Intelligently designed how or for what? — tim wood

By God and as a home for creation.

That - or something equivalent - would be sufficient empirical evidence. Of course it would be most helpful if the giant voice would also tell us the proper religion: — EricH

God is not going to force faith on anyone. To do that would be to destroy free will. There is no need for God to shout, He will be heard by those who listen.

By God and as a home for creation. — EnPassant

So you hold that God exists, yes? Can you say anything substative about that existence? Tall? Blue-eyed, for example? Or anything abut the nature of that existence?

As to intelligently designed, as a home? For whom? For creation? Of what?

So you hold that God exists, yes? Can you say anything substantive about
that existence? — tim wood

God is substance. One of the most difficult questions in philosophy is why there is something rather than nothing. We don't know why or how but we know there is something. That substance that is, is eternal (otherwise it came from nothing, impossible). This substance is identical with existence. It is existence. Every contingent thing that exists exists because it is in existence/God. Creation is more than existence, it is being; life, consciousness...

As to intelligently designed, as a home? For whom? For creation? Of what?

Matter is contingent so it is made. It is an image of energy. When creation fell away from God it descended into 'veils of matter' (Origen)

Enough nonsense. Believe what you like; it's a privilege that the year 2020 and certain locations on earth grant you. But learn the differences between belief and reality, what is true and what is supposed.

'Rational warrant' and 'empirical evidence' are different things. Empirical evidence, as construed by modern naturalism, starts, as a matter of principle, by excluding consideration of anything beyond the natural domain, and then demands evidence to the contrary, having already made the in-principle commitment not to consider it.

You're apparently conflating scientific evidence- constrained by naturalism as a methodological principle- with empirical evidence more broadly. Empirical evidence just means evidence from experience, from observation- it needn't be constrained by naturalism, and so it needn't rule out evidence for theism. And of course what counts as natural is flexible (i.e. Hempel's dilemma), so there's reason to suspect that if divine intervention were real, and that there was observable evidence for it, that it couldn't qualify as natural and so within the sphere of scientific investigation. As jorndoe notes, its more that evidence of this variety is lacking as a contingent matter of fact more than being ruled-out a priori. If there were substantial evidence for theism, obviously there's a great deal about our theorizing about the world that would have to adapt. But there doesn't seem to be, and so it doesn't, at least not at present.

As far as a Plantinga is concerned, belief in God has a rational warrant, on the traditional grounds - anticipated by Plato - that the harmony and intricacy of the natural world bespeaks an intentional creation. The counter-arguments from scientific naturalism, are what seem question-begging from that perspective, because they assume that the order of the cosmos is somehow self-generating or spontaneously occuring

The quintessential refutation of the design/teleological arguments do not come from "scientific naturalism"- as you say, naturalism as a methodological principle rules it out out of hand- but from e.g. Hume, as in his DCNR. The argument's flaws are very real, and not a matter of an a priori rejection. Like the other traditional arguments for the existence of God, its just not a good argument... and thus that half of the problem here- the traditional philosophical arguments for the existence of God are all fatally flawed, and there is no empirical evidence for God's existence, so belief in the existence of God appears to be entirely unwarranted (and therefore unreasonable).

We get it, materialism= bad, and anyone who says materialism=bad is OK in your book. — Enai De A Lukal

I do feel as though I should respond to that, as it's not the first time you've said it. Expressed in these terms, it reduces the entire question to personal prediliction, 'what I like'. I think criticism of materialism is more profound than that, as it is the de-facto philosophy of secular culture. I don't believe the main stream of Western philosophy is materialism at all.

If a giant voice would emerge from nowhere saying: — EricH

I'm interested in philosophy of religion.

The scientific methodologies do not inherently (heck, you could launch examinations of "supernatural magic" if there was much to examine).
They're just self-critical, seeking to self-error-correct, minimize bias, falsify, all that.
And it so happens that, say, Sagan's garage dragon, fictional characters, imaginary beings, hallucinatory claims, etc, tend to be discounted as a consequence. And why wouldn't they anyway? Mental attempts to populate the world with such ... stuff doesn't make it so.
If you cannot differentiate whether, say, Shiva or Yahweh are fictional or real, then why insist (and preach indoctrinate proselytize) that they're real in the first place? (If pressed, I might take this a step further, and say that some such activities converge on fraud or deception.) — jorndoe

The historical situation of the founding of modern science was such that certain ways of thinking, certain kinds of ideas, were excluded from it as part of its constitution. For example at the foundation of the Royal Society, which was the first scientific association as such, it was declared that 'we shalt not touch metaphysics with a barge pole', or something similar.

A consequence of the division in early modern philosophy into 'primary and secondary' qualities was the emergence of the view that only the mathematically quantifiable attributes of physical bodies were among the primary qualities. The mind, the observer, was at least implicitly relegated to the domain of 'secondary qualities' and therefore subjectivized and relativized.

If you study philosophy of science and history of ideas, none of that is controversial.

As for your depictions of 'Shiva, Yahweh, Tooth fairy' - popular religion operates through popular archetypes in the guises that popular culture will respond to.

But then whats the point in saying that they're question begging? If all the premises are correct then the conclusion must follow? We can't just swoop away deductive arguments altogether for begging the question as such, right? Is only the ontological argument invalid?
Surely these arguments are rejected for other reasons than these two.

Because the proponents of these arguments (at least some of them, like Craig) make quite strong claims about them, like that they are both sound and persuasive and warrant theism (and render atheism/agnosticism unwarranted/irrational)... claims which aren't tenable. And the problem is often precisely that the premises aren't correct- or, at least, can't be regarded as such without simply assuming the conclusion that is in dispute (rendering the whole exercise pointless). And there are numerous variations of each type, the ontological argument is certainly not the only one that is invalid, but that's going to vary on a case by case basis I expect (its easy, even trivial, to construct a valid argument for any conclusion.. the fly in the pudding is finding acceptable premises). The ones that are valid, are question-begging, and visa versa. And I don't doubt that people reject these arguments for other reasons, you'd have to take a survey. I'm not sure what relevance that has here, though. Whatever other reasons people may have for rejecting these arguments, its hard to have a better reason than the fact that the arguments either don't logically entail their conclusions and/or have premises which have not been established as true (as these are sort of the basic things an argument needs to do in order to be successful, i.e. sound).

I do feel as though I should respond to that, as it's not the first time you've said it. Expressed in these terms, it reduces the entire question to personal prediliction, 'what I like'. I think criticism of materialism is more profound than that, as it is the de-facto philosophy of secular culture. I don't believe the main stream of Western philosophy is materialism at all.

The problem here is that it wasn't relevant and so was a change of topic. If I wanted to defend or talk about materialism, I would find a thread about materialism. I wasn't really interested in talking about e.g. the quality of Feser's arguments against materialism or the supposed failings of Daniel Dennett when the topic is the existence of God and the quality (or lack thereof) of the arguments/evidence in its favor.

The quintessential refutation of the design/teleological arguments do not come from "scientific naturalism"- as you say, naturalism as a methodological principle rules it out out of hand- but from e.g. Hume, as in his DCNR. The argument's flaws are very real, and not a matter of an a priori rejection. Like the other traditional arguments for the existence of God, its just not a good argument... and thus that half of the problem here- the traditional philosophical arguments for the existence of God are all fatally flawed, — Enai De A Lukal

As mentioned, I don't believe Christianity has ever relied on philosophical arguments to establish the existence of God. But as to whether all such arguments are 'fatally flawed' - that's another matter altogether. I think Kant effectively deflated Hume's scepticism.

there is no empirical evidence for God's existence, so belief in the existence of God appears to be entirely unwarranted (and therefore unreasonable). — Enai De A Lukal

I should, however, mention one body of solid empirical evidence for, at least, divine intervention. You will recall the origin of the term 'devil's advocate' - it was a role accorded to an ecclesiastical offical whose job it was to try and debunk evidence of the miracle cures that were required for the process of the beatification of Catholic saints. And the reason that this body of records is 'solid' is because the process has been carried out over centuries, and has been meticulously recorded, so there's a reasonable data set. This caught the attention of a haemotologist, Jacalyn Duffyn, whose expert testimony was sought regarding one such case. It piqued her interest and she began to study the records. She said:

Over hundreds of hours in the Vatican archives, I examined the files of more than 1,400 miracle investigations — at least one from every canonization between 1588 and 1999. A vast majority — 93 percent over all and 96 percent for the 20th century — were stories of recovery from illness or injury, detailing treatment and testimony from baffled physicians.

If a sick person recovers through prayer and without medicine, that’s nice, but not a miracle. She had to be sick or dying despite receiving the best of care. The church finds no incompatibility between scientific medicine and religious faith; for believers, medicine is just one more manifestation of God’s work on earth.

Perversely then, this ancient religious process, intended to celebrate exemplary lives, is hostage to the relativistic wisdom and temporal opinions of modern science. Physicians, as nonpartisan witnesses and unaligned third parties, are necessary to corroborate the claims of hopeful postulants. For that reason alone, illness stories top miracle claims. I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.

From here and here. It is of note that Duffyn continues to profess atheism and was not converted by this research, but she does acknowledge that the cures in all these cases defied scientific prediction.

The problem here is that it wasn't relevant and so was a change of topic. If I wanted to defend or talk about materialism, I would find a thread about materialism. — Enai De A Lukal

I can't see how they're not related; they're two sides of a coin. The philosophy of secular culture assumes a naturalistic basis for existence. But I say that historically, this grew out of and effectively inverted theism, such that belief in the powers of natural reason now occupies the place once accorded to the priesthood. The 'jealous god' dies hard.

My own religious belief is not grounded in the religious tradition I was purportedly brought up in (although my own family was not at all religious). It is grounded more in 60's 'higher consciousness' type of understanding. But that has allowed me to re-interpret the symbolic meaning of religious ideas. Whereas as I see it most secular philosophy is born out of a reaction against Christian dogma, so it's got this 'don't mention the war' undercurrent which conditions everything it thinks about the subject.

As mentioned, I don't believe Christianity has ever relied on philosophical arguments to establish the existence of God.

Tell that to Craig. I also recall seeing a survey where a plurality of theists listed "evidence of design in nature" as the top reason why they believed in God. So while there's no question that there is a huge variety of reasons why people accept theism, its simply false to say that no theists ever claim that philosophical arguments establish the truth of theism (this is also completely neglecting the relevant cultural/social/historical significance of, for instance, Aquinas and his Ways). There's an entire industry of apologists who do basically just that for a living, Craig not least of which. And Kant certainly did not refute Hume's criticisms of the design argument (Kant did not disagree with Hume on this point), and indeed Kant would be another key philosopher to cite as far as those philosophers who made major contributions to destroying that sort of natural theology as a valid or useful enterprise. But Hume's refutation of the analogical design argument specifically stands to this day.

I should, however, mention one body of solid empirical evidence for, at least, divine intervention. You will recall the origin of the term 'devil's advocate' - it was a role accorded to an ecclesiastical offical whose job it was to try and debunk evidence of the miracle cures that were required for the process of the beatification of Catholic saints. And the reason that this body of records is 'solid' is because the process has been carried out over centuries, and has been meticulously recorded, so there's a reasonable data set. This caught the attention of a haemotologist, Jacalyn Duffyn, whose expert testimony was sought regarding one such case. It piqued her interest and she began to study the records. She said:

Over hundreds of hours in the Vatican archives, I examined the files of more than 1,400 miracle investigations — at least one from every canonization between 1588 and 1999. A vast majority — 93 percent over all and 96 percent for the 20th century — were stories of recovery from illness or injury, detailing treatment and testimony from baffled physicians.

If a sick person recovers through prayer and without medicine, that’s nice, but not a miracle. She had to be sick or dying despite receiving the best of care. The church finds no incompatibility between scientific medicine and religious faith; for believers, medicine is just one more manifestation of God’s work on earth.

Perversely then, this ancient religious process, intended to celebrate exemplary lives, is hostage to the relativistic wisdom and temporal opinions of modern science. Physicians, as nonpartisan witnesses and unaligned third parties, are necessary to corroborate the claims of hopeful postulants. For that reason alone, illness stories top miracle claims. I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.

From here and here. It is of note that Duffyn continues to profess atheism and was not converted by this research, but she does acknowledge that the cures in all these cases defied scientific prediction.

Regarding this as positive evidence for the existence of God/divine intervention is a pretty textbook "god-of-the-gaps" fallacious appeal to ignorance. Lacking a scientific explanation->god-did-it is not a valid or reasonable inference. If that's the strongest evidence there is, this only strengthens my point: theism is not sufficiently warranted by either empirical evidence or philosophical arguments.

I can't see how they're not related; they're two sides of a coin.

Of course there are connections, but there was no direct relevance to the conversation at hand. The quality of Feser's arguments against naturalism has no bearing on the quality of his arguments for the existence of God. The possibility of e.g. Daniel Dannett sawing off the branch he's sitting on doesn't mean that theists claiming God is "beyond reason" aren't also sawing off their own branch. That's what I mean when I say they were not relevant.

this only strengthens my point: — Enai De A Lukal

Which is that even where evidence is cited, it can easily be dismissed!

Nope, but nice try. The point is that the evidence for theism is woefully lacking- and your comment that the best evidence for theism is ... not actually evidence for theism unless you engage in open fallacy obviously is consistent with and only strengthens that point.

As I said, not 'evidence for theism' as such but for, at least, divine intervention. The reporter in that case is a medical practitioner, reporting on over 1500 cases - but you know that can't be evidence for anything, right? If you view it through the perspectiv of 'this can't be real evidence', then what would constitute 'evidence'? Anything that is cited you will interpret in line with your beliefs.

God is substance. — EnPassant

Is this a definition, or an observation?

You're not even trying at this point. If X can only be regarded as evidence for something if you engage in open fallacy, then X isn't meaningful or substantive evidence for anything. And the lack of a scientific explanation doesn't entail a theistic explanation, this is textbook "god-of-the-gaps" reasoning. Truly, if that's the best evidence for theism, I can rest my case.

What would evidence for invisible garden fairies look like? Sagan's garage dragon? Fictional characters? Perhaps more pertinently, how would you differentiate?

This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead.

My evidence for the existence of God is my existence, it's pretty strong evidence, because without God none of this world I find myself in and myself included would exist.

This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead. — Punshhh

Well but this just begs the question: what attributes of good do we "see", in whatever way you propose we can, in reality?

Hmmm... Punshhh exists, therefore theism. Well I guess that settles it then, I mean who could argue with that?

But learn the differences between belief and reality, what is true and what is supposed. — tim wood

It is not a supposition that form/contingency, must have substance, otherwise the universe is an abstraction.

Is this a definition, or an observation? — Banno

It is a deduction. There can be no properties/contingent things, without substance. The eternal substance that is, is the substance of all contingent things. You cannot have a property/form without substance.

It is a deduction. There can be no properties/contingent things, without substance. The eternal substance that is, is the substance of all contingent things. You cannot have a property/form without substance. — EnPassant

Odd, these notions. What is substance then? Not mass. Not space. Not anything familiar from physics. Not a notion that has been part of the vocabulary of science for a few hundred years. From the SEP article...

But three things at least remain controversial. First, it is disputed what kinds of concepts need to be deployed to characterise these enduring things: are they the rich variety of traditional or ‘Aristotelian’ substance concepts, or will various ways of identifying things simply as physical bodies with certain characteristics do the job? Second, it is still unclear how far our substance concepts purport to reflect a component in reality (real or imagined) over and above the bundle of properties that constitute its intelligible aspects. Third, the unclarity of the connection between what a thing is and what it does leaves unresolved the degree of interdependence between substance concepts and notions of purpose and final causation.

That's an awful lot of baggage to drag around behind your notion of God.

But three things at least remain controversial.

Draw a circle in ink. You now have two things, substance/ink and form/circle. If there are two things you can separate them - that is, if the circle, as an abstraction, can exist without substance. But how can you do this? Can you lift the abstraction away from the ink so you can hold up an abstract circle? What would that look like? If there is no substance the universe is an abstraction. But abstractions cannot exist without, at least, a mind to keep them in being.

Space? Space is a positive existence, it is not nothingness.

Yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with this sort of discussion. I'm not to keen on engaging in the game, except to say that what is to count as an abstraction will depend on what one is doing; Wittgenstein explained it better than Aristotle.

Again,

That's an awful lot of baggage to drag around behind your notion of God. — Banno

That's an awful lot of baggage to drag around behind your notion of God. — Banno

See my post here - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8779/turtles-all-the-way-down-in-physics

...so you counter the baggage by increasing it.

SO if I have it right, accepting that God exists, for you, involves accepting a a bunch of obscure, somewhat archaic metaphysical notions.

Not going to get too many believers that way.

SO if I have it right, accepting that God exists, for you, involves accepting a a bunch of obscure, somewhat archaic metaphysical notions. — Banno

That is an extreme rhetorical distortion of what I believe. My beliefs are based on many things including reason - see my last few posts - and many other things too. The world is immensely complex and theism is, for me, the best explanation by far, despite the awful distortions in religion. Religion often gives the wrong view of God but it still has truth within it. I believe mythological religion has served its purpose and maybe in the future humanity will have a more purified spirituality.

This is a weak argument, it relies on God being necessarily defined by the person claiming his existence. Philosophy would need to go deeper than what people claim to know through the use of their intellect. † — Punshhh

Yet your response goes ahead and presupposes "Him" anyway. :confused: Presupposition does not make it so (and is not particularly philosophical in this context). This is what you'd have to show in the first place.

Regardless of what people say, be they theists, or atheists, the reality on the ground is not altered. So philosophy is required to look beyond these arguments and consider reality instead. — Punshhh

Using intellect? † Let's also go by evidence. (y)

Anyway, how might we differentiate whether (fictional) characters, (imaginary) beings, (hallucinatory) claims are real or not?
Or maybe reality is what you meant by "Him" "God", then? Or maybe we're talking the unknown, personified? That's all fine (except personified); I'd just use terms with less baggage.
Should we go by diluted (watered down) phrases, that tells us roughly nothing in this respect, and are put together in such a manner that they could mean more or less anything, avoiding means to differentiate?

@Wayfarer promotes Biblical stories of miracles only to relegate Yahweh as being an archetype (no particular argument given), and without having attempted to differentiate fictional and real in the first place. So, these supposed super-beings continue to be removed from sight if you will, evading attempts to differentiate, yet continue to be claimed real in the same breath, just like ghosts of imagined entities, existentially dependent upon the minds of us.

form/contingency, must have substance, — EnPassant

And what sort of substance might that be?

otherwise the universe is an abstraction — EnPassant

Why is that a problem?

I actually get to more or less that conclusion myself (that the universe is an abstraction), in the form of mathematicism.

In the same way that we can construct a series of sets that behave exactly like the natural numbers and so are indistinguishable and thus identical to them, so too can we construct complicated mathematical objects that behave indistinguishably from the fundamental constituents of reality and so are, for all intents and purposes, identical to them.

And it is not a special feature of contemporary physics that says reality is made of mathematical objects; rather, it is a general feature of mathematics that whatever we find things in reality to be doing, we can always invent a mathematical structure that behaves exactly, indistinguishably like that, and so say that the things in reality are identical to that mathematical structure. If we should find tomorrow that our contemporary theories of physics are wrong, it could not possibly prove that those features of reality are not identical to some mathematical structure or another; only that they are not identical to the structures we thought they were identical to, and we need to better figure out which of the infinite possible structures we could come up with it is identical to. We just need to identify the rules that reality is obeying, and then define mathematical objects by their obedience to those same rules. It may be hard to identify what those rules are but we can never conclusively say that reality simply does not obey rules, only that we have not figured out what rules it obeys, yet.

The mathematics is essentially just describing reality, and whatever reality should be like, we can always come up with some way of describing it. One may be tempted to say that that does not make the description identical to reality itself, as in the adage "the map is not the territory". In general that adage is true, and we should not arrogantly hold our current descriptions of reality to be certainly identical to reality itself. But a perfectly detailed, perfectly accurate map of any territory at 1:1 scale is just an exact replica of that territory, and so is itself a territory in its own right, indistinguishable from the original; and likewise, whatever the perfectly detailed, perfectly accurate mathematical model of reality should turn out to be, that mathematical model is a reality: the features of it that are perfectly detailed, perfectly accurate models of people like us would find themselves experiencing it as their reality exactly like we experience our reality. Mathematics "merely models" reality in that we don't know exactly what our reality is like and we're trying to make a map of it. But whatever model it is that would perfectly map reality in every detail, that would be identical to reality itself. We just don't know what model that is.

There necessarily must be some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system or another that would be a perfect description of reality. The alternative to reality being describable by a formal language would be either that some phenomenon occurs, and we are somehow unable to even speak about it; or that we can speak about it, but only in vague poetic language using words and grammar that are not well-defined. I struggle to imagine any possible phenomenon that could cause either of those problems. In fact, it seems to me that such a phenomenon is, in principle, literally unimaginable: I cannot picture in my head some definite image of something happening, yet at the same time not be able to describe it, as rigorously as I should feel like, not even by inventing new terminology if I need to. At best, I can just kind of... not really definitely imagine anything in particular.


I am wholeheartedly against Platonism regarding abstract object, but I think that a kind of existence can nevertheless be applied to abstract objects after all, a kind of existence abstracted away from the more familiar notion of concrete existence.

In the most restricted sense, one could say "only what I am experiencing right here right now exists". Everything else that we talk about existing is some degree of inference and abstraction away from that. There is a position in the philosophy of time, called presentism, that holds that only the present exists, neither the past nor the future. I agree with them to the extent that in a sense only the present exists: only the present presently exists, right now. But a part of what I'm experiencing right now in the present is memory, from which I infer (automatically, intuitively, without thinking about it) the existence of other times, having an experience of moving between different times, from those remembered past times and toward projected future times, and there is a perfectly serviceable sense in which I can say that those other times "exist" in a timeless sense of the word: they don't exist now, presently, for sure, but they still exist at other times. And in that "movie", so to speak, of my past, present, and future experiences that I have now inferred, I have the experience of seeming to move around different places, so I further infer that other places exist too, besides just the here that I am experiencing now. Like with presentism, only the place I am at exists here, but those other places can still reasonably be said to exist elsewhere.

In this way, a spatiotemporal kind of existence is already abstracted away from the more primitive kind of existence relevant to my local, present experiences. But beyond that, some philosophers such as David Lewis hold, and I agree, that other possible worlds, like the kind that we use to make sense of talk of alethic modalities like necessity and possibility, really exist, and aren't just useful fictions, even though they don't actually exist, because "actual" is an indexical term like "present" or "local": it refers to things relative to the person using the word. Just as other times don't presently exist but are still real in a more abstract sense, so too, on this account, other possible words don't actually exist, because "actually" means "in the possible world I am a part of", but they are nevertheless still real in a still more abstract sense. Likewise, to finally get on to my point about the existence of mathematical objects, since we can in principle equate our concrete universe with some mathematical structure or another, and that mathematical structure definitely concretely exists (because it just is the concrete universe), we can say that other mathematical structures, i.e. abstract objects, don't concretely exist — because "concretely" is indexical, like "actually", it means "as a part of the mathematical structure that is our universe" — but they can nevertheless be reasonably called "real" in some even broader sense, the most abstract sense possible: they abstractly exist.


This completely obviates the need for any kind of explanation for why this universe instead of another, or why something rather than nothing, what's the necessity that enables all these contingencies, what's the substance that underlies all this form. Everything is just form with no mysterious substance, it's only ever features of some forms that are necessary (which is to say, their negations are impossible) so every form is merely contingent, and every form that can possibly exist does exist, while nothingness can't exist (there is no possible world at which there is no world, there is no mathematical structure that is not a mathematical structure), so since this world can exist it does, and since it features us in it, we experience it as our actual world.

Your need for invisible friends is a piece of personal psychology, and not philosophy.