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(June 5, 2010 at 5:16 pm)Caecilian Wrote: I've numbered the points for easy reference.
1. Does something have to have explanatory power to be meaningful? I don't really see how that follows.
2. Yeah...If 'god' is uncertain, then anything supervening on a description that includes 'god' is also uncertain. We end up being uncertain about way too much. In some versions ('god is the universe') we end up being uncertain about everything. Not good. Unsure how the mystical vapour would help here- looks like a lost cause to me.
3. Well, it turned out to be a correct guess, anyway.
4. Representing other peoples views is always a tricky business. Especially when you strongly disagree with the views that you're representing.
Ad 1. If god has no explanatory power, than the allegedly divinely inspired bible has no explanatory power since it is the word of god. So it cannot explain anything to the reader that was intended by god. Any explanation about the reality we live in, that the reader reads from it, must be delusional. That includes perceived understanding of the teleological nature of reality.
Ad 2. Let's be clear, it seems a basket case to me too, Caecilian. But gods are made of rubber. You can bend 'm any way you like, any time. My statement is that with the illogical characteristics of the supernatural as a basic tool *anybody* can twist any inconsistencies with reality to fit in no time. In fact this has been done all over the planet for centuries. You find million year old fossils? No problem, god stuck 'm there as old as they are. You say that the universe has a bigger radius than 4000 lightyears? No problem, god made it look that way to us. You say there is genocide in the bible? No problem, it's all just metaphorical. Any way, any time, no problem at all.
Ad 3. As for now. Still it is inconsistent with "no explanatory power".
Ad 4. Yep, I can only agree. And by the noble art of dodging, bending, strecthing it's easy to create a moving target that is even less easy to nail down.
1. I agree completely with most of this. If 'god' has no explanatory power, then 'god' is epiphenomenal. Religion becomes completely pointless. No point in praying, since god can't do anything. And as for god creating the universe- well, thats obviously a non-starter. Still, I don't think it rules out teleology. It would mean that 'god' would have to be an emergent phenomenon- a sort of 'final cause' (in the Aristotelian sense) that doesn't in itself have any efficient causal powers. And then: how could something like that possibly count as 'god'?
2. Not much to add here. You're very good on the slipperiness of the theist position! Made me laugh.
3. See 1. And just to clarify: type-f theism seems to me to avoid the 'conflict with science' problem, but at the cost of either a) making god utterly powerless (and so not 'god') or b) incoherence (a god without explanatory value having causal powers).
4. Yes.
He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
Mikhail Bakunin
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything
Friedrich Nietzsche
