May 17th, 2013
by Max Andrews
This is a legitimate question. The claim that God could have created us in the state of heaven avoiding all this evil and suffering in the world is a nuanced version of the problem of evil. If we are going to heaven and our telos, our purpose and end, is to worship God and enjoy him forever in heaven then why didn’t God skip this earthly step? Surely, one may think that there’s a possible world in which we all exist in heaven. It’s my contention that the instantiation of heaven alone is not a possible world.
Aside from other theodicies and defenses such as soul-making, perhaps the most relevant to this question, I think it’s critical to understand that heaven isn’t some lone possible state of affairs by itself. Heaven is, necessarily, a contingent state of affairs. It’s a consequent, if and only if, there are prior antecedent conditions or states of affairs. Heaven is a result of our choices during this life. In other words, this earthly life is a necessary condition for heaven to be brought about (aside from the salvific will of the Father and saving power of Christ, I’m merely stating that this life must precede heaven.
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Posted in Bible, Christianity, Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments »
May 13th, 2013
by Max Andrews
Question:
Max
I have come to conclusions that I am certain that you do not accept about the existence of God. My conclusions are theological and philosophical based and I can offer full discourse in defense. What I would like to know is how far away are we from each other once we realize that what we believe about the one true living God is different.
Do you believe that God has free will?
Can The Lord go back in time and change Judas for John?
I accept the partially-openview as a characteristic of existence for both God and man.
How would you interpret 1 Samuel 13:13?
The other is that I believe that those that are fearful of creation science need to consider their motivation and assure that they are not being deceived by methodological naturalism and unnecessarily extended ages of the earth and the universe.
I am a fan of ID but what I deplore is that there is an anti-creation bias associated with most proponents of ID. I understand the neutral conclusion of ID, but there is no reason to avoid young earth creationism from dialogue.
1 Cor 15:47
Do you believe in a literal global catastrophic flood?
Daniel
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Posted in Biblical Studies, Christianity, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Q & A, Theology | 1 Comment »
April 26th, 2013
by Max Andrews
In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1821-1881), a story of four brothers in Russia is a grim description of the reality of what the world would look like if God were not to exist. One brother, Ivan, an atheist, tells another brother that there are no objective truths, specifically that there are no moral absolutes. Ivan’s brother then kills his father, an act that obtains no condemnation if God does not exist.
This can be understood as ☐(~Eg ⊃ ∀ϕ~Wϕ), (Let Eg represent the existence of God, ϕ for any action, and W for wrong), also known as Karamazov’s Theorem. It is necessarily true that if God does not exist then any action cannot be wrong. It may also be true if a conjunct of rightness is inserted into the theorem. This ultimately leads to moral nihilism—a nonexistence of value. Without God, everything is permitted. Nothing can be praised and nothing can be condemned. This world, as Dostoevsky understands it, is a world of nothingness.
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Posted in Ethics, Existentialism, Philosophy, Theology | 5 Comments »
April 26th, 2013
by Max Andrews
Any type of efficient causality is typically associated with being an unscientific explanation—explanations nonetheless but unscientific. It is believed that if biology, chemistry, physics, etc. rested explanations in final causation then it would be a science stopper. This is where the distinction between Duhemian science and Augustinian science must be made. I would deny the use of Duhemian science. This method, or philosophy, has a goal of stripping science from all metaphysical imports. Augustinian science is open to metaphysical presuppositions with science. Francis Bacon and Descartes used and allowed for formal and final causation in scientific explanation. Newton entered science and postulated that the universe was entirely mechanistic, which was a denial of Baconian and Cartesian science (at least their versions of scientific explanation) but offered no explanation for the appearance of final causation and efficient causation. Darwin came along and provided a plausible material mechanism for the appearance of final and efficient causation (at least for the special science of biology).
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Posted in Darwinism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science | No Comments »
April 21st, 2013
by Max Andrews
Interestingly, there is an argument used by atheists to demonstrate that God is impossible, which picks up on the ontological argument. This argument is traditionally called the reverse ontological argument. Instead of demonstrating that God a maximally great being that exists necessarily, the reverse form is used to demonstrate that God is impossible. To give a context for the atheistic argument here are the two most popular versions of the theistic ontological argument:
The Anselmian Ontological Argument (Theistic)
- God exists in the understanding
- God is a possible being
- If X exists only in the understanding and is a possible being, then X might have been greater
- Suppose God exists only in the understanding
- God might have been greater (2, 4, 3)
- God is a being than which a greater is not possible
- So, a being than which nothing greater is not possible is a being which is greater is possible
- Since 4 led to a contradiction 4 must be false
- God exists not only in the understanding alone—God exists in reality as well
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Posted in Apologetics, Arguments for the Existence of God, Philosophy | 3 Comments »
April 12th, 2013
by Max Andrews
In Sam Harris’ recent books, The Moral Landscape and Free Will, he has attempted to redefine normative statements. He equates human well-being with the good and that which does not contribute to human well-being is not the good. In The Moral Landscape Harris states,
“Questions about values are really questions about the well being of conscious creatures… I want to develop a science of human flourishing.”[1]
The problem here is equating human flourishing with the good. Why is that? Why not the well-being of cats, dogs, or sponges? Such attempts to ground objective axiological facts leaves one with specieism—a bias and special treatment for the homo sapiens sapiens species and a suppression of other species. Certainly science can account for how we come to know certain axiological facts but it cannot account for their grounding. I’m not saying human well-being isn’t good since good categorically encompasses human well-being but such an account for objective morality does not satisfy the demands of a robust axiology—namely, the problem of deontology. Additionally, how could one know what increases the well-being of conscious creatures?
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Posted in Ethics, Philosophy | 4 Comments »
April 5th, 2013
by Max Andrews
The Newtonian system depicted a deterministic universe but it was not causally closed. Newtonian mechanics in conjunction with the Laplacian causally closed universe entails problems for divine immanence. Because of Einstein’s relativity the Newtonian and Laplacian models have been abandoned. The present discussion of how God interacts with the world has shifted to quantum mechanics. There are over a dozen interpretations, which mathematically describe the quantum world. Objections from the principle of conservation are moot in an Einsteinian universe because it is not causally closed. Even so, certain quantum interpretations reject the principle of conservation such as the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW) interpretation. In a theistic context, GRW makes sense of external causes having an ontological link to the physical world without violating conservation.[1]
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Posted in Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science | 2 Comments »
March 30th, 2013
by Max Andrews
Eleonore Stump recently delivered lectures for BLPR on pain and suffering.
Eleonore Stump is The Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, where she has taught since 1992. In 2012, Dr. Stump was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among other honors, she is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. She delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 2003, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University in 2006, the Thomas Merton Lecture at Columbia University in 2008, and the Stewart Lectures at Princeton University in 2009. She is the author of numerous articles and books, includingWandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford 2010).
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Posted in Christianity, Philosophy, Theology | No Comments »
March 26th, 2013
by Max Andrews
Question:
Hello Max,
I’m currently reading on philosophy of religion, and I came across your site. You admit to being a “staunch proponent of abductive arguments”. It made me curious as to what your thoughts were regarding arguments against theistic explanations (such as those given in Gregory Dawes’ Theism and Explanation). For example, theistic explanations don’t fulfill explanatory virtues such as being part of successful research program (most theistic explanations failed in the past), being informative (they don’t describe in great detail the mechanisms involved in divine activity), being testable, being coherent with our background knowledge (arguably, all our knowledge involves embodied minds, so positing a disembodied one is theoretically costly), and having ontological economy (theistic explanations posit a radically new set of substances).
Furthermore, given God’s omniperfection, we can expect that he will fulfill his intentions in the best possible way. But to the extent that the phenomena to be explained don’t seem to be the product of the best possible way of being actualized, it is to that extent we can doubt that God’s activity is the explanation for that phenomena. We need good reason to think the phenomena to be explained was actualized in the best possible way; otherwise, the theistic explanation won’t work.
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Posted in Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Q & A | No Comments »
March 4th, 2013
by Max Andrews
Question:
I often here materialists argue that minds are the products of brains. I also have heard some argue that minds are non physical. However, I was recently approached with a challenge to materialism on YouTube (specifically this video by a user named OntoLogistics
youtube.com/watch?v=sIr22Puh1Wk) where he argued a transcendent mind and argued that materialism is faith based and is based on minimal evidence. I have never heard any clear objections to materialism however a few questions (I am not materialist myself by the way):
1. Is mind Non Physical?
2. Does the mind transcend the brain?
3. Is materialism verifiable/valid?
4. Does the soul exist?
5. your thoughts on mind/body dualism
Sam
Answer:
Sam,
Thanks for sending me your question and the material you’ve included. Before I respond to the arguments presented by OntoLogistics I’ll give you a brief response to your five questions and then I’ll elaborate on them.
- Is the mind non-physical? -Yes
- Does the mind transcend the brain? -Yes
- Is materialism verifiable/valid? -Maybe
- Does the soul exist? -Yes
- [My] thoughts on mind/body dualism: I consider myself to be a Cartesian dualist.
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Posted in Metaphysics, Philosophy | 2 Comments »
