The God Delusion by Dawkins

[mattdamore]

The first premise of the KCA as formulated by Dr. Craig is that, "Everything that begins to exist has a cause." He has made it perfectly clear that when he says "cause," he is referring to Aristotelian causation.

Hello, Boxing Pythagoras. I'm sorry for this random interjection. I was reading through the thread and I thought I'd chime in here. I don't think it's necessarily the case that Dr. Craig has in mind Aristotelian causation when he formulates premise 1 of the KCA. In his debate with Dr. Sean Carroll, Carroll had made the following point:

The problem with this premise is that it is false. There’s almost no explanation or justification given for this premise in Dr. Craig’s presentation. But there’s a bigger problem with it, which is that it is not even false. The real problem is that these are not the right vocabulary words to be using when we discuss fundamental physics and cosmology. This kind of Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2,500 years ago. Today we know better. Our metaphysics must follow our physics. That’s what the word metaphysics means. And in modern physics, you open a quantum field theory textbook or a general relativity textbook, you will not find the words “transcendent cause” anywhere.

In Dr. Craig's rebuttal, he argues (with his usual rhetorical flourish):

To my surprise, Dr. Carroll challenges the first premise of this argument by saying it is based on outmoded Aristotelian concepts of causality. I protest – not at all! There is no analysis given of what it means to be a cause in this first premise. You can adopt your favorite theory of causation or take causation to be a conceptual primitive. All it requires is that the universe did not pop into being uncaused out of absolutely nothing.

Though I agree that Dr. Craig often explains the premise in terms of Aristotelian causation, do you think that the above quotation might show that it's not necessary?

Thank you.

[Starlight]

Remind me, where did I say God could not be a first cause?

Poor phrasing on my part, I mean that you said God could... not-be-the-first-cause, not that God couldn't be the first cause.

You needn't defend the position if you do not want to defend the position. However, if you want us to be convinced of the position, you'll need to defend it. That seems rather equitable, I think.

Oh absolutely, that always applies. I can't be bothered so I won't further defend it more than I've already done.

God, by definition, is transcendent and therefore could very well be beyond anything that we can comprehend.

From what I can see, this is a new topic that you haven't touched on.

Okay, sure, God being beyond our understanding is indeed a new topic. I don't think Dawkins touches on it in his book (at least in a quick browse of my notes nothing leaped out to me), but personally I have a lot of issues with the way claims about God's transcendence and incomprehensibility tend to be used and deployed and how religious people try to have their cake and eat it too by misusing this.

I am fine with a claim of transcendence and incomprehensibility - I don't mind people claiming that God is incomprehensible any more than I mind the idea that the first cause might turn out to be mathematically and quantumy and pretty much incomprehensible. But if the claim is to be made that God is incomprehensible and beyond knowledge then that always needs to be clearly stated when positive knowledge claims about God are being made, and needs to not be simply played as a trump-card during apologetics when the point is made that the knowledge claims are silly ones.

Example:
Theist: "God is all-benevolent"
Atheist: "So how come there's natural disasters in the world that cause great suffering, that lead to benevolent humans giving aid to the injured, but where your omni-benevolent God gives no aid?"
Theist: "Um... God is incomprehensible and transcendent...? And, yeah, so he's like all-benevolent but, you just can't realize his true benevolence for what it is. You're buying this, right?"
Atheist: "Er, so why don't you just use words correctly in the first place and say something like "God's kinda benevolent, but kinda not, because he's beyond our understanding of words like 'benevolence'"? Or say "we can't really ascribe any morality or moral values to God because he's beyond us"?"
Theist: "And abandon all my favorite theological terminology in favor of correct and non-misleading word usage? Never!"

In this case you're doing a similar thing with the word "intelligence". First the claim is put forward that God is "intelligent". Then when that claim is shown to be problematic, God's transcendence is invoked to save the day in a way that basically works out as "did we say 'intelligent'? well we didn't mean the sort of 'intelligence' any human is familiar with, God has his own special sort of 'intelligence' which is completely different to anything you know as 'intelligence', so you could really say that God isn't 'intelligent'." And so transcendence is deployed to undo the problems that the positive knowledge claims about God have, which raises the issue of it was unreasonable, misleading, and deceptive, to make those positive knowledge claims in the first place.

It gets a bit frustrating to deal with because the positive knowledge claims are whisked away by deceptive apologists under the cover of "transcendence" and yet the positive knowledge claims are regularly and repeatedly made by religious believers. It gets to the point where God is attributed with all sorts of things, but as soon as any of that is critically examined it is all sucked away into a vortex of "transcendence" that is conveniently out of sight of critical or rational examination. Again, I don't mind a claim like "our universe was intentionally created by a powerful conscious entity whom we label 'God' who is beyond our understanding" but when theologians start adding dozens if not hundreds of further positive knowledge claims about this entity and then apologists subtract any they feel like in an ad hoc way under the cover of transcendence it irks me. [/rant]


A second, entirely different problem with your transcendent non-material non-complex intelligence claim, is that you are claiming the existence of something of a type that has never been observed and cannot even be described theoretically by our general theoretical A.I. models of intelligence. So in that sense it adds a huge amount of epistemic improbability to the 'God hypothesis'... for God to exist it would have to be true that there exists this as-yet-unknown and completely-implausible-sounding type of 'intelligence' that was not merely non-material (which I personally don't have much of a problem with, because I can imagine it being material in some other universe or being somewhat abstracted like computer-code for an A.I., but B.P. seems to strongly dislike any kind of non-material hypotheses) but also non-complex in the sense of not being an arbitrary combination of multiple parts (which I do personally have a huge problem with because everything I ever understood about intelligence whether learned in computer science or philosophy or by looking at animals in the world, tells me that such a thing is in pretty fundamental opposition to everything we've ever learned about what intelligence is or can be). Anyone would thus have to assign for themselves a lower probability to the God's-existence hypothesis than to the hypothesis of the possibility of that weird-and-as-yet-undiscovered type of intelligence, if the former requires the latter.

To paraphrase, you said that the God Delusion offered the most persuasive arguments for the absence of God. I could not disagree more and I am trying to understand why you feel that way. I can think of a lot better examples of atheistic philosophy that this could be said about. Even atheist philosophers have shredded the arguments made in the God Delusion.

Eh? I don't feel that I've made the kinds of claims that you're referring to here. I've claimed to agree with the vast majority of Dawkins' book, which is pretty unusual for me to do when reading a book. I've said I like his book and think he gives a good wide-ranging discussion, and that on the whole I think it's a great book. Is it necessarily the most persuasive book ever written, or does it have the best arguments of any book ever written? I highly doubt it.

[Adrift]

Example:
Theist: "God is all-benevolent"
Atheist: "So how come there's natural disasters in the world that cause great suffering, that lead to benevolent humans giving aid to the injured, but where your omni-benevolent God gives no aid?"
Theist: "Um... God is incomprehensible and transcendent...? And, yeah, so he's like all-benevolent but, you just can't realize his true benevolence for what it is. You're buying this, right?"
Atheist: "Er, so why don't you just use words correctly in the first place and say something like "God's kinda benevolent, but kinda not, because he's beyond our understanding of words like 'benevolence'"? Or say "we can't really ascribe any morality or moral values to God because he's beyond us"?"
Theist: "And abandon all my favorite theological terminology in favor of correct and non-misleading word usage? Never!"

This is a really goofy strawman. I've never heard of any serious Christian apologist use this sort of argument. As someone who claims to once have been a well informed apologist, you should know better.

In this case you're doing a similar thing with the word "intelligence". First the claim is put forward that God is "intelligent". Then when that claim is shown to be problematic, God's transcendence is invoked to save the day in a way that basically works out as "did we say 'intelligent'? well we didn't mean the sort of 'intelligence' any human is familiar with, God has his own special sort of 'intelligence' which is completely different to anything you know as 'intelligence', so you could really say that God isn't 'intelligent'." And so transcendence is deployed to undo the problems that the positive knowledge claims about God have, which raises the issue of it was unreasonable, misleading, and deceptive, to make those positive knowledge claims in the first place.

A transcendent creator of the universe need not have the same sort of intelligence as that found in humans. To assume that the divine must share a similar intelligence is absurd to the extreme. Transcendence is not "deployed to undo" a problem. Transcendence is built into the very concept of a divine being that created the material world. You're being very silly.

[Starlight]

This is a really goofy strawman. I've never heard of any serious Christian apologist use this sort of argument. As someone who claims to once have been a well informed apologist, you should know better.

You haven't seen it therefore I haven't seen it...? You're ridiculous.

To assume that the divine must share a similar intelligence is absurd to the extreme.

Tell that to the people who think God created man in his own image.

[Adrift]

You haven't seen it therefore I haven't seen it...? You're ridiculous.

Show me where you've seen that sort of argument from an informed apologist. You can't, because you've never seen it.

Tell that to the people who think God created man in his own image.

What? That doesn't even make any sense, and you know it. Just...stop. Seriously. You're embarrassing yourself.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

Hello, Boxing Pythagoras. I'm sorry for this random interjection. I was reading through the thread and I thought I'd chime in here. I don't think it's necessarily the case that Dr. Craig has in mind Aristotelian causation when he formulates premise 1 of the KCA.

Yep. Farther along in the thread, we came to the agreement that Dr. Craig's more recent work explicitly notes that the causation of the KCA need not be Aristotelian.

[robrecht]

Poor phrasing on my part, I mean that you said God could... not-be-the-first-cause, not that God couldn't be the first cause.

...

Can you remind me where I said, 'God could ... not-be-the-first-cause'? I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Do you mean to say something like God chose to create the world and need not have done so. I do believe that, but don't recall saying that here. Or do you mean something else?

[element771]

I am fine with a claim of transcendence and incomprehensibility - I don't mind people claiming that God is incomprehensible any more than I mind the idea that the first cause might turn out to be mathematically and quantumy and pretty much incomprehensible. But if the claim is to be made that God is incomprehensible and beyond knowledge then that always needs to be clearly stated when positive knowledge claims about God are being made, and needs to not be simply played as a trump-card during apologetics when the point is made that the knowledge claims are silly ones.

Example:
Theist: "God is all-benevolent"
Atheist: "So how come there's natural disasters in the world that cause great suffering, that lead to benevolent humans giving aid to the injured, but where your omni-benevolent God gives no aid?"
Theist: "Um... God is incomprehensible and transcendent...? And, yeah, so he's like all-benevolent but, you just can't realize his true benevolence for what it is. You're buying this, right?"
Atheist: "Er, so why don't you just use words correctly in the first place and say something like "God's kinda benevolent, but kinda not, because he's beyond our understanding of words like 'benevolence'"? Or say "we can't really ascribe any morality or moral values to God because he's beyond us"?"
Theist: "And abandon all my favorite theological terminology in favor of correct and non-misleading word usage? Never!"

1. That is a ridiculous argument.
2. That is not what I am saying and I think you are missing my point.

Just because our experience of his creation leads us to believe that simple must preceded complex, doesn't mean squat when defining God.

In this case you're doing a similar thing with the word "intelligence". First the claim is put forward that God is "intelligent". Then when that claim is shown to be problematic, God's transcendence is invoked to save the day in a way that basically works out as "did we say 'intelligent'? well we didn't mean the sort of 'intelligence' any human is familiar with, God has his own special sort of 'intelligence' which is completely different to anything you know as 'intelligence', so you could really say that God isn't 'intelligent'." And so transcendence is deployed to undo the problems that the positive knowledge claims about God have, which raises the issue of it was unreasonable, misleading, and deceptive, to make those positive knowledge claims in the first place.

No I am not. Can you show me where I put forward the claim that God is "intelligent"? I never used the word intelligence.

It gets a bit frustrating to deal with because the positive knowledge claims are whisked away by deceptive apologists under the cover of "transcendence" and yet the positive knowledge claims are regularly and repeatedly made by religious believers. It gets to the point where God is attributed with all sorts of things, but as soon as any of that is critically examined it is all sucked away into a vortex of "transcendence" that is conveniently out of sight of critical or rational examination. Again, I don't mind a claim like "our universe was intentionally created by a powerful conscious entity whom we label 'God' who is beyond our understanding" but when theologians start adding dozens if not hundreds of further positive knowledge claims about this entity and then apologists subtract any they feel like in an ad hoc way under the cover of transcendence it irks me. [/rant]

I am not using transcendence in this way. I am simply saying that we cannot use our knowledge of this universe and apply it to God. God could be simple...God could be complex. To say that 'the 'first cause' of everything cannot itself be a complex entity of any kind" is not a valid assumption. It is a categorical error. It is applying what we know about the universe to the creator of said universe.

A second, entirely different problem with your transcendent non-material non-complex intelligence claim, is that you are claiming the existence of something of a type that has never been observed and cannot even be described theoretically by our general theoretical A.I. models of intelligence. So in that sense it adds a huge amount of epistemic improbability to the 'God hypothesis'... for God to exist it would have to be true that there exists this as-yet-unknown and completely-implausible-sounding type of 'intelligence' that was not merely non-material (which I personally don't have much of a problem with, because I can imagine it being material in some other universe or being somewhat abstracted like computer-code for an A.I., but B.P. seems to strongly dislike any kind of non-material hypotheses) but also non-complex in the sense of not being an arbitrary combination of multiple parts (which I do personally have a huge problem with because everything I ever understood about intelligence whether learned in computer science or philosophy or by looking at animals in the world, tells me that such a thing is in pretty fundamental opposition to everything we've ever learned about what intelligence is or can be). Anyone would thus have to assign for themselves a lower probability to the God's-existence hypothesis than to the hypothesis of the possibility of that weird-and-as-yet-undiscovered type of intelligence, if the former requires the latter.

Again, you are applying what we know to a metaphysical being. You are making the assumption that God MUST be able to be described in terms that science can investigate.

I will use an analogy. Let's pretend that I designed a universe on a computer that would continue existing on its own in said computer. I programmed into the code an algorithm that would inevitable lead to self aware, religious organisms. I am their "god" and they came to worship me. These organisms and their world consisted of only 2 dimensional, symmetric geometrical shapes with angles of 90, 45, and 0 degrees.

Would they be correct in assuming that I too am composed of 2 dimensional, symmetric geometrical shapes with angles of 90, 45, and 0 degrees?

Would they even be able to comprehend the existence of a 3rd dimension?

I will simplify my question for further discussion as you seem to be missing the point of my argument....

Why do you assume that a creator must follow the same laws and/or concepts as his/her creation?

[element771]

Tell that to the people who think God created man in his own image.

There is nothing contradictory here. Just because God created man in his own image, it does not follow that we have all properties of God. A writer often creates characters in a story in either their own image or the image of others. It doesn't follow that the characters in the story are identical those that inspired them.

[mattdamore]

Yep. Farther along in the thread, we came to the agreement that Dr. Craig's more recent work explicitly notes that the causation of the KCA need not be Aristotelian.

I should have read ahead. Thank you.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

I should have read ahead. Thank you.

No worries! There's a lot of thread, here. I don't mind a simple summary, now and again.

[shunyadragon]

How many philosophical works are you aware of that are fiction? Dawkins' God Delusion is most definitely non-fiction.

My definition given stands. I worked in a library and philosophy and theology are not classified as either fiction nor non-fiction. That is unless you are atheist, and Theology would be fiction.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

My definition given stands. I worked in a library and philosophy and theology are not classified as either fiction nor non-fiction. That is unless you are atheist, and Theology would be fiction.

What library did you work in that philosophy was not classified as either fiction or non-fiction?

[mattdamore]

I also used to work in a public library. "Fiction" included literature: science fiction, classic, modern, romance, kids, mythology, and such. "Non-fiction" included everything else: maps, even new age, philosophy, religion, self-help, psychology, gardening, history, politics, home & garden, etc. I'm not sure if libraries are organized differently so I can't universalize it. But that is how our library was structured.

[mattdamore]

No worries! There's a lot of thread, here. I don't mind a simple summary, now and again.

I appreciate it. There are many intelligent people on these threads and so far I'm very impressed. Thanks for understanding.