August 26, 2010 4

Dhorpatan Responds to Me

By Tim H in Debate, Internet, Philosophy
dhorpatan-responds-to-me

Looks like Dhorpatan himself has decided to respond to a post where I endorsed Veritas48′s defense of the KCA.  He uses Dan Barker-esque criticisms of the first premise and argues that kalam equivocates on its use of the term “beginning” in regard to the second.

Apparently, he also takes issue with my statement that such counter-arguments are pop objections that are generally not found in the scholarly literature regarding the argument (Which is true, by the way). I apparently have no right to say this because I’m a layman myself (Which I am, but that doesn’t stop me from pointing out the fact that they are just pop objections — he’s arguing tu quoque). I’ll be issuing a response within a few days. This post is simply to point out his response.

Keep all comments appropriate.

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August 23, 2010 12

A Short Thomistic Cosmological Argument

By Tim H in Musings, Philosophy
a-short-thomistic-cosmological-argument

This formulation comes from Scott Sullivan.1

1. Dependent beings exist
2. Either dependent beings exist because of an infinite series of other dependent beings or because of an independent being.
3. Not because of infinite series of other dependent beings
4. Therefore because of an independent being which theists call God

The first premise is obviously true. What it means for a being to be dependent is for it to rely on external factors for its existence. My own existence, for example, is dependent on a myriad of conditions including temperature, pressure, air, and so on.  The existence of my computer is dependent on the actions of the person (or robot) who manufactured it.  Virtually everything we see is dependent on something else — they are effects which result from causes.

Now why does the set of dependent beings exist?  Well, there’s really only two alternatives: either they exist because of an infinite series of dependent beings, or they exist because of an independent being who grounds their existence.  The first option seems unlikely, because no matter how many dependent beings you have, the whole set remains unexplained.

Suppose I want to borrow a cup of sugar from you.  I knock on your door and proceed to ask for some sugar.  You respond by saying that while you do not have any sugar, you can get some from your neighbor to give to me.  So you go to your neighbor and proceed to ask him for sugar.  Unfortunately, your neighbor is also out of sugar, and he directs you to his neighbor to get some sugar. If you keep doing that, then nobody ends up with sugar, because every person in the series must first have it in order to give it.  The same is true for the set of dependent beings.  Explaining each being in terms of another does not explain why the whole set explains to begin with.

Okay, so maybe an infinite series of dependent beings isn’t sufficient — why can’t the dependent beings cause each other?  To illustrate the absurdity of this, assume for a moment that the universe only has two dependent beings — Smith and James.  On such an analysis, Smith is the cause of James, and James is the cause of Smith. But this doesn’t make sense. In order for Smith to be the cause of James, Smith must first exist.  But then James would have to exist too.  Ultimately, they would have to exist before they existed, which is absurd.

Perhaps it commits the fallacy of composition.  After all, simply because all members of the set are contingent doesn’t mean that the whole set is contingent.  But part-whole reasoning is not always fallacious.  For example, if every brick which makes up a wall is red, then the wall as a whole is also red.  There is no good reason in this case to treat the whole as if it were different from the parts.

We are thus finally left with an independent being as the ground for the existence of dependent beings. Thus being would himself not require a ground for existence, since he is not a member of the set of dependent beings. This being would also have to be perfect (Immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient, etc..) in all regards, since it is not bound by anything external to itself (Otherwise it would be dependent).  And this is what we call God.

  1. http://www.scottmsullivan.com/courses/contingency.pdf [↩]

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August 21, 2010 5

Is God a Psychological Projection?

By Tim H in Atheism, Philosophy, Psychology
is-god-a-psychological-projection

The short answer: No

This type of argument is especially common amongst young adherents of the new atheism. In brief, it alleges that belief in God is the product of the ignorant and weak masses who sought to find comfort in an imaginary friend.  The main implication of this is that belief in God is therefore false, outdated, or ignorant. Here are four problems with this line of reasoning:

1. It commits the genetic fallacy.  The truth of a belief is independent of how it originated.  For example,  though I might have been raised by my parents to believe that 2+2=4, it does not follow that my belief is therefore false. Or suppose I learned Calculus from a math teacher who was later discovered to be an axe-murderer.  The fact that my teacher was a bad man doesn’t mean that therefore I can’t trust what I learned from him. Thus, even granting that belief in God is a psychological crutch for the weak minded, it does not follow that therefore one’s belief in God is false.  A psychological analysis of why one holds a particular belief, though sometimes useful, should come after a philosophical analysis of the truth of the belief in question.

2. If God exists, then we would expect people to come up with an idea of God.  This was in fact the argument of C. S. Lewis, who argued that our desire for God was a natural desire which corresponds to a fulfillment, similar to our desire for food and water.1  The argument thus cuts both ways. Humanity’s universal desire for God might as well count as evidence for the existence of God!  To assume that humanity’s desire for God counts against belief in God is to tacitly beg the question in favor of atheism.

3. Assuming that we’re talking about the Judeo-Christian God — who would want to project him?  The God of Judaism and Christianity is “holy, demanding, omnipotent, omniscient (thus capable of knowing me through and through even when I do not wish to be known), awesome in wrath and justice, and so forth. If one were going to project a god to meet one’s needs, a being much tamer, much more human, much more manageable would be a better candidate.”2 A view of religion that is based on one’s personal likes and dislikes invariably leads to a conception of God that fits the person who does the choosing and does not require major lifestyle changes. Interestingly, it is pagan and New Age deities who fit perfectly into this category (I wonder what that might suggest about them.)3

4. Why not turn the tables and argue that atheism is a psychological crutch for those who wish to avoid moral accountability for their actions? The psychologist Paul Vitz, and more recently the philosopher James Spiegel, have argued in this way.4  In Freudian terms, if theism is the result of wanting to project a father figure, then atheism is a desire to kill the father figure.

  1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperCollins: 2001 ed.) p.137-138 [↩]
  2. J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. 1987) p.230 [↩]
  3. J. P. Moreland, “Arguments for the Existence of God,” Biola University lecture [↩]
  4. Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless (Spence Publishing) and James S. Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Moody Publishers: 2010 [↩]

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August 17, 2010 5

New Guy

By MattWM in News
new-guy

So I’m the new guy here. I’m a high school student (going to be a Senior this year), and I love the whole business of apologetics. My main interests are in historical Jesus studies and the New Testament/Classical culture of the 1st and 2nd centuries. I got into the whole apologetics business relatively recently (last year), and I really love studying stuff about the historical Jesus and New Testament culture. I’m inexperienced in the area of philosophy, but I’m sure the other two posters will make up for that.

I don’t know how often I’ll be posting, but most of my stuff will usually be about questions pertaining to the historical Jesus and the like. Perhaps I could even get a short reply to some of Bart Earman’s arguments up here soon. We’ll see.

I’d like to thank Tim and Gil for letting me join the team. I’m sure it’s gonna be a valuable experience dialoguing with them and others.

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August 14, 2010 13

Veritas48 Defends The Moral Argument

By Tim H in Atheism, Internet, Morality, Philosophy
veritas48-defends-the-moral-argument

YouTube apologist Veritas48 provides an in-depth treatment of the moral argument.  He covers several preliminary issues and then critiques relativism and other competing theories of ethics. The video is roughly 42 minutes long. Skip to 00:45 for a table of contents.

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