Francis Berger's Blog, page 15
November 19, 2024
Cause and Reason Do Not Overrule Motivation and Purpose
“Nicene Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation – a motive for God creating rather than not.”
The suggestion is Dr. Charlton’s, and I believe it draws attention to the gaping chasm present in what falls under the umbrella of classical/traditional/conventional Christianity.
The reasons for Creation in traditional Christianity expound upon causes and their related ontological considerations and remain eerily silent when it comes to explicating the motivations for those causes and reasons.
Simply put, traditional Christianity was designed to render all questions about the motivation for Creation obsolete. Traditional Christianity is hardwired against the audacity of supposing God has any motivations for Creation at all. Creation is just something God does. He could not do otherwise.
In this sense, traditional Christianity is happy to inform you about the whats and hows but adamantly avoids considerations of the whys of Creation because it rejects the possibility of any why nots.
The supposed whys it does offer—God displaying his glory, creating all the good that can be created, etc—are merely what and hows in disguise.
Traditional Christianity offers no insights into potential motivations for Creation because it is grounded in secondary thought.
By its nature and limitations, secondary thought precludes all considerations of motivation because it can offer nothing more than causes and reasons, which inevitably all culminate in the one and only big eternal cause and reason.
Asking for anything beyond that point is considered absurd.
Secular materialism is also grounded in secondary thought. Like traditional Christianity, it offers its own explanations of causes and reasons, and like traditional Christianity, it essentially rules out the possibility of comprehending any sort of underlying motivation for the physical universe.
Secular materialism can tell you all about the Big Bang but will scornfully smirk at you if you dare ask it why the Big Bang occurred. The Big Bang (or string theory, or multiverse, or quantum this-or-that) is the only big cause or reason. Asking for anything beyond that point is absurd.
In the end, traditional Christianity and secular materialism offer remarkably similar non-answers when it comes to the matter of why or positing motives for Creation.
Neither acknowledges the question as a valid question.
And how could it be otherwise? After all, both are firmly grounded in secondary thought.
Both implicitly deny the reality of direct knowledge and primary thinking.
However, denials of reality do not negate reality.
Primary thinking and direct knowledge are real, and it is through them, and only through them that we can access the whys, the motives for God creating rather than not.
Note added: By extension, primary thinking and direct knowledge is the direction Christianity or, at the very least, individual Christians need to go.
The suggestion is Dr. Charlton’s, and I believe it draws attention to the gaping chasm present in what falls under the umbrella of classical/traditional/conventional Christianity.
The reasons for Creation in traditional Christianity expound upon causes and their related ontological considerations and remain eerily silent when it comes to explicating the motivations for those causes and reasons.
Simply put, traditional Christianity was designed to render all questions about the motivation for Creation obsolete. Traditional Christianity is hardwired against the audacity of supposing God has any motivations for Creation at all. Creation is just something God does. He could not do otherwise.
In this sense, traditional Christianity is happy to inform you about the whats and hows but adamantly avoids considerations of the whys of Creation because it rejects the possibility of any why nots.
The supposed whys it does offer—God displaying his glory, creating all the good that can be created, etc—are merely what and hows in disguise.
Traditional Christianity offers no insights into potential motivations for Creation because it is grounded in secondary thought.
By its nature and limitations, secondary thought precludes all considerations of motivation because it can offer nothing more than causes and reasons, which inevitably all culminate in the one and only big eternal cause and reason.
Asking for anything beyond that point is considered absurd.
Secular materialism is also grounded in secondary thought. Like traditional Christianity, it offers its own explanations of causes and reasons, and like traditional Christianity, it essentially rules out the possibility of comprehending any sort of underlying motivation for the physical universe.
Secular materialism can tell you all about the Big Bang but will scornfully smirk at you if you dare ask it why the Big Bang occurred. The Big Bang (or string theory, or multiverse, or quantum this-or-that) is the only big cause or reason. Asking for anything beyond that point is absurd.
In the end, traditional Christianity and secular materialism offer remarkably similar non-answers when it comes to the matter of why or positing motives for Creation.
Neither acknowledges the question as a valid question.
And how could it be otherwise? After all, both are firmly grounded in secondary thought.
Both implicitly deny the reality of direct knowledge and primary thinking.
However, denials of reality do not negate reality.
Primary thinking and direct knowledge are real, and it is through them, and only through them that we can access the whys, the motives for God creating rather than not.
Note added: By extension, primary thinking and direct knowledge is the direction Christianity or, at the very least, individual Christians need to go.
Christianty That Lives By Secondary Thought...
…dies by secondary thought.
Secondary thought refers to the process and state of being informed.
In that sense, it is not a form of thinking or, at best, a low-level of thinking. From the perspective of human consciousness, being informed involves receiving, interpreting, and internalizing external information via representational configurations, i.e., symbols, images, and language, and using these to augment or construct a sense of reality.
Before the advent and eventual dominance of secondary thought, being informed meant something different. We can refer to this as primary thinking. Whereas secondary thought focuses on representations of reality, primary thinking is total or near total subjective immersion in reality.
Immersion in reality is not limited to the simple act of confronting and contending with nature; it also encompasses a direct sense and knowing of the spiritual of which nature is but a subset. Because it does not rely on representations as a chief source of knowledge, primary thinking is a more “concrete” form of thinking, for lack of a better way of putting it.
Secondary thought in the form of symbols, images, and language allowed men to overcome nature to a great degree. Still, this gradual “mastery” of nature weakened the “concreteness” of primary thinking. Consciousness became more attuned to the representational and abstract. It rescinded from thinking and settled into thought.
Spiritually speaking, it would be wrong to consider this development in consciousness as negative because the shift toward the abstract allowed for the evolution of recorded knowledge, which led to increasingly complex societies and civilizations and better standards of living.
People were increasingly liberated from the brute necessity nature imposed upon them with its redness in tooth and claw. Moreover, secondary thought allowed men to discover and contemplate the spiritual from new perspectives; however, learning new perspectives via the internalization of secondary, representational information continued to widen the chasm between man and his “original” mode of primary thinking.
That basic yet virtually unfiltered direct knowledge of spirit was gradually replaced by the understanding of a physical world that was a subset of the spiritual world or utterly distinct from the physical world.
The development of what we now regard as Christianity was a gradual process of converging upon, establishing, and, eventually, enforcing a mode of spiritual secondary thought. Vestiges of primary thinking were progressively filtered out and eliminated in favor of a confluence of thought based on and rooted in secondary thinking, in the form of scripture, doctrines, rituals, symbols, etc. What we now regard as traditional or conventional Christianity amounts to little more than this convergence of secondary thought.
The above-mentioned convergence of secondary thought solidified into spiritual authority, which merged with worldly power, a merger that eventually dominated and fueled civilization in the West. To put it in more contemporary terms, the convergence of secondary thought known as Christianity became the West’s driving “narrative,” and it remained the West’s driving narrative for as long as the authorities upholding the convergence formed and informed the narrative.
The convergence of authority, however, proved unstable from the start. Although Catholicism enjoyed a millennium of virtual domination in the West, it had to do so within the framework of its eastern half breaking away via schism. Regardless, all Christianity, be it Catholic, Orthodox, or some splintered, minor faction, remained predominantly grounded in secondary thought and remained open to challenges emanating from secondary thinking.
Information was probed and re-interpreted. Disagreements and disputes over the validity, soundness, interpretation, and enforceability of “settled” doctrines, texts, symbols, rituals, and so forth flared up throughout the history of Christianity, leading to “reforms” and further schisms of all sorts and varieties.
In simpler terms, the narrative splintered but remained firmly entrenched in secondary thought, rendering it vulnerable to the continuing development of human consciousness, an increase in self-consciousness within the framework of secondary thought, which demanded an increase in the expression of individual liberty and agency, or, to put it another way, an increase in the personal ability to form—that is reform and inform—reality.
I am inclined to believe this point in the development of human consciousness should have led to the broad recognition of the need to rediscover primary thinking and harmonize it with secondary thought, leading to an entirely new yet utterly innate form of thinking leading to full participation in and with Creation that lay dormant within human consciousness.
The need was certainly recognized by some, and the expression of this recognition is what we now refer to as Romanticism; however, the Romantic upsurge ultimately failed because it did not adequately recognize or embrace latent spiritual possibilities. Christianity was oblivious to the upsurge altogether.
The failure to harmonize and unify primary thinking and secondary thought solidified secondary thought at the expense of primary thinking. Since Christianity remained firmly committed to its “truths” in the realm of secondary thought, it could access no meaningful defense or counter to the secondary thought forces that increasingly questioned or challenged the “truths” churches, doctrines, and scripture expounded. As a result, Christianity fell upon its own sword; it ceded its secondary thought to the secondary thought narrative of science, logic, and reason, before submitting to and eventually merging with the secular narrative.
People whose intuitions continued to sense the pressing need for the rediscovery of primal thinking and its harmonization with secondary thought--of the need to personally form and reform the world from subjective, directly known spiritual acts and principles--were left bereft of options at the collective level.
The ruling secular narrative offered only secondary thought grounded exclusively in materialism; while the self-conquered religious narrative continued to promulgate an outmoded secondary thought narrative based on symbols and texts that no longer connected to anything beyond themselves.
People are prisoners of secondary thought.
Unfortunately, contemporary Christians rank among the most glaring examples of such prisoners.
And that is where we are today, spiritually speaking.
Secondary thought refers to the process and state of being informed.
In that sense, it is not a form of thinking or, at best, a low-level of thinking. From the perspective of human consciousness, being informed involves receiving, interpreting, and internalizing external information via representational configurations, i.e., symbols, images, and language, and using these to augment or construct a sense of reality.
Before the advent and eventual dominance of secondary thought, being informed meant something different. We can refer to this as primary thinking. Whereas secondary thought focuses on representations of reality, primary thinking is total or near total subjective immersion in reality.
Immersion in reality is not limited to the simple act of confronting and contending with nature; it also encompasses a direct sense and knowing of the spiritual of which nature is but a subset. Because it does not rely on representations as a chief source of knowledge, primary thinking is a more “concrete” form of thinking, for lack of a better way of putting it.
Secondary thought in the form of symbols, images, and language allowed men to overcome nature to a great degree. Still, this gradual “mastery” of nature weakened the “concreteness” of primary thinking. Consciousness became more attuned to the representational and abstract. It rescinded from thinking and settled into thought.
Spiritually speaking, it would be wrong to consider this development in consciousness as negative because the shift toward the abstract allowed for the evolution of recorded knowledge, which led to increasingly complex societies and civilizations and better standards of living.
People were increasingly liberated from the brute necessity nature imposed upon them with its redness in tooth and claw. Moreover, secondary thought allowed men to discover and contemplate the spiritual from new perspectives; however, learning new perspectives via the internalization of secondary, representational information continued to widen the chasm between man and his “original” mode of primary thinking.
That basic yet virtually unfiltered direct knowledge of spirit was gradually replaced by the understanding of a physical world that was a subset of the spiritual world or utterly distinct from the physical world.
The development of what we now regard as Christianity was a gradual process of converging upon, establishing, and, eventually, enforcing a mode of spiritual secondary thought. Vestiges of primary thinking were progressively filtered out and eliminated in favor of a confluence of thought based on and rooted in secondary thinking, in the form of scripture, doctrines, rituals, symbols, etc. What we now regard as traditional or conventional Christianity amounts to little more than this convergence of secondary thought.
The above-mentioned convergence of secondary thought solidified into spiritual authority, which merged with worldly power, a merger that eventually dominated and fueled civilization in the West. To put it in more contemporary terms, the convergence of secondary thought known as Christianity became the West’s driving “narrative,” and it remained the West’s driving narrative for as long as the authorities upholding the convergence formed and informed the narrative.
The convergence of authority, however, proved unstable from the start. Although Catholicism enjoyed a millennium of virtual domination in the West, it had to do so within the framework of its eastern half breaking away via schism. Regardless, all Christianity, be it Catholic, Orthodox, or some splintered, minor faction, remained predominantly grounded in secondary thought and remained open to challenges emanating from secondary thinking.
Information was probed and re-interpreted. Disagreements and disputes over the validity, soundness, interpretation, and enforceability of “settled” doctrines, texts, symbols, rituals, and so forth flared up throughout the history of Christianity, leading to “reforms” and further schisms of all sorts and varieties.
In simpler terms, the narrative splintered but remained firmly entrenched in secondary thought, rendering it vulnerable to the continuing development of human consciousness, an increase in self-consciousness within the framework of secondary thought, which demanded an increase in the expression of individual liberty and agency, or, to put it another way, an increase in the personal ability to form—that is reform and inform—reality.
I am inclined to believe this point in the development of human consciousness should have led to the broad recognition of the need to rediscover primary thinking and harmonize it with secondary thought, leading to an entirely new yet utterly innate form of thinking leading to full participation in and with Creation that lay dormant within human consciousness.
The need was certainly recognized by some, and the expression of this recognition is what we now refer to as Romanticism; however, the Romantic upsurge ultimately failed because it did not adequately recognize or embrace latent spiritual possibilities. Christianity was oblivious to the upsurge altogether.
The failure to harmonize and unify primary thinking and secondary thought solidified secondary thought at the expense of primary thinking. Since Christianity remained firmly committed to its “truths” in the realm of secondary thought, it could access no meaningful defense or counter to the secondary thought forces that increasingly questioned or challenged the “truths” churches, doctrines, and scripture expounded. As a result, Christianity fell upon its own sword; it ceded its secondary thought to the secondary thought narrative of science, logic, and reason, before submitting to and eventually merging with the secular narrative.
People whose intuitions continued to sense the pressing need for the rediscovery of primal thinking and its harmonization with secondary thought--of the need to personally form and reform the world from subjective, directly known spiritual acts and principles--were left bereft of options at the collective level.
The ruling secular narrative offered only secondary thought grounded exclusively in materialism; while the self-conquered religious narrative continued to promulgate an outmoded secondary thought narrative based on symbols and texts that no longer connected to anything beyond themselves.
People are prisoners of secondary thought.
Unfortunately, contemporary Christians rank among the most glaring examples of such prisoners.
And that is where we are today, spiritually speaking.
November 18, 2024
Francis Berger Promotes an Insane Anti-Christian, Anti-Human Culture and Cult of Death
After months of fruitless exchange that Kristor of the Orthosphere triggered here, I finally asked him what his motivation for initiating the discussion had been.
Kristor, what was your motivation behind initiating this whole fruitless, months’-long exchange via comments on my blog back in September?
I only ask because I wasn’t the one looking for a discussion. You were.
Here is Kristor's response: (Bold added)
I sympathize with your frustration. It sucks for you that there is an intractable problem with your idea of perpetuity. But it is what it is. Believe me, it’s not that I’ve been stubbornly unwilling to entertain your arguments; on the contrary, I’ve confronted them all head on. It’s the problem that is stubborn. And the Kalam problem is not alone, unfortunately.
When we say there are many beings like God, all of whom are infinitely old and will live forever, we dethrone him (and we contradict scripture, massively; but that has so far proven no impediment).
If he is of the same sort as we, or as Satan, then his will is no better than ours, or Satan’s. We might as well disobey him, then, if that’s what we feel like doing; after all, he is not the boss of us, so who is he to try to judge us?
Who is he to establish a Church, or before that a holy nation, and a royal priesthood? By what right does he expel Adam and Eve from the Garden? Indeed, how could he even effect such an expulsion … or anything else, for that matter? Who is he to try to run a cosmic project?
If God is in fact Ultimate, it’s foolish and deadly dangerous to disagree with him.
If he’s not, then, hey, all bets are off, as there are no odds, no odds maker, no contest to bet on, no field of contest, no rules, no judges or referees, no score. Then do as you wish is the whole of the law. I.e., there is no law. It’s you against all others, and the will to power is all there is. Nietzsche was right! To hell with this idiotic cosmic project of YHWH!
I’ve been motivated to engage with your arguments in the first place because I find such engagement edifying. I always learn a lot from such exchanges. I’m extraordinarily interested in them when they concern notions that if carried into practice could harm people.
And the rejection of Christianity entailed by the idea that God is of the same sort as we would harm people a lot. As I wrote to you recently:
It’s no good to object that these recondite topics are merely a matter of private opinion, and so are no big deal: that, after all, readers are free to stay in Church and chant their mistaken creeds if they like (the poor fools, deluded by false or premodern consciousness) and by them irrationally form their lives (Dawkins says the same); why then get all het up about them?
Well, in the first place, by publishing them, you make them public; and in the second, it is a Very Big Deal to vitiate the faith of the faithful, thus to promote their apostasy (whether or not intentionally), and so worsen their chances at everlasting life in Heaven. It is like posting essays online that suggest fentanyl is cool.
Moreover (as Dawkins has recently noticed), the abandonment of Christianity is not merely an inconsequential private matter: as apostasy propagates, it has disastrously vicious social and cultural sequelae.
The post-Christian world looks categorically, profoundly worse than the pagan world that preceded it; for, paganism having been long already utterly moribund and incredible to moderns, it has not even the benefit of pagan morality. It is totally unmoored from morality, reason, truth; from reality, from life.
I use the present tense because, despite the fact that a quarter of the world is still Christian, the character of the post-Christian culture bereft even of pagan cults is already horribly clear in peoples among whom apostasy has spread. When you derogate the Church or her dogma, then whether you mean to do so or not, you promote that insane anti-Christian, anti-human culture and cult of death.
Where Christ wanes, Moloch waxes. It’s a deadly serious matter. It is serious as Hell.
That’s why I take your arguments seriously, and try to refute them publicly, rather than wave them off as harmless idiosyncrasies.
Kristor, what was your motivation behind initiating this whole fruitless, months’-long exchange via comments on my blog back in September?
I only ask because I wasn’t the one looking for a discussion. You were.
Here is Kristor's response: (Bold added)
I sympathize with your frustration. It sucks for you that there is an intractable problem with your idea of perpetuity. But it is what it is. Believe me, it’s not that I’ve been stubbornly unwilling to entertain your arguments; on the contrary, I’ve confronted them all head on. It’s the problem that is stubborn. And the Kalam problem is not alone, unfortunately.
When we say there are many beings like God, all of whom are infinitely old and will live forever, we dethrone him (and we contradict scripture, massively; but that has so far proven no impediment).
If he is of the same sort as we, or as Satan, then his will is no better than ours, or Satan’s. We might as well disobey him, then, if that’s what we feel like doing; after all, he is not the boss of us, so who is he to try to judge us?
Who is he to establish a Church, or before that a holy nation, and a royal priesthood? By what right does he expel Adam and Eve from the Garden? Indeed, how could he even effect such an expulsion … or anything else, for that matter? Who is he to try to run a cosmic project?
If God is in fact Ultimate, it’s foolish and deadly dangerous to disagree with him.
If he’s not, then, hey, all bets are off, as there are no odds, no odds maker, no contest to bet on, no field of contest, no rules, no judges or referees, no score. Then do as you wish is the whole of the law. I.e., there is no law. It’s you against all others, and the will to power is all there is. Nietzsche was right! To hell with this idiotic cosmic project of YHWH!
I’ve been motivated to engage with your arguments in the first place because I find such engagement edifying. I always learn a lot from such exchanges. I’m extraordinarily interested in them when they concern notions that if carried into practice could harm people.
And the rejection of Christianity entailed by the idea that God is of the same sort as we would harm people a lot. As I wrote to you recently:
It’s no good to object that these recondite topics are merely a matter of private opinion, and so are no big deal: that, after all, readers are free to stay in Church and chant their mistaken creeds if they like (the poor fools, deluded by false or premodern consciousness) and by them irrationally form their lives (Dawkins says the same); why then get all het up about them?
Well, in the first place, by publishing them, you make them public; and in the second, it is a Very Big Deal to vitiate the faith of the faithful, thus to promote their apostasy (whether or not intentionally), and so worsen their chances at everlasting life in Heaven. It is like posting essays online that suggest fentanyl is cool.
Moreover (as Dawkins has recently noticed), the abandonment of Christianity is not merely an inconsequential private matter: as apostasy propagates, it has disastrously vicious social and cultural sequelae.
The post-Christian world looks categorically, profoundly worse than the pagan world that preceded it; for, paganism having been long already utterly moribund and incredible to moderns, it has not even the benefit of pagan morality. It is totally unmoored from morality, reason, truth; from reality, from life.
I use the present tense because, despite the fact that a quarter of the world is still Christian, the character of the post-Christian culture bereft even of pagan cults is already horribly clear in peoples among whom apostasy has spread. When you derogate the Church or her dogma, then whether you mean to do so or not, you promote that insane anti-Christian, anti-human culture and cult of death.
Where Christ wanes, Moloch waxes. It’s a deadly serious matter. It is serious as Hell.
That’s why I take your arguments seriously, and try to refute them publicly, rather than wave them off as harmless idiosyncrasies.
Infinity: No Beginning Means No Beginning
Ask some classical theists what God did before Creation, and they will protest that you cannot take such liberties and argue from the absurdities that result from such a line of thinking.
Yet the same classical theists consider it perfectly acceptable to challenge assumptions about the “infinite” existence of beings by demanding those holding such assumptions explain how an infinitely old being could finish counting from negative infinity to zero and “traverse the infinite lapse of time between Infinity BC and the present.”
Wm Jas Tychonievich explains the problem and muddled thinking inherent in such demands (bold added):
1. Infinite elapsed time
As discussed in my earlier post, the Kalām Cosmological Argument assumes that there can be only two kinds of beings: (1) beings that began to exist a finite amount of time ago; and (2) beings that are atemporal, or "exist outside of time." Everything we know, including the physical universe itself, belongs to the first category; it is therefore necessary to explain their existence by positing a being of the second type, and this is Allah.
The reason given for rejecting a third category -- beings that are temporal but never began to exist -- is that for those beings an infinite amount of time must already have elapsed. They must already be "infinity years old." However, it is impossible for anything to ever be "infinity years old," because time elapses finite step by finite step, and infinity can never be reached by adding up finite quantities.
With the caveat that it is notoriously difficult to think clearly about infinity, I think this argument is in error. It conflates "never began" with "began an infinitely long time ago." Consider by way of analogy the number line of integers. It is infinite, but it would be sloppy thinking to say it extends "from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity." There is no such number as "infinity" (negative or positive) on the number line. Of all the infinitely many integers on the line, not a single one of them is infinitely distant from zero.
The present moment corresponds to zero, the past to the negative integers, and the future to the positive ones. If I say that my existence (in one form or another) is infinite in both directions, in precisely the same way that the number line is infinite, does that make me "infinity years old"? No.
The Kalām Argument assumes that an infinite amount of time must have elapsed from "the beginning" to the present -- missing the point that there was no beginning. A billion years ago, I existed; and a billion years have elapsed since then. A quadrillion years ago, I existed; and a quadrillion years have elapsed since then. The "infinity" lies in the fact that the statement will be true for absolutely any number I choose, no matter how astronomically large it may be; but every number, without exception, will be a finite distance from the present, and only a finite time will have elapsed since then. Just as you can get from any point on the infinite number line to any other by adding or subtracting a finite quantity, so any distance on the infinite timeline can be traversed without an infinite amount of time elapsing.
So, I reject this argument against infinite temporal existence.
As do I.
Short summary: You can’t count from a beginning that isn’t there.
Furthermore, the following does not constitute a meaningful rebuttal or counterargument:
If a being has existed for an infinite amount of time, then it existed an infinite amount of finite years ago, and from that moment it would have to traverse an infinite number of years to fail to reach the present moment – or any other moments in its past.
Why is this this a meaningless rebuttal? Because it tries to sneak that non-existent beginning into infinity again despite Wm Jas’s coherent demonstration that the very concept of infinity precludes “a beginning” by definition.
Note: The above ties in with my declared assumption from yesterday--the Beings in Creation have no beginning and will have no end. Put another way, the "beingness" of Beings is eternal.
Yet the same classical theists consider it perfectly acceptable to challenge assumptions about the “infinite” existence of beings by demanding those holding such assumptions explain how an infinitely old being could finish counting from negative infinity to zero and “traverse the infinite lapse of time between Infinity BC and the present.”
Wm Jas Tychonievich explains the problem and muddled thinking inherent in such demands (bold added):
1. Infinite elapsed time
As discussed in my earlier post, the Kalām Cosmological Argument assumes that there can be only two kinds of beings: (1) beings that began to exist a finite amount of time ago; and (2) beings that are atemporal, or "exist outside of time." Everything we know, including the physical universe itself, belongs to the first category; it is therefore necessary to explain their existence by positing a being of the second type, and this is Allah.
The reason given for rejecting a third category -- beings that are temporal but never began to exist -- is that for those beings an infinite amount of time must already have elapsed. They must already be "infinity years old." However, it is impossible for anything to ever be "infinity years old," because time elapses finite step by finite step, and infinity can never be reached by adding up finite quantities.
With the caveat that it is notoriously difficult to think clearly about infinity, I think this argument is in error. It conflates "never began" with "began an infinitely long time ago." Consider by way of analogy the number line of integers. It is infinite, but it would be sloppy thinking to say it extends "from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity." There is no such number as "infinity" (negative or positive) on the number line. Of all the infinitely many integers on the line, not a single one of them is infinitely distant from zero.
The present moment corresponds to zero, the past to the negative integers, and the future to the positive ones. If I say that my existence (in one form or another) is infinite in both directions, in precisely the same way that the number line is infinite, does that make me "infinity years old"? No.
The Kalām Argument assumes that an infinite amount of time must have elapsed from "the beginning" to the present -- missing the point that there was no beginning. A billion years ago, I existed; and a billion years have elapsed since then. A quadrillion years ago, I existed; and a quadrillion years have elapsed since then. The "infinity" lies in the fact that the statement will be true for absolutely any number I choose, no matter how astronomically large it may be; but every number, without exception, will be a finite distance from the present, and only a finite time will have elapsed since then. Just as you can get from any point on the infinite number line to any other by adding or subtracting a finite quantity, so any distance on the infinite timeline can be traversed without an infinite amount of time elapsing.
So, I reject this argument against infinite temporal existence.
As do I.
Short summary: You can’t count from a beginning that isn’t there.
Furthermore, the following does not constitute a meaningful rebuttal or counterargument:
If a being has existed for an infinite amount of time, then it existed an infinite amount of finite years ago, and from that moment it would have to traverse an infinite number of years to fail to reach the present moment – or any other moments in its past.
Why is this this a meaningless rebuttal? Because it tries to sneak that non-existent beginning into infinity again despite Wm Jas’s coherent demonstration that the very concept of infinity precludes “a beginning” by definition.
Note: The above ties in with my declared assumption from yesterday--the Beings in Creation have no beginning and will have no end. Put another way, the "beingness" of Beings is eternal.
November 17, 2024
Creation Began; The Beings in Creation Did Not
Assumption:
Creation has a beginning, and it may have an end. The Beings in Creation, however, have no beginning and will have no end. They did not begin with Creation, nor will they end with Creation.
Because Creation has a beginning does not imply that Creation is the only or ultimate beginning. The Beings in Creation pre-existed Creation; therefore, "before" Creation is conceivable.
Creation has a beginning, and it may have an end. The Beings in Creation, however, have no beginning and will have no end. They did not begin with Creation, nor will they end with Creation.
Because Creation has a beginning does not imply that Creation is the only or ultimate beginning. The Beings in Creation pre-existed Creation; therefore, "before" Creation is conceivable.
November 15, 2024
In Metaphysics, "Bizarre" Does Not Mean Impossible - Final Thoughts on the KCA
Note: This is my final post on the Kalam Cosmological Argument and other "laws" aimed at discrediting and disparaging my assumptions.
Kristor has responded to one of my posts about the Kalam Cosmological Argument. In his response, he insists that I am honestly mistaken about KCA and classical theism and that pretty much everything I have said about them is false.
I beg to differ, but I won’t dedicate a post to quibbling.
What I will do instead is address the “battering ram” Kristor considers to be ironclad in his argumentation. The one he has consistently employed against my assumptions; the one he believes sinks my assumptions entirely-- the apparent impossibility of traversing the infinite .
Kristor explained his position quite clearly in a comment on this blog:
Kalam demonstrates that perpetuity – of God, or of other beings – is an incoherent notion : there is no way an infinite temporal series of finite events (in the life of a cosmos or of a being) that had no beginning – i.e., a perpetuity – could ever reach the present moment, or any other. From a point in time infinitely far in the past of any moment, any now, an infinite series of finite events would have to traverse infinitely many finite steps to reach that now. And no number of finite steps can sum to infinity. From the perspective of any such now, the series would always be cooking along infinitely far in its past.
Zeno’s paradoxes of motion anticipate Kalam.
For “finite events” in the foregoing we may substitute “finite causes” and reach the same result: no assemblage of finities can add up to infinity; it cannot be the case that it’s turtles all the way down. So, the real world and its panoply of causes must be finite: they must each have a terminus a quo, a First Cause, an absolute beginning.
Thus, perpetuity can’t be carried into actuality. So, neither God nor any world can be perpetual.
The necessity of an absolute beginning is by the way the basis and reason of creatio ex nihilo. The alternative – creatio ex materia – implicitly presupposes the actuality of an impossible perpetuity.
In his most recent post, Kristor maintains his death grip on this position by doubling down via an external source:
An infinite collection formed by successive addition is impossible: Next, Craig argues that – even if an actual infinite is possible – an actual infinite can never be formed by successive addition. But, if the past is infinite, that is exactly what the past must be. Craig argues that, if the past were infinite, then an infinite number of successive moments have been traversed (i.e., an infinite number of moments have “streamed by” so to speak). But, if “traversing the infinite” were possible, it would lead to a number of absurdities. To illustrate this, he uses the example of the infinite counter:
Imagine that there has always been The Count from Sesame Street. He has always existed, and as long as he has existed, he has been counting down. Today, he is about to reach zero. “Negative two!” he says. “Negative one! Zero!!! Ah ah ah!” … Now, it seems clear that, if I begin counting up (“one, two, three…”), I will never reach infinity. One can never count to infinity. But, why should it be any different in the other direction? How could one ever count from infinity? In this example, it seems like The Count would reach zero today, because (if the past is beginningless) there were an infinite number of moments before today. But, wait …
There were also an infinite number of moments before yesterday. So, it seems like The Count should have finished counting yesterday. But, wait… There were also an infinite number of moments before a year ago, or a billion years ago. In fact, no matter how far back in time we go, it seems like The Count should have always already finished counting (since, no matter how far back in time we go, there was always an infinite amount of time before that). But, that is absurd. Therefore, an infinite succession cannot be traversed.
I could counter Kristor’s selective or limited understanding of infinity in my own words, but I don’t think that would make much of an impression on or difference to Kristor.
So, what I will do instead is refer to Edward Feser, a prominent philosopher firmly within Kristor’s classical theist camp, who offered the following concerning the KCA, infinity, and Craig's notion of time:
A third reservation – the one I will discuss here -- has to do with the question of whether one really can demonstrate that an infinitely old universe is metaphysically impossible, and in particular whether one can demonstrate that an accidentally ordered series of causes (as opposed to an essentially ordered series) cannot be infinite.
(This is, of course, the traditional bone of contention for Thomists.) I am not convinced that this cannot be demonstrated. But I’m not sure that Craig’s metaphysical arguments for that conclusion (e.g. the well-known appeals to Hilbert’s hotel and similar examples) work.
Recall that the basic kalām argument says:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. So the universe has a cause.
That’s the easy part, and the main work in defending the argument involves (a) defending the second premise, and (b) showing that the cause of the universe must be a divine cause. It is in defending the second premise that Craig appeals to examples like Hilbert’s hotel.
The basic idea of such arguments is this. We can draw a distinction between an actual infinite and a merely potential infinite. A potential infinite is a collection that is actually only finitely large, but can be added to without limit. For example, suppose there are ten chairs in some particular room. We could always add an eleventh, a twelfth, and so on, and (if we knock out some of the walls and expand the room) can in principle add any number of further chairs ad infinitum. A potential infinite never is actually infinitely large, but can still always be added to in theory, as long as time and resources permit. An actual infinite, by contrast, already is infinitely large. An actually infinite collection of chairs, for example, would be one that already includes an infinite number of chairs, all at once and at the same time.
This is a distinction Craig borrows from Aristotle, even if in other respects his argument is not particularly Aristotelian. The use he makes of it is this. The notion of a potential infinite is unproblematic, but the notion of an actual infinite is fraught with paradox.
For instance, if we imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests checking in and checking out, we will, if we work out the implications, find them to be utterly bizarre.
So bizarre, in Craig’s view, that we should conclude that such a hotel could not possibly exist in reality. (Those familiar with Craig’s argument will know how the details of examples like these go – I won’t rehearse them here.) And this shows, Craig argues, that the idea of an actual infinite is in general very fishy. There just can’t be an actually infinite collection of things.
Now, an infinitely old universe would constitute an actual infinite, Craig argues. It would amount to an actually infinitely large collection of hours, days, years, or whatever other unit of time you pick. Hence, since there cannot be an actual infinite of any sort, there cannot be an actual infinite of this particular sort. So, the universe cannot be infinitely old.
Now, one problem here is that it will not do to show merely that an actual infinite like the one described in the Hilbert’s hotel scenario is bizarre . To show that something is bizarre does not suffice to show that it is impossible.
For that, you need to show that it involves some outright contradiction or incoherence. But perhaps that can indeed be shown. That isn’t the issue I’m concerned with here. So, for present purposes let’s concede for the sake of argument that scenarios like Hilbert’s hotel really are strictly metaphysically impossible.
The problem is this: How does this show that an infinitely old universe is impossible?
In particular, how does this show that there could not have been in the past an infinite series of hours, days, or years?
The reason this is a problem is that Craig is a presentist . That is to say, he thinks that it is present things and events alone that exist. Past objects and events don’t exist anymore, and future objects and events don’t yet exist. (This contrasts with theories of time like the “growing block” theory, which holds that past and present things and events exist, with the present being the growing edge of a block universe; and with the eternalist view that all things and events, whether past, present, or future, all equally exist.)
Now, his commitment to presentism is not itself the problem; in fact, I agree with Craig about that. (I will have much more to say about that subject in forthcoming work.) The problem is rather this. If the present alone is real, then how can an infinite series of events in time count as an actual infinite?
Past moments of time are not actual; they no longer exist. Hence an infinite series of past moments is not relevantly analogous to Hilbert’s hotel. In the Hilbert’s hotel scenario, all of the hotel rooms in the infinite collection of rooms, all of the guests in the infinite collection of guests, etc. exist together all at once, at the same time. But (for a presentist) past moments, and past things and events in general, no longer exist. They don’t exist together, all at once and at the same time, because they don’t exist at all .
Hence there really is even prima facie (again, if one is a presentist) no such thing as an infinite collection of past moments of time, as there might at least prima facie be an infinite collection of rooms and guests. So, an infinitely old universe scenario is simply not relevantly analogous to scenarios like Hilbert’s hotel – in which case, it seems Craig’s argument will fail even if it is conceded that an actual infinite is impossible.
For an infinitely old universe just wouldn’t be an actual infinite in the relevant sense.
Kristor can do with that what he will, but I think that pretty much sinks the “you can’t traverse the infinite” mantra. So much for "turtles all the way down." If it doesn’t, I have a whole bag of other goodies that could do so in a far more devastating fashion.
But here’s the thing. I don’t want to pursue this anymore because it is drawing me closer to philosophy than to God.
What Kristor and I have been engaged in since September only demonstrates the futility and limitations of pursuing Christianity via secondary thinking (communication through language and other symbols). We could literally keep this up to infinity and get nowhere with each other.
I would much rather focus on expounding my assumptions and how these relate to my primary thinking and direct knowledge.
I invite Kristor to do the same.
Leave the world of secondary thinking for a while and see what happens.
Note added: The whole spiel about "counting to infinity" in the example Kristor cites is hogwash. It is nothing more than a conflation of actual infinity and potential infinity. Infinity is not a number. It is a property of a number.
Counting to infinity would be akin to counting to primeness or evenness. That actual infinities are logically and metaphysically possible has not been a controversial topic in mathematics for over a century--yet people like Craig and Kristor still consider them to be killshots for metaphysical assumptions that do not complement theirs.
What do the KCA, the necessity of a first cause, and other philosophical arguments have to do with being a Christian or following Jesus? Well, for me, not much, but for guys like Kristor, it seems to be all that matters.
Kristor has responded to one of my posts about the Kalam Cosmological Argument. In his response, he insists that I am honestly mistaken about KCA and classical theism and that pretty much everything I have said about them is false.
I beg to differ, but I won’t dedicate a post to quibbling.
What I will do instead is address the “battering ram” Kristor considers to be ironclad in his argumentation. The one he has consistently employed against my assumptions; the one he believes sinks my assumptions entirely-- the apparent impossibility of traversing the infinite .
Kristor explained his position quite clearly in a comment on this blog:
Kalam demonstrates that perpetuity – of God, or of other beings – is an incoherent notion : there is no way an infinite temporal series of finite events (in the life of a cosmos or of a being) that had no beginning – i.e., a perpetuity – could ever reach the present moment, or any other. From a point in time infinitely far in the past of any moment, any now, an infinite series of finite events would have to traverse infinitely many finite steps to reach that now. And no number of finite steps can sum to infinity. From the perspective of any such now, the series would always be cooking along infinitely far in its past.
Zeno’s paradoxes of motion anticipate Kalam.
For “finite events” in the foregoing we may substitute “finite causes” and reach the same result: no assemblage of finities can add up to infinity; it cannot be the case that it’s turtles all the way down. So, the real world and its panoply of causes must be finite: they must each have a terminus a quo, a First Cause, an absolute beginning.
Thus, perpetuity can’t be carried into actuality. So, neither God nor any world can be perpetual.
The necessity of an absolute beginning is by the way the basis and reason of creatio ex nihilo. The alternative – creatio ex materia – implicitly presupposes the actuality of an impossible perpetuity.
In his most recent post, Kristor maintains his death grip on this position by doubling down via an external source:
An infinite collection formed by successive addition is impossible: Next, Craig argues that – even if an actual infinite is possible – an actual infinite can never be formed by successive addition. But, if the past is infinite, that is exactly what the past must be. Craig argues that, if the past were infinite, then an infinite number of successive moments have been traversed (i.e., an infinite number of moments have “streamed by” so to speak). But, if “traversing the infinite” were possible, it would lead to a number of absurdities. To illustrate this, he uses the example of the infinite counter:
Imagine that there has always been The Count from Sesame Street. He has always existed, and as long as he has existed, he has been counting down. Today, he is about to reach zero. “Negative two!” he says. “Negative one! Zero!!! Ah ah ah!” … Now, it seems clear that, if I begin counting up (“one, two, three…”), I will never reach infinity. One can never count to infinity. But, why should it be any different in the other direction? How could one ever count from infinity? In this example, it seems like The Count would reach zero today, because (if the past is beginningless) there were an infinite number of moments before today. But, wait …
There were also an infinite number of moments before yesterday. So, it seems like The Count should have finished counting yesterday. But, wait… There were also an infinite number of moments before a year ago, or a billion years ago. In fact, no matter how far back in time we go, it seems like The Count should have always already finished counting (since, no matter how far back in time we go, there was always an infinite amount of time before that). But, that is absurd. Therefore, an infinite succession cannot be traversed.
I could counter Kristor’s selective or limited understanding of infinity in my own words, but I don’t think that would make much of an impression on or difference to Kristor.
So, what I will do instead is refer to Edward Feser, a prominent philosopher firmly within Kristor’s classical theist camp, who offered the following concerning the KCA, infinity, and Craig's notion of time:
A third reservation – the one I will discuss here -- has to do with the question of whether one really can demonstrate that an infinitely old universe is metaphysically impossible, and in particular whether one can demonstrate that an accidentally ordered series of causes (as opposed to an essentially ordered series) cannot be infinite.
(This is, of course, the traditional bone of contention for Thomists.) I am not convinced that this cannot be demonstrated. But I’m not sure that Craig’s metaphysical arguments for that conclusion (e.g. the well-known appeals to Hilbert’s hotel and similar examples) work.
Recall that the basic kalām argument says:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. So the universe has a cause.
That’s the easy part, and the main work in defending the argument involves (a) defending the second premise, and (b) showing that the cause of the universe must be a divine cause. It is in defending the second premise that Craig appeals to examples like Hilbert’s hotel.
The basic idea of such arguments is this. We can draw a distinction between an actual infinite and a merely potential infinite. A potential infinite is a collection that is actually only finitely large, but can be added to without limit. For example, suppose there are ten chairs in some particular room. We could always add an eleventh, a twelfth, and so on, and (if we knock out some of the walls and expand the room) can in principle add any number of further chairs ad infinitum. A potential infinite never is actually infinitely large, but can still always be added to in theory, as long as time and resources permit. An actual infinite, by contrast, already is infinitely large. An actually infinite collection of chairs, for example, would be one that already includes an infinite number of chairs, all at once and at the same time.
This is a distinction Craig borrows from Aristotle, even if in other respects his argument is not particularly Aristotelian. The use he makes of it is this. The notion of a potential infinite is unproblematic, but the notion of an actual infinite is fraught with paradox.
For instance, if we imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests checking in and checking out, we will, if we work out the implications, find them to be utterly bizarre.
So bizarre, in Craig’s view, that we should conclude that such a hotel could not possibly exist in reality. (Those familiar with Craig’s argument will know how the details of examples like these go – I won’t rehearse them here.) And this shows, Craig argues, that the idea of an actual infinite is in general very fishy. There just can’t be an actually infinite collection of things.
Now, an infinitely old universe would constitute an actual infinite, Craig argues. It would amount to an actually infinitely large collection of hours, days, years, or whatever other unit of time you pick. Hence, since there cannot be an actual infinite of any sort, there cannot be an actual infinite of this particular sort. So, the universe cannot be infinitely old.
Now, one problem here is that it will not do to show merely that an actual infinite like the one described in the Hilbert’s hotel scenario is bizarre . To show that something is bizarre does not suffice to show that it is impossible.
For that, you need to show that it involves some outright contradiction or incoherence. But perhaps that can indeed be shown. That isn’t the issue I’m concerned with here. So, for present purposes let’s concede for the sake of argument that scenarios like Hilbert’s hotel really are strictly metaphysically impossible.
The problem is this: How does this show that an infinitely old universe is impossible?
In particular, how does this show that there could not have been in the past an infinite series of hours, days, or years?
The reason this is a problem is that Craig is a presentist . That is to say, he thinks that it is present things and events alone that exist. Past objects and events don’t exist anymore, and future objects and events don’t yet exist. (This contrasts with theories of time like the “growing block” theory, which holds that past and present things and events exist, with the present being the growing edge of a block universe; and with the eternalist view that all things and events, whether past, present, or future, all equally exist.)
Now, his commitment to presentism is not itself the problem; in fact, I agree with Craig about that. (I will have much more to say about that subject in forthcoming work.) The problem is rather this. If the present alone is real, then how can an infinite series of events in time count as an actual infinite?
Past moments of time are not actual; they no longer exist. Hence an infinite series of past moments is not relevantly analogous to Hilbert’s hotel. In the Hilbert’s hotel scenario, all of the hotel rooms in the infinite collection of rooms, all of the guests in the infinite collection of guests, etc. exist together all at once, at the same time. But (for a presentist) past moments, and past things and events in general, no longer exist. They don’t exist together, all at once and at the same time, because they don’t exist at all .
Hence there really is even prima facie (again, if one is a presentist) no such thing as an infinite collection of past moments of time, as there might at least prima facie be an infinite collection of rooms and guests. So, an infinitely old universe scenario is simply not relevantly analogous to scenarios like Hilbert’s hotel – in which case, it seems Craig’s argument will fail even if it is conceded that an actual infinite is impossible.
For an infinitely old universe just wouldn’t be an actual infinite in the relevant sense.
Kristor can do with that what he will, but I think that pretty much sinks the “you can’t traverse the infinite” mantra. So much for "turtles all the way down." If it doesn’t, I have a whole bag of other goodies that could do so in a far more devastating fashion.
But here’s the thing. I don’t want to pursue this anymore because it is drawing me closer to philosophy than to God.
What Kristor and I have been engaged in since September only demonstrates the futility and limitations of pursuing Christianity via secondary thinking (communication through language and other symbols). We could literally keep this up to infinity and get nowhere with each other.
I would much rather focus on expounding my assumptions and how these relate to my primary thinking and direct knowledge.
I invite Kristor to do the same.
Leave the world of secondary thinking for a while and see what happens.
Note added: The whole spiel about "counting to infinity" in the example Kristor cites is hogwash. It is nothing more than a conflation of actual infinity and potential infinity. Infinity is not a number. It is a property of a number.
Counting to infinity would be akin to counting to primeness or evenness. That actual infinities are logically and metaphysically possible has not been a controversial topic in mathematics for over a century--yet people like Craig and Kristor still consider them to be killshots for metaphysical assumptions that do not complement theirs.
What do the KCA, the necessity of a first cause, and other philosophical arguments have to do with being a Christian or following Jesus? Well, for me, not much, but for guys like Kristor, it seems to be all that matters.
November 13, 2024
How the Kalam Cosmological Argument Fits My Assumptions—Kind Of. Sort Of. Premise 1.
Once again, for your reading pleasure, the illustrious Kalam Ontological, oops, I mean Cosmological Argument!
If you are wondering why I am expending my precious time on this rehashed argument, thank Kristor of the Orthosphere, who insists that my assumptions pass the “scythe” of this argument—an argument promoted by contemporary Protestant system-Christian who reformulated it from the work a medieval Muslim who, in turn, was inspired by the logical arguments of an ancient Greek pagan.
That alone should make you pause for thought.
Anyway, here is the KCA again (not including premise 4 and conclusion 5).
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Let’s focus on Premise 1
What does everything encompass? No idea. It certainly cannot include God because that opposes Craig’s assumptions and beliefs (and mine, albeit for different reasons).
See the trick in the first premise? God never began to exist, but everything else did; hence God is the cause of everything!
Quick question. Why doesn’t the argument just stop there? Who needs the second premise and the conclusion?
Occam’s Razor, man! Occam’s Razor!
Next question. What does “begins to exist” mean?
To come into being from nothing? Or pre-existing things/beings undergoing change and existing in another way or form?
Craig implies the former, but the latter can also encompass “begins to exist.”
For example, I didn’t begin to exist in Hungary until I moved here a decade ago. Before that, I existed in another country.
Final question. What does cause mean?
I only ask because theologians and philosophers are known to be the most slippery and creative wordsmiths (lawyers eat your hearts out).
Anyway, Craig is referring to Aristotle’s efficient cause—the thing responsible for the motion or rest of the being in question (re: a carpenter is the efficient cause of a table. The material cause is the wood the carpenter uses. The final cause is the table's end purpose).
Ultimately, Craig implies that God is the initial cause of everything in the universe.
Okay, got it. Once again—are the second premise and conclusion even necessary? The first premise has covered all the bases.
After all of that, I can only begin to make sense of the first premise if I reword it in the following manner:
Every being that begins to exist in Creation has a creator.
Do with that what you will. I’ll address the second premise soon.
In the meantime, enjoy this “engaging” debate between William Lane Craig and Ben Shapiro.
The topic? Jesus.
Yes. Ben Shapiro...arguing about Jesus with the author of the Kalam Ontological Argument.
My goodness. What have I got myself into?
If you are wondering why I am expending my precious time on this rehashed argument, thank Kristor of the Orthosphere, who insists that my assumptions pass the “scythe” of this argument—an argument promoted by contemporary Protestant system-Christian who reformulated it from the work a medieval Muslim who, in turn, was inspired by the logical arguments of an ancient Greek pagan.
That alone should make you pause for thought.
Anyway, here is the KCA again (not including premise 4 and conclusion 5).
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Let’s focus on Premise 1
What does everything encompass? No idea. It certainly cannot include God because that opposes Craig’s assumptions and beliefs (and mine, albeit for different reasons).
See the trick in the first premise? God never began to exist, but everything else did; hence God is the cause of everything!
Quick question. Why doesn’t the argument just stop there? Who needs the second premise and the conclusion?
Occam’s Razor, man! Occam’s Razor!
Next question. What does “begins to exist” mean?
To come into being from nothing? Or pre-existing things/beings undergoing change and existing in another way or form?
Craig implies the former, but the latter can also encompass “begins to exist.”
For example, I didn’t begin to exist in Hungary until I moved here a decade ago. Before that, I existed in another country.
Final question. What does cause mean?
I only ask because theologians and philosophers are known to be the most slippery and creative wordsmiths (lawyers eat your hearts out).
Anyway, Craig is referring to Aristotle’s efficient cause—the thing responsible for the motion or rest of the being in question (re: a carpenter is the efficient cause of a table. The material cause is the wood the carpenter uses. The final cause is the table's end purpose).
Ultimately, Craig implies that God is the initial cause of everything in the universe.
Okay, got it. Once again—are the second premise and conclusion even necessary? The first premise has covered all the bases.
After all of that, I can only begin to make sense of the first premise if I reword it in the following manner:
Every being that begins to exist in Creation has a creator.
Do with that what you will. I’ll address the second premise soon.
In the meantime, enjoy this “engaging” debate between William Lane Craig and Ben Shapiro.
The topic? Jesus.
Yes. Ben Shapiro...arguing about Jesus with the author of the Kalam Ontological Argument.
My goodness. What have I got myself into?
November 11, 2024
A Lord of the Rings Landscape, Carus Style
Carl Gustav Carus - Nebelwolken in der Sächsischen Schweiz -ca.1828
November 10, 2024
Strictly Speaking, Kristor's God of Classical Theism Fails the Kalam Cosmological Argument
In our discussions, I’ve shown why the perpetuity that you and Bruce advocate is problematic, not because it disagrees with classical theism, but because it fails the test of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I have not mentioned that it fails also the test of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, though it does.
You have not addressed those arguments. You have not even noticed them. To be honest, it begins to look as though you are the one who is so committed to his own notions that he can’t bring himself to confront the problems inherent in them.
That is how Kristor of the Orthosphere has summarized the state of our discussions on freedom, the nature of God, time, etc. Perpetuity is the name Kristor has ascribed to the position that Bruce and I posit concerning the nature of time. It is his term, not ours.
Anyway, the reason Bruce and I have not addressed the “tests” Kristor suggests is simple—they are irrelevant to our assumptions.
Bruce explains:
As an argument it gets nowhere with me, because I reject the assumptions behind the first premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" - which assumes that there are "things" that "begin" to exist (rather than having always existed) - and I infer that he assumes that these "things" include human beings.
Ditto for me. To be honest, I don’t understand Kristor’s insistence that we address things like the Kalam Cosmological Argument or the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
I believe in the reality of uncreated freedom, which entails that God is not the only uncaused cause at the most fundamental level of existence. Thus, the KCA and PSR have no real bearing on my assumptions; however, they have a tremendous bearing on Kristor’s assumptions. In fact, it is fair to say that they represent the very basis of Kristor’s classical theist assumptions and beliefs.
From all of this, I can conclude that Kristor regards my assumptions as incoherent. He is motivated to prove this supposed incoherence to me via arguments supporting his own classical theist assumptions, beliefs, views, and position, which he regards as ironclad and true.
I touched briefly on the KCA yesterday and will continue exploring it in future posts to address Kristor’s concerns.
I infer that Kristor is throwing the Kalam Cosmological Argument at me because he believes it debunks my assumptions while simultaneously supporting his classical theist position on the nature of God, the origin of Creation, and time.
What is Kristor’s position? Here’s the man in his own words responding to my unthinkable thought crime of considering God’s existence before Creation:
Francis is struggling with that paragraph because he misconstrues eternity. Sub specie aeternitatis, there is no time before God created, and there is no time after God created. Eternity is a now of infinite duration; all times are present to the Eternal One, all at once. He sees all times, but not the way we do. That’s why he tells us, in Exodus 3:14 and John 8:56-58, that he is I AM. Every event occurs for him in the present tense.
Excursus: When God tells us in Exodus 3:14 that he is I AM THAT I AM, he is saying that he is necessary: that there is no cause or reason of him, other than himself; that his being is the reason of his being. NB: what is necessary is ipso facto eternal. Ergo, etc.
Thus for him, his act of being himself and his act of creating and all the moments and creaturely acts in all the worlds he creates are happening now, as aspects of a single act, a single moment, of infinite scope along all dimensions. For him, fiat lux and the eschaton are right now; so is every moment of the everlasting lives of the blessed in heaven. There is for him then no such thing as before he created; no such thing as a time when any creature has not yet been brought to its proper complete fulfillment.
Here is another description of Kristor’s position from a secondary source:
The claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal. First, God exists, but does not exist at any temporal location. Rather than holding that God is everlastingly eternal, and, therefore, he exists at each time, this position is that God exists but he does not exist at any time at all.
God is beyond time altogether. It could be said that although God does not exist at any time God exists at eternity. That is, eternity can be seen as a non-temporal location as any point within time is a temporal location.
Second, it is thought that God does not experience temporal succession. God’s relation to each event in a temporal sequence is the same as his relation to any other event. God does not experience the first century before he experiences the twenty-first. Both of these centuries are experienced by God in one “timeless now.”
So, while it is true that in the thirteenth century Aquinas prayed for understanding and received it, God’s response to his prayers is not something that also occurred in that century. God, in his timeless state of being, heard Aquinas’ prayers and answered them. He did not first hear them and then answer them. He heard and answered in one timeless moment — in fact, he did so in the same timeless moment that he hears and answers prayers offered in the twenty-first century.
I mentioned that the idea of an atemporal God becomes incoherent if one assumes the reality of time, to which Kristor responded:
It’s the other way round. If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.
Okay, now that we have established Kristor’s position, let’s revisit William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument:
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.The universe began to exist.Therefore, the universe has a cause.If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans (without) the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
The first two premises and conclusion are William Lane Craig’s original formulation of the argument, to which he appends the further premise and conclusion.
The first two premises and conclusion affirm Kristor’s classical theist position, but the appended premise and conclusion do not.
Why?
Because they do not affirm Kristor’s position that God is atemporal. Craig supports Kristor’s assumption about there being no before or after in the life of God, a point Kristor vehemently stressed in his discussions with me:
You can’t talk about before and after in the life of the eternal God of classical theism, and argue from the absurdities that result from so doing, without implicitly presupposing that the eternal God of classical theism is temporal. And to do that is to suppose that he is not the God of classical theism to begin with, but rather a god like Thor. If there is before and after in the life of God, so that he could enjoy his perfection before he created (thus raising the question of why he created a world utterly superfluous to his perfect enjoyment) then he is temporal … and he is not the God that the classical theists are talking about, but a straw man and a misdirection and a confusion. You can’t have it both ways.
Now, Craig’s views align with Kristor as far as before and after the life of God as far as the beginning of the universe and time is concerned; however, unlike Kristor, Craig does not conclude that the God of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is strictly atemporal.
Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid:
God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.
What does that mean? Honestly, who the hell knows?
In any case, two things have happened here.
First, the author of the KCA affirms that biblical data are underdeterminative, drawing into question the biblical “proof” Kristor supplies above. He also admits that there are a variety of views out there, undermining Kristor’s stance that the classical theist view is the only correct one.
Second, timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation is NOT the strictly atemporal God that Kristor touts as the only conceivable God.
Kristor has insisted that “If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.”
I guess that means he rejects Craig’s position that God is temporal since creation. He must because the claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal.
It’s all the same to me because—as I mentioned above—I regard the premises and conclusions of the Kalam Cosmological Argument as irrelevant to my assumptions. I don’t think the same could be said of Kristor.
So, here’s my problem.
Why does Kristor tout a cosmological argument that supports his position on some points, yet whose ultimate conclusion diverges on the matter of the “necessity” of God as atemporal?
I shared this link with Kristor during one of our discussions to demonstrate that not all philosophers working within orthodox parameters regard the classical theist position on time as the do-all-and-end-all of the matter. Craig’s ideas about a temporal God were included in that link.
Kristor’s response? He lumps Craig together with other modern philosophers who have “turned away from God and toward the world as their fundamental point of orientation.”
Okay, if that truly is the case, then why badger me with Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument?
Moreover, why does Kristor promote a cosmological argument from a man he accuses of having “turned away from God?”
That aside, strictly speaking, it would seem that Kristor's conceptualization of God fails the Kamal Cosmological Argument, at least as far as the appended premise and conclusion are concerned.
Craig's KCA argues for the reality of a God who is " timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation."
That is not what Kristor argues for. I guess that means he would regard Craig's conceptualization of God as a confusion, misdirection, and straw man. Still, that doesn't save his conceptualization of God from failing Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument, strictly speaking.
So what gives?
I fully expect Kristor will respond in his usual wall-of-text form, defining this, qualifying that, refuting everything else, citing the Bible, all while referring to Aquinus, Anslem, Aristotle, Boethius, etc.
Anyway, I'll have more thoughts on the KCA in my next post.
End note: I find all of this to be a miserable business. Philosophy. Logic. Ultimately, word games that, in the end, prove nothing besides the penchant to draw closer to philosophy than to God.
You have not addressed those arguments. You have not even noticed them. To be honest, it begins to look as though you are the one who is so committed to his own notions that he can’t bring himself to confront the problems inherent in them.
That is how Kristor of the Orthosphere has summarized the state of our discussions on freedom, the nature of God, time, etc. Perpetuity is the name Kristor has ascribed to the position that Bruce and I posit concerning the nature of time. It is his term, not ours.
Anyway, the reason Bruce and I have not addressed the “tests” Kristor suggests is simple—they are irrelevant to our assumptions.
Bruce explains:
As an argument it gets nowhere with me, because I reject the assumptions behind the first premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" - which assumes that there are "things" that "begin" to exist (rather than having always existed) - and I infer that he assumes that these "things" include human beings.
Ditto for me. To be honest, I don’t understand Kristor’s insistence that we address things like the Kalam Cosmological Argument or the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
I believe in the reality of uncreated freedom, which entails that God is not the only uncaused cause at the most fundamental level of existence. Thus, the KCA and PSR have no real bearing on my assumptions; however, they have a tremendous bearing on Kristor’s assumptions. In fact, it is fair to say that they represent the very basis of Kristor’s classical theist assumptions and beliefs.
From all of this, I can conclude that Kristor regards my assumptions as incoherent. He is motivated to prove this supposed incoherence to me via arguments supporting his own classical theist assumptions, beliefs, views, and position, which he regards as ironclad and true.
I touched briefly on the KCA yesterday and will continue exploring it in future posts to address Kristor’s concerns.
I infer that Kristor is throwing the Kalam Cosmological Argument at me because he believes it debunks my assumptions while simultaneously supporting his classical theist position on the nature of God, the origin of Creation, and time.
What is Kristor’s position? Here’s the man in his own words responding to my unthinkable thought crime of considering God’s existence before Creation:
Francis is struggling with that paragraph because he misconstrues eternity. Sub specie aeternitatis, there is no time before God created, and there is no time after God created. Eternity is a now of infinite duration; all times are present to the Eternal One, all at once. He sees all times, but not the way we do. That’s why he tells us, in Exodus 3:14 and John 8:56-58, that he is I AM. Every event occurs for him in the present tense.
Excursus: When God tells us in Exodus 3:14 that he is I AM THAT I AM, he is saying that he is necessary: that there is no cause or reason of him, other than himself; that his being is the reason of his being. NB: what is necessary is ipso facto eternal. Ergo, etc.
Thus for him, his act of being himself and his act of creating and all the moments and creaturely acts in all the worlds he creates are happening now, as aspects of a single act, a single moment, of infinite scope along all dimensions. For him, fiat lux and the eschaton are right now; so is every moment of the everlasting lives of the blessed in heaven. There is for him then no such thing as before he created; no such thing as a time when any creature has not yet been brought to its proper complete fulfillment.
Here is another description of Kristor’s position from a secondary source:
The claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal. First, God exists, but does not exist at any temporal location. Rather than holding that God is everlastingly eternal, and, therefore, he exists at each time, this position is that God exists but he does not exist at any time at all.
God is beyond time altogether. It could be said that although God does not exist at any time God exists at eternity. That is, eternity can be seen as a non-temporal location as any point within time is a temporal location.
Second, it is thought that God does not experience temporal succession. God’s relation to each event in a temporal sequence is the same as his relation to any other event. God does not experience the first century before he experiences the twenty-first. Both of these centuries are experienced by God in one “timeless now.”
So, while it is true that in the thirteenth century Aquinas prayed for understanding and received it, God’s response to his prayers is not something that also occurred in that century. God, in his timeless state of being, heard Aquinas’ prayers and answered them. He did not first hear them and then answer them. He heard and answered in one timeless moment — in fact, he did so in the same timeless moment that he hears and answers prayers offered in the twenty-first century.
I mentioned that the idea of an atemporal God becomes incoherent if one assumes the reality of time, to which Kristor responded:
It’s the other way round. If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.
Okay, now that we have established Kristor’s position, let’s revisit William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument:
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.The universe began to exist.Therefore, the universe has a cause.If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans (without) the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
The first two premises and conclusion are William Lane Craig’s original formulation of the argument, to which he appends the further premise and conclusion.
The first two premises and conclusion affirm Kristor’s classical theist position, but the appended premise and conclusion do not.
Why?
Because they do not affirm Kristor’s position that God is atemporal. Craig supports Kristor’s assumption about there being no before or after in the life of God, a point Kristor vehemently stressed in his discussions with me:
You can’t talk about before and after in the life of the eternal God of classical theism, and argue from the absurdities that result from so doing, without implicitly presupposing that the eternal God of classical theism is temporal. And to do that is to suppose that he is not the God of classical theism to begin with, but rather a god like Thor. If there is before and after in the life of God, so that he could enjoy his perfection before he created (thus raising the question of why he created a world utterly superfluous to his perfect enjoyment) then he is temporal … and he is not the God that the classical theists are talking about, but a straw man and a misdirection and a confusion. You can’t have it both ways.
Now, Craig’s views align with Kristor as far as before and after the life of God as far as the beginning of the universe and time is concerned; however, unlike Kristor, Craig does not conclude that the God of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is strictly atemporal.
Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid:
God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.
What does that mean? Honestly, who the hell knows?
In any case, two things have happened here.
First, the author of the KCA affirms that biblical data are underdeterminative, drawing into question the biblical “proof” Kristor supplies above. He also admits that there are a variety of views out there, undermining Kristor’s stance that the classical theist view is the only correct one.
Second, timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation is NOT the strictly atemporal God that Kristor touts as the only conceivable God.
Kristor has insisted that “If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.”
I guess that means he rejects Craig’s position that God is temporal since creation. He must because the claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal.
It’s all the same to me because—as I mentioned above—I regard the premises and conclusions of the Kalam Cosmological Argument as irrelevant to my assumptions. I don’t think the same could be said of Kristor.
So, here’s my problem.
Why does Kristor tout a cosmological argument that supports his position on some points, yet whose ultimate conclusion diverges on the matter of the “necessity” of God as atemporal?
I shared this link with Kristor during one of our discussions to demonstrate that not all philosophers working within orthodox parameters regard the classical theist position on time as the do-all-and-end-all of the matter. Craig’s ideas about a temporal God were included in that link.
Kristor’s response? He lumps Craig together with other modern philosophers who have “turned away from God and toward the world as their fundamental point of orientation.”
Okay, if that truly is the case, then why badger me with Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument?
Moreover, why does Kristor promote a cosmological argument from a man he accuses of having “turned away from God?”
That aside, strictly speaking, it would seem that Kristor's conceptualization of God fails the Kamal Cosmological Argument, at least as far as the appended premise and conclusion are concerned.
Craig's KCA argues for the reality of a God who is " timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation."
That is not what Kristor argues for. I guess that means he would regard Craig's conceptualization of God as a confusion, misdirection, and straw man. Still, that doesn't save his conceptualization of God from failing Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument, strictly speaking.
So what gives?
I fully expect Kristor will respond in his usual wall-of-text form, defining this, qualifying that, refuting everything else, citing the Bible, all while referring to Aquinus, Anslem, Aristotle, Boethius, etc.
Anyway, I'll have more thoughts on the KCA in my next post.
End note: I find all of this to be a miserable business. Philosophy. Logic. Ultimately, word games that, in the end, prove nothing besides the penchant to draw closer to philosophy than to God.
November 9, 2024
The Kalam Argument; God is Timeless, Of Course, But Also Temporal. Sort Of. Kind Of.
Behold the first two premises and conclusion of William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument!
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
And the further premise and conclusion Craig appended later:
4. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans (without) the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
5. Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
I’ll wade into my own thoughts about this argument in the coming days. For now, I’d just like to focus on one point in 4 and 5 of the argument, specifically, the bit about the uncaused, personal Creator of the universe who is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful sans the universe.
Now, at first glance, I would interpret this as God having all those qualities despite the universe—meaning the creation of the universe had no effect on him as beginningless, changeless, etc.
But then I considered that Craig may be referring to time. Is he suggesting that God may be temporal?
Maybe. Kinda. Sort of.
Here’s what Craig has to say on the subject:
Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid:
God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.
Wait! Did he say God may be temporal rather than strictly atemporal?
Well, kind of. Sort of. Not really.
Craig explains his position via an inviting wall of text here.
Why do Christians have such difficulty accepting time as an inherent reality within beings?
Same reason they insist upon things like the Kalam Cosmological Argument as “proof” of creation out of nothing.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
And the further premise and conclusion Craig appended later:
4. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans (without) the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
5. Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
I’ll wade into my own thoughts about this argument in the coming days. For now, I’d just like to focus on one point in 4 and 5 of the argument, specifically, the bit about the uncaused, personal Creator of the universe who is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful sans the universe.
Now, at first glance, I would interpret this as God having all those qualities despite the universe—meaning the creation of the universe had no effect on him as beginningless, changeless, etc.
But then I considered that Craig may be referring to time. Is he suggesting that God may be temporal?
Maybe. Kinda. Sort of.
Here’s what Craig has to say on the subject:
Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid:
God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.
Wait! Did he say God may be temporal rather than strictly atemporal?
Well, kind of. Sort of. Not really.
Craig explains his position via an inviting wall of text here.
Why do Christians have such difficulty accepting time as an inherent reality within beings?
Same reason they insist upon things like the Kalam Cosmological Argument as “proof” of creation out of nothing.
