Berkeley's argument for the existence of God

[robvalue]

Not to trawl back through yesterday's fun times, but I still just don't see how this argument is useful, meaningful, or enlightening about reality at all (let alone the existence of a god), especially considering how much more we know about reality nowadays.

FWIW its utility is in plotting out what we actually know about the real universe. It is asking, "If the material world exists, what evidence is there for that? Could it all be ideas?" It's always nice to question one's own assumptions, and that is a major part of a philosopher's work.

It's an investigation into the very foundations of knowledge. The answer to Berkeley's question is meaningful or enlightening no matter how you slice it.

As to "useful"... who knows? It is a search for knowledge. In a quest for knowledge it is often difficult to see what utility the knowledge you are looking for has. For instance, astrophysicists and cosmologists study the cosmic background radiation in an attempt to work out what happened after the big bang. How is that useful to know?

You can't say to an astrophysicist, "Show me how this is going to be useful information and THEN we will allow you to look for the answers." If that had happened, Galileo would have been prevented from proving that the earth revolved around the sun. After all, how useful is that bit of information to a 17th century European? We use that information for a lot of things now, but it would have been hard to argue back then how such information would have proved beneficial to the life of the average person.

The ideas discussed are interesting, and potentially useful, but he's only doing so as a smokescreen before throwing a "God" in at the end. If he cut that crap out it could become a worthy discussion, but it would have nothing to do with his desired conclusion.