Strong Natural Theism: An Alternative to Mainstream Religion

Bob Ross

Strong Natural Theism: An Alternative to Mainstream Religion

This OP aims to briefly summarize a theistic position from natural theology which I believe to be a viable alternative to mainstream religion which avoids atheism. I will include a link at the bottom to a work-in-progress essay I am writing on this position which goes into more depth on this topic; and I will be continually writing it as I hear peoples’ thoughts herein.

Thesis

Strong Natural Theism’s central thesis is comprised of two claims: (1) God can be known through the application of reason to empirically demonstrable aspects of the ordinary and natural world, and (2) this knowledge is sufficient for understanding and justifying living a proper and good life.

Overview

Natural theology can reasonably provide a natural theistic position where:

1. Classical theism is true;
2. Objective morality exists and the richest sense;
3. It can justify all the cardinal natural and theological virtues (as well as many others);
4. It can provide a basis for a supreme justice (in terms of both getting proper rewards and punishments);
5. It provides a perfect synthesis of justice and mercy that necessitates the practical and reasonable acquisition of salvation;
6. It provides for animal justice; and
7. Reconciles our intuitions of the problem of evil with God’s absolute goodness.

Advantages (Over Mainstream Religion)

This strong natural theistic view is immune to:

1. Issues with historicity;
2. Having to depend on historical, Divine Revelation for morality;
3. Having to depend on the passing of tradition onto the next generation;
4. Requiring to accept the writings or reject the whole theory of all the religious scriptures passed down as canon (in whichever religion we are talking about);
5. Having to depend on faith (viz., trust in an authority to verify, at least in part, its position); and
6. Having to accept the Divinity of any given person in order to be saved (such as in Christianity).

What I Ask of You

This position is no where near complete; and I would appreciate it, though, if people could engage with me on this position and its claims to help further or kill the ideas in it.

For those that are interested, <here's a link to the document I am writing>.

Paine

↪Bob Ross

What you describe seems to express the view of Deism, a collection of views from the Enlightenment that welcomed a certain view of creation but questioned the idea of God as a direct agent in human affairs.

Do you see your effort in the context of that history?

Wayfarer

↪Bob Ross

What happened to that document you posted the other day? The OP seems to have dissappeared - I went back to review it after making an initial comment and couldn't find it.

180 Proof

↪Bob Ross

Afaik, the "God" of Western "classical theism" (JCI & pagan) is a belated, unparsimonious, and in some ways conceptually incoherent form of – derivation from – pre-Hindu idea of Brahman. In modern philosophy, I think Spinoza was the first thinker to deconstruct "natural theism" (re: natural theology) and reconceive it as Substance (i.e. Natura Naturans aka 'laws of nature'): Deus, sive natura.

↪Bob Ross
What you describe seems to express the view of Deism ... — Paine

:up:

Bob Ross

↪Wayfarer

@Jamal removed it but I worked it out with them so that this time they hopefully won't.

Bob Ross

↪Paine

Not really, to be honest. I see God as being perfectly capable of intervening if He wants to. Can you elaborate?

Bob Ross

↪180 Proof

Can you elaborate on Spinoza's critiques of classical theism?

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?

Paine

↪Bob Ross

The Deists did not agree with your assessment. The idea was central to the separation of church and state in America.

180 Proof

Can you elaborate on Spinoza's critiques [deconstruction] of classical theism? — Bob Ross

Read his Ethics - Part 1 "Of God" pp. 1-31 (iirc)

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?

I agree.

Janus

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?
I agree. — 180 Proof

:up:

Question for @Bob Ross: if god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

Not really, to be honest. I see God as being perfectly capable of intervening if He wants to. Can you elaborate? — Bob Ross

The idea of god intervening just is an idea of separation. Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'. Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology.

180 Proof

The idea of god intervening just is an idea of separation.

... the idea of an intervening god seem to place you [@Bob Ross] more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology. — Janus

:up: :up:

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪180 Proof

↪Janus

Reminds me of a passage:

“This is why you c-call the God-of-Gods …”

He sees …

“Call Him … ‘It’?”

He understands.

Admission was all that remained.

~~~

It.

The name of all things inhuman.

When applied to the inanimate world, it meant nothing. No whinge of significance accompanied its utterance. But when applied to animate things, it became ever more peculiar, ever more fraught with moral intimation. And when used to single out apparently human things, it roared with a life all its own.

It festered.

Call a man “it” and you were saying that crime can no more be committed against him as against a stone. Ajencis had called Man “onraxia”, the being that judged beings. The Law, the Great Kyranean claimed, belonged to his very essence. To call a man “it” was to kill him with words, and so to oil the actions that would murder him in fact.

And the God? What did it mean for the God of Gods to be called an “it”?

R. Scott Bakker - The Great Ordeal

Of course, Bakker can make up whatever sort of connotations he wants for his presumably unique fantasy languages, but in English this seems only partially true. "It" is used for the person of the Holy Spirit (and for Christ as Logos) by some writers and the capitalization seems to be enough to avoid this connotation, although it is true that the neuter pronoun does carry a certain connotation of lacking experience or at least intellect. Hence the creation of "xe," "ze," "xir," etc. rather than people uncomfortable with "he" or "she" advocating to be referred to as "it." If "it" is disrespectful for men, how much more so for God?

My guess is that "He" only seems strange to us now because of the quite rapid move to gender neutral language in the past half century. "Man" was long a possible synonym for "human," and "they" a plural pronoun only used in the singular when it was supposing for an anonymous referent that thus included a plurality of possible referents (e.g., "I don't trust someone that says that they never lie.") Hence, "he" is a sort default (plus the cumbersome "he or she" doesn't work for a definite referent).

I have seen mixed opinions on this, both that "It" makes God seem to foreign and inanimate, but also that it ought to be preferred because it avoids anthropomorphizing God, with "he" being reserved for the Incarnation or specific person of the Father (obviously, in the Christian contexts). Or some even use "she" to signify feminine aspects but this is rare, although "she" is often used for God's Wisdom, Sophia, who in some traditions is read as Christ the Logos, resulting in he, she, and it being applied to the Son/Word depending on context.

Hanover

This position is no where near complete; and I would appreciate it, though, if people could engage with me on this position and its claims to help further or kill the ideas in it. — Bob Ross

My thought is that this is an attempt to justify Christianity upon rationality alone without reliance upon revelation, perhaps because you believe rationality is a firmer basis for belief than revelation or faith alone. Your views on the Trinity, incarnation and sacrifice, grace, mercy, and justice, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, and purgatory are clearly Christian. Suggesting that we could arrive at those ideas without introduction to and indoctrination to Christianity, but that we could arrive at that through reason alone will not ring true to anyone but a very devout Christian.

You do move away from Christian orthodoxy in some places, like hell not being eternal, with the possibility of posthumous salvation, purgatory taking on a more traditional hell-like state, you seem to redefine original sin, you describe a purely rational state when we go to heaven (which seems consistent with your desire to prioritize rationality as an attribute), and you see this propensity to prioritize the rational with the way you describe atonement, which I didn't completely follow.

If I had to offer a single assessment, it would be that you're trying to sort out your very Christian beliefs and orientation in a way that comports with your philosophical leanings. It presents an account of your religious journey, which I think would be well received by a pastor with philosophical leanings and who isn't overly orthodox in his views, but less so to a conservative minded priest.

To the average reader with no Christian leanings (me, for example), I don't find it all persuasive in terms of convincing me that your views might arise without an a priori commitment to Christianity. The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity, so he's doing like most religious people do who are otherwise devout believers: they modify the doctrine in a personally palatable way and often convince themselves that they have uncovered the truer form of the religion lost somewhere in time.

MoK

↪Bob Ross

That is a lot of material. I think you need to open a thread on each topic!

Tom Storm

The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity, so he's doing like most religious people do who are otherwise devout believers: they modify the doctrine in a personally palatable way and often convince themselves that they have uncovered the truer form of the religion lost somewhere in time. — Hanover

I think this is right.

Relativist

God can be known through the application of reason to empirically demonstrable aspects of the ordinary and natural world, — Bob Ross

Is this a premise?

Your OP seems focused on morality. Are you defining God as nothing more than the foundation of objective moral values? That may be all you need, and it lightens your burden of proof.

Leontiskos

What I Ask of You

This position is no where near complete; and I would appreciate it, though, if people could engage with me on this position and its claims to help further or kill the ideas in it.

For those that are interested, <here's a link to the document I am writing>. — Bob Ross

This is an interesting endeavor, Bob Ross. :up:

I think the most fruitful things to pursue would be those things where you disagree with traditional Christians, in particular over whether some doctrine is accessible through natural reason (i.e. apart from revelation).

With that in mind, this seems like the most difficult thesis:

5. It provides a perfect synthesis of justice and mercy that necessitates the practical and reasonable acquisition of salvation; — Bob Ross

The difficulty here is that "salvation" is often understood as a Christian term, and in that context it is not something we can achieve on our own power. Supposing you are not using the term in that way, I would want to know how you are using the term. (Nevertheless, I have not looked at your document in any detail.)

Advantages (Over Mainstream Religion)

This strong natural theistic view is immune to:

1. Issues with historicity;
2. Having to depend on historical, Divine Revelation for morality;
3. Having to depend on the passing of tradition onto the next generation;
4. Requiring to accept the writings or reject the whole theory of all the religious scriptures passed down as canon (in whichever religion we are talking about);
5. Having to depend on faith (viz., trust in an authority to verify, at least in part, its position); and
6. Having to accept the Divinity of any given person in order to be saved (such as in Christianity). — Bob Ross

I think

↪Paine

's observation is insightful, as usual. For example, if we have a non-Deistic God who interacts with creation, then it is very intuitive to move into the idea that God has spoken and men have listened (i.e. faith). If God is interacting (and speaking) but these interactions have no special import, then the question arises of why God is bothering to interact. The marriage between Deism and Christianity seems fraught.

Anyway, I hope to have a closer look at your document in the near future.

PoeticUniverse

This OP aims to briefly summarize a theistic position from natural theology — Bob Ross

"18. Therefore, a first cause of change is a changeless being.
19. A part of a whole is something which contributes to the whole but is not identical to it.
20. Anything which has parts has potential (to be affected by way of its parts being affected).

21. A purely actual being, lacking any potential, being changeless, must have no parts
whatsoever because parts imply having potential and this kind of being lacks all potential.
22. A purely actual being, then, is absolutely simple.
23. Therefore, there must be at least one purely actual and absolute simple being which provides
the first, pure act of change."

It seems that you are leaping ahead, identifying a being, rather than just an eternal permanence that 'IS' (has being), such as the quantum vacuum, that is absolutely simple, but never still, providing for change.

180 Proof

It seems that you are leaping ahead, identifying a being, rather than just an eternal permanence that 'IS' (has being), such as the quantum vacuum, that is absolutely simple, but never still, providing for change. — PoeticUniverse

:smirk:

Janus

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the pronoun 'he' reflects a longstanding understanding of God as 'father', while nature is referred to as 'mother'. I tend to think that the idea of animation, and of animating spirits in things (animism) found its genesis in the basic apprehension of the difference between life and non-life, the stationary and the moving. The animate Earth thus might include the wind, water, plants, animals―anything that visibly moves or changes might have been considered to be living in some kind of sense― inhabited by animating spirits in earlier times and then later by the spirit of one god. (That said mountains and other places considered to be sacred were also thought to be inhabited by spirits, spirits of place, which perhaps reflects the effects on human feelings different places can certainly have, and that tells me I'm presenting a somewhat simplified picture).

In any case, according to that understanding the breath of God animates the material world. God is the Father and the material world the impregnated (with the seed or breath of god) Mother. I don't think is any coincidence that there are similarities between mater and matter, material, matrix.

This vision of an animating God is fundamentally a dualistic vision it seems.―God is above and also "inscrutably" within the external matrix―he breathes life into it, so it only finds its being in God.

No doubt there is more complex story to be told than the simple one I have imagined here. The main point would be that God is radically "other', radically transcendent, and that the material world is not God, even though it finds its being in Him. It seems all we can know of God is gained by reading the book of the world and by revelation to human prophets, but what is understood from the study of the world must not contradict the revelations of scripture according to this vision.

So, to repeat what I said earlier, I think this vision of an interventionist God is very much a child of scripture, not of natural theology

Bob Ross

↪180 Proof

I've read his Ethics and it seems to me like he believed in a form of deism; but, crucially, I don't see how it is incompatible with historical classical theism (like Aristotle's). Can you elaborate on what you mean by classical theism being outdated but Spinoza's Substance is not?

Bob Ross

↪Paine

Whether or not the idea of separation of church and state was primarily motivated by deism is a completely separate topic. However, it is clear that not all the founding fathers were deists or atheists; and they did not establish a separation of church and state. The first amendment refers to congress, which is federal---not state--and state's had sanctioned churches for a long time afterwards. It is an interesting topic, though: Thomas Jefferson seemed adamantly in favor of a full separation like the one you noted.

Bob Ross

↪Janus

f god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

God is subsistent being itself; which means that He exists before and independently of anything which depends on Him. Therefore, there is a separation between Being and beings; although beings would be dependent and thusly intimately related to Being itself.

This really gets into a much richer and far mysterious topic of what being is. The more I’ve thought about what being itself is, the more complicated it gets. I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? This is distinct from something which just happens to exist (viz., a contingent being like a chair).

Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'.

Good question. It is metaphorical for God giving life to everything else, like a male gives life and a female makes life. There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person.

Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology

By ‘strong natural theism’, I was noting a position that is confined to the knowledge have of God naturalistically that is ‘strong’ because it takes the position that we can sufficiently know God this way; however, it is not incompatible with revealed theism either. It is not a dilemma.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene.

Bob Ross

↪Hanover

My thought is that this is an attempt to justify Christianity upon rationality alone without reliance upon revelation, perhaps because you believe rationality is a firmer basis for belief than revelation or faith alone. Your views on the Trinity, incarnation and sacrifice, grace, mercy, and justice, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, and purgatory are clearly Christian. Suggesting that we could arrive at those ideas without introduction to and indoctrination to Christianity, but that we could arrive at that through reason alone will not ring true to anyone but a very devout Christian.

Exactly what I did is demonstrate that we can, and I in fact have, determined various aspects of God’s nature and His creation without appeal nor indoctrination into any major world religion because they all depend on Divine Revelation. Even if all the scriptures for all religions were found to be utterly false; my arguments would remain unimpeded.

You do move away from Christian orthodoxy in some places, like hell not being eternal, with the possibility of posthumous salvation, purgatory taking on a more traditional hell-like state

This is because I am not ad hoc rationalizing Christianity. I am not a Christian. I am going where reason applied to mundane things takes me (such as the nature of change, contingency, composition, etc.).

you seem to redefine original sin, you describe a purely rational state when we go to heaven (which seems consistent with your desire to prioritize rationality as an attribute)

Rationality is not distinct from faith: that would imply that to have faith is always irrational. I have faith that germs make me sick because doctor’s told me so and I trust the curriculum I had in school. I did not verify faithlessly that germs make me sick.

I do, however, to your point, prioritize faithless over faith-based understanding because faith requires trust in someone else to provide verification that one does not do themselves. So, of course, verifying something myself without the need for trust in anyone else is going to be more convincing for me than otherwise.

The reason that perfect knowledge is a part of our heavenly state is because reason is our highest faculty, because it (1) resembles God most and (2) it guides our actions, and its natural end is to know everything absolutely. That’s the whole point of intellect.

If I had to offer a single assessment, it would be that you're trying to sort out your very Christian beliefs and orientation in a way that comports with your philosophical leanings. It presents an account of your religious journey, which I think would be well received by a pastor with philosophical leanings and who isn't overly orthodox in his views, but less so to a conservative minded priest.

I genuinely am not trying to sort out Christian beliefs in the paper: I am just following the logic to where it takes me unbiasedly. If that takes me to conclusions a Christian might accept, then so be it.

I don't find it all persuasive in terms of convincing me that your views might arise without an a priori commitment to Christianity. The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity,

I understand where you are coming from; but I would challenge you to find fault with the writings themselves that I posted, because I didn’t depend on Christianity for my arguments. I began with natural theological arguments for God’s existence from change, contingency, composition, and essences.

Bob Ross

↪MoK

I think that would pollute the forum with way to many posts.

Bob Ross

↪Relativist

Is this a premise?

It is a part of my thesis.

Your OP seems focused on morality. Are you defining God as nothing more than the foundation of objective moral values? That may be all you need, and it lightens your burden of proof.

I think providing an accurate depiction of goodness and, by proxy, morality is vital to any metaphysical theory; however, I don’t think my OP is limited to that: it also provides a basis for ordinary things like change, contingency, composition, intelligibility, etc.

I noted mostly benefits that tie to our moral intuitions in the OP because I think those make the theory most advantageous.

Bob Ross

↪PoeticUniverse

A quantum vacuum is not absolutely simple. A 'part' in this essay is being defined as 'something which contributes but is not identical to the whole'.

Janus

I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? — Bob Ross

I have no idea what self-subsistent being would be like. I also cannot see how anything in our investigations of nature could inform us about what self-existent being is like or that it gives us any reason to believe in self-existent being, unless by that term you mean something like "the totality of what exists" or just the sheer fact that something always exists. The idea of self-existent being meaning a being that exists when nothing else exists makes no sense to me at all. How could our investigation of nature (natural theology) tell us that something could exist when absolutely nothing else exists?

There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person. — Bob Ross

Here again I am left with no idea what it is about nature that leads you to conclude that God is a person.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene. — Bob Ross

You say we can know through natural theology that God is omnipotent, but you don't explain how natural theology enables us to know that. Is natural theology different than revelation for you?

Mijin

I had a read through the paper.

The proofs of God are of course well-known by now, and not convincing at all IMO. We can go through them each individually but I'll bet they all have past threads on the philosophy forum.

Then the proof of the trinity...it always makes me a bit sad to read these, because it's always obviously arbitrary post-hoc rationalizing (rather than anything approaching first-principles reasoning), and I don't get how some people can't see it.
If we were in the "song of fire and ice" universe (with the seven forms of God), there'd be a "proof" of how God must be made of 7 elements, because "that which is perfect must perfectly encapsulate love, justice, hope...<7 total aspects>"

It just doesn't work, and that's evident from the fact that it's only people who already believe in a trinitarian god that claim this reasoning; you never hear someone from another faith wonder why there aren't three godheads.

Count Timothy von Icarus

The point on divine freedom: freedom of indifference versus freedom of excellence, is an important one. I would just add there that "freedom of indifference" collapses into contradiction at the limit. At the limit, it assumes that absolute freedom is absolute arbitrariness, which is of course the opposite of any sort of conscious choice. For it implies that any truly free choice must be determined by nothing at all, and so must be random. More importantly, if the ability to "do anything" is a sort of maximal freedom, then actually choosing anything is a limit on freedom because to have chosen anything is to have made a determinate choice, but to have made any determinant choice necessarily rules out other choices (such as not choosing). Hence, maximal freedom requires never making any choices, but not being able to make choices is the definition of being unfree, a contradiction.

Hegel tackles this early in the Philosophy of Right. I think you can actually trace a dialectical move from this contradiction up to a sort of "freedom of excellence" through several stages.

On the demonstration of the Trinity, one issue I thought of is that the distinction between God's will and God's intellect is generally considered to be merely conceptual. It is a distinction that appears for us, but it isn't a real distinction (else God would not be simple). It's the same way "good" and "true" apply to being generally, but don't add anything to being; they are being as considered from some perspective. But then it would seem that the distinction would have to be real if it is generating subsistent relations, no?

180 Proof

I've read his Ethics and it seems to me like he believed in a form of deism ... — Bob Ross

The 'god of deism' is transcendent – ontologically separate – from the universe in contrast to Spinoza's immanent substance that is not ontologically separate from the universe. Read Spinoza more closely, Bob.

... but, crucially, I don't see how it is incompatible with historical classical theism (like Aristotle's).

Well, actually, Spinoza's substance is incompatible with "classical theism (like Aristotle's)" because e.g.

(A) it does not intend final causes (i.e. no telos, no moral laws),

(B) it is not a volitional agent (i.e. not conscious) and

(C) it is not ontologically separate from the universe or any other substance (i.e. not transcendent).

Can you elaborate on what you mean by classical theism being outdated but Spinoza's Substance is not?

I said deconstructed (i.e. shown to consist of inconsistent or contradictory predicates), not "outdated". Again, ...

Read [Spinoza's] Ethics - Part 1 "Of God" pp. 1-31 (iirc) — 180 Proof

Strong Natural Theism: An Alternative to Mainstream Religion

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