The absolute absurdity of God

[Angrboda]

How familiar are you with the various Buddhist canons?

Is it an evidence-based or a philosophy-based worldview? The teachings about origins and endings (two very important things in a worldview) are hard to square with what we know about reality. Anyway, there isn't really much evidence to support or to refute so I don't think there is much of a parallel here with the Christianity/evidence/rejection point I was making.

The Buddhist canons contain arguments based on the phenomenology of human experience relating to the essential nature of that reality.  This is a fundamental claim of Buddhism and if you are not familiar with it and basing your rejection on sound counter-argument, instead of what appears to be the case, that you are rejecting Buddhism based on a superficial and shallow understanding of it, then your complaint about people not conducting a thorough examination of the case of Christianity is nothing but rank hypocrisy, and your supposed conclusions about the comparative strengths of the evidence for both which you gave in another thread are nothing more than special pleading based upon an ignorant and dishonest misrepresentation of the fairness and diligence which you have failed to apply to the case for other religions.  I don't fault you for being ignorant of Buddhism.  But I do fault you for your hypocrisy and the essential sophistry of attempting to compare a nuanced view of Christianity and an ignorant and clumsy view of other religions, and pretending that you've made a fair comparison.  The fact that you are not even aware of what the evidence for Buddhism would consist of, speaks volumes about the competence with which you've conducted your investigation and subsequent dismissal.

You're not making sense here.  You seem to be suggesting that an effect must have the same properties as its cause, in which case, I must ask why the universe is not also immaterial?  I don't understand what you're getting at here.  The question is what can we know about what existed when the universe did not exist.  You're claiming we can know that the entity which existed was possessed of a mind, presumably like ours (Imago Dei).  Beyond that, I can't make sense of your objection here. 


The question was why is the cause necessarily a personal one, possessed of mind.  An entity with libertarian free will could precede creation.  That alone doesn't show that the entity which existed in the absence of creation was such an entity.  As pointed out, a non-sentient entity satisfies the priors just as satisfactorily.  

I said that because of (6) that without an intention, something either causes or does not cause the universe. Otherwise, there is no way a cause capable of creating the universe can delay its ability to cause the universe. So, if there is no capacity to decide to create, the effect would be co-eternal with any cause. But we have the hurdles of the universe being infinite in the past. To say it another way, we have a timeless cause and and non-timeless effect that are co-eternal. 

Your last sentence is an equivocation.  You're using co-eternal in two different senses simultaneously.  God is eternal in the sense of being timeless.  The universe is eternal in the sense of being a potential infinite.  This is the same equivocation which Ghazali and Craig made, and which was previously pointed out to you.  But the more substantial problem is that what happens within time does not constrain what happened before time existed.  There is no "delay" occurring in a timeless state as the concept of delay does not apply to a timeless state.  For there to be a delay, time has to exist, otherwise the concept is incoherent.  You're continuing to fail to make the distinction between God's activity in time, and God's activity in its absence.  There is no delay in a timeless state, so your argument for the personal nature is fundamentally incoherent.  We might be able to reason backward from the effect to the cause, but that's not what you've done.  You have assumed that things which apply to God when the universe is in existence necessarily apply to God when the universe did not exist, and that is simply not the case.

Who said anything about God and creation being separable.  My whole point was that they might be inseparable.  That God and the creative act need not be separable.  You are not only arguing the converse, but that it is necessarily so.  Where are you getting this from?


I'm not making the affirmative case.  You are.  I only need to establish the possibility to undermine your argument.  I have no need for reasons for thinking it is true, nor am I 'avoiding' anything by pointing that out.


Your question has to do with meaning and knowledge.  How does it work without a mind?  How does it work with a mind?  You don't have an explanation for the latter; why do I need one for the former?  Ultimately the question relates not to how knowledge and meaning works, I freely admit I don't know.  But that's not necessary to my conclusion.  All that is required is some non-sentient power or process that can form appropriate relationships between information and logically consistent and appropriate acts.  You don't know what is under the hood with respect to God, and you seem to be begging the question by assuming that the activity of whatever cause existed required comprehension in the same manner as we possess comprehension.  It doesn't.

Let me illustrate with regard to the example of John Searle's classic Chinese Room argument.  In that gedanken, Searle postulated that one could create a room containing a set of rules for responding to Chinese language queries, and an automaton necessary to carry out those rules.  His point was that there is no actual understanding in such a room in the sense that we understand things.  However, from the point of view of someone outside the room, there's no way to tell whether what is inside the room is an automaton, mindlessly carrying out a process, or an actual person with a mind that comprehends Chinese as a native speaker does.  Essentially, we only know God by his effects.  If an automaton can have the same effects as a sentient entity, then you have failed to show that the entity in question necessarily is sentient.  To do that would either be to show that no such automaton or other non-sentient entity could accomplish the same effects, or that sentience is a requirement for understanding, neither of which I think is within the realm of possibility here.  The assumption of natural theology is that you can know God through his effects, specifically in the natural world.  If you cannot show that those effects require sentience, then you cannot establish that the first cause was necessarily personal.

Note that I am not suggesting that the cause was an automaton in the sense of being a material process or having any specific mechanism of operation.  If you can appeal to mystery and magic, so can I.  A relevant example is the Turing Oracle.  We have no idea how such an oracle would work, but it is not a logical contradiction to propose such an oracle.  The idea itself is not incoherent.

An additional possibility that I'll raise as long as I'm at it is that the initial cause was a non-sentient entity possessed of the necessary powers that simply creates the effects we are trying to explain in the appropriate time and order for no reason whatsoever.  While such an entity may seem improbable, it's not necessarily any more improbable than the God you postulate, nor is it necessary that I establish that it is -- again, I'm not making the affirmative case; it only need be possible, not necessarily actual.

I will grant that it is broadly logically possible that the cause of the universe isn't personal (defined in a weak sense as intentional/purposeful). But I think you must then say the universe is co-eternal with its cause. The cost of this is that you need to expand your metaphysics to include an infinite series of events in the past. Because this and other similar arguments are probabilistic, I would say that "personal" does not come with such a cost and is therefore the more reasonable conclusion. 

First of all, your objection would only be relevant if you were making an inductive argument, and not a deductive one.  The cosmological argument and other first cause arguments can take both deductive and inductive forms.  However I'm not addressing the cosmological argument, but rather an inference based upon the conclusion that a necessary first cause exists, and that this first cause is necessarily personal.  That is a separate argument from the first cause argument, and must stand or fall on its own merits.  Now I contend that you actually are making a deductive argument, in spite of your last complaint, but let's examine the inductive argument first, just to be thorough.  You claim that a personal first cause is the most plausible conclusion.  This is either an implicit appeal to an argument to the most likely hypothesis, or it is mere subjective opinion.  If it's just opinion, it can be readily dismissed.  If on the other hand it is an argument to the most likely hypothesis, then such an argument requires at least an estimate of the probability of all relevant alternatives.  You cannot construct such a set of possibilities, so no such argument can be made.  I don't even fathom how one would estimate the probability of a metaphysical conjecture, if the idea is even coherent.  So you are necessarily making a deductive argument about what must have been the case, so speculations such as you have offered here are irrelevant.  And I will point out you are still confusing the two senses of eternal, and the two conditions under which God was operating.  A timeless state does not imply an infinite series of events in the past because a timeless state has no past.  No infinite series of events is either required nor postulated, so I'm going to be charitable and simply attribute your claim of such to your ongoing confusion regarding the matter.  Given that your appraisal of the "personal" conclusion is based upon a serious misunderstanding of the relevant facts, it obviously holds no water.

Let me ask you this: how do you know that God has purposes?  You don't.  You're either pulling it from an interpretation of special revelation, or out of thin air.  These are natural theology arguments.  What relation is there between your question about purpose and the general question at issue?  Can you demonstrate that any supposed first cause is necessarily personal?  I don't think you can.  You initially appealed to Ghazali's argument, which was shown to be flawed.  You've yet to replace it with anything substantial other than a bunch of talk about the finite and tensed nature of the universe, which doesn't seem to relate to any necessity about the nature of the first cause that I can see.  It seems nothing more than a non sequitur.

From this argument, you only get that the cause has intentions (as I try to explain above). It is reasoned that intentions are something only ever ascribed to a person. 

Whether intentions are ascribed to persons is not the relevant question, but rather whether intentions can be ascribed to something other than a person.  Explicitly, my response was a reply to a misreading of your question, but even then, I did not speak of intentions, so you are putting words in my mouth.  Beyond that, the question of whether intentions can only be ascribed to a person depends upon what specifically is meant by the term as to what it means to have an intention.  This is a currently poorly understood question in both the sciences and philosophy, and at best all we can do is refer to supposed paradigm cases of it, and attempt to describe the relevant features of such cases.  That is all that you are essentially doing here, pointing out that we have what we consider examples of it in persons.  That, besides being inadequate to your needs in showing that only persons are capable of such, is essentially begging the question as you are defining intentions as that thing which persons do, and then from there arguing that intention is something that people do.  You need an operant definition of intention, and a justification for such, before you can even begin.  You have neither, so your complaint is empty.

It needn't do so.  All that is required is a process or cause that is indistinguishable from an entity possessing a mind. Arguing that this entity or cause must work in the same way that we or God works is basically special pleading; placing a requirement on the answer that has no reason for being there.  How we got on the subject of libertarian free will is a mystery to me.  It seems to bear no relation to what you are trying to prove.  You can't as yet demonstrate that a first cause necessarily reasoned as we do.  I'm reasonably certain you're simply pushing a successful argument further out of your reach by claiming that these natural theology arguments establish that the cause had libertarian free will.  I'll entertain some contemplation on the matter simply because I find it amusing.  It's predicated that our minds have a will which operates in some as yet not fully determined manner.  Libertarian free will is a specific way of conceptualizing this will, but it's not the only one.  Physicalists postulate that as a consequence of materialism and determinism, that libertarian free will does not exist.  But it's not necessary to retain the requirement that the will be the effect of a material process.  One could equally as well postulate a will that was completely deterministic in its operation, completely independent of the brain.  A "robot soul," so to speak.  We don't know whether libertarian free will is the reality anymore than we know that the hard incompatibilist account is.  You can't determine which is the case with respect to human beings, how are you going to do so for a supposed first cause?

I see your point: I did push the argument further than it can support.

Thank you for the acknowledgement.  I also want to thank you for drawing my attention to an aspect of your argument that I had not noticed before.  The question of libertarian free will is not simply incidental to the argument that the first cause is necessarily personal and therefore God, but rather it is a core claim.  If the first cause possesses a mind which does not possess libertarian free will, then that first cause is not God, as neither compatibilist accounts of free will, nor hard incompatibilism are consistent with the God of Christianity or any other God worth examining.  If God does not possess libertarian free will, then he is essentially an automaton, and his acts and behaviors are nothing more than the workings out of cause and effect.  His acts have no moral significance, as they were not freely made, and he becomes nothing more than another form of nature.

So whether the first cause exhibits a libertarian free will or not is not simply a side question, but is a necessary component of your case that this first cause was God.  I won't hold you to your capitulation on the issue, of course, but I think it's a sign of the formidable task ahead of anyone who wishes to argue that the first cause was necessarily God.  I'm only going to sketch out my argument relating to that, as I've already gone on at considerable length, and hope you can get the gist of my objection from that account.

In a prior thread, you gave the following definition for libertarian free will:

Definition of Free Will: A personal explanation of some basic result R brought about intentionally be person P where this bringing about of R is a basic action A will cite the intention I of P that R occurred and the basic power B that P exercised to bring about R. P, I and B provide a personal explanation of R: agent P brought about R be exercising power B in order to realize intention I as an irreducible teleological goal. (Moreland, Blackwell's Companion to Natural Theology. p 298)

Of particular note here is that you are describing the will as nothing more than a brute power, without any mechanistic, deterministic account of its operation.  This is similar to the case of the Turing oracle in which it is described as simply a kind of power with the ability to accomplish certain things.  I contend, and the literature pretty much confirms, that no deterministic account of libertarian free will can be made.  If such a deterministic account did apply, then it would no longer be libertarian free will by definition; libertarian free will is necessarily indeterministic.  This presents a problem in attempting to demonstrate that the first cause possesses libertarian free will because deductive arguments must deterministically follow by inference from one statement to the next via the rules of logic and the relevant syllogistic forms.  But libertarian free will is indeterministic, so you can't construct such a determinative chain of logic leading to it or its operation.  Because libertarian free will is indeterministic, it will always present a gap in the logic of any argument leading to the conclusion that this or that entity possesses it.  This is a problem for libertarian free will in general, but it is especially fatal with respect to the argument that the first cause necessarily possesses libertarian free will.  As noted, without any way of deterministically inferring that the effects of God which these natural theology arguments depend upon imply a libertarian free will, then none of them can be used to prove the existence of any of the relevant gods.

Maybe you can see a way around this.  I can't see such at this time.  At minimum, it seems your prior definition is wholly inadequate for the practical task of reasoning toward a conclusion that anyone displays the necessary artifacts of a libertarian free will.  It thus seems rather useless for demonstrating the existence of libertarian free will at all.  It's like the Turing oracle in that regard, it is essentially a black box, possessed of only inputs and outputs, with no comprehensible explanation of its operation.  Fortunately, I don't hold to the existence of Turing oracles.  You do, however, hold to the existence of libertarian free will, as well as to the belief that the first cause can be demonstrably shown to have necessarily possessed it.

(Btw, if you have accurately quoted Moreland here, I think his definition is incomprehensible gibberish. I happen to have the book out from the library, so hopefully I can find time to examine his essay on the matter. If this is an example of what I'm going to find when I do, I'm not impressed with what some have described as excellent defenses of the natural theological arguments. I've gotten part way into Reppert's essay regarding the argument from reason and have been similarly unimpressed. But then, as noted, I haven't finished the essay, so I won't sell him short until I have done so.)