The trick being pulled in religious arguments

Ethics
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I made this post as the result of a discussion with a Catholic. He equates God with existence (or the creation of existence, but identical to existence… or something like that), and says that God’s rules must be obeyed. I then have the gall to ask, “why should I obey God’s rules?” He considers that question nonsensical - suggesting that if Jesus revealed himself to me, it would make no sense for me to ask why I should obey his rules. It seems to me he considers it as nonsensical as asking, “why should I obey the laws of physics?”

Anyways, I’m trying to figure out what the linguistic trick is that they’re doing, as it’s obvious that’s all their doing. It’s certainly equivocation, but is that all there is to it? Here’s my response:

Here is exactly what you (or the Catholic) are doing:

You have this anthropomorphic, personal thing called “God”. Then you have harsh, cold reality, “existence”, which you believe to be without meaning. You want to connect them, so you define them as equivalent. God created existence and is existence. Thus, you are able to suggest that God’s commands must be obeyed, just as the laws of physics must be obeyed. It would be absurd for me to ask “why should I obey the laws of physics?” You have no choice BUT to obey them. BUT, the laws of physics are not enough laws for your universe - you need moral codes. You equate God with existence in order to give those codes meaning and force.

You take a personification, who commands rules (just like a king would). You equate this personification with reality, in order to make those rules a necessary consequence of reality. Now, I try to ask “why” to “obey me” and you say it is nonsensical.

The trick that you are pulling is that when I try to argue with the person of God, you convert him into existence. When I try to argue with your notion of existence, you convert him back into the person of God.

In short, you switch back and forth between the “is” and the “ought”. When I argue with the “ought” you convert it (by definition) to the “is”. The reason that you have to use an anthropomorphic entity for your “ought” is that meanings, values, rules, are unique to humans. In other words, for something to be a rule requires it to be “commanded, obeyed, demanded”, etc - all human actions. It’s familiar territory, and easier to be absorbed by your brain.

In this way, you evade responding directly to anything, but appear to have an answer for everything.

I’m not sure I succeeded in writing this clearly, but I have succeeded in identifying the source of the trick.

I guess the next step would be understanding why some statements are more easily accepted by the brain than others, especially if they are put into familiar forms. It seems obvious, but maybe there are some requirements for acceptance. Are there any other requirements besides being a) familiar and B) grammatically/syntactically correct?

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You might work in a parenthetical about how it is certainly possible to break moral rules, unlike with physical laws–just to explicitly draw the distinction. In fact your Catholic interlocutor has certainly broken them himself; that’s the whole bloody point of “needing” to be “saved.” (So how can he be so confused by the concept?)

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Anyways, I’m trying to figure out what the linguistic trick is that they’re doing, as it’s obvious that’s all their doing.

Basically, they are saying that existence is a manifestation of God’s Will, that existence works as smoothly as it does because it is under God’s purview, and that if there was no God, then there would be no existence – not just that He created the world, but that He is there all of the time everywhere keeping existence in existence. This type of idea goes all the way back to Plato’s Forms, whereby that which we perceive is a manifestation of the True Forms. Plotinus reduced that down to One ultimate Form, and the Christians made that into God via Augustine. So, to them, making an argument that existence exists and only existence exists means that God definitely exists. It’s not a linguistic problem, but rather a more profound philosophical problem. Ultimately, they would say that a glass is a glass because God makes it so.

I don’t know that there is any way to get through to this mentality, since every fact is a confirmation of God’s existence. In that sense, they would say that one cannot disobey God’s Will any more than you can disobey the law of gravity. God gave us free will so that we could either accept Him or reject Him, but even in claiming that we reject him, we are accepting Him because we are acting according to our nature which God created. In other words, even in rejecting Him and living in reality by our own minds, we have to accept that existence exists and that therefore there must be a God that brought it and continues to bring it into existence. Without God, you would not exist, so the very fact that you exist and reject Him means that He created you to be able to do so. You might not accept that, but it doesn’t matter, since God is the Ultimate Axiom – the thing upon which everything else rests.

This is basically intrinsicism run amuck – having an idea not based on reality but accepting it nonetheless because it is held to be The Truth. There is no arguing with this mentality, just as there is no arguing with people who will not accept the facts as facts. Try arguing with an extreme rationalist that we have free will, when they have concluded “logically” that it is impossible. These religious God as Axiom mentalities will never accept that a thing is what it is because it exists, and that there is no need for God for there to be Existence.

I used to be Catholic, and I think some of the arguments I give above are from Aquinas, so I can tell you that it was difficult for me to overcome that sort of “logic” until I accepted the idea that logic is non-contradictory identification of the facts of reality as given in perception and by utilizing reason based on the evidence of the senses and introspection. But I was already questioning Catholicism as a guide to life before I came across Objectivism in high school. Past a certain point, there is no reaching them, because they have accepted Faith as the final arbiter. God as Axiom has been accepted by them all the way down.

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Basically, they are saying that existence is a manifestation of God’s Will, that existence works as smoothly as it does because it is under God’s purview,

What do you mean with ‘existence’?

Existence “works as smoothly as it does”, yes, in the sense of that there seems to be no interruptions, we continue to exist.

But looking at the harsh reality there is not much that runs ‘smoothly’. Maybe in the tiny tiny spot called earth and on that earth the few places where man has conquered nature, but anywhere else (well, maybe there are a few other planets) there is only one thing: death and decay, black holes, empty space, etc.

The only equation I have found to be fitting is ‘God = Reality’, i.e. a different word for the same meaning and a separate word/entity ‘God’ being unnecessary.

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The only equation I have found to be fitting is ‘God = Reality’, i.e. a different word for the same meaning and a separate word/entity ‘God’ being unnecessary.

Yes, in the sense that Spinoza used the term “God” to mean that reality exists and that it cannot be disobeyed without impunity. However, most of the time when a religionist uses the term “God” he is referring to an intelligence – a consciousness – and not merely the fact that existence exists and that to attempt to act against it will lead to misery or even death.

Part of this mis-thinking or misintegration (to use Dr. Peikoff’s term) comes from Plato’s idea that material things or matter is just too stupid to follow a rational principle in and of itself. And if one thinks of a rational principle as something that must be understood before it can be followed, then it would indeed be strange to think that, say, a rock must understand gravity before it can roll down hill in a predictable manner. To Plato, matter had to be guided by a rational principle in order for it to act the way it does, which led him to conceive of rational principles as something that exists apart from matter --i.e. the Forms. But actually, there are no rational principles operative in reality apart from human consciousness. A thing is what it is and acts accordingly; that is, causality does not require any understanding on the part of the thing acting for it to act. Rational principles are abstractions done by the human mind, rather than something that exists out there in reality.