Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 05/24/02 4:22pm
In reply to:
Ben
's message, "Wade (and anyone else), please define "God"" on 04/26/02 7:34pm
Sorry for not being around for a while. I've been busy with a lot of tests and finals in this 18 credit semester (on top of a job, volunteer work, and several extracurricular activities) for several weeks. And afterwards I decided to take a break of sorts. Well, I'm back.
>Wade,
>
>Maybe you have already done this elsewhere, and if so,
>I apologize. But I would like to hear your definition
>of "God." I know it at least _includes_ the idea that
>he necessarily exists (i.e., exists in all possible
>universes), so I've at least been paying that much
>attention.
Not as much as you seem to think. I actually didn’t clam that I believe it includes the idea of necessary existence, I was just putting forth the ontological argument as an answer that some propose for the question of “why” God existing. The confusion is quite understandable though, since it’s very easy to assume that one holds the position one argues for, and I'm at least partly to blame for not pointing out my actual views on that matter. (I probably would have done the same in your position.)
>But I just wondered how you define the
>word. I have a definition of my own, but I'd like to
>hear yours first.
Okay. Here’s a list of properties I attribute to God. I copied most this from Philosophy for Dummies when it got into philosophy of religion.
- Omnipotence: God can do anything (to the greatest possible extent)
- Omniscience: God knows everything (to the greatest possible extent)
- Omnipresence: God is present, in some sense, everywhere.
- Incorporeality: God is not composed of corporeal substance.
- Omnibenevolence: God is perfectly good.
- Aseity: God is not dependent for existence on anything else.
- Eternity: God is not bound by time. There are two interpretations of this property. One is that he has existed for an infinite amount of time, the other being that God is atemporally timeless.
- Ineffability: God’s nature cannot fully be put into words.
- Perfection: God is without flaws and defects. This is a summary property, generalizing pretty much all others. God is perfectly powerful, perfectly wise and knowledgeable, perfectly good, and so forth.
The idea of necessary existence comes from defining God as the greatest possible being, a being of maximal perfection. Some may criticize this definition by saying that’s not what they mean when they use the term God, but it’s unclear why a rational person should be reluctant to call a being of maximal perfection God given the summaritive property. The justification for necessary existence is that the greatest possible being would by definition have the greatest possible form of existence, which happens to be necessary existence.
>If our definitions match, we might
>agree with each other more than you might imagine.
>
>(the main difference if that's true would be that I do
>not think such a being's existence can be proven
>either by logic or the scientific method)
I’m reluctant to agree with you on that last part. Can God be proved via logic? Some think that the ontological argument accomplishes that. Whether or not the ontological argument is successful I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s at least possible. What about the scientific method? What is the scientific method? How do scientists operate? Here’s my view of science. One thing science tries to do is come up with laws that describe empirical regularities (which are usually mathematical). If a scientist (e.g. Newton) believes he finds one and has experiments to support it, he tells other scientists about it and those fellow scientists test it out for themselves. If it all checks out, the law is accepted. If future observations contradict the law, it is modified or discarded.
The second thing scientists try to do is come up with explanatory theories to explain data. Whereas laws are descriptions of empirical regularities, explanatory theories are conceptual constructions to explain why the data exist. For example, atomic theory explains why we see certain observations. The same could be said with DNA and relativity. Scientists try to put forth reasonable theories that explain relevant data, such as why gas operates in certain ways. Unfortunately, the acceptance and rejection of explanatory theories aren’t so clear-cut as they are with laws. There will always be innumerous theories that explain the exact same data (some absurd, some not), and there will always be some way to modify a previously falsified theory so that it’s consistent with the data (no matter how ridiculous the theory may become). Since these competing theories are empirically indistinguishable from each other, if science is to pick out a theory from among these numerous competitors and claim that it is correct, then such a selection must be based on nonempirical principles (whether they be philosophical, personal, societal, or whatever). When choosing the theory that scientists think is the most likely to be correct, they can justify their decision using Ockham’s razor, empirical adequacy, fruitfulness, and so forth. Alas, there is still no known clear-cut method that tells us to what degree the evidence confirms a scientific theory, despite attempts at finding one. Instead, scientists intuitively feel how rational scientific theories are, rather than having a precise logical method for such judgments. For instance, we intuitively feel that the five-minute hypothesis (the theory that everything in the universe, including fossils, wrinkles, etc. were formed five minutes ago) is false, even though it is 100% empirically identical to the theory of the universe being 10-30 billion years old. This is not to say that such theory evaluations are irrational, but such intuitive feelings do ultimately decide the fate of an explanatory theory.
In light of this, I think theism can be tested in ways similar to “the scientific method” when it comes to explanatory theories. We can never come up with rigorous proof, but it does explain data. How well it explains data is something that cannot be decided by any rigorous logical method. Even science does not have such a mechanism to select its explanatory theories.
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