Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

I think God can to prove his existence.  I also think
He has.  The truth of the matter is, we choose to believe
what we want.  Some desperately seek truth, others seek
happiness, most seek something that they can live with
and accept.

Collis

    Perhaps that depends on what you mean by "prove".  If you mean that
    people can become convinced in their hearts that God exists, then I
    agree.  However, I was addressing specifically certain formal and
    logical proofs that have been put forward by Anselm, Aquinas,
    DesCartes, and others.  I believe that such proofs are not so much
    "proofs" as modes of analysizing one's understanding of God's nature
    and role in relation to the universe.
    
    I think this can even apply to an a priori proof.  For example,
    Anselm's ontological proof deals with the notion of God as "that than
    which nothing is greater."  As a tool of theological analysis, this
    kind of definition can be very useful.
    
    -- Mike

    
    
    Mike,
    
     I believe St Thomas Aquinas tried proving the existence of God by
    taking Aristotles prime mover theory and expounding upon it. The
    potential for motion is not actual until the prive mover comes in
    contact with it and changes it from potential to actual. Hence you
    have a ball that is not in motion until someone(GOD) touches it
    and sets it into motion. God is the prime mover. This arguement was
    defeated in the minds of some by applying the theory of Infinite 
    regression..
    
    David

    David,
    
    I wouldn't be surprised.  From what I know of Aquinas (admittedly not a
    great deal), he seems to have been influenced by Greek philosphy.
    
    -- Mike

I was thinking in terms of "historical" proof.  Of
course, such proof is impossible to be foolproof
since everything is subjective.  You can't "prove"
anything that you see, touch, experience, etc. because
you sense may be wrong or your brain may be misinterpreting
things (just talk with someone who is manic!), etc.
We are bound to our senses.  Within that limitation,
God has given our forefathers proof.  That proof is
recorded.  That proof continues every day when the
unexplainable happens - that which is perfectly explainable
by those who believe in God, but unexplainable by those
who reject God.

Of course, there is much more proof than this, some of
which you have touched upon.  In the end, proof is
important but is not the be all and end all.  People will
believe what they want to believe if they can convince
themselves that it's true.

Collis

    It was my serious reading of Hans Kung's "Does God Exist?" that whetted
    my appetite for seminary.  It took me a little more than a full year to
    get thru the book; it's a serious study of the historical approach with
    Kung's analysis and his understanding.
    
    	Shalom,
    
    	Ron
    

Re: .5 Collis

>God has given our forefathers proof.  That proof is
>recorded.

Couldn't our forefathers have recorded something which didn't happen.

>That proof continues every day when the
>unexplainable happens - that which is perfectly explainable
>by those who believe in God, but unexplainable by those
>who reject God.

Of course those who believe in God can explain everything: if they don't
understand something they can just say "God did that".  That doesn't prove
that God actually did those things.

I don't claim to be able to explain everything.  There is much that I don't
understand about the universe.  I try to understand it as best as I can.

>Of course, there is much more proof than this, some of
>which you have touched upon.

None of the proofs that Mike mentioned were convincing (at least to me).

				-- Bob

    
    
    
    > none of the proofs that Mike mentioned 
    
     Bob,
    
     Even philosophers of todays era give a great deal of credit to Thomas
    Aquinas's attempts at proving the existence of God. Back in Toms time
    it was a gutsy move to prove something that the church said was
    supposed to be axiomatic..
    
    David

    Some scientific materialists would argue that the existence of God is
    unnecessary for our understanding of the universe, and therefore by the
    principle of Occam's razor should be abandoned.

    I take a different view.  My own feeling is that the existence of God
    provides a more meaningful interpretation of the world we live in.  I
    thus see God not in what cannot be explained, but in what *can*.

    All of the proofs for God's existence that I cited have been criticized
    on various points by philosophers of religion.  I admit that the first
    time I heard the ontological proof, it struck me as ridiculous; after
    all, the human imagination can conceive of anything false that it wants
    to.  However, there are times when it strikes me as interesting and
    worthy of consideration.  I think it is worth emphasizing that just
    because one believes in God, one need not resort to accepting any of
    the proofs I cited as valid.  As I mentioned, for example, Kant,
    rejected the ontological proof but offered a moral argument of his own.

    I have strongly been influenced by Whitehead in the formulation of my
    own world view, and God is a necessary part of his philosophy. 
    However, if you don't accept Whitehead's ontological categories you are
    under no obligation to accept his philosophy as a proof for God's
    existence. 

    It is all very interesting to me.  The teleological argument says that
    God is necessary for the establishment of the order that we see in the
    universe.  Even if one doesn't accept this argument, clearly one tenet
    of faith in God is that God *is* a source of order in the universe.  
    How do we conceive of an orderless universe, anyway--this is the only
    one we know.  That is what I mean by suggesting that these proofs are
    more valuable as tools of analysis.  But perhaps others find a validity
    in them that I don't.

    -- Mike

    Mike,
    
    Kung has so intrigued me in earlier (than entering seminary) years,
    that when I entered seminary my first course was Systematic Theology I
    and I chose him to be the principle systematic theologian to study for
    the full year along with all the other theologians.  My assignment was
    to try to get under the skin of my chosen person and to almost become
    him during the year.
    
    I've read almost all his works and have some rare works which were
    banned by Rome for years which dealt with the charges against him which
    cost him his Priesthood during what would have been his Jubilee year.
    
    I've met him in person when he lectured at Boston University and I am
    really pleased for the Roman Catholic Faith that such a person exists. 
    Even though his writings have been placed on the "list" by Rome and
    even though he lost his status with Rome, he will always remain (his
    comments in "On Being a Christian") with the Roman Catholic Faith.
    
    Each of his books, except for "Eternal Life", require intense and
    difficult study, at least for me, to grasp and hold his understanding
    and his persuasion of his or others' Christian faith.  Dot gave me
    "Ecumenism in the Third Millenium" as a graduation present from ANTS
    two years ago and I have only begun and re-begun it several times.
    
    Maybe with my move to Dallas coming right around the corner and with
    Dot's and our dog's staying in Acton, MA until the end of June, I'll
    have the time to tackle this book with a little more seriousness.
    
    It sure was different for a Protestant seminarian to take on Kung as
    the theologian that I was expected to learn most about during seminary
    but I'm really pleased that I've grown to understand him for who he is
    and for what he believes.
    
    	Shalom,
    
    	Ron
    

This story was shared during a sermon I heard many years ago which was
preached by a United Methodist pastor:

A Moslem, observed while deep in prayer, was approached upon rising by an
American skeptic.  "Tell me, how do you know there's a God?  You cannot
see your God.  And you cannot touch your God," the skeptic insisted.

"You know that a camel came through our camp last night, do you not?" asked
the Moslem.

"Yes, there were the marks of camel hooves outside our tent where before
there were none."

"Yet you did not see a camel.  Nor did you touch a camel."

And then, the Moslem pointed toward a magnificent sunset and said, "And that
is how I know there is a God.  For there is God's fingerprint."

Peace,
Richard

Re: .12  Richard

Actually, though, the magnificent sunset was caused by light from the sun
passing through the atmosphere at a steep angle.

				-- Bob

    
    
    Bob,
    
      I think your seeing the tree but missing the forest here. Who made
    the atmosphere, or do you belief in infinite regress??
    
    
    David

For simplicity (i.e. cutting out a large number of intervening steps)
let's say that the Big Bang made the atmosphere.  So who or what made the
Big Bang? I don't know.  Maybe the universe collapsed into a single point,
then expanded into the universe we now know, and will one day collapse
back into a single point, i.e. infinite regress.  Or maybe our universe
formed out of some other universe.  Or maybe our universe is a
self-contained whole of which the singularity of the Big Bang is simply
one of the limits - see Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".  Or
maybe the universe was created by some law of nature which we simply don't
understand.  Or maybe the universe was created by God - which doesn't
necessarily mean that it was created by the God of the bible.

Even if we eliminate infinite regress, that doesn't mean that God had to
have created the universe.  The universe could have been created by some
means which we don't understand.

				-- Bob

>Even if we eliminate infinite regress, that doesn't mean that God had to
>have created the universe.  The universe could have been created by some
>means which we don't understand.

    Hmmm, I think that might be one of the standard counter-arguments to
    the teleological proof.  Even if you accept the premise that the
    universe requires a creator, that doesn't necessarily imply that God
    was the creator--it could have been some sort of demiurge, for example. 
    The only problem I have with that is that if you accept the premise of
    the teleological argument--that the watch requires a watchmaker--then
    why not apply that to the demiurge as well, which is also not infinite
    and unsurpassable as God is defined to be?  So then the question
    arises as to who created the demiurge.

    Of course, if you don't buy the "no watch without a watchmaker"
    argument in the first place, then none of this matters.  I'm not sure
    that I buy the argument myself.  But if you do accept that argument,
    then it seems to me that ultimately you have to accept the existence of
    an Infinite and Ultimate creator beyond which nothing is or conceivably
    could be greater--merely turning to a demiurge as the creator would not
    be satisfactory, it seems to me.

    Back in my atheist days, my traditional response to the teleological
    argument was to suggest that it is no harder to believe that the
    universe simply happens to exist than it is to believe that God simply
    happens to exist.  My reasoning was that if the universe can't exist
    without a creator, then why assume God exists without a creator?  Of
    course, the difference is that God is Ultimate and Infinite and
    requires no creator, and thus any regress stops there, so I think I was
    looking at the question more from the point of view of "Why" rather
    than "How".  In other words, I was looking at the fact that the
    universe exists, but considering the possibility that it might not have
    existed.  Can we imagine a reality in which nothing existed?  Is that
    even possible as a reality--how can "non-existence" exist?  Anyway,
    given those alternatives--that the universe could have existed, or not
    existed--the one that turned out to occur was that it exists.  Now if
    we consider two other contingencies--God exists, or God doesn't exist. 
    One of those happens to be the case.  Of course, unlike the existence
    of the universe, the existence of God is subject to debate, and if it
    is possible that God doesn't exist, then believers in God are accepting
    as a given the existence of something that might not have existed.  So,
    my argument went, it was certainly no more difficult to accept the
    existence of God over the non-existence of God as the one possibility
    that happens to be true, then it is to accept the existence of the
    universe over the non-existence of the universe as the one possibility
    that happens to be true.

    I think, though, that this is where the ontological argument fits in. 
    The ontological argument says that God's existence is not contingent in
    any sense; rather, it claims that God's existence is necessary in the
    strongest possible sense--in other words, that there can be no possible
    world without God.  So, given that, the belief is that God doesn't just
    "happen" to exist, but exists because he/she must.

    -- Mike

Note 578.13

>Actually, though, the magnificent sunset was caused by light from the sun
>passing through the atmosphere at a steep angle.

Bob,

	Uh, yeah.  But, Bob!  This string is for the philosophical approach,
rather than the scientific or empirical approach, is it not?

	Perhaps my example is more poetic than philosophical, I don't know.
I see "God's fingerprint" in a lot of things which can be explained away; a
newborn baby, an unrequested act of kindness, and the fragrance of orange
blossoms, just to name a few.

Peace,
Richard

Re: .16 Mike

>    Of course, if you don't buy the "no watch without a watchmaker"
>    argument in the first place, then none of this matters.

I don't buy the "no watch without a watchmaker" argument.

As I understand it, the argument goes something like this:

1. Everything in the universe, except God, must have a cause.
2. Therefore, God is the ultimate cause of everything in the universe.

Disregarding the possibility of infinite regress, I would be more inclined
to accept this modified form of the argument:

1a. Everything in the universe, except the initial conditions, must have a
   cause.
2a. Therefore, the initial condition are the ultimate cause of everything in
   the universe.

The initial conditions, or "demiurges", might be: A, the laws of nature
(force = mass times acceleration, etc), and B, the initial state of the
universe at the instant of the Big Bang.

Both A and B are somewhat arbitrary.  We can conceive of a universe where
force = mass times the square root of acceleration, say, or a universe
with double the mass of our present universe.  A and B hardly qualify as
"an Ultimate and Infinite creator beyond which nothing is or conceivably
could be greater".  According to 1a, though, this doesn't matter.  A and
B are simply the way things are/were, just as to a believer the existence
of God is simply the way things are/were.

Could God have caused A and B?  Yes.  Must God have caused A and B?  I
don't think so.

>    I think, though, that this is where the ontological argument fits in. 
>    The ontological argument says that God's existence is not contingent in
>    any sense; rather, it claims that God's existence is necessary in the
>    strongest possible sense--in other words, that there can be no possible
>    world without God.  So, given that, the belief is that God doesn't just
>    "happen" to exist, but exists because he/she must.

I laughed when I saw the ontological argument presented somewhere in the
RELIGION conference - it struck me as the silliest argument I had ever
seen.  It was something like this (in abbreviated form):

1. God is the greatest thing in the universe.
2. Something that exists is greater than something that doesn't exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

What's left ambiguous is whether points 1 and 3 are talking about God
existing in reality or in our imagination.  Making this explicit exposes
the logical fallacy.  Either:

1. God is the greatest thing that exists in the universe.
2. Something that exists is greater than something that doesn't exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

That argument assumes what it was trying to prove, i.e. that God exists.
Or:

1. God is the greatest thing that we can imagine in the universe.
2. Something that exists is greater than something that doesn't exist.
3. Therefore, God exists in our imagination.
or
3. Therefore, if God exists then God exists.
or
...?

I can't think of a useful conclusion that can be drawn from these two premises.
Yes, if God doesn't exist than God is not the greatest thing in the
universe, but we can *imagine* that God is the greatest thing in the
universe.

				-- Bob

Re: .17  Richard

I thought we were talking about the existence of God in reality, not just
the poetical existence of God.  But if believing in God brings you enjoyment
and doesn't harm other people, by all means continue!

Poetically speaking, I can enjoy Christmas without believing in Jesus or
Santa Claus.  I can enjoy the Messiah without believing in the Messiah.
Maybe it's a case of suspending my disbelief.

				-- Bob

Note 578.19

>I thought we were talking about the existence of God in reality, not just
>the poetical existence of God.

I take it you're speaking of empirical reality, exclusively.

>Maybe it's a case of suspending my disbelief.

Yup.  I think you've got something here, Bob.

Peace,
Richard

    Bob,
    
>As I understand it, the argument goes something like this:
>
>1. Everything in the universe, except God, must have a cause.
>2. Therefore, God is the ultimate cause of everything in the universe.

    I think that is probably closer to the Cosmological argument than the
    Teleological argument.  The cosmological argument says that God is the
    First Cause; the teleological argument points to the order that exists
    in the universe and says that this order implies an intelligent
    designer.  It seems to me that you still have the problem that a higher
    intelligence need not be God, but could be nothing more than a
    demiurge, so it isn't clear to me how this proof is really sufficient.
    
    Please note that I am not saying that I accept any of these arguments
    as valid proofs.  And note that I am also inclined to agree with you
    about the ontological argument.  We can always conceive of things not
    existing; as Kant pointed out, existence is not an attribute. 
    
    -- Mike

Re: .21 Mike

>    I think that is probably closer to the Cosmological argument than the
>    Teleological argument.  The cosmological argument says that God is the
>    First Cause; the teleological argument points to the order that exists
>    in the universe and says that this order implies an intelligent
>    designer.

Well, an intelligent designer is one example of a "cause".  But as stated,
I don't agree with the teleological argument because I don't agree with its
premise; order does not always imply an intelligent designer.

				-- Bob

    I found an interesting reference to Aristotle's influence on Aquinas:
    
    "Aquinas was the great sythesizer, able to use the newly rediscovered
    Aristotle to produce a philosophical system by which reason could be
    set alongside faith.  There are for Aquinas revealed truths, and where
    philosophical considerations conflict with revelation--as is the case,
    for example, when Aristotelian principles lead to a denial of a first
    creation--Aquinas has no hesitation in siding with faith.  Nevertheless
    in natural theology and elsewhere reason is paramount, and Aquinas
    thought that the Aristotle of whom he first learned through his teacher
    Albertus Magnus provide the rational principles for a complete
    philosophy which faith could call to its aid....Aquinas knew his
    Aristotle not from original sources, but in translation; moreover, it
    was still necessary to sort out which of the received works were truly
    Aristotle's.  Hence his knowledge of Aristotle is relative to the
    times and circumstances in which he lived.  Nevertheless for Aquinas,
    Aristotle is 'the Philosopher'."

    		-from A History of Western Philosophy, by D.W. Hamlyn