fruitful faith » philosophy

first

Dale — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:16:38 +0000

A) “Who or what made God?”

B) “The question assumes that God is the sort of being whose existence is contingent on something else.”

A) “Why couldn’t God be like that?”

B) “Well, one of the most basic ideas about God is that God is the First Cause.”

A) “…but what would have caused this ‘First Cause’…?”

B) “I said First, which means . . . → Read More: first

nothing and something

Dale — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:34:18 +0000

A) “God is the creator of everything there is.”

B) “Oh yeah, well who created God, then?”

A) “That’s a nonsense question.”

B) “Why? Who says so?”

A) “Well, God would be the sort of thing that isn’t created.”

B) “Well, if God can be self-existent, then why can’t we just have made that claim for the universe?”

A) “Well, first of all the universe appears to have a beginning.”

B) “Well, why couldn’t God have had a beginning?”

A) “Well, reason points to something that has no beginning, and was not created, but is ‘just there’ so to speak.”

B) “But why can’t this be true of the universe?”

A) “Well, how would we know this to be the case? It looks like it had a beginning, and how could we know that it caused itself?”

B) “Well, how would we know that God created the universe then? We didn’t see that either.”

A) “God is the reason why there is something rather than nothing.”

B) “No, we now know that God is no longer a viable answer to that question…”

A) “Really!? How and when did we find this out?”

B) “Well, we now know that universes can create themselves through ‘spontaneous creation’, due to the law of gravity.”

A) “Wait, so you’re saying that the reason that there is something rather than nothing is because the law of gravity forces universe to self-create themselves?”

B) “Yes, no need at all to drag in theological speculations anymore. It’s totally a scientific question.”

A) “So, the thing that is the cause of everything is natural law?”

B) “Yep.”

A) “But how can any laws exist, let alone cause anything, if nothing exists yet?”

B) “That’s a nonsense question.”

causal chain

Dale — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:08:56 +0000

Think of causality as a chain. (Leaving aside Aristotle’s other varieties of causation [formal, efficient and final] we’ll just focus on material causation alone…)

Much of the chain we can see with our eyes…
Quite a bit more of the chain has been brought into view with modern technology and scientific methodology…
The rest of the chain (actually, even some/most of it seen with technology/science) we can only see with our intellect/imagination, using things like reason, logic, philosophy, etc.

As our technology and methods get better and stronger, we can be sure that more and more of the chain will come into view, so to speak… But now, as always, we cannot know how far down the causal chain we are looking. What we may think of as 95% down the chain may be only .0001%. (Or the chain may be infinite, if you believe that infinity is not just a mathematical concept, but has a real example – the physical [multi/uni]verse).

Enter Hawking and Mlodinow’s new book, ‘The Grand Design’ – or I should say, enter the internet flurry of talk over the new book (Ken has nicely collected the relevant links), as most people (myself included) have not read the book yet. I have only seen the claim that physics has answered the question of why there is something rather than nothing, as well as the idea that God wasn’t ‘needed’ for the Big Bang, etc.

What this is claiming is not only that we’ve seen the final link in the causal chain – we know there are no other links.

(note: what follows is not pretending to be interaction with the new book, but rather reflecting on the issues raised by it.)

I can imagine the atheist response, “Well, you think God is the final Link in the chain, so you are also claiming ‘there are no other links’.”

At one level, I don’t disagree. Indeed, what the atheist must (or at least tends to) claim for Nature, the theist claims for God. Both think they have identified the Thing beyond which no other ‘T[t]hings” lie. Based on the admittedly tiny quote I’ve seen from a NZ Herald story, Hawking seems to think that the law of gravity is the ‘Thing’ that is just simply there? I’d be interested to see if he deals to the obvious question that this begs – namely the question of the origin or cause of the Law of Gravity.

Also related to the discussion seems to be Quantum Indeterminacy. I’ve never ever understood how this could even begin to contribute to the question of why something rather than nothing. Claims that matter is being spontaneously created at the quantum level go way beyond anything we can actually observe. This is where language needs to be precise. Rather than saying that matter flicks back and forth in/out of existence, we ought to say that it flicks in/out of observability – given our current technology and methodology.

And even if we were certain (which we cannot ever be) that we were looking at the final link in the quantum causal chain, how do you ever run an experiment to test for divine action? Most conceptions of God as Creator (well at least non-Deistic ones) hold that God is not just the Creator in terms of ex nihilo, but also in the sense of creatio continua; faithful, sustaining, moment-by-moment, on-going creative action. If we believe, as we do, that the Creator is to be credited (ultimately) for the lengthening of a single blade of grass, then we also believe that Quantum behaviour, however known/unknown, is also dependent (ultimately) on divine creative action.

But at another level, I do disagree. For God should not be thought of as just another link in a chain, let alone a chain of physical causation. God should be thought of as the Anchor at the end of the chain – which is not the chain itself, but nonetheless has a permanent, fundamental and foundational relationship to the chain.

All analogies eventually break down, so I’m under no illusion that this one has great lasting power. But nonetheless, imagine a person happening upon the end of a long chain that goes around a corner or out of sight. The chain is moving. It seems to me that the atheist claim is that nothing is moving the chain – it moves all by itself.

child questions

Dale — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:38:01 +0000

I’m looking forward to the profundity of the questions Thomas will ask as he and his mind develop and grow. Children often surprise us.

Having said that, their questions remind us of what it was like to not have thought further about a question. Take a question like ‘Who made God?’ This is one of the questions dealt with in the new book, ‘Who Made God? And Other Tricky Questions‘, by missiologist, linguist, and former Carey Baptist principal Brian Smith.

Because kids¹ need to be shown how to identify what is assumed in a question (and an answer to it), any semantic issues involved, and learn to (if necessary) reformulate or rephrase it, think past initial, incomplete answers and get to subsequent less incomplete answers.

and some popular atheists – I cannot resist the urge to add…

easy hard

Dale — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:56:57 +0000

quick reflections:

It’s easy to paint Islam as a) inherently evil/violent or b) docile/dormant and harmless – it’s hard to patiently assess what Islam is actually like.
It’s easy to tell a woman considering abortion a) that she’s a murderer or b) that whatever choice she makes is the right choice – it’s hard to journey patiently, lovingly, understandingly, etc-ingly, with not only the her, but the father, her family, her friends, her community in and through difficult and complex times.
(repeat with all kinds of issues…)

phantom parabolas

Dale — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:48:18 +0000

Saw this morning on TV1 Breakfast – not much (anything? maybe this??) about it on the net yet…

But according to TVNZ, “maths teacher Philip Lloyd, an Auckland man who has made a maths-changing discovery to do with parabolas.” (though the date of the above forum post is 2003, and the name is TJ Evert!!?? hmmm…)

Anyway, the discovery is cool – whether by TJ Evert in 2003 or by Philipo Lloyd more recently. Apparently (if I’m wording this right – it’s been a while since algebra class!) equations with an ‘imaginary’ solutions for ‘x’ ¹ do not intersect the x axis.

The news is that a ‘phantom parabola’ can be plotted, which does intersect an imaginary x-’plane’ (we always had to imagine the x & y axis’ did we not?).

The ‘ooh that’s a cool parallel with spirituality’ thought that I initially had may well be not much more than a play on the word ‘imaginary’, but hey… Like the Flatland analogy (used by C.S. Lewis [unknowingly? i cannot remember] and Rob Bell), this would be another case of adding another dimension. After all, we imagine real things all the time, don’t we?

So there it is. I’ve sent TVNZ an email with the link above. Will see if it’s relevant

[Dale refuses the philosophical tangent - no pun intended]

science and theology

Dale — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:03:51 +0000

At a science/faith conference last year (sponsored by TANSA and hosted by Northcote Baptist Church), NZ physicist¹ and Christian Jeff Tallon comparatively defines physics and faith as follows:

Physics: understanding through enquiry the world about us (which we transcend) using the language of mathematics; it involves theory (concepts & equations) and application.
Faith: understanding through enquiry the world about us (which transcends us) using the language of worship; in involves theory (revelation & theology) and application.

I recently had a similar thought (still under formulation) about science and theology:

Science: a systematic account of the experience of the natural world, expressed in the form of hypothesis and theory; its sources are reason, experimental data, basic assumptions and imagination.
Theology: a systematic account of the experience of the divine plan, expressed in the form of confession and creed; its sources are reason, experiential data, basic beliefs and scripture.

Member of the Royal Society of NZ, and recipient of the prestigious Rutherford Medal, and described here as ‘a benchmark for what world-class science is’

meaning

Dale — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:35:31 +0000

I’m happy to be accused of ‘middle-ism’¹, but with regard to the question of inherent meaning in/to any things or events², it seems that meaningfulness is between the extreme on one hand of seeing too little – or no – meaning (nihilism)³, and the extreme on the other of seeing too much meaning (superstition)⁴.

The spectrum seems an honest one.

Nihilism is as far as you can go in the direction of denying any/all kinds of meaning, purpose or value. Superstition is as far as you can go in the direction of affirming any/all kinds of meaning, purpose or value. Judaeo-Christian monotheism opposes both.

In opposition to nihilism, monotheism says that there is inherent meaning, purpose and value to things/events⁵. Life is seen to have at least some kind of purpose, meaning and value – even if non-omniscient humans cannot omnisciently know the content of them⁶. Life (from amoeba to anthropos) is seen as the result of a purpose, desire/will, intent – and not a meaningless accident with no purpose.

In opposition to superstition, monotheism resists falsely attributed meaning to things like cats walking under ladders, mirrors breaking, crystals, idols, necklaces (yes, even cross-shaped ones). It is not that ladders, necklaces, cats, crystals and mirrors have no meaning or value, but that meaning/value is falsely attributed to them. Ladders evidence human tool-making, and necklaces their art; cats and crystals show the creativity of the Creator (and the natural processes employed), and broken mirrors point to anything from carelessness to human art/illustration⁷.

There are other points on the spectrum on both sides of monotheism that (in both directions) gradually approach nihilism and superstition. Something like this gradient seems accurate: nihilism (atheism), pantheism, panentheism, deism, monotheism, henotheism, polytheism, animism, voodoo/spiritism.

Pantheism (I like to say) is characterised by a rejection of all particular beliefs, whilst affirming the general notion of some kind of universal ‘energy’ that can be appreciated, sensed, or ‘felt’ etc. Even ‘prayed to’; there are degrees within pantheism, too⁸. Pantheism⁹ is very tolerable and acceptable as it allows people to identify as ‘spiritual’, without having to bother with ‘doctrine’. It prefers general over the particular.

Polytheism, however, has a myriad of gods whose action is attributed to all manner of things/events. The sun god brings out the sun, the corn king provides corn, etc. ad infinitum.

To the nihilst/atheist, all other positions (including monotheism) are superstition. To the polytheist, monotheism is a kind of nihilism/atheism. The early Christians, for example, were called atheists – for they were ‘atheists’ about the Roman idol gods¹⁰.

Painting two extremes and arguing that the middle is best or most correct
In a sense, things are events??
from Latin nihil – ‘nothing’
from Latin superstitio – ‘over-standing’
Interestingly, however, Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, thought that – at some level of experience – ‘everything is meaningless’.
Stop and ask, however: Isn’t our utter inability to know everything one of the first things we can truly know? And doesn’t this overturn full-on agnosticism?
I shattered a mirror in a camp talk making the point about how sin shatters human nature which like a mirror reflects God into the world.
I’ve heard people talk of putting thoughts ‘out into the universe’ which will return, etc.
Atheism and pantheism are mere millimetres apart.
Ah, but ‘some of us just go one God further’ is the Dawkinsesque line. But as we’ve seen, the spectrum is not like that – killing off all meaning is a bit harder than killing off extreme superstition.

dumb witch

Dale — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:29:30 +0000

“I spoke just now about the Latinity of Latin. It is more evident to us than it can have been to the Romans. The Englishness of English is audible only to those who know some other language as well. In the same way and for the same reason, only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see… the astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you have ever thought this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women. She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt. Meet her and know her. If we are immortal, and if she is doomed (as the scientists tell us) to run down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this hoyden, this incorrigible fairy, this dumb witch. But the theologians tells [sic] us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The “vanity” to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cured, but cured in character: not tamed (Heaven forbid) nor sterilised. We shall still be able to recognise our old enemy, friend, playfellow and foster-mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting.” – C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p. 71.

explanatory harmony

Dale — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:12:50 +0000

(I believe this analogy – my version of it below – belongs to Polkinghorne, but I’m not sure)

explain the boiling kettle!

Explanation A: Well, the heat from the element is transferred to the metal of the kettle, which transfers to the water, which changes the chemical state of the water, which we call boiling, at which liquid gives rise to vapor. The bubbling, by the way, is utterly random!

Explanation B: I wanted a cup of tea.

Both explanations are perfectly true, and in absolute harmony with one another. In other words, robust scientific descriptions do not cancel out teleological or intention-based ones.