On the Divine

[squeakus]

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

As I noted last time, I need to give my views on the divine. This is different to belief in the divine, though that will be touched on here; but belief, faith, and for that matter knowledge are a subject to

Comments

[tomfranklin]

Let us deal with Ockham first, and I think you are abusing his argument, which is that the simplest argument that agrees with all the "facts" is the most likely to be correct. However, he is not saying that God is simpler than not God, but that an explanation of the world without God doesn't cover all the known "facts" (or at least the known "facts" then). Thus, it is / was simpler to explain things by evoking God. This is sometimes known as God of the Gaps; and inevitably this will be a retreating God as we understand more. For instance, it wasnt until Newton that we had an explanation of planetary motion that did not require God. The simplest ones had God, now they don't.

I also disagree with your reason for not accepting Paley's argument, and I would suggest that your response allows for God, but requires a better argument or analogy. And by the way I certainly dont agree that it is because we know about watches and that they have makers. I think that the problem with Paley is that he doesn't distinguish between static and changing systems. Something which has been made is typically not a living system (living in the sense that it has continuous changing behaviour not necessarily live as in animal or vegetable). So, geological or animal (including vegetable from now on) systems exhibit life-cycles during which they develop and change, and it is these processes which mean that they do not require a creator. An object which is outside processes must have been made by some process, either natural or man-made or God-made. Paley, therefore fails by not taking account of natural processes, and he was writing before Lyell and before there was much in the way of evolutionary thinking.

I would suggest that there is an additional problem with St Aslem's idea. Plato argued that the ideal is greater than the real, and this too would refute his argument.

I think that there is a problem wih where you part with theists by saying "I cannot sustain faith in God when my reason says there is no reason to have faith in God" reason and faith are simply not comensurate so to say you have no reason to have faith makes no sense. Faith is an action (or possibly a premise) not a conclusion and therefore not amenable to rationality. People will have faith in things that rationally they know to be false (astrology, superstition) and things where it is simply undecidable by rational means alone (God).

Your second argument for the creation of God is fairly similar to one that abounds in sociobiological circles (and is thus a Just-so story, but still has interesting things to say). Humans are evolved from apes, apes are very hierarchical and have a chief (I cant remember the correct term at them moment). Early humans almost certainly followed this social model, and it is common in society today with the chief being the president, prime-minister, monarch; or at lower levels the chief executive etc. At some point groups got to big to have a single chief that all could know personally on a day-to-day basis (there is a discussion of this in Exodus where Moses instead of trying all cases appoints chiefs over tens, and chiefs over tens of tens etc.) At this point, it is argued, the chief still needs to be present on a day-to-day basis, so the chief becomes sublimated and - there is God.