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Are we all postmoderns now?
I have a thought experiment, riffed from Schrödinger, of a box that when opened reveals whether or not God exists. While philosophically paradoxical (any entity that can definitively say God doesn't exist must be all-knowing and thus indistinguishable from God; an entity that says God does exist may only be referring to itself), I consider this a test for the strength of belief and/or the strength of the yearning for truth for believer and non-believer alike. Would someone be willing to stake a core part of their identity in opening such a box or would they rather leave it closed?
In my innocent (if not naive) moments, I consider the existence of God to be self-evident: life and consciousness are (to me) massive gaps in the Atheistic narrative. In my cynical (if not naive) moments, I consider the existence of God to be self-evident as well, but only as the creator/designer of our simulation.
During the "Sunday school" hour, my church has been having members talk about their lives and how they ended up being where they are geographically, professionally, and spiritually. Statements by two members struck me particularly:
These are members who, if offered the choice in my thought experiment, I'm sure would open the box. Yet they made statements that seem at odds with an assurance of the physical reality of God.
In the first instance, conditioning belief on an attribute of God (and one that has only existed for two thousand years!) implies a causality that runs in the opposite direction than it does: that the existence of God is predicated on our belief; or even worse, our preference for certain attributes of God. We may consider his attributes good but only because God is the creator of everything including morality. What we perceive (at least as through a glass dimly) as his good attributes are simply because we were made by a God who has these attributes. Any part of us that considers any aspect of God to be less than perfect is an error of our own fallen nature.
In the second, the desire (spurred by our post-enlightenment culture, perhaps) to appear (or even to actually be) intellectual and rational is juxtaposed against faith as if the existence of God is predicated on our ability to reason our way to him (or at least not reason ourselves away from him). Put succinctly, this line of thinking posits that we adjust our priors for the existence of God based on rational evidence or lack-thereof. Yet this presupposes our intellect to both be the primary means of knowledge about the existence of God and to be a reliable source of this knowledge. I have qualms with both presuppositions. The existence of God can be perceived experientially, and is probably a more robust evidence for God than mere philosophical puzzling (Colossians 2:8). Contra Aquinas, the intellect itself is fallen and incapable of definitively or reliably answering questions of God's existence. One of the genuine contributions of post-modernity and critical theory is bringing attention back to the limitations of rationality and scientific knowledge.
In both of my fellow Christians' statements, the "default" position is assumed to be one of agnosticism or "lack of belief". And indeed, everything about our culture assumes agnosticism. To participate and engage in culture is to do so within this agnostic backdrop. Every aspect of our interactions with non-believers and believers alike is permeated with this assumption.
Yet I owe this culture no allegiance. My acquiescence to the milieu (or should I say malaise?) is entirely self-imposed. Would that I could live in my own impenetrable bubble; surrounded by society without feeling the taint of it. The impossibility drives a desire to escape, to find a place where I can find the space to fully explore my relationship with God, with my family, with fellow believers, with nature; and better organize my own opinions and beliefs into a consistent narrative. It's the same desire that drives Rod Dreher to recommend cloistering away from culture, and Ayn Rand to fantasize about capitalistic communes. (It's worth nothing that neither acted on this desire; though Dreher did emigrate).
My fellow Christians keep reminding me that we are called to be in the world but not of the world. They are probably much better Christians than I; they may driven by a genuine desire to save the lost. I know myself, and I merely use the Biblical commandment as an excuse to amass temporal and superficial comforts at the expense of something much deeper. No fellow believer will uncover my secret: it is impossible to distinguish someone who is just "in the world" with someone wallowing in it.
Lest it be unclear at this point: I am inescapably postmodern.
Aww, shoot. I was working on an effort post about postmodernism and the signaling barber-pole, guess I’ve been beaten to the punch…
Never mind. I’m still in business.
I don’t think you are using “postmodern” correctly. Merely deriding (Derriding?) philosophy isn’t enough. For example, you argue that experience of God is “probably” a substitute for philosophy. I think you’ve got the wrong interpretation of Colossians 2.
This is not an exhortation against intellect. It is ranking one tradition—the Church—over competing interests. Perhaps this may be framed as the struggles of an early Church? Consideration of human interests, of the systems of knowledge which motivated and informed the creation of a work, is what makes the criticism post-structural.
Postmodernism is neither reductionist nor anti-rational. It posits alternate structures, understanding of which supplements an inadequate rationality. It rejects epistemic certainty rather than endorsing it. This is perfectly compatible with agnosticism.
It also makes the user sound like a tool, should he spend too much time smugly pointing out contradictions and deconstructing systems. So…yeah. I suppose we are all postmoderns.
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In the original Schrodinger's Cat experiment, once you open the box, you can see a live or dead cat for yourself. If I open this box, do I then get to see God for myself?
Or does the box just speak the answer and I'm supposed to believe on faith that the box is telling the truth? If so how's that different from what I'm expected to do for God anyway without the box?
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I can imagine either a powerless oracle-entity which is all-knowing, or some bit of information which is entangled, quantum-like, with the bit of information about the universe "does God exist, Y/N?", so the box is (to me) obviously not philosophically paradoxical. Of course, I'm an atheist, so I won't have shared assumptions.
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Let me be clear- the typical committed Christian’s answer is probably ‘the box changes nothing. Either it says god is real, or it’s lying.’ And whether or not an individual opens the box depends on how much the individual wants to find out if the box is lying.
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But what about God? Why is it that the universe needs to be created but God needs no creator? I have a sympathy for an eternal universe because of this issue with what comes first. If the universe is infinite in time then we don't need to care about beginnings. If God is infinite in time then that's a similar kind of completeness.
Also, why does life need God? Do we understand the biology of the primordial soup deeply enough to be totally sure how proteins might form? We have not replicated their formation in the lab, sure, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. How can we be sure that we're not missing some feature of underwater volcanoes that makes it easier to form proteins, or that there isn't some other process that produces life? Does anyone feel really confident about microbiology from billions of years ago?
??? Why so? If we're not using our intellect, then it's just words, superstition and cope (that the evil people who do so well on Earth will actually be invisibly punished by powerful beings after they die, when said beings could easily punish them in public). Scientific logic has gotten us a great many good things, what has critical theory supplied of equal worth? Critical theory is a great solvent, it's used to destroy. But where is the evidence that it dissolves bad things and not good things? I could use critical theory to undermine critical theorists, analyze how they invent new concepts like 'gender' which further divisions and conflict. I could psychoanalyze the interests of critical theorists as a class, open up questions as to the meaning of emancipation...
The universe is composed of parts that change. Everything that changes is composed of the actual (what it currently is) and the potential (all the states it could be in.) Everything that is composite like this needs some sort of explanation for why it is in this current condition and not a different state.
The classical theist definition of God solves this problem by proposing something that has no composition, no change. Because there is nothing else that it could be, its current state needs no explanation. This changeless, fully actual thing is that which we call God. Based on knowing that it is without composition, fully actual, philosophers can then derive proofs for the other common attributes of God.
What if the universe just is, a timeless unchanging thing (unchanging from outside) and time and causality describe relationships within it and it's parts? As an analogy, a filmmaker shoots a reel and the reel itself is unchanging, but within it still seems to move.
To me, this has the advantage of only talking about observable things, and doesn't have the first cause problem. Am I making some elementary error?
That there are real relationships within the universe itself, without which it would be something substantively different, indicates that this is not the answer. Classical Theism requires that God be "divinely simple," composed of no parts that could even be conceptually taken away.
But I will admit we are coming up to the edge of which arguments I remember comfortably. There are lots of distinctions made between types of relationships, causal, change, etc and I have forgotten more here than I remember.
Needless to say, if presented with the box described in the OP, I would open it in a heart beat! I have spent a decent percentage of my life trying to answer the question with the tools I have, and will undoubtedly spend a lot of time in the future on the matter (I have Gaven Kerr's "De Ente et Essentia" on my desk and am trying to psyche myself up for what some have called the best proof for God's existence yet.)
I don't understand this. What's an example of a real relationship that makes the universe substantially different? How does this indicate that "time and causality are not relationships within the universe"?
There could be three fewer stars in the universe, and the universe would still make sense as a concept, but the effects of the gravity of the stars would no longer exist. Within the universe, we can talk about things having cause and effect, firing a bullet really does cause a broken window.
The imagined God would not have such cause and effect internal to it.
Are you saying that the universe could have been different (it could have had 3 fewer stars), therefore it needs an explanation for why it is the way it is, and why it isn't another way? If this is not what you're saying, than I admit I cannot follow what you write.
In this post you discuss God's nature.
Why does God's nature (to act and bring into existence) not require explanation? Couldn't its nature have been different?
I am struggling to see what value or benefit the concept of God is giving: I will admit, my general strategy is to show the universe has God-like properties, or equivalently, that God has universe-like properties.
Yes, you understand what I'm saying. Whether I'm providing the best steelman of the argument is another question (answer is probably no.)
God's nature could not be different, or it would not be God. Philosophers call God a "Necessary Being," a Being whose nature is that it is impossible that it should not exist. If He is the answer to "why something, instead of nothing" it would be because His nature is necessary, not conditional or composite.
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In this analogy, who is watching the universe-movie?
The analogy is between the universe and the film. The film isn't playing, because there's nothing to play it on. Verbs refer to actions within the movie and time refers to the movie's runtime. Are you implying that because movies are filmed in our world, it must mean the universe was created?
No. I mean that the static film reel only appears to move when someone is watching it (and not when it's sitting on a shelf).
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Can this changeless, fully actual thing have downstream causal effects? If not, I don't think "we call this changeless, fully actual thing God, and God is the reason the universe exists" works as an argument for the existence of God-as-the-thing-that-caused-the-universe-to-exist.
If the changeless thing is allowed to causally affect things, the question becomes "but where did the system that contains the changeless thing and also the changeable universe come from, since the changing universe can't be a part of the changeless thing".
The changless thing is allowed to casually affect things, in fact, that is it's nature entirely. The changeless thing's nature is entirely, wholly, and simply to act, to bring into existence. You would need to present a really good argument for why this would imply the universe is part of God. It is contingent on God, and is possibly inevitable based on God's nature, but has a different nature.
Edit: One classical theist described God as an "omnipotence trope," if that helps conceptualize what theists are talking about.
Does the changeless thing that we're calling God know it has acted? Before it acted, did it know that it had not yet acted?
(BTW if your faith is a load-bearing part of your personality, and you're not currently doing anything deeply maladaptive due to that faith, there's probably only downsides and no upsides of engaging)
The changeless thing exists out of time and knows all its actions before, during, and after them. It is without emotion. If that is incompatible with your understanding of the Judeo-Christian God then I don't know why that matters to this conversation.
So, if I'm understanding this view correctly
So, coming from a viewpoint of "for a statement to be meaningful, nontrivial, and correct, its negation must be meaningful and incorrect":
Also, is there any particular reason that we would expect that the universe we live in is one that is causally downstream of an instance of this specific type of god?
I'm going to start referring to the philosopher's God as pGod, to disambiguate and maybe help distinguish the idea in your mind from any religious upbringing you might have had.
I think it can only be discussed analogously, and determined negatively. Meaning, we can be certain of what pGod isn't, and use all those "isn'ts" to develop an "is." It is so far outside our realm of experience as temporal, complex creatures.
When we know something, we are grasping its form and holding the form somewhere inside our self. As the originator and grounds of all forms, pGod grasps these forms in their most perfect way. That is what is meant by pGod knowing everything.
What specific type of god? pGod, the First Cause God? The arguments from casualty, rationality, motion, essence, etc all point to the same type of pGod. They are all arguments for the same God that Is, Existence itself, formulated differently to avoid different objections as they arise, to try to express the idea more clearly.
Or do you mean the omniscient, omnipotent, divinely simple God? The same arguments that make the case for pGod are then continued to require such things. As you can see above, the omniscience follows from the nature of the pGod as the ground of all things, that which is "proved" (philosophically, proof just means a logically coherent argument given certain starting positions) in the argument for pGod.
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Or we could posit that there is an infinite, even if we cannot know it; or even that causality and time make no sense outside of our contingent environment, and that speaking of “what caused the universe” or “what came before the universe” is a category error in and of itself.
Even if we accept that there needs to be an explanation for existence — and any argument for this has been terribly, terribly far from convincing — it doesn’t explain why it needs a god; nor does it explain why a “changeless, fully actual thing” would be able to cause the universe to exist beyond “trust me bro”.
The one thing that I'm fairly certain of is that existence cannot be simply explained by an infinite casual chain. Lets say there was an infinite line of people, each has their hands by their side. They all have the command that when the person to the left of them raises their hands, they will raise their hand. If no one has their hands raised, then no one ever will raise their hands. It doesn't matter if they're standing in a circle. It doesn't matter how many infinities of people there are.
(Edit: This doesn't mean that there can't be a infinite causal chain, just that by itself it doesn't answer the question at hand.)
The question of "why something, instead of nothing?" does not rely on the universe having a beginning. It begins with the attempt to explain the existence of a single thing, here and now, that has the potential to be many other things, and going on from there.
You are trying to imagine a first hand raising but there wouldn't be a first hand, hands would just start raising backwards in time infinitely. These arguments about the impossibility of infinite are weird, we know of logicaly consistent definitions of infinte that are extremely counterintuitive (a segment can be divided by two indefinitely, there are as many even numbers as there are numbers). You can't just say "I can't imagine" and expect to be done with it. Maybe the problem is with the infinite, maybe the problem is your imagination.
I'm not saying "I can't imagine." I said, with the starting position of no contingent things, having an infinite amount of no contingent things does not equal a contingent thing. An infinite series of contingent things that don't exist cannot explain existence. That is what I said, that is what I meant.
Your example relies on a "brute fact:" at least one contingent thing exists. And that is an argument that some philosophers make! It may be true. It is a possible solution. The implications of accepting a "brute fact" haven't been fully unpacked yet but from what I understand it is a possible solution.
I see two possible solutions to the problem of existence: classical theism (at least one non-contingent thing exists) or acceptance of brute facts.
So you are making the argument from contingency not from motion? I don't think it matters much, I still think the dismissal of infinites in these types of arguments lack rigor: they were formulated during a period of time where the principle of non-existence of actual infinity was commonly accepted, but this is not the case anymore. Mathematics rutinely deals with actual infinity in a way that is consistent, so you have to justify why this particular actual infinity is impossible.
It doesn't seem you're responding to what I'm actually saying so I'm not sure what productive conversation can be had here. I'm not arguing from contingency or motion. I'm not even making an argument for God. I did not say a particular actual infinity of contingent things is impossible - in fact I explicitly said it's possible and how ("brute fact")!
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These types of arguments feel totally disengaged from reality. It reminds me of ancient philosophers' endless attempts to define reality using words, and reason about the nature of words and concepts much more than about the nature of reality itself.
External reality exists and is a much more reliable source of information than attempts to reason from first principles.
This is especially true when what we know of reality contradicts these ideas of infinities. You cannot divide a line an infinite number of times. Even a line the length of the entire observable universe can only be divided 205.2 times before reaching 1 Plank Length, beyond which there is simply no smaller unit to divide the line into. Infinities are useful abstractions, but reality operates in discrete units.
This isn't true. You're thinking about Planck time, which is the smallest unit of time that can theoretically be measured.
In any case, that would constrain the lower bound of infinitesimals, but not large infinities; and there are countless other objections. Especially when it's even more true that attempting to reason to god via "something exists" is torturous, and the methods to link it to the Jewish storm god even more so. At least the atheistic abstract arguments in this vein are doing so because they are dealing with that level of abstraction (countering "something exists...therefore god")!
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The argument of @OracleOutlook is (usually) an argument by necessity, "it is logically impossible that god does not exist because..."
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Hm, I'm not sure about that. My understanding of plank lengths is that you can go smaller. There are things smaller than a plank length such as singularities, and there are distances measured using fractional plank lengths (otherwise basic geometry would break).
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If you say so buddy, but from over here this just looks like a completely bespoke definition of "when things need explanations" cut out of whole cloth for no reason other than to let theists off the hook.
The other alternative theory is that some things just are "brute fact", but that this "brute fact" does not have the features of God in classical theism for whatever reason the philosopher favors.
The question, "Why something, instead of nothing?" isn't at all an easy question, and is not solved by an infinite universe. I don't mean to imply God is an easy answer to the question. Just that there is a differentiation being made by classical theists between God and the universe, and that distinction is "change."
I'll be honest, it mostly comes off as word salad. Is there any particular reason to take seriously the idea that being "unchanging" somehow equates to a free pass when it comes to causality, other than the fact that it's convenient for theists?
It just sounds the same as telling me that god has the property of being "fnuh" and that fnuh things don't need to come from anywhere.
Like science has pushed the god of the gaps so far off into irrelevance that the only theistic rhetorical tactic left is to hope they can convince someone that they don't need any evidence outside of their own skulls at all.
To put it very informally, if things that change need explanations for the change then if there is anything that does not need an explanation, it does not change. If there is something that has the property of coming from nothing with no explanation, then it would be something that does not change. You could say that things that change do not always need explanation for that change if you like. I'm not trying to prove or convince anyone of God here. All I am trying to do is explain the distinction between God and the Universe that philosophers draw.
This is not a God of the Gaps argument at all. Thomas Aquinas wrote his Five Ways in the 13th century , Sir Francis Bacon lived in the 17th century.
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First hand experience is limited as a means to knowledge. Philosophical puzzling can get you out of the rabbit holes that raw experience can leave you in.
I could take LSD and have it revealed to me that some form of atheistic Buddhism is the fundamental reality. What could you say to me in response if you're saying experience can trump reasoning? You'd be preventing yourself from making the obvious refutation that I was experiencing a drug-induced delusion.
The obvious response is to ask what particular experiences you would have anticipated having in a world where atheistic buddhism was not the fundamental reality that you no longer expect to have now that you know that atheistic buddhism is the fundamental reality.
I'm not sure what it means that you "believe that atheistic buddhism is the fundamental reality", if there are no differences in your expected observations, even in principle.
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That experience doesn't always trump reasoning obviously. The nature of the experience and reasoning in question are important, and each informs the other.
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My problem there is the reliability of the box; how do I know this is true, how do I gauge the builders of the box, is this going to turn out like that scene in Star Trek: The Final Frontier?
But if I can trust it, then yes: open the box. To know is better than not to know.
Because of the Fall, our understanding is darkened, yes, but we still have the ability to use reason to work out what is true and what is not. Post-modernism cuts off the branch it is sitting on, because if we can't know anything, then it is itself a useless tool. If we throw out "you can't definitively answer the question of God's existence" then all we have to fall back on is subjective experience, and then of course "well why Jesus instead of Buddha or Mohammed? Or Wicca?" What if my subjective experience is that God does not exist? Why should I accept your "experiental" evidence of God, since your experiences could be down to drugs, something wrong with your brain, or simple self-deception - 'I asked God for a sign and then the window blew open' - no, that was just the wind, not God.
The experiences are the basis for the philosophy; that's the whole idea, that there is evidence for the existence of God in the world around us and the nature of reality, and we can use our God-given intellects to work that out the same way we can use them to work out acids and bases and how they react.
Subjective/experiental belief can lapse into Fideism or the 'signs and wonders' version which further degrades into Prosperity Gospel nonsense.
Amusingly this is exactly where my mind went reading the OP as well. Final Frontier catches a lot of flack from Star Trek fans and granted it's not as good the installments before and after it, but I've always liked it, and the interactions between Kirk and Sybock (culminating in that scene) are most of the reason.
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But why wouldn't an all knowing and all powerful god show himself to all people, but in reality restricts himself to just a geographical area, one that happens to correspond closely to the geographical area that the Roman Empire ruled. And; of course, the Eastern half of that has it's own even more absurd prophet who has taken the hearts and minds of that portion of the human race.
The Post-Modernists are right in that we can't force anyone to believe anything. That doesn't make a completely irrational belief the same as a rational one. That you can differentiate them yourself is all the evidence I need.
Why wouldn't God show himself to everyone? Usually because they're not ready and such proof would not be helpful to them. This applies on a personal level and on a geographic (really, cultural) level.
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I can't imagine what kind of person I would have to be to not open the box immediately. Hell, even if the box said, "the only path to salvation and eternal life is a steady diet of fresh dog poop, yes/no?" I would still open it.
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