist] is that there is nothing in classical theism to disseminate, nothing to argue against."

Why don't you just admit you don't know what classic theism is since you obviously do not?

ThePainefulTruth · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
Yes, it is a big subject that is at once simple and complex.

It's either simple or it's not. In this case it couldn't be simpler because we have no evidence of any kind for a cause for the beginning, a cause for the Big Bang. The only possible, the only rational position, with no evidence, is agnosticism. We don't know, but that doesn't prohibit speculation as long as we never forget that's what were doing. If God, this.... If no God, that.... but they've both still got a hanging question mark.

In classical theism, the usual arguments against God — the problem of evil, lack of evidence, etc. — are simply incoherent.

ONLY if we don't qualify our theism as not dealing with a laissez faire God. Classic, Pan-, Panen-, Poly-theism etc. can all be made rational and comprehensible if you substitute deism for theism. (Well, process theism/deism can be dismissed as incoherent--the preface process having obviously been chosen for its obscure, even say psychobabblic qualities.

Evidence by its nature has to establish boundaries in order to define

Only because definitions establish limits to what a word or subject means. Evidence itself is not bounded because the process of science is about establishing links between the evidence we have, to facts or other evidence, and that often leads to more evidence or at least a new pathway to explore. Now that's an example of complex as opposed to simple.

God sustains and vitalizes the universe from below, within and from above, creating like a musician creates music rather than a blacksmith making a horseshoe. To argue that a God so understood is not necessary is to hang everything, including science, on thin air and talk like a toddler whose answer to everything is, “Just because.”

Given the assumption that God exists, we can speculate on possible motivations, but how do you conclude (even, using you language, declare), that God sustains and vitalizes the universe? How can you so easily dismiss the possibility that God only watches, or perhaps came to be, simultaneously with the universe, whether it's a part of God or not?

Albert Einstein famously said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that is comprehensible." We have come full circle. The notion of God doesn't do away with mystery or diminish science in any way

Exactly.

It's optional, but the denial of God so understood is to remain is a toddler. For the early modern scientists, doing science and mathematics was to commune with God and a way to know the mind of God.

Yes, but so is the pursuit of justice, love and beauty. There, along with that knowledge, is Truth, which is as close to God as anything we're every going to know....I'm assuming.

Agondonter · Jun 4, 2016

Never heard of it. Expand on the hypothesis please.

Anything that remotely suggests that God is a being alongside other beings is what I call a "superman hypothesis."

I am seeing classical theism as defining a God who is :-

1) The most perfect being ever possible

But not a being alongside other beings. Implicit in "That than which nothing greater can be conceived" is a God that is transcendent and immanent: A transcendent God that is also immanent in nature is greater than a God that is just transcendent. God is closer to you than your breath and more intimately involved with your life than the vein in your neck.

2) Fully consistent with the revelation of the corresponding holy book

Nothing touched by the hands of man can be thought of as "perfect." That would be idolatry.

3) Incorporeal

4) Simple:- God has no parts or real distinctions. The neo-Platonist Plotinus regarded God as therefore characterless, but Christianity generally recognizes the legitimacy of talk of attributes. For Aquinas, to be simple God must be (among other things) incorporeal as well as identical to his nature, not a member of a class that shares a common nature. Aquinas said that God has the perfections we ascribe to him, but that they exist in him in an incomprehensible unity such that we cannot understand the reality behind our statements.

Also called the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity. Essence and substance are synonymous when referring to God. What Alvin Plantinga and other "personalists" overlook is that to deny the possibility of God's volitional self-limitation amounts to a denial of the very concept of God's volitional absoluteness.

5)Unity:- Monotheism maintains that there is one God. To this Christianity adds that there is a threefold distinction within one God. Stated roughly, God is one substance in three persons.

Yes, and the Trinity is a logical necessity in order to get from the One to the many, the multifarious universe.

That is a LOT of claims being made about this classical theos that are very very very ripe for refutation. The blog poster you quote tries to run away from how classical theism actually has always defined God to dodge Graham Oppy's refutation of classical theos.

So what is it you're refuting? Oppy's response (and yours) has considerable force against superman conceptions of God, but against classical theism, it is utterly incoherent (see #1 above). But like I said earlier: "God sustains and vitalizes the universe from below, within and from above, creating like a musician creates music rather than a blacksmith making a horseshoe. To argue that a God so understood is not necessary is to hang everything, including science, on thin air and talk like a toddler whose answer to everything is, “Just because.”"

Agondonter · Jun 4, 2016

I said in post #43 that physicist Robert B. Laughlinin writes in A Different Universe, "I am increasingly persuaded that all physical all we know about has collective origins, not just some of it. In other words, the distinction between fundamental laws and the laws descending from them is a myth, as is the idea of mastery of the universe do mathematics alone."

And since atheists and agnostics like to appeal to authority so much with "prove it" or a "reference please," I'm surprised that this comment from Nobel winner would be ignored.That is consistent with the doctrine of divine simplicity.

sayak83 · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
Never heard of it. Expand on the hypothesis please.

Anything that remotely suggests that God is a being alongside other beings is what I call a "superman hypothesis."

What God? The statement
We will ultimately understand the world as a single unified reality, not caused or sustained or influenced by anything outside of itself."
Does not refer to any God. Why would it? There is no God.

So what is it you're refuting?

The existence of God as defined in the classical theism's God as described in the links I referred to.

"God sustains and vitalizes the universe from below, within and from above, creating like a musician creates music rather than a blacksmith making a horseshoe.

No such entity exists. Nature exists and sustains itself. Its not caused or sustained or influenced or vitalized by anything or anyone below it.

To argue that a God so understood is not necessary is to hang everything, including science, on thin air and talk like a toddler whose answer to everything is, “Just because.”"

Emotional rhetoric devoid of content. Its just a toddler whining "Bohooo! I wanna a God I wanna God!" Sorry, nature is grounded by its own being, does not require to hang on anything else. If you want to argue otherwise, make an argument or provide evidence.

sayak83 · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
I said in post #43 that physicist Robert B. Laughlinin writes in A Different Universe, "I am increasingly persuaded that all physical all we know about has collective origins, not just some of it. In other words, the distinction between fundamental laws and the laws descending from them is a myth, as is the idea of mastery of the universe do mathematics alone."

And since atheists and agnostics like to appeal to authority so much with "prove it" or a "reference please," I'm surprised that this comment from Nobel winner would be ignored.That is consistent with the doctrine of divine simplicity.

I am a scientist myself. There are many Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic scientists with as many disparate philosophical stances as people. The only arguments I make are the ones that convince me. By the way have you read the book you have quoted? Or are you simply recycling some random quote from some random website? I am myself confused as to what a book describing the idea of emergence in physics has to do with your thesis. I think you have no clue either, but simply repeating something you have read somewhere.

Here are excerpts from a technical review of the book from the London Review of Books:-

Laughlin’s central argument is that instead of becoming obsessed with ultimate theories we would do better to focus on those properties of matter that ‘emerge’ from the organisation of large numbers of atoms. Examples of emergence include the hardness of crystals, the self-organisation of vast numbers of atoms that we know as life, and even the most fundamental laws of physics, such as Newton’s laws of motion.

Emergence is said to occur when a physical phenomenon arises as a result of organisation among any component pieces, whereas the same phenomenon is not produced by the individual pieces alone. ..... A more everyday example is the emergence of solids, liquids and gases from a large collection of molecules.............In a crystalline solid, the orderly arrangement of individual molecules into a lattice ensures the crystal’s solidity and also its beauty: carbon atoms may organise themselves into diamond, or into soot. In a solid, the individual atoms are locked in place relative to one another, but a rise in temperature causes them to jiggle a bit so that each is slightly displaced. The positional ‘errors’ do not accumulate, however, and the whole can retain its apparent solidity. In the liquid phase, the jiggling becomes so agitated that the atoms break ranks and flow.

The reason predictive science is possible is that laws operating at the level of individual atoms become organised into new laws as one moves up to complex systems. Thus the laws of electrical charges beget those of thermodynamics and chemistry; these in turn lead to the laws of rigidity and then of engineering. We may not be able to derive the liquid state for this or that substance from first principles, but liquids still have general properties that transcend these. .........It is this hierarchy of structures and laws that enables us to understand and describe the world: the outer layers rely on the inner, yet they each have an identity of their own and can often be treated in isolation. Thus an engineer can design a bridge without needing to know the atomic physics that underpin the laws of stress and strain; and although we know that atoms come apart when they collide fast enough, that their nuclei split at higher speeds, and that at extreme speeds they effectively melt into constituent quarks and ‘glue’, a chemist has no need of quarks and gluons when it comes to designing drugs.

He then goes on to argue against extreme reductionism and string theory. He believes that Quantum to Newtonian mechanics is also an emergent phenomena (I highly doubt that).

For some, this paradox has mystical overtones, as though twisting one’s mind around it were a step on the path to enlightenment. Laughlin rightly criticises this and argues that ‘in science one becomes enlightened not by discovering ways to believe things that make no sense but by identifying things that one does not understand and doing experiments to clarify them.’ He stresses here that what is not understood in the cat paradox is the measurement process. Where a large number of atoms are involved, their co-operation means that Newtonian laws can emerge from the underlying quantum weirdness. All means of determining the cat’s status involve a large number of atoms, whether we shine a light on it, or even sniff it. Detecting the radioactive decay of one atom by using something as small as another atom would make no sense, as it would merely replace one unmeasurable thing by another. What we recognise as ‘measurement’ requires a large apparatus, and Laughlin argues that this is the key factor, since if the process of observing an object changes that object, then it doesn’t qualify as an act of observation. This is why it isn’t possible to observe a single atom. Size is the key, and certainty emerges from the organisation of billions of atoms acting co-operatively.

Interesting idea. But I have no clue whatsoever what his thesis of emergentism of laws of classical mechanics has anything to do with theism.

So next time, quote the entire paragraph from which you plucked out that sentence for me to actually take you seriously in this matter.

sayak83 · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
Is there something about "that is consistent with the doctrine of divine simplicity" you don't understand?

Toddler-talk.

There's that superman hypothesis, again. Anything that remotely suggests that God is a being alongside other beings is what I call a "superman hypothesis." Implicit in "That than which nothing greater can be conceived" is a God that is transcendent and immanent: A transcendent God that is also immanent in nature is greater than a God that is just transcendent. Such a God is closer to you than your breath and more intimately involved with your life than the vein in your neck.

Incoherent babble. The entire set of sentences you wrote has in the "not even wrong" class of meaningless word salad.
You simply rewrite your sentences without any understanding whatsoever.

ThePainefulTruth · Jun 4, 2016

Agondonter said:
BLANK

FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS IN THIS THREAD:

Agondonter has apparently put me on ignore. While that is his right, it should be noted that it's an excellent indication that he's been unable to formulate a response to my posts, and exposes his reluctance to deal with that which he refuses to admit to himself he is unable to deal with. If I am on ignore, he won't see this--but I suspect he'll pick up on it by other means soon enough.

sayak83 · Jun 4, 2016

1) The most perfect being ever possible

But not a being alongside other beings. Implicit in "That than which nothing greater can be conceived" is a God that is transcendent and immanent: A transcendent God that is also immanent in nature is greater than a God that is just transcendent. God is closer to you than your breath and more intimately involved with your life than the vein in your neck.