Why not deism?

[Inqwizitor]

Full knowledge is an irrational concept, and an irrational requirement.  

It has to be understood that when we say naturalism provides a complete accounting of x y and z, we're making that statement to the best of our knowledge and/or ability.  Any comment that can be reduced to "but what about what you may not know?" is utterly worthless in the absence of some example to consider.

It's particularly worthless if god is supposed to be the example.  As if, in the "unknown" box....a person can know that it contains a "god".  Begging the question, in the process, of whether gods are in the unknown instead of known box in the first place.  

In the end, the idea that we don't know everything is a deepity, and doesn't advance an argument for god, or even the possibility of a god.  No more so than it would advance an argument for santa or the possibility of santa's existence.

It's not inserting a god, as in, something in some category of being, where there is gaps in our natural knowledge; but stating that natural knowledge itself requires some further explanation or reason for being. There is an old argument, that what knows, and what is known, cannot be the same thing. No matter how much we investigate nature, it is still metaphysically contingent. There are some axiomatic assumptions we must make about reality if we are to make sense of anything, and it's on that same plane that naturalism, as the particular instantiation of observable or measurable phenomena in space and time, is inherently incomplete. It's an existential limitation. @Grandizer suggests that all logically possible worlds could be that explanation; but I think that goes beyond naturalism.

[Jackalope]

What is it proving, exactly? What does "God exists" even mean, really (devoid of faith)? That seems like saying, "existence exists." If "God" is simply the absolute ontological ground of all logically possible existence. In that case, that might be the only thing we can really know.

"God exists" in this context means a maximally great being exists, one that is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, and necessarily so in all possible worlds. God is not simply the ground of all existence here.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/

Visit the link above and scroll down to the bit about Platinga and his MOA.

What makes those things greatest? If say, I value malevolence, I may come up with an entirely different set of characteristics. What are these criteria other than an expression of our own desires?

[Jackalope]

To answer the OP's question, at the risk of sounding flippant...

The god of deism gives not one ripe fuck as to my existence and I am merely repaying the courtesy.

[GrandizerII]

"God exists" in this context means a maximally great being exists, one that is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, and necessarily so in all possible worlds. God is not simply the ground of all existence here.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/

Visit the link above and scroll down to the bit about Platinga and his MOA.

What makes those things greatest?   If say, I value malevolence, I may come up with an entirely different set of characteristics.  What are these criteria other than an expression of our own desires?

Yeah, that's another fault with the argument. And in fact someone actually made a blog post (along with a video) about something along that lines:

http://counterapologist.blogspot.com/201...ument.html

So here’s the syllogism:

A being has maximal depravity in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly evil in W; and
A being has maximal evilness if it has maximal depravity in every possible world.
It is possible that there is a being that has maximal evilness. (Premise)
Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly evil being exists.
Therefore, (by axiom S5) it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly evil being exists.
Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly evil being exists.

[GrandizerII]

@Grandizer suggests that all logically possible worlds could be that explanation; but I think that goes beyond naturalism.

It's one alternative possible explanation, and I don't see how it must go beyond naturalism. It is possible for natural reality to be all there is and for its existence to be a logical/metaphysical necessity. You seem to be defining nature in a way that does not go beyond the observable subset of reality, but that doesn't necessarily make what's outside of this subset of reality spiritual or of a qualitatively different kind of reality.

The modal realist postulation should be seen as an extension of what we see, rather than a "beyond nature" kind of thing.

ETA: The point is you don't know whether nature is metaphysically contingent or not, and you shouldn't confidently make a statement like that.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not inserting a god, as in, something in some category of being, where there is gaps in our natural knowledge; but stating that natural knowledge itself requires some further explanation or reason for being.

Its not inserting a god, but inserting a god!

Honestly, lol......?

There is an old argument, that what knows, and what is known, cannot be the same thing. No matter how much we investigate nature, it is still metaphysically contingent. There are some axiomatic assumptions we must make about reality if we are to make sense of anything, and it's on that same plane that naturalism, as the particular instantiation of observable or measurable phenomena in space and time, is inherently incomplete. It's an existential limitation. @Grandizer suggests that all logically possible worlds could be that explanation; but I think that goes beyond naturalism.

If we have to make assumptions to make sense of anything, then you aren't discussing any problem specific to naturalism.  You keep insisting that naturlism is incomplete, but it hardly matters, unless the missing content of naturalism is a god.  


You'd be pretty disappointed if the missing content of naturalism was chi, lol.  

Stop with this "we don't know stuff" nonsense.  Demonstrate that you know anything.  Shit or get off the pot.  That's a reasonable request, right? I've long wondered why people have such trouble with the notion of nature as metaphysically ultimate. Especially the faithful. Everything we point to as a reason for gods super-duperness is, ultimately, some facet of the natural universe. You'd think that rubbing those two sticks together all these years would have started a fire by now, but no.

[Inqwizitor]

@Grandizer suggests that all logically possible worlds could be that explanation; but I think that goes beyond naturalism.

It's one alternative possible explanation, and I don't see how it must go beyond naturalism. It is possible for natural reality to be all there is and for its existence to be a logical/metaphysical necessity. You seem to be defining nature in a way that does not go beyond the observable subset of reality, but that doesn't necessarily make what's outside of this subset of reality spiritual or of a qualitatively different kind of reality.

The modal realist postulation should be seen as an extension of what we see, rather than a "beyond nature" kind of thing.

ETA: The point is you don't know whether nature is metaphysically contingent or not, and you shouldn't confidently make a statement like that.

What you seem to be defining as naturalism is what I've understood as monism: there is one kind of reality. Naturalism, as I understand it, is the belief that our space-time continuum — the physical phenomena and laws that we know in this world, as they are in location and sequence — are the extent of existence. If physics is the same in every logically possible world — that it's like physical copies of this universe with all logically possible outcomes in location and sequence — then I think we're equivocating logical and physical possibility. It is conceivable there are other worlds that have the same physics as ours, but a different space-time, like a set of mirrors of how things in our own world could have been. My understanding is that what constitutes nature in our world, the physical matter and laws, could logically be entirely different in other worlds. In that case, what is natural there is not natural here.

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Its not inserting a god, but inserting a god!

Honestly, lol......?

Not inserting a god into nature, no.

You'd be pretty disappointed if the missing content of naturalism was chi, lol.

Like taoism? I don't think deism makes a claim about what the missing content is — that would be gnosticism — but only that nature is missing an explanation if it's all there is (a brute fact). God is the word to describe the missing content because it connotes a cause of nature, rather than a cause within nature. It also leaves room for the idea of purpose, as in final cause, in the Aristotelian sense. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arist...#FinCauDef

Stop with this "we don't know stuff" nonsense.  Demonstrate that you know anything.  Shit or get off the pot.  That's a reasonable request, right?  I've long wondered why people have such trouble with the notion of nature as metaphysically ultimate.  Especially the faithful.  Everything we point to as a reason for gods super-duperness is, ultimately, some facet of the natural universe.  You'd think that rubbing those two sticks together all these years would have started a fire by now, but no.

It's not nonsense, it's honesty. How do we know anything? We have generally agreed it's by observation and reasoning. We can go around in circles about justification, but we can know whether something is without knowing what it is. Dark matter is a natural example of this within our universe: we can know there is something else there, but we don't know what, yet. Either that, or we have to question and rearrange basic understanding of our physical knowledge. Even that ability to adjust conceptions of nature demonstrates the metaphysical contingency of natural existence.

[The Grand Nudger]

What observation or reasoning leads you to a god, then?

[GrandizerII]

It's one alternative possible explanation, and I don't see how it must go beyond naturalism. It is possible for natural reality to be all there is and for its existence to be a logical/metaphysical necessity. You seem to be defining nature in a way that does not go beyond the observable subset of reality, but that doesn't necessarily make what's outside of this subset of reality spiritual or of a qualitatively different kind of reality.

The modal realist postulation should be seen as an extension of what we see, rather than a "beyond nature" kind of thing.

ETA: The point is you don't know whether nature is metaphysically contingent or not, and you shouldn't confidently make a statement like that.

What you seem to be defining as naturalism is what I've understood as monism: there is one kind of reality. Naturalism, as I understand it, is the belief that our space-time continuum — the physical phenomena and laws that we know in this world, as they are in location and sequence — are the extent of existence.

Whatever you wish to call it, it is not theism/deism of any sort.

If physics is the same in every logically possible world — that it's like physical copies of this universe with all logically possible outcomes in location and sequence — then I think we're equivocating logical and physical possibility. It is conceivable there are other worlds that have the same physics as ours, but a different space-time, like a set of mirrors of how things in our own world could have been. My understanding is that what constitutes nature in our world, the physical matter and laws, could logically be entirely different in other worlds. In that case, what is natural there is not natural here.

I do agree I should be more careful when I say "logically possible" because what I mean by "logically possible" is really more like "physically/metaphysically possible". Something that is conceivable does not necessarily mean it's physically/metaphysically possible.

Yes, I'm aware there's also a distinction between physical and metaphysical possibility, but my point is that according to the version of modal realism I'm talking about, whatever world that can be actualized in this reality is actualized. I'm not suggesting a David Lewis kind of modal realism, but more of a modernized Max Tegmark type (though I'm not sure about the whole Platonic mathematical structure bit). Either way, this is a good alternative to theism and actually, even better than theism if you wish to go beyond the PSR and argue that every "unactualized" world must have a sufficient reason for it not being actualized.

Or it may very well be, that this actual world we're in is the only world that could ever be actual, hence this is what we have. It may be that the only way for existence to actualize is to actualize as the "maximal world of some sort" (something similar to how Leibniz, if I remember correctly, argued this world is the best of all possible worlds). Or this world just somehow is (even if it's not satisfactory, we can't logically rule this out). So who knows at the end of the day? Using the power of imagination, you can come up with plenty of alternative explanations that doesn't require God. Theism/deism is, in fact, extraneous compared to some of these more naturalistic alternatives.

[Mister Agenda]

The alternative to existence is absolute nothingness (no energy, no matter, no space, no time). Absolute nothingness seems to be an incoherent concepts (how long could that state of affairs last w/o time, for instance). There's absolute simplicity for you: existence exists because it has to.