This paper, written by a Christian, critiques Objectivist arguments in philosophy of religion, including Piekoff’s reasoning in OPAR and ITOE. I thought it would be of interest given that the forum has recently sprouted several threads discussing arguments for and against God’s existence.
http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/archives/jars8-2/jars8_2sparrish.pdf
Where does he talk about arbitrary assertions? It’s 42 pages, so I started skimming once I saw that he wasn’t putting the main Objectivist argument first. I never did find it.
Where does he talk about arbitrary assertions? It’s 42 pages, so I started skimming once I saw that he wasn’t putting the main Objectivist argument first. I never did find it.
He talks about the burden of proof on page 203.
He talks about the burden of proof on page 203.
He doesn’t cover arbitrary assertions.
The point is that Thomas assumes without argument that
God is on the same level of plausibility as gremlins. This may seem
the case to him, but certainly does not to most people.
Missing the point. The analogy is not about plausibility, but arbitrariness.
According to the naturalistic theory, reality is ultimately unconscious and impersonal; the theistic theory considers reality conscious and personal. Thus, from a theoretical point of view, the concepts of the cosmos are radically different. Occam’s Razor only takes effect when all other considerations are equal.
…
What we therefore have is not a situation in which the burden of proof is on one theory, namely theism. Rather, we have a situation to
explain, the existence of the physical cosmos, and two theories by which to do so.
First, he assumes the “existence of the physical cosmos” needs explaining, and that this is the job of philosophy. Does this mean that a caveman, or a bronze age city-state dweller, had to accept theistic explanations for existence, lacking, as he was, any kind of alternate, scientific narrative? Or could/should he be what Michael Shermer amusingly calls a militant agnostic: I don’t know, and neither do you! And is it so different today? We have explanations of a kind, but they’re incomplete. They may always be incomplete. That doesn’t give anyone license to just make shit up. And BTW, Occam’s Razor is an heuristic, it doesn’t prove anything.
There’s nothing Objectivism-specific about how to answer this attempted monkey-shine, but it calls to mind William Lane Craig’s recent debate with Lawrence Krauss. Craig claimed that there was “evidence” for the existence of God, and his approach was a Bayesian probability argument. One of the elements he used was the (surely factual) assertion: the majority of New Testament scholars agree that the resurrection of Jesus was a historical event. I mainly bring up that detail because it’s so funny, talk about being obtuse.
Hey, it gives me an idea, I’m going to consult a majority of Nostradamus scholars to help me pick lottery numbers. At least then the nonsense will have an expiration date on it.
First, he assumes the “existence of the physical cosmos” needs explaining, and that this is the job of philosophy.
Ugh, I’m straining for a quote, and I’m almost positive it’s from Ayn Rand. When asked where did the universe come from, her answer was “Am I to answer you from outside the universe?” The question might have been “What is the purpose of the universe?”
Ugh, I’m straining for a quote, and I’m almost positive it’s from Ayn Rand. When asked where did the universe come from, her answer was “Am I to answer you from outside the universe?” The question might have been “What is the purpose of the universe?”
The two quotes that could be searched from “outside” near “universe” yeilds the following:
As the whole history of philosophy demonstrates, no study of the natural universe can warrant jumping outside it to a supernatural entity. The five arguments for God offered by the greatest of all religious thinkers, Thomas Aquinas, are widely recognized by philosophers to be logically defective; they have each been refuted many times, and they are the best arguments that have ever been offered on this subject.
and
The law of causality does not state that every entity has a cause. Some of the things commonly referred to as “entities” do not come into being or pass away, but are eternal—e.g., the universe as a whole. The concept of “cause” is inapplicable to the universe; by definition, there is nothing outside the totality to act as a cause. The universe simply is; it is an irreducible primary. An entity may be said to have a cause only if it is the kind of entity that is noneternal; and then what one actually explains causally is a process, the fact of its coming into being or another thing’s passing away.
I thought it would be of interest given that the forum has recently sprouted several threads discussing arguments for and against God’s existence.
As in this case, the threads which have been propagated which assert the existence of god(s) are predominantly started by non-objectivists. An Objectivist who has cultivated a theory of concepts which are premised based on a solid epistemological basis premises have no need for such arbitrary assertions.
As in this case, the threads which have been propagated which assert the existence of god(s) are predominantly started by non-objectivists. An Objectivist who has cultivated a theory of concepts which are premised based on a solid epistemological basis premises have no need for such arbitrary assertions.
The paper claims that some new developments have been made in philosophy of religion since Rand’s time. This is, of course, indisputable. These new developments include:
The kalam cosmological argument (ancient Muslim philosophers developed early versions of it, but Craig has developed it significantly in recent decades)
The fine tuning argument
The ontological arguments of Plantinga, Hartshorne, and Maydole
Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism
The moral argument (developed with an eye to the implications of evolution by several authors)
Plantinga’s concept of theism as a properly basic belief
Swinburne’s argument from religious experience
The argument from consciousness
I don’t think Objectivists have responded to any of this stuff. Isn’t that a problem?
Edit: I just thought of a really good way to put this point. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, published in 2009, is arguably the best defense of theism ever written. It is about 600 pages of dense, carefully argued theistic reasoning. To my knowledge, there is not a single argument in this book which you could refute with anything in the Objectivist literature.
I don’t think Objectivists have responded to any of this stuff. Isn’t that a problem?
To my knowledge, there is not a single argument in this book which you could refute with anything in the Objectivist literature.
Is it a problem? No. The arbitrary requires no response.
As you become more knowledgable of Objectivist literature, you come to understand that it is not about refutation.
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, published in 2009, is arguably the best defense of theism ever written. It is about 600 pages of dense, carefully argued theistic reasoning. To my knowledge, there is not a single argument in this book which you could refute with anything in the Objectivist literature.
Then bring it on. Fire your best shot. I see ontological, teleological, cosmological, and ooh, looks like a variation on Kant’s moral argument (oh yum), just from the names it looks like a lot of same old same old.
A case has not been refuted until it has been stated at its strongest.
Christopher Hitchens
I don’t think Objectivists have responded to any of this stuff. Isn’t that a problem?
BTW you’ll find George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God available online for free. GHS posted the link himself, here: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10497&view=findpost&p=133253
He writes from an Objectivist perspective, cites Rand et al.
Nathaniel Branden’s The Concept of God from his NBI lectures has been published, and discusses the god question from the Objectivist perspective, all in one place. It’s not a subject that’s ever been of much interest to Objectivists, as dream_weaver notes.
If you’re going use one of these “new” arguments as a challenge, please focus on whatever is unique and new about them. I don’t think anyone will be interested in typing out a refutation of St. Anselm (re the classic ontological argument).
And brace yourself for ridicule.
I’m not understanding why it is that Objectivists “just have to respond” to every argument ever put out for theism, or it becomes a “problem for Objectivism.” Is it a problem for you that you haven’t responded to every arbitrary assertion I can make up? Why would this be a problem for anyone? What does that mean? If I don’t respond to every argument ever put out or formulated by every theist, and every variation on every theme, ever, does that make theism more true in your mind? Does that lend extra veracity to it? Make it more plausible? Does that make you feel better about its truth in some way? A-ha, my opponents aren’t even listening to me anymore, I win! Whoever evades the most and out-annoys everyone else until they give up and ignore you wins? Does it diminish the truth-value of atheism, or make whatever truths Objectivism holds less truth in some way? Why is someone’s refusal to entertain the arbitrary a problem for their philosophy?
Personally speaking, the opportunity costs of exchanging polemics with mystics versus people who believe, say, altruism is rational, or that collectivism is necessary, or what have you, are pretty high you know. But I can see the point in saying that, maybe among professional academics, less scholarly material has been put out against religion in general (not necessarily responding to every theist, ever.) Especially if you believe “religion is the number one threat.” Then you think you might want to write a book about it, or fund someone else to write a book refuting all types of religion, or at least get the transcriptions to some of your lectures published in book-form. But still, that wasn’t the point. The point was that we have to for some reason “keep abreast” of every new variation on the standard arguments for God, and if we don’t, that somehow is a problem for our standing in the world, or some such.
Then bring it on. Fire your best shot. I see ontological, teleological, cosmological, and ooh, looks like a variation on Kant’s moral argument (oh yum), just from the names it looks like a lot of same old same old.
A case has not been refuted until it has been stated at its strongest.
Christopher Hitchens
I’m not really in it for weeks of logic chopping on this forum, but you can read Collins’ fine tuning argument here if you’re interested in an example of the quality of reasoning that the analytic theists are producing:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Collins-The-Teleological-Argument.pdf
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Collins-The-Teleological-Argument.pdf
Another argument ad nauseam.
The paper claims that some new developments have been made in philosophy of religion since Rand’s time.
Do any of these developments include any discourse on their theory of concepts?
I’m not really in it for weeks of logic chopping on this forum, but you can read Collins’ fine tuning argument here if you’re interested in an example of the quality of reasoning that the analytic theists are producing:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Collins-The-Teleological-Argument.pdf
80 pages, you’ve got to be kidding! How about reducing it to a syllogism?
I’ve heard the fine tuning argument from William Lane Craig in debates, there are lots of them on YouTube, Christopher Hitchens and Lawrence Krauss have been his opponents, among others. So I’m fairly familiar with it.
I say, “fine tuning”, compared to what? Are there other universes Dr. Craig has checked, and compared to ours? Ones where the metaphorical knobs and switches have been set differently? Of course not. Further, he doesn’t show us a mechanism by which such values are set, or can be changed. He points to factors like the force of gravity, which is governed by Newton’s inverse square equation, strong and weak nuclear force, the speed of light etc. and claims they are arbitrary values, and then slips in the premise of Primacy of Consciousness by claiming, therefore, that these values must have been “set” by someone (God).
To put it in Objectivist terms, he’s asserting that Identity and Causality prove Primacy of Consciousness. I don’t know if you have enough background in Objectivism to understand that, or if you know what is meant by Primacy of Existence, so I’ll leave it there for now.
Is this the best argument you’ve struggled over? You made me think of St. Anselm earlier, which reminded me of a favorite argument for God (cue the ridicule music):
“Plenty of morons’ books are published, because they’re convincing at first glance. An editor is not required to weed out the morons. If the Academy of Sciences doesn’t do it, why should he?”
“Philosophers don’t either. Saint Anselm’s ontological argument is moronic, for example. God must exist because I can conceive Him as a being perfect in all ways, including existence. The saint confuses existence in thought with existence in reality.”
“True, but Gaunilon’s refutation is moronic, too. I can think of an island in the sea even if the island doesn’t exist. He confuses thinking of the possible with thinking of the necessary.”
“A duel between morons.”
“Exactly. And God loves every minute of it. He chose to be unthinkable only to prove that Anselm and Gaunilon were morons. What a sublime purpose for creation, or, rather, for that act by which God willed Himself to be: to unmask cosmic moronism.”
Umberto Eco,
Foucault’s Pendulum
, Chapter 10
80 pages, you’ve got to be kidding! How about reducing it to a syllogism?
Collins presents this syllogism on page 207 (the sixth page):
(1) Given the fine-tuning evidence, LPU is very, very epistemically unlikely under NSU: that is, P(LPU|NSU & k′) << 1, where k′ represents some appropriately chosen background information, and << represents much, much less than (thus making P(LPU|NSU & k′) close to zero).
(2) Given the fine-tuning evidence, LPU is not unlikely under T: that is, ~P(LPU|T & k′) << 1.
(3) T was advocated prior to the fine-tuning evidence (and has independent motivation).
(4) Therefore, by the restricted version of the Likelihood Principle, LPU strongly supports T over NSU.
All of the acronyms and terminology are explained on pages 202-206. I don’t know if that’s sufficiently reduced for your purposes, though. I happen to own a copy of the (much less rigorous) book The Rationality of Theism, which is a collection of short essays by the top defenders of various theistic arguments. We can discuss Collins’ presentation of the fine tuning argument in that book instead, if you’d like.
I’ve heard the fine tuning argument from William Lane Craig in debates, there are lots of them on YouTube, Christopher Hitchens and Lawrence Krauss have been his opponents, among others. So I’m fairly familiar with it.
Cool.
I say, “fine tuning”, compared to what? Are there other universes Dr. Craig has checked, and compared to ours? Ones where the metaphorical knobs and switches have been set differently? Of course not. Further, he doesn’t show us a mechanism by which such values are set, or can be changed. He points to factors like the force of gravity, which is governed by Newton’s inverse square equation, strong and weak nuclear force, the speed of light etc. and claims they are arbitrary values, and then slips in the premise of Primacy of Consciousness by claiming, therefore, that these values must have been “set” by someone (God).
I think this is Hume’s objection to the cosmological argument, correct? Swinburne refutes it as follows in The Existence of God (p. 134):
"From time to time various writers have told us that we cannot reach any conclusions about the origin or development of the universe, since it is the only one of which we have knowledge, and rational inquiry can reach conclusions obly about objects that belong to kinds, for example, it can reach a conclusion about what will happen to this bit of iron only because there are other bits of iron, the behaviour of which can be studied. This objection has the surprising, and to most of these writers unwelcome, consequence, that physical cosmology could not reach justified conclusions about such matters as the size, age, rate of expansion, and density of the universe as a whole (because it is the only one of which we have knowledge); and also that physical anthropology could not reach conclusions about the origin and development of the human race (because, as far as our knowledge goes, it is the only one of its kind). The implausibility of these consequences leads us to doubt the original objection, which is indeed totally misguided.
“Uniqueness is relative to description. Every physical object is unique under some description, if you allow descriptions that locate an object by its spatial position - that is, by its distance and direction from named objects. Thus my desk is the one and only desk in such and such an apartment; and that apartment is the penultimate one on the left in a certain row… My desk has in common with various other objects that it is a desk; and with various different objects, that is weighs less than a ton, and so on. The same applies to the universe itself. It is, for example, like objects within it such as the solar system, a system of material bodies distributed in empty space. It is a physical object and, like other physical objects, has density and mass. The objection fails to make any crucial distinction between the universe and other objects; and so it fails in its attempt to prevent at the outset a rational inquiry into the issue of whether the universe has some origin outside itself.”
The analytic theists (Swinburne, Plantinga, et al.) have refuted a lot of the Enlightenment objections to the arguments for God. News of this has, generally speaking, not reached the internet atheist community as yet.
I think this is Hume’s objection to the cosmological argument, correct? Swinburne refutes it as follows in The Existence of God (p. 134):
I’m not familiar with what Hume wrote about the Cosmological argument, he’s chapter on miracles is useful, but that’s all I would probably ever cite him on.
I didn’t say “we cannot reach any conclusions about the origin or development of the universe”, I did object to calling the laws of the universe “fine-tuned”, when there is no “out of tune” universe to compare to. It’s the only one we’ve got, the only one we’ve ever seen or studied, so what’s the point of saying it’s “fine-tuned”? I’m afraid your Swinburne quote turned immediately to gobbledygook, presumably he’s answering the (here unstated) objection of Hume. Who, BTW, couldn’t have addressed the fine-tuning argument, how could it have been stated yet? He was roughly contemporary with Newton himself. You said these were new arguments!
Here’s a funny snippet of Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking about fine-tuning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPLn9nv26NM&feature=related
And a particular favorite, 666 arguments for the existence of God:
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
Here’s number 25:
ARGUMENT FROM INTERNET AUTHORITY
(1) There is a website that successfully argues for the existence of God.
(2) Here is the URL.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
Now seriously, please demonstrate for all of us that you understand what is meant by Primacy of Consciousness vs. Primacy of Existence. You have 251 posts on this forum, so I assume you have some knowledge of Objectivism. I could be wrong about that, and thus talked right past you in my earlier post.
Another thing, the syllogism starts “Given the fine-tuning evidence…”, for the reasons already stated this evidence is not given, so I didn’t even bother trying to figure out the alphabet soup.
I didn’t say “we cannot reach any conclusions about the origin or development of the universe”, I did object to calling the laws of the universe “fine-tuned”, when there is no “out of tune” universe to compare to. It’s the only one we’ve got, the only one we’ve ever seen or studied, so what’s the point of saying it’s “fine-tuned”? I’m afraid your Swinburne quote turned immediately to gobbledygook, presumably he’s answering the (here unstated) objection of Hume. Who, BTW, couldn’t have addressed the fine-tuning argument, how could it have been stated yet? He was roughly contemporary with Newton himself. You said these were new arguments!
Okay, so you’re just wondering what Collins means when he says that the universe is fine tuned. He explains that on page 204 (the third page).
" 3 Fine-tuning of the universe; existence of a fine-tuned universe; fine-tuning evidence; fine-tuning data. To stay in conformity with the literature, I shall mean by the “fine-tuning of the universe” or the “existence of a fine-tuned universe” the conjunction of the following two claims: (i) the claim that the laws and values of the constants of physics, and the initial conditions of any universe with the same laws as our universe, must be set in a seemingly very precise way for the universe to support life; and (ii) the claim that such a universe exists, or when the background information includes the information that there is only one universe, the claim that this universe is life-permitting, where this is an indexical that picks out the one universe that actually exists. When I speak of the “fine-tuning evidence (data),” or “the evidence (data) of fi netuning,” or variations of these, I shall be referring only to claim (i). The reason for this is that “evidence” and “data” implicitly refer to what physicists have discovered. Clearly, physicists have not discovered that the laws, constants, and initial conditions are lifepermitting since we always knew that based on our existence. Rather, they have discovered claim (i). When I attempt rigorously to formulate the argument, the distinction between claim (i) and claim (ii), and the distinction between the “fi ne-tuning of the universe” and the “fi ne-tuning evidence (or data)” should be kept in mind.
" 4 Fine-tuning of a constant C of physics. When discussing a constant C of physics (see Sections 2.3 and 4.2), I shall use the term “fine-tuning” specifically to refer to the claim that the life-permitting range of C – that is, the range of values that allows for life – is very small compared with the some properly chosen “comparison range” for that constant. (For how to choose this comparison range, see Sections 4.3 and 4.4.) In connection with a constant C, the term “fine-tuning” will never be used to include the claim that it has a life-permitting value."
Now seriously, please demonstrate for all of us that you understand what is meant by Primacy of Consciousness vs. Primacy of Existence. You have 251 posts on this forum, so I assume you have some knowledge of Objectivism. I could be wrong about that, and thus talked right past you in my earlier post.
I do not understand that distinction, and I’m not sure that anyone else does either. You’re free to try to explain it.
I do not understand that distinction, and I’m not sure that anyone else does either. You’re free to try to explain it.
Grames post a concise summary in this thread entitled Primacy of Existence.
It is possible to observe someone is both unmarried and a man. It is possible to observe that the content of consciousness is dependent upon reality external to consciousness.
While primacy of consciousness is ruled out because of the defects of the arguments made for it (circularity, contradictions) that does not imply primacy of existence has a better deductive argument. From my Notes on “The Evidence of the Senses”:
II. Primacy of Existence cannot be proven
A. Proof cannot begin by premising facts external to consciousness because that begs the question
B. Proof cannot begin by premising facts about consciousness as that contradicts the thesis that facts external to consciousness must be known first before awareness of awareness is possible
C. There are no other kinds of premises
D. Primacy of Existence cannot be a conclusion
E. “P of E” is self-evident not arbitrary or an act of faith
F. “P of E” is axiomatic because existence is implicit in any and all instances of awareness, any attempt to deny it affirms it
G. The third person external perspective when used to explain consciousness is implicitly a primacy of existence perspective.
Please note that the Primacy of Existence cannot be proven (deduced), rather it is induced from the observation of the facts your consciousness provides you with of existence every moment of your life.
Edited to add