10/31/2006

The Divine Plan or His Work in Progress

Filed under: — site admin @ 9:12 pm
FROM BARR TO SANDERS
First off, I was very impressed with chapter 2 in “The God Who Risks”. Sanders made it clear that he understood what I considered Barr’s shortcomings to be such. His view on anthropomorphism and semantic argument, along with the inconsistencies of modern theological logic pertaining to God’s characteristics and “infinite” nature were excellently depicted. However, I feel that while Barr became victim of his own arguments, Sanders did so more directly. Paradoxically, Barr explained his stance on design through mathematical order and physical causation, merely to reduce it to indeterminate, thus logically providing for free agency. All the while, Sanders rips down other theologies to provide a theology just as vulnerable to the same criticisms.
Specifically, Sanders rips apart someone claiming to know that we cannot know the true nature of God because of our limitations. Sanders correctly and perhaps paradoxically questions how she can know something is not knowable, one would seemingly have to know enough about it at least to know one could not know it. He is correct in this distinction (31) that we cannot fathom that which is other than us, to bluntly summarize. However, there is something to the woman’s argument, that Sanders does not give credit, and that is through the classic Sherlock Holmes and his reputed abilities of deduction. It is true that we know enough about many things in order to know we don’t know a large deal about them. The phrase “we’ve just scratched the surface” often used by scientists and explorers is an example of knowledge about the unknown. In fact, everything we learn about we find that there is simply more out there about it and everything else to learn about. We are very limited beings in our knowledge, but we have great capacity to attain it. We know visually what colors and wavelengths of light we can see, and we have given names to those we cannot see, in order to refer to them. But we know from deduction that one of their qualities is being beyond our sight, despite the fact that we cannot see it.
It is criticisms such as this that are also applicable to Sanders theory. He often states the nature of God and his relationship with us. In fact it is an expert theory in regards to scriptural exegesis. Yet, he believes for one, that we can understand the “Most High” whether or not He is infinite, despite His being far less finite than ourselves. He believes this can be done through divine revelation, yet he believes, perhaps too far, that while God can sufficiently communicate a message through revelation that man can comprehend, that man too has the ability to convey a message from God to other men. I admit this is conceivable, but it is definitely a big step when God is reduced from the interaction. For this reason I believe that resting one’s perception on the revelation or assumed relationship between some one else and God is far less certain than belief based on one’s own relationship with God or revelation from God. If God is as relational as Sanders claims, why trust the word of anyone other than God. Go to the source, not the Bible. His claims are that one cannot understand that which is more than himself, yet in the case of God, the part man can understand is all man needs to understand, and so is sufficient. Yet he does go far too far in my opinion when discussing the relational and active participation of God in our lives. Because I have just as much right to ask Sanders how he knows this about God, and he can perhaps justifiably indicate the reason is because he communes with God all the time. But what he cannot do is give me revelation or permit me to see and communicate with God when I have not. And I believe only a fool simply trusts, as Sanders has indicated, that someone else knows about the divine and can tell you about Him.
THE DIVINE PLAN or A WORK IN PROGRESS
Sanders and I greatly disagree on the lack of a Divine Plan. While I am an atheistic agnostic (I do not know if there is a God, but I know I live as if there were none.), I do believe that order exists throughout the universe. It appears to me that the design theorists such as Barr, have something right when they see that laws and tendencies of chemistry and physics interweave until the creation of life comes into fruition, and that from life are noticed tendencies that we attribute as biological laws. Nature, chemistry, and physics all seem to move in directions that seem to us to be pointed. I believe there is some sort of causal chain. There is a deterministic element that is obvious in all things. To what end, I do not, may continue not, and perhaps cannot know. For this reason, I believe that the theory of “Intelligent Design” is the second most evident reason for belief in a God. The first would be “Divine Revelation”, or the interaction between oneself and something he could not deny.
The problem with divine revelation is that if I heard voices, and they led me to believe they were sourced from divinity, I may ask for proof, but the only revelation that counts for proof is that which one cannot deny. If the nature of the voices were such that it seemed that I was getting messages from some great being in the sky that claimed to be the creator of all. I might believe in God. The problem with design is that from my perspective the design is there. What is not clear is how, why, or that it entails the necessity of a mind to conjure it.
However, because I think causality is self evident throughout the nature of all things, I could not possibly believe in a God that did not work through rational, physical, causal means. For many people of faith, God is the Design in all things…not the designer. This is what I think is evident of Einstein’s actual theory of the divine, although he quotes about God and religion in a very traditional way. It is because I see this as evident, but not evident of God, that if I were to believe in a creator, he would be the creator of some divine plan. The only exception would be if I were confronted directly by God, through divine revelation, that there is only the appearance of a plan, and at the largest (big bang) and smallest (quantum theory) parts is just as the movie, “What the Bleep Do We Know?” suggested –at these levels all is chaotic, and existence and perception of such is simply a choose your own adventure book which provides for free will, and for the progression of a finite personal deity.
Back to the text, Sanders declares that to think of a person’s choices as following a divine blueprint, would be a case of “reading into” what happened and making God responsible for the bad things that had to happen in fulfillment of such a blueprint. However, to assume that these women (56) were not fulfilling “God’s Plan” through whatever choices is to “read into” the nature of God’s interaction with His creation.
As for a plan which necessitates that which man calls “evil” or “bad”, can there be any possible plan in which “goodness” exists without the contrast of evil? Logic tells us this cannot be so. Furthermore, what we call “bad”, like spiders, may not be so to God. Again, what we call “good”, such as life and living, has no impact as good without the contrast of death and dying. Moreover, it has been theorized that God tried this already in Eden, and gave man the choice to create a world based on the consequences of engaging in actions declared by god as sin. Such consequences were named in the Bible to include pain and death. Under this reasoning, responsibility for the atrocities committed by man against man is but a remnant of the fall of man -a choice of man which may have been made possible by the grace of God. This is to say that it is God’s grace which allows for the existence of man’s ability to make choices. Yet, in order to give import to such choices, God had to create that which is evil. God created evil for man (it apparently existed sometime earlier for Lucifer as indicated by the Bible later on) by giving his creations a commandment. The sin would be the disobedience of the commandment, and the results were warned about before the choice to sin was ever made. God told them that if they were to eat from the tree they would surely die. Sanders offers interpretations in which this consequence did not happen, or did not happen the way God said it would, but that is masturbation of his own philosophy. We know now, as Sanders should have known when he wrote his book, that Adam and Eve (if they ever lived), as the story goes, did not die before choosing to consume the forbidden fruit. To boot, it is not made clear that “the circle of life” existed in any form before the choice to disobey was made. The lion was said to have lain down with the lamb, not to have eaten or killed the lamb. It is made clear that after (however long after) Adam and Eve surely died. The consequence declared by God was fulfilled; perhaps, like with the entering of “the promised land”, it did not occur when people thought it should have happened.
WHAT IS GOOD?
More importantly, in regards to responsibility, who is the pot to question the potter? If we exist in any form, at any time or in anyway due to a creator, then we owe everything to said creator. As they say, to have loved and lost is better than never to have loved at all. I think the same could be said about existing or living. Goodness in any form is relative. Omnibenevolence is quite possibly a contradiction of logic or at least of import as mentioned before by the value of contrast. However, goodness is defined by the sovereign (He who cannot be opposed), if there is one, who decrees it. It is because it is decreed by he who cannot be opposed that it is good, not by those who would interpret for themselves which is good and which is not. In this sense, goodness is either relative to the interpreter, or if it does exist absolutely, then it is because it is decreed by the sovereign, in which case, the interpreter (man) would be mistaken about that which is good as declared by his creator. Even if all mankind agreed that God was not good, if God created all that is, our interpretation is less than a scream in space, and changes nothing; it is a will but not a will to power.

Note: This is my conclusion for now (otherwise the paper goes on and on). But I want to hold onto the book for the rest of the semester, so I can continue using it on my papers to compare and contrast with the other books we are reading. Also, I just barely watched the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?”, so in the next couple of weeks I plan on writing another paper on that movie, as well as finishing some more of what I wanted to say about Sanders’ book. Thanks,
~Chris Blight

Barr and Blight on Design

Filed under: — site admin @ 8:57 pm
MY APPRECIATION FOR BARR
I am quite impressed with Barr’s extensive knowledge/research into the subjects of mathematics and physics (Barr 126). I especially enjoyed his depictions of possible big bang theories and the nature of the universe(s). His book was definitely a beneficial step if not review for my own clarification of various theories of reality (Barr 52). Despite his ability to compose a good book and discuss theoretical physics, I find that his book was written more for potential believers of his theory (other would-be intelligent design theorists) rather than with direction to oppose the materialist scientific opposition. While he mentions this other group of believers, most of his intelligent design arguments seem based in semantics.
MY PROBLEMS WITH BARR
Despite Barr’s obvious intelligent design and pursuit of knowledge, he perturbs me to no end. When a theist seeks to tell an atheist, not what to believe, but what the atheist does believe, he has overstepped his bounds of knowledge. Many atheists do not believe that in the beginning of the universe existed chaos, which has come to form order. Many atheists do not believe that marbles rolling on cardboard act out of unordered spontaneity, which turn out to be acting out of highly complex causal means (apparently designed by a designer).
The story of the watch in the desert has bothered me since the first time I had heard it (Barr 68). How can one use something that is agreed upon to have a designer supposed to prove how something not agreed upon as having a designer must have designer. Not to sound like I am speaking in circles, but a much better question would not be to ask someone about the complexities of a watch in the desert, for they already know the object to be designed by a designer. I should say that at least most have the experience that objects like watches are made by men who designed them. A better question to ask is about the intricacies of quartz itself, or the intricacies of the desert itself. Starting at this point it is not obvious that there exists a designer for such things, and the argument can begin from a reasonable stance. At such a point one cannot pick up a piece of quartz and say, if something this complex must be put together by a designer, then surely the complexity of the human body must have been made by a designer, because it is not yet clear that the quartz was designed, just as it is not clear whether man was designed.
The “Law of Chairs” argument annoys me worse than the tale of the watch in the desert. Again it starts with objects people commonly understand to be man made, even when chairs are stacked symmetrically, this is an act people are familiar with being done by men who chose to place them in such a way just as they designed them to be symmetrical for such a purpose. What Barr does not use as an example is that from which an object or pattern of design is not already commonly known to be designed in such a way by a designer. An example of this might be a tree in a forest. Unlike the chairs, there is not a parallel tree in the forest for every other tree, nor is there an obvious pattern. Even when a pattern is seen in certain tree or plant types, we are at least at a starting off point for the argument. It has not yet been made clear that the patterns of trees or plants and there arrangement in nature are due to an obvious creator.
Barr makes a redundant claim about the nature of marbles and how they only act so uniformly because a marble manufacturer designed them in such a way, thus suggesting that crystalline structures in rock formation must be designed. What he does not include in his argument is that marbles were designed by designers, however those designers did not design (or create) the symmetry and measurement found in the marbles, they merely mirrored that which they found in nature. Note that they did give symmetry to their creation, but the symmetry of a sphere was not their design, nor was it the measurement or discovery of marble manufacturers. More to the point, the argument should not have begun with obvious examples of design such as marbles. It should have begun with the honeycomb, the nautilus shell, and his other examples which, by the way, he does attribute to causal necessity through natural laws.
I’ll try not to get too far into free will and determinism, since I’ll be writing more specifically about that in my Open and Closed Theism papers.
DEBATING DESIGN
Barr’s arguments are filled with semantics, and despite his constant recognition of symmetry and “coincidence” in the nature of life as well as the cosmos as proof of causal congruency, he shoots down his own argument for the sake of free will. To boot, it seems apparent that his arguments take a direction less based in observation, and more pointed towards proving his prior developed theories about the nature of the universe. Due to this, when I keep reminding myself that he is not trying to prove that the Christian God is real, merely that the universe appears to have been formed through intelligence beyond our own, I am taken aback by noting that he is indeed trying to prove the Jewish and Christian God of the Bible, as he continuously quotes their religious views and from their religious text.
Barr first acknowledges design by referring to an obvious pattern (through his chair example, as well as the golden mean) in nature; this pattern appears far too convenient to have arrived accidentally. He adds to this that it is obvious that there are “universal” laws, including gravity and such. He comments that all things have a specific design. All of these basic notions, including those about his opposing view stem to “prove” his semantic argument. He goes on to say that the scientific materialist believes in “blind chance” (Barr 1), “pure chance", “spontaneity", “accidents"(Barr 71-72) , “coincidences” (Barr 118), and so forth. He argues, rather, that everyone can agree that where there are laws, there is a lawgiver, where there is design there is a designer, where lies beauty so ends the quills of an artist, where there is order so is there a being to have ordered it, and where there is function their is purpose (and with a purpose, so exists some intelligence in configuring it).
So, I suppose I’ll do a brief run down of my own theory of the world, so as to make a short argument on such a big subject. Things exist apart from us. For this reason we believe we exist, and so do things other than us. It does not matter at this point to discuss reality or perception. We are, as Berkeley points out, just as real or unreal as the world we must encounter. We interact, and have until laws were decided upon as being a characteristic of our universe; these laws include those discovered by Newton and Galileo. These were based on simple observations of the interactions of things around us, and were not called laws because someone made these laws to keep the universe behaving itself.
I do believe in a causal world. I am not necessarily a materialist, but I am a hard determinist. I do believe there are immaterial things that affect the material world…unless my perception of force is incorrect, and that the forces that cause gusts of wind, the activity amongst electrons which form our lightning, and gravity itself. If these are materialistic in nature then I may be that as well. However, I think it is necessary to understand that despite being a determinist we must seek to understand the “immaterial". The immaterial is a vital and common part of the human life. This is the big side effect (if not the fore-front) of abstract thought. The major cause for belief in the immaterial world is our ability to conceive of one. Because people can think irrationally, allows them to believe in the irrational. Because, as Barr has shown us, it is so difficult to see all the intricacies of complexity due to the simplistic outcomes (starfish example), we begin to try to piece puzzles together abstractly and irrationally, before we have the rational explanations, or the technology to see them.
Barr is exactly right that a computer is nothing to compared to the human brain (oops, did he say “mind"). The reason is that the human being is no where near fully understanding itself. And, the human being can only give to the computer’s programming a maximum of what he himself understands (probably less, because of the complications in understanding programming itself, and its applicable field results). While the computer can operate faster than the human brain, the human brain can make far larger jumps, and possibly reach important answers faster, simply due to the ability to think abstractly, irrationally, and beyond any programming (semantic argument that man wasn’t programmed/created).
Anthropic coincidences are, for me, not coincidences at all. They are musts. All this tells is that man exists now, but based causally, there are many conceivable probabilities that if the universe was different than it is, that man might not exist. Well, this is very peculiar coming from Barr, who just explained earlier in his book that we have no idea what the universe is like. Does it bang, expand, implode, and then bang again? Does the universe expand forever; does it give rise to new universes? It is true that we exist because of the nature of our universe, what we don’t know is what the nature of our universe is. Quite frankly, what these measurements in coincidences do show is that the human race will probably have evolved or gone extinct by the time we understand much at all about our universe. Our observation of such mass and distance is very limited when we compare sizes. As Barr might say, it is like an atom trying to travel the diameter of the inside of a tennis ball (not a good analogy, I know). If it was indeed that there was one universe, ours, and one point during that expansion which life could have existed, namely earth and this last 5 billion years or whoever is counting, then that would indeed be a nifty coincidence to be discussed. Sadly this is something to write a science fiction novel about to be made into a movie and discussed in a philosophy class. It is not, due to its totally abstract and theoretical nature, something to live one’s life by. More importantly, to argue the design movement, these coincidences do not suggest that the Hebrew God of the Bible is at the end of a seemingly improbable existence.
This is what bothers me about theists who make it blatantly obvious that they are trying to prove their beliefs, rather than to discover truth. If there is design of the universe, for the sake of argument, and this entails a designer, then does it mean that the God of the Old or New Testaments exists and loves us and has a beautiful plan for our lives, if we so choose? The answer is a big fat “NO". It does not mean that. It means that someone or something, perhaps something unlike us in many ways is the demiurgos as the Greeks thought. In fact, it is pretty absurd and abstract to think that design in the universe means all this unless, someone calling himself God tells you so on a regular basis. In which case, one would probably have a secret mission or something that has nothing at all to do with debating design (or not). Listening to the faith of ancients who know far less than we know now, and who were, in fact, incorrect on countless occasions about their beliefs, would be a step backward for mankind. Skepticism is a tool to avoid deception, not a weapon of a callous and mean person who wants to ruin everyone’s day. Enough of the “Who is the designer?” question, since it is obvious that many of those who debate design are not starting from observation, but belief.
“Pure chance” is only chance, not when causally necessary, but when put in comparison to many other possibilities that were not in the cards. It is called pure chance when the one card needed is pulled from a deck in order to win the game. Not when a fifth ace is pulled from a regular deck. The universe only plays with the cards it is dealt, and by the causal characteristics we have seen in the universe, it plays the next card in the deck, nothing special. But that does not mean that something special cannot come of it. We have no idea what type of “neat” things could have happened with a different universe, or will, or have happened with our own. All we know is that from our perspective we are the neatest thing it has produced. Keep in mind our perspective is quite limited. Pure chance is not the miracle it seems to be. But the order necessary to connect the dots, and the amount of knowledge, discovery and observation needed to determine the necessity, rather than the chance, is too complex to waste our short lives on. So far many “pure chance” discoveries have been given rational explanations, found due to causal means.
Thought is what we call ideas conceived by the conscious as well as the unconscious, all constructed by chemical and physical processes in the brain. Saying that the mind and body are one is very true. Since the mind is an abstract construct of the brain to perceive itself as an acting being, organ, and entity, apart from others, apart from the body, and in alliance with the body. I agree that a thought (a perception of the chemical interactions using memory retrieval as well as sensory induction) can change the physiology of the brain which in turn can change other things about the body itself. However, this happens all the time. Thoughts of fear change the physiology because thoughts of fear or panic are a process used in accordance with norepinephrine, just as other neurotransmitters processed throughout the brain are chemical causes or correlations for other thoughts, which relay memories stored from other times of releases (other times one may have been afraid).
“Free Will” is merely a misconception. Free will is one of those ancient ideas that had no deep basis. Like Barr’s starfish example, or crystal rock, the depth of rational means, at a variety of levels that goes to explain something that seems so simple is where the misconception lies. What has always been called free will, is our obvious ability to do what we want to do. Well, say there isn’t a causal world. I dare you to use your free will to go outside of our universe. Having trouble? Well, do not be too upset. There is no such thing as free will as far is it is conceived of being free to step outside of the causal chain. I will get into my theory that a God’s ability to have foreknowledge of one’s decision does not negate one’s ability to choose as he likes, in my review of Sanders’ “The God Who Risks". We are free to will to do anything. However, not all abstract thinking can be actualized in a material world. But just because you cannot do some things does not mean you cannot choose to do them. Also, if one could know everything that goes into making your next decision, one would know what decision you would make. However, one cannot know all of that. People commonly know only a small fraction of the reasons for which they do things. They may know the most important of the reasons, but that may only account for one of millions upon millions that actually led to one’s decision, which furthermore might have little effect on ones actual actions. If somebody asks you if you would prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream, and you punch him in the face, it might have been really easy to determine what went into deciding between chocolate and vanilla, but it might have been extremely difficult to determine why you hit him instead of answering his question. Usually this argument is done by using a dichotomy like the flavor choice, but real life is a little more complex. Every action you do probably has a multitude of other actions you could have done. Most of the time people do not even think of choosing between them, they just do what they normally do, or what they normally like doing. But, the complication is that not through a logical argument, but practically, there are a near infinite number of reasons why someone does anything. They may see it as simple as saying, “I like chocolate", but the reasons why they like chocolate could stem back to the big bang, or God’s foreknowledge, or any demiurge. It is merely an error in perception that people believe they have a free will which is unpredictable. It is near impossible from a human’s capability, but it is “in principle", as Barr indicates with regards to anthropic principles, calculable.
Hume is right that just because something has acted one way every time we have observed it in relation to stimuli of some sort, has no indication that it will act this way again. In this simple manner Hume as proved inability to predict the future, simply based on all foreknown happenings. The reason for this as I meant to get to earlier, is that all things in existence have characteristics; these may be perceived as functions in relation to other things, but what they are: actions, tendencies, or form, which can potentially be described. This is what allows them to be named, and to be said to exist. If we don’t first know the full and accurate description of all things which do and can exist in the material world, we cannot accurately predict, no matter how cool we are at this, all future outcomes from any present (from a linear timeline theory).
As far as design goes, I completely agree that the world is intricate, full of symmetries, pretty great for us that we exist, quite possibly the work of a designer, but I believe that even if immaterial things do exist and can impact our world, they work from a causal determinism that could materially effect our world and quite possibly immaterially effect their own. I am not so attached to the material necessity, but that when it is there, it cannot be denied for the sake of will or tradition. I believe thoughts exist, the conception of them, and they themselves are constructs of the material world, and the material implications which can be called thoughts, or create thoughts, are what impact the physical world. Thoughts are merely our abstract understanding.