Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[Angrboda]

What practical observation allows you to tell the difference between a universe that is ordered due to purposive design of an intelligent agent and one that is ordered through the workings of brute, undesigned necessity and chance?  What allows you to make that metaphysical distinction?

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It simply will not do for someone to ask “Why is it necessary for effects to regularly follow causes?” and answer by saying, “Because they do so by necessity” unless of course that someone has a don’t know/don’t care attitude. I do not mean to disparage anyone for stopping their inquiry at this point. I only wish to point out the following. Deciding not to pursue the fundamentals of the human condition that run deeper than naturalist assumptions comes at great cost. One must forego the hope of reaching satisfactory answers those questions that matter most. People are left with doubting the veracity of rational though, accurate interpretation of sense data, personal identity, and the defensibility of value judgments. In short, one becomes a slave to blind impersonal forces in an absurd world, doubting of one’s own perceptions, and left bereft of purpose.

Jor, you are smart enough to know that each of these positions have a home in modern analytic philosophy. And as I recall, you have defended each: determinism, lack of privileged access, consciousness as an illusion, and most recently shucking the fundamental the fundamental laws of thought like the PNC.

I find your stances bleak.

That does not mean your stances are wrong, only that I think no inquiry into the role of intentionality will ever satisfy an eliminative materialist, which is the position you seem to hold. To me, that stance is self-refuting. When someone sees all subjective experiences, including rational reflection, personal identity, and as untrustworthy, he can only conclude that no answers can be derived. Personally, I think you know deep down that your stances are fatalistic and nihilistic.

But you have made a personal existential choice in that direction by taking naturalistic assumptions about causality and concept formation as the extreme limits of human knowledge.
At a minimum, I have tried to show that the Schoolmen tackled these same problems hundreds of years prior to Descartes’s radical skepticism discounting the carefully crafted distinctions and conceptual nuances of Scholastic thought. I find great value in that tradition and see clearly how many intractable paradoxes of modern philosophy become irrelevant. That does not mean I am right, only that I believe the Principle of Sufficient Reason applies.

So in a partial answer to your original question, I say the answer hinges on how best to think about necessity and chance.

Two notions cover chance: 1) the notion that any given event can happen completely without rhyme or reason or 2) the infeasibility of fully knowing the conditions on which outcomes depend making the outcome uncertain, i.e. indeterminate.

Some people, like Esquilax, hold the notion that the rules applying to all known physical objects need not apply to one particular object, the entire physical universe which is the biggest of them all. Perhaps. However, many assure me that at the most fundamental level of reality subatomic particles pop in and out of existence randomly without cause. If this is truly the case, then the logic of the Third Way applies. If it is possible that any given particle could cease to exist, then any object made of such particles would cease to exist if all the particles of which it is made ceased to exist all at once. If the object under consideration is the entire physical universe and if the physical universe is the sum total of all being, then...it would be possible at any given point in the history of the universe (whether extending eternally into the past or having a temporal start) to cease existing for no rhyme or reason. Since the physical universe continues to exist, a rational person can reasonably suppose that something sustains the physical universe, something whose existence is not subject to chance.

That leaves option 2, the existence of the physical universe depends on something necessary, but that whatever it is cannot be fully know. Except that's not true. We do know something about it: it must exist and it is absolutely requires to sustain existence every second of every day, regardless of how the whole ball of wax started in the first place.

Now as it relates to the Fifth Way either intentionality exists in nature or it does not. As stated earlier, I am not aware of any argument that an eliminative materialist would even consider. They have already ruled intentionality, including their own, as an illusion.

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Thank you for your response, Chad. If I have a reply, it will come later.