An Essay about Atheism in Latin

[Belacqua]

[FlatAssembler]

I don't think that theology has devolved over the centuries.

Theology as a whole perhaps hasn't. Apologetics obviously has.

While those of good theology have not.

So might an astrologist say that the premises of bad astrology have been refuted, but that the premises of good astrology haven't been. Having made more stuff up to evade falsification doesn't make you more credible, in fact, it makes you even less credible.

Galileo rejected the idea that the moon influences the tides despite huge amounts of empirical evidence, because he refused to accept the alchemical idea of "action at a distance."

That's not the same degree of wrongness as when Aquinas suggested that that with fire was a valid argument.

It has persuaded people in modern times -- including a guy I know who recently got his doctorate from the philosophy department of one of America's top-level universities.

Philosophers generally aren't the biggest experts in logic or physics these days, which is necessary to evaluate those statements.

Terms in metaphysics are often meant differently from physics, and you need training to know that.

How is that different from saying that the Bible has perhaps just been mistranslated? Look, maybe there is some language barrier going on here, but it's hard to deny that Lucretius got many more things right than Christian philosophers have.

Look, Belacqua, your responses here read like this:

Yes, the Earth is probably round. But the ships appearing to sink as they disappear over the horizon isn't a valid argument. But don't ask me why, I am not going to teach you the basics of plateogeology here. You need to study plateogeology to be able to refute it. Otherwise, you are just making yourself look arrogant and ill-informed.

[GrandizerII]

The problem with arguments such as Aquinas' Five Ways is that they aren't compelling arguments for God, given what we've settled on as scientifically true regarding the structure of this world and how it works. Maybe the arguments were very compelling in the past, but times have drastically changed since the days of Aquinas. We know a lot of things scientifically that Aquinas himself, for all his intelligence, could not have known.

Looking at the first three arguments for God from Aquinas, the premises seem reasonable, but the conclusion doesn't really follow from the premises unless we are defining God in a very minimalistic kind of way to the point that we could call a naturalistic first cause "God". In such a case, however, the arguments aren't pointing to the kind of being believed in by Aquinas and Catholics (and other Christians) in general.

When it comes to the last two arguments, there is much to doubt about some of the premises. The fourth argument relies on the necessity of the existence of the "maximum", something which has not been successfully established from what I've read. The last argument appears to be "out-of-date", given what we do know thanks to such sciences as evolutionary science.

[Belacqua]

Apologetics obviously has.

Maybe so. I don't know what apologetics -- separate from theology -- was like centuries ago, so I can't judge.

So might an astrologist say that the premises of bad astrology have been refuted, but that the premises of good astrology haven't been. Having made more stuff up to evade falsification doesn't make you more credible, in fact, it makes you even less credible.

If an astrologist made that claim, we'd have to ask him to make arguments, as see if we could refute them. 

Philosophers generally aren't the biggest experts in logic or physics these days, which is necessary to evaluate those statements.

Why should philosophers be experts in physics? Those are separate fields. I don't expect physicists to be expert in philosophy -- though if they say things about philosophy they should try to know what they're talking about.

As for logic, that's a field in philosophy. The experts on what logic is or does are philosophers. 

How is that different from saying that the Bible has perhaps just been mistranslated? Look, maybe there is some language barrier going on here, but 

It's entirely different. 

When Kant uses the word "intuition," he doesn't mean what we do in conversation. When Merleau-Ponty says "intentional," he doesn't mean what we do in conversation. In order to deal with difficult subjects philosophers have often had to use special vocabulary, and to understand them we have to learn what they mean. 

It's the same in science, right? When scientists talk about "theory," they don't mean "my best guess." 

To work out Feynman's critique of Spinoza and whether it was fair or not, we'd have to know what Spinoza meant be "attributes" and "substances," etc. These may or may not be the same as what Feynman was imagining when he read the words. If you know more specifically about Spinoza and why Einstein was wrong about him, I'd be glad to read your explanation. 

it's hard to deny that Lucretius got many more things right than Christian philosophers have.

Christian philosophers like Locke and Kant? Christian physicists like Newton? I imagine that Lucretius got some things right. If you'd like to specify one or two I might be able to talk about them. 

Look, Belacqua, your responses here read like this:

Yes, the Earth is probably round. But the ships appearing to sink as they disappear over the horizon isn't a valid argument. But don't ask me why, I am not going to teach you the basics of plateogeology here. You need to study plateogeology to be able to refute it. Otherwise, you are just making yourself look arrogant and ill-informed.

No doubt it sounds that way to you. 

So far you've taken a kind of scatter-shot approach, addressing so many different ideas in a single post that it's just wearisome. Frankly it comes across as a kind of Gish Gallop, in which you try to make half a dozen weak arguments add up to a strong one. I know that isn't intentional, but it makes it hard to respond. There are so many claims that it's hard to know where to begin. I try not to type out personal insults, but for the record you seem very arrogant and ill-informed to me too. 

Which specific theological claim would you like to focus on?

[Belacqua]

A note on Lucretius, by the way:

The goal for Epicureans like him was a state of mind called ataraxia. After realizing that the world was merely a combination of dead atoms, you would attain this state and become indifferent to the suffering of others and how the world works.

If this had really caught on, it would have nipped science in the bud by eliminating its two main motivations: the desire to improve life, and curiosity.

When the Christian philosophers of the Renaissance began to look at Lucretius' book again, they took from it a number of ideas, but wisely chose not to make ataraxia their goal. As Christians, they were taught not to be indifferent to other people's suffering. And since the Logos is the second person of the Trinity, and Logos is also the set of principles and laws through which nature operates, many Christians had long argued that to learn how the world works is to know God better.

---

The problem with arguments such as Aquinas' Five Ways[...]

Yeah, I don't find them persuasive either. 

That doesn't mean we should say false things about them, though. 

One thing that I think has been exaggerated is the extent to which they are meant to persuade. I don't think they were written as stand-alone succinct proofs, as if they were syllogisms. They were more like bullet points for theology students, and several of the ideas -- like what constitutes the "greatest" and why there would have to be such a thing -- need filling in with about a semester's worth of lectures.

[GrandizerII]

When the Christian philosophers of the Renaissance began to look at Lucretius' book again, they took from it a number of ideas, but wisely chose not to make ataraxia their goal.

Wisely? You make it sound like these Christian philosophers were equally impelled by their Christianity to accept the idea of ataraxia as they were impelled to reject it, and that after a significant period of deliberation struggles, they eventually arrived at the decision to reject it. I don't think it was much of an option.

That doesn't mean we should say false things about them, though.

What false things did I say about the arguments? I expressed a view of the arguments in general which is confirmed by the observations I've made and the collective knowledge of today's world, with parts of that knowledge adequately accessible to me. As for the arguments specifically, I was careful enough to read and understand the best I can what they're stating, so if I misrepresented any of the arguments, it was not intentional and I am open to correction. But just implying that I said false things about these arguments without elaboration isn't helpful.

One thing that I think has been exaggerated is the extent to which they are meant to persuade. I don't think they were written as stand-alone succinct proofs, as if they were syllogisms. They were more like bullet points for theology students, and several of the ideas -- like what constitutes the "greatest" and why there would have to be such a thing -- need filling in with about a semester's worth of lectures.

But we have the Internet to help us fill in the gap in knowledge pertaining to all sorts of topics and subjects, including Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics. It's not like one needs to necessarily enrol in some prestigious university to have access to whatever extra information I may be missing regarding Aquinas' Five Ways. And it's not like one has to be a top expert of a subject before they can understand the basics and fundamentals of the topic or before they can be qualified to critique the various topics debated within the subject. I personally have made use of various Internet resources to eventually have a good idea of what evolution entails, adequately understand what quantum mechanics is about and the popular interpretations of quantum mechanics, and finally learn how to do calculus. Most of this I never studied back in school.

So it comes off as rather "lawyerly-speak" when you word things the way you have here, and in so doing, have placed theology at such a high epistemic level that laypeople aren't able to attain easily and thereby are very likely not to be qualified to discuss/debate theology.

Furthermore, you could have said a similar thing about arguments for God which you do not take so seriously, such as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. But it doesn't mean that because understanding how to properly defend and support every component of the argument may require semesters (or even years) of studying apologetics along with access to highly technical papers hidden behind paywalls, one needs to go through the same series of milestones to understand what the argument is saying and what objections can be reasonably made against it.

Ultimately, it's all about really understanding what these arguments are saying, and often times this can be achieved by reading the right free-to-access articles on the Internet (which doesn't take semesters to accomplish).

[Belacqua]

[GrandizerII]

Apologies, I didn’t mean to say that you had said anything wrong about the Five Ways. (It should be clear to everybody that you are among the most careful posters here.) I meant to say “we” in the most inclusive way possible. And of course I had recently referred to Dawkins’ very poor explication. 

Oh ok, I should've kept in mind the wider context of your post and reinterpreted accordingly. My bad.

I honestly think that some people begin with the assumption that anything in theology will be so stupid and obvious that it takes no effort at all to knock it down. And that it’s so wrong that we are entitled to just type out and publish whatever occurs to us.

That's fair. Many of us do have this inclination, true. I certainly do based on my own prior experiences with the arguments in general. Nevertheless, I agree we should be careful in our analyses of any argument made by theologians and be humble in our addressing the argument. After all, lots of intellectual effort has been put into these arguments, backed by centuries of intellectual thinking on the relevant subjects, so the least we could do is think carefully about these arguments and be honest in our search for any flaws in the argument, if any. And if we can't find any obvious flaw, or think of a knockdown argument, then better to just admit we're unable to.

So yeah, it would be unfair to compare theology to astrology (at least the stuff I'm familiar with). That said (and I'll admit I say with very possibly with lots of ignorance), there does seem to be this one dominant theme in theology that generally constrains the range of thinking allowed in the field, and that is the dogmatic belief that "God exists". And I'm not sure I've ever heard a convincing counterargument to the contrary. Even in natural theology, where the aim is to get at the conclusion "God exists" rather than assume it, it would seem rather far-fetched to hear of a case in which an argument is made that rationally arrives at the conclusion "God does not exist" and is nevertheless accepted in theology. I'm sure there are atheist theologians out there, but I get the impression they're more in it for the intellectual exercise and aren't concerned about debunking arguments for God's existence. Again, this is the general (and honest) impression I get, and so not necessarily a statement of facts.

You’re right, of course, that a serious search on the Internet can teach us what we need to know. With the caveat, of course, that since any fool can make a web page what we find is likely as not to be wrong, and it’s a mistake to settle for whatever explanation jibes with our own initial thoughts.

Absolutely. I did not emphasize that well enough in prior post, but we're in agreement here. If I want to understand theology well, better to seek articles written by theologians that explain the arguments well than by atheists like Richard Dawkins. And better to consult multiple sources from different theologians.

As for the rest of what you said, look, you definitely have a better handle of these arguments than I do, and you have clearly devoted a lot of time to them, and are willing to be as honest and as fair as possible in your treatment of them, and yet nevertheless you don't find them convincing as well. I would say that's confirmation that perhaps they're not strong arguments after all.

Regarding that book, I believe you brought this up a couple times before. I'm in the process soon of searching this book up on Kindle and then purchasing it for reading. Might even post about it in your Book Reports thread.

[FlatAssembler]

In order to deal with difficult subjects philosophers have often had to use special vocabulary, and to understand them we have to learn what they mean.

Well, yes, but, sometimes, it's just not worth learning those things. What Flat-Earthers mean when they say "mirage" is different from what we mean when we say that, that doesn't mean it's worth learning those things. And, as far as I know, most philosophers today don't consider metaphysics to be a legitimate branch of philosophy, or consider only the part where it interferes with the philosophy of language to be legitimate.

Christian philosophers like Locke and Kant?

In what sense was Kant a "Christian philosopher"? As far as I know, he didn't write anything about religion other than claiming that the Ontological Argument had a hidden premise that existence was a logical predicate. By "Christian philosophers", I meant the Patristic and the Scholastic philosophers.

I imagine that Lucretius got some things right.

Well, he correctly criticized the Roman beliefs that, for instance, the lightnings were a sign of gods to be superstition. And the atomic theory is certainly a lot closer to the truth than the Aristotle's theory of matter is. Though it's not as amazingly accurate as the Boscovich'es version of atomic theory is. He also supposed the living creatures developed from less complicated ones to more complicated ones.

[GrandizerII]

Belaqua, I was able to locate that book by Feser on Kindle but there is no purchase option for it. There are two other books by the same author that I am able to purchase that seem relevant here: "Five Proofs of the Existence of God" and "Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide". I'll download the Aquinas one for now, and if I get enough value out of it will consider the other one.