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Originally posted by Rossweisse:
Is it just me, or has the OP silently slipped away?

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Originally posted by Rossweisse:
Five posts and out. Such a pity; he really didn't give himself a proper chance.

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Originally posted by Fool:
I am interested in what makes sensible grown adults believe in the supernatural despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence to suggest that the supernatural exists and plenty of proof that if it does it has never manifested its self in any way at all beyond the imagination of its adherents .

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Originally posted by Golden Key:

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:

I'm not sure the 2nd Law of thermodynamics applies to the spiritual world.

Unless you're capable of weighing and Angel and determining its calorific requirement to fly from the third level of Heaven to Grimsby and back... Then the calculation just requires that some unit of distance is defined. I forsee a lot of difficulties.

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Do angels make that journey often? Good angel food cake and Starbuck's coffee in Grimsby? Or does a barista slip them some devil's food cake in a brown paper bag?


As to thermodynamics and the spiritual world, I just had to look that up! So I searched on "metaphysics law of thermodynamics", sometimes adding "spiritual". Some odd and interesting stuff out there! Samples:

Biblical evidence for Catholicism: Current Models in Cosmological Physics Concerning the Origin of the Universe (Dark Energy & Matter, Etc.), & Their Interaction With Metaphysics.

And this one is "passing strange"!
Metabolic Metaphysics--Entropy: Nature's Preferred Direction?

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:

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Originally posted by Fool:
I am interested in what makes sensible grown adults believe in the supernatural despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence to suggest that the supernatural exists and plenty of proof that if it does it has never manifested its self in any way at all beyond the imagination of its adherents .

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To return to Fool's original question, during my 46 year Christian journey, which began at the age of 15, I've come to appreciate the words of the anonymous writer of the medieval English mystical tract "The Cloud of Unknowing" when he said of God "By love may He be gotten and holden, but by thought never." From a thinking aspect I'm quite agnostic, in that I think God's existence or not, is both unknown and completely unknowable in our present condition. But I feel Him in my heart as a living and guiding presence, who leads me further into a life of devotion.

It's only now, in the autumn of my years, that I'm able to reconcile and harmonise the tension of living in that state. I am at one with the psalmist whi writes of a longing for God, which, in my case gets stronger all the time. I disagree with Fools's assertion that the supernatural has never manifested itself beyond our imagination. Whether or not one believes in miracles, the collective life of the Jewish people from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom as God's children in the promised land, and even more importantly Christ's submission to the world, in odedience to Our Father, are all the Theophany I need to help me on my journey.

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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Teilhard: But, yes, there are some scoffer-skeptical materialist atheists who float the claim that at least in principle, all of life, the universe and everything -- including the vagaries of history -- can eventually be reduced to an equation or set of equations …

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Then they still would need to explain where these equations come from.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure what supernatural means really; isn't it possible to conceive of the transcendent without invoking the supernatural? But maybe I am straying into paganism!

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Karl: Liberal Backslider: No they wouldn't. The equations are descriptive, not prescriptive. They describe what things do. The things themselves do not need to have any equations in order to do the "right" thing.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure what supernatural means really; isn't it possible to conceive of the transcendent without invoking the supernatural? But maybe I am straying into paganism!

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The word 'supernatural' is philosophically problematic. Originally it means something is performing a task that is more complex than its inherent nature allows. Balaam's donkey is supernatural when it speaks, not because it is a miracle but because donkeys cannot speak. Arguably a guide dog is supernatural, because it has been trained to assist its guide in a way in which dogs do not normally know how to assist pack members. God is not supernatural since there is no taks that is more complex than God's inherent nature allows.
That meaning is now almost defunct.

These days it means entities outside the competence of science as presently understood. Rigourously defined, anything supernatural doesn't exist by definition: if ghosts do exist somebody could set up a branch of science to study them and therefore they wouldn't be supernatural. (The exception being God who is outside the remit of any possible body of organised knowledge.)
C.S.Lewis in his history of the meaning of words, says that the word 'supernatural' means something about which you would feel the moods you'd feel in reading a ghost story.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
The word 'supernatural' is philosophically problematic. Originally it means something is performing a task that is more complex than its inherent nature allows. Balaam's donkey is supernatural when it speaks, not because it is a miracle but because donkeys cannot speak.

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"Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas" by Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
The supernatural, according to the Catholic Church, is that which is above all created nature; which, although it exceeds the powers and requirements of any nature created or capable of being created, does not exceed the passive capacity of perfectibility and aptitude of our nature. (Cf. Denz, nos. 1790, 1795, 1808, 1816; Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione, I, 193, 197, 202.)

Moreover, according to the Church, supernaturalness is at least twofold, namely:

1. The supernaturalness of miracles, which surpasses the efficient powers and requirements of any created nature, but not, however, the cognitive powers of human nature. (Denz, nos. 1790, 1818.)
2. The supernaturalness of mysteries strictly speaking and of the life of grace and glory is that which surpasses not only the efficient powers and requirements of any created nature, but also the cognitive and appetitive powers (or natural merit) of any intellectual nature created or capable of being created.

...
This division of supernaturalness may be otherwise expressed according to the terminology rather generally accepted among theologians, thus:

• The absolute supernatural exceeding the powers and requirements of any created nature
  
  • with respect to substance or the formal cause
    
    • uncreated, substantial of itself
      
      • God in the most intimate sense of His Divinity and Trinity.
      • The uncreated person of the Word subsisting in the human nature of Christ.
    • created (accidental)
      
      • Habitual and actual grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost (supernatural by virtue of their formal object).
  • with respect to the manner or to the extrinsic causes, that is, in the manner both of its extrinsic disposition and of its production
    
    • in regard to the end
      
      • Natural act, such as acquired temperance, as supernaturally ordered by charity to a supernatural end.
    • in regard to the efficient cause (Ia, q. 105, a. 8)
      
      • The miraculous substantially (the glorification of the body or prophecy).
      • The miraculous subjectively (nonglorified resurrection, the knowledge of the secrets of heart).
      • The miraculous modally (sudden cure of a fever, the gift of tongues).

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mr cheesy: There is no need for further explanation, it just is.

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• To the question "why does an apple fall to the ground", Science finds the answer "it just does" unacceptable.
• To the question "why are there all these glimmering points in the night sky?", Science finds the answer "they just are" unacceptable.
• To the question "why is there life on Earth?", Science finds the answer "it just is" unacceptable.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
This is not quite the traditional meaning of "supernatural" as used by the Roman Catholic Church. Rather:

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"Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas" by Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
The supernatural, according to the Catholic Church, is that which is above all created nature; which, although it exceeds the powers and requirements of any nature created or capable of being created, does not exceed the passive capacity of perfectibility and aptitude of our nature. (Cf. Denz, nos. 1790, 1795, 1808, 1816; Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione, I, 193, 197, 202.)

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
No, "it just is" isn't an answer, it's an evasion of the question. (Going to a multiple universes doesn't help you either, it just moves the question to a different level.)

If you say that Science cannot explain everything, then we can shake hands, and we need to discuss no further. (I'm not claiming that religion can explain everything either.)

But if materialists claim that Science can explain everything, then they need to set the same standards for the question "why is there something instead of nothing?" (which is what this ultimately boils down to) as for all the other questions about the Universe.

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If Science itself deems a certain kind of answer unacceptable for all other questions, it cannot suddenly find it acceptable for this question.

For example:

• To the question "why does an apple fall to the ground", Science finds the answer "it just does" unacceptable.
• To the question "why are there all these glimmering points in the night sky?", Science finds the answer "they just are" unacceptable.
• To the question "why is there life on Earth?", Science finds the answer "it just is" unacceptable.

It isn't just me who finds these answers unacceptable, it is Science itself. Science can do much better than this, and in fact Science has been developped (gravity, evolution, astronomy ...) exactly by finding much better answers to these questions.

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So, if Science itself finds "it just is" an unacceptable (insufficient) answer to all other questions, it cannot claim to have explained the Universe if it has answered an important question with "it just is".

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mr cheesy: I'm sorry, clearly you don't believe it and/or you don't understand the point, but it is still an answer: there is something because there was always something.

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mr cheesy: The point is that as we are talking about something happening which is not capable of being interrogated by science (it happened before time began), it is purely in the realms of speculation, religion and philosophy.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
This just leads to another question: why was there always something?

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Okay, I have no problem if you admit that it's outside of the realm of Science.

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mr cheesy: Because.

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mr cheesy: Imagine you are talking about a deity that has pre-existed for eternity and apply the same logic to the universe instead. You can't answer questions about the origin of the deity, because there was no origin.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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mr cheesy: Because.

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The same answer I would give as a child when my mother arrived home and asked me "Why is there chocolate around your mouth?"

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mr cheesy: Imagine you are talking about a deity that has pre-existed for eternity and apply the same logic to the universe instead. You can't answer questions about the origin of the deity, because there was no origin.

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I don't apply logic to a deity. I can't answer questions about the origin of the deity, because the deity is outside the realm described by logic.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
I would add to this that the logic around the explanation of God, and the logic around the explanation of the universe isn't the same logic. Any regression of causes needs a logical stopping point. If God exists, then by definition there can be no greater cause than himself. As IngoB pointed out above, God exists necessarily. If God exists at all, he exists because he has to, or he wouldn't be God.

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You can't apply that logic to the universe. The universe doesn't have to exist (even if it is eternal) since its possible to conceive a state of affairs when nothing exists. Of if God exists, we can conceive of a state when the only existence in the universe is God himself.

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I think, Mr Cheesy, these are the conundrums you have to solve. The logic for God's existence won't work for the universe - you need something else. And you also need to account for the fact that it's only the universe itself that needs no explanation, and not any other observable thing we can think of.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Teilhard: But, yes, there are some scoffer-skeptical materialist atheists who float the claim that at least in principle, all of life, the universe and everything -- including the vagaries of history -- can eventually be reduced to an equation or set of equations …

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Then they still would need to explain where these equations come from.

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No they wouldn't. The equations are descriptive, not prescriptive. They describe what things do. The things themselves do not need to have any equations in order to do the "right" thing.

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Originally posted by The Midge:
Would it be wrong to point out that the wisest teacher said "everything is meaningless"?

You can say the universe exists because you can see/ touch/ taste/ smell it or measure it in someway and repeat experiments for certain parts of the mechanics. You just can't say the reason whyexists (if it does have a reason other than it just happened this way).

Even if you can argue that a deity exists you cannot be certain from such an argument that the god so deduced is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Zeus or a flying spaghetti monster. Actually knowing God is dependant on something else entirely. So what is the point such a reasoning exercise?

Everything is meaningless.

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Originally posted by Teilhard:

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Originally posted by The Midge:
Would it be wrong to point out that the wisest teacher said "everything is meaningless"?

You can say the universe exists because you can see/ touch/ taste/ smell it or measure it in someway and repeat experiments for certain parts of the mechanics. You just can't say the reason whyexists (if it does have a reason other than it just happened this way).

Even if you can argue that a deity exists you cannot be certain from such an argument that the god so deduced is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Zeus or a flying spaghetti monster. Actually knowing God is dependant on something else entirely. So what is the point such a reasoning exercise?

Everything is meaningless.

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Except … The Wise Teacher concluding her/his musings and advice thusly:

"Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil."
-- Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:

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Originally posted by Teilhard:

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Originally posted by The Midge:
Would it be wrong to point out that the wisest teacher said "everything is meaningless"?

You can say the universe exists because you can see/ touch/ taste/ smell it or measure it in someway and repeat experiments for certain parts of the mechanics. You just can't say the reason whyexists (if it does have a reason other than it just happened this way).

Even if you can argue that a deity exists you cannot be certain from such an argument that the god so deduced is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Zeus or a flying spaghetti monster. Actually knowing God is dependant on something else entirely. So what is the point such a reasoning exercise?

Everything is meaningless.

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Except … The Wise Teacher concluding her/his musings and advice thusly:

"Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil."
-- Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

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1 – there are reasonable grounds for doubting that either David or Solomon existed, and if either/both did it was probably only as the patriarch of an extended family occupying a small, politically insignificant territory. (Scholars advise that its construction suggests that Ecclesiastes was not written prior to 450BCE – Solomon is assumed to have reigned some 500 years earlier.

2 – the Teacher believes the earth to be eternal (1:4) - it isn't; views the sun as moving around the earth (1:5) - it doesn't; and would suffer cognitive dissonance if faced with a car, a computer, a CT scanner or a chocolate cup-cake (1:9/10). Since accuracy is hardly his strong point perhaps he's not the best source to rely upon for valid conclusions?

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Originally posted by Truman White:
@Mr Cheesy. Last hurrah from me ol' son and I'll leave you in peace. You reckon the universe doesn't need an explanation of its existence because it's eternal. Doesn't work mate. You need more than that. You see, we're not talking about just any universe here, or universes in general, we're talking about this universe. This universe is made up in a particular way. The atoms are arranged in a certain order, the constants that hold it all together have closely defined strengths and ratios that keep it from all falling apart di dah di dah.

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That's the point. This universe could have been arranged differently. With less energy to play with it could have been smaller, it could now be collapsing instead of expanding etc.

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You can get away with an eternal universe that's contingent on God who's also eternal.

You need more than eternity on its own to explain our universe assume it's eternal. And you do need an explanation because it doesn't have to be the way it is.

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Originally posted by Teilhard:

Second, "Ecclesiastes" is obviously not a scientific treatise … so expecting it to be one and then dismissing it for not being such is hardly reasonable ...

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Teilhard:

Second, "Ecclesiastes" is obviously not a scientific treatise … so expecting it to be one and then dismissing it for not being such is hardly reasonable ...

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Yes, but if this is claimed to be written by the wisest person who ever lived, you'd think it might be a bit less obviously stupid.

A plain reading of Ecclesiastes suggests to me that it is written by more than one person, because it is extremely difficult to square the one half with the other.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
There is nothing more logical in believing in this kind of deity than believing in the infinite eternal status of stuff. Neither can be proven in and of themselves.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Yes, but if this is claimed to be written by the wisest person who ever lived, you'd think it might be a bit less obviously stupid.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
To the contrary, it is precisely the logical analysis of the observations of nature which leads one to propose that there must be an "uncaused cause". This outcome of the analysis get appropriated by theists as "God", and that's fair enough if they play by the rules of that analysis (which many modern theists do not!). But it does not change that the core claims arise from a logical analysis of observed change.

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The problem you have is that the universe undeniably changes all the time. That's why your speculations about "eternity" contain these unobserved cycles of universes. But the sort of temporal change you allow only gets you the existence of a universe now from the existence of the universe back then. It does not get you why any of this endless cycle has arisen in the first place. The universe is contingent, you have already admitted this by allowing temporal change even at the universe level (cycles of universes). But if the universe is contingent, then all the cycles throughout endless time are still contingent, for a series of contingencies does not become necessary. So we can still meaningfully ask: "How come any of this?"

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The one and only answer possible here is obviously something that is not contingent, something that does not change, something that is necessarily existing always in the same way. The only way to escape contingency is necessity. And here we are talking necessity in the most fundamental sense, not based on some circumstances.

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Your cycle of universe is not some kind of alternative to this. A necessary being follows as much from a finite universe as from your endless cycle of universes. Any kind of thinkable contingency must be grounded in necessity, or forfeit reason. Your one and only alternative move is the declaration of "brute fact". It is not your endless cycle of universes that is an alternative to God. It is your claim that the endless cycle of universes (or a finite universe, or egg on toast, ...) is a "brute fact" that is your actual alternative to God. Because the only alternative to the analytic reason that proposes a necessary being is non-reason. You can refuse to think about things, you can declare matters to be beyond human reason. The materialist position is precisely to do this for things like the universe. Theists think that materialists give up reason too early, they say one can still reason out the existence of God, and our reason only starts to falter when we try to analyse God.

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I'm not sure that the author of Ecclesiastes was "the wisest person who ever lived," but what he has written is certainly not "obviously stupid." Rather it is pretty damn stupid to read Eccles 1 as some kind of physics treatise, rather than as a poetic assessment of the meaning of life and the scope of human action.

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Originally posted by The Midge:
Even if you can argue that a deity exists you cannot be certain from such an argument that the god so deduced is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Zeus or a flying spaghetti monster. Actually knowing God is dependant on something else entirely.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
The arguments for the existence of a deity are more precisely for the existence of an unmoved mover, or a supreme good, who is then argued to have to possess such and such features by virtue of the argument, which features warrant the name God.

Zeus and the flying spaghetti monster don't possess the relevant features or else possess features that the argument rules out.

For example, if the unmoved mover is necessarily the way it is - it has to be to satisfy the argument - and the universe is contingent, the universe cannot be necessarily derived from the unmoved mover. Therefore the unmoved mover must be free to create the universe one way or another.
That means that the unmoved mover must have features analagous to knowledge and will.

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The argument doesn't go: we need an explanation for the universe, therefore God. It is we need an explanation for the universe; any explanation has to have certain features; an entity with those features may be reasonably called God.

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It's true that you can't deduce that the unmoved mover revealed themselves to the Israeli people, or that they became incarnate as Jesus. For that you need faith. But you can show that there's no incompatibility there.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@IngoB. I was particularly attracted to your conclusion that the only way to avoid contingency is through necessity. Whilst self-evident when I think about it, it's elegantly put.

I also liked your point that you can't avoid contingency with respect to a cyclic universe theory since one universe is contingent on a previous one. How then, does one get from contingency to necessity?

And the point that materialists stop thinking though an issue before theists is well made. Materialism, by definition, hits a boundary of knowledge which theism comfortable traverses.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
OK, but there is also no incompatibility in such a deity existing but not being the creator of all things (or in fact being a bunch of other things) either. It isn't as simple as 'God-creator-of-the-universe' vs nothing.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@IngoB. I was particularly attracted to your conclusion that the only way to avoid contingency is through necessity. Whilst self-evident when I think about it, it's elegantly put.

I also liked your point that you can't avoid contingency with respect to a cyclic universe theory since one universe is contingent on a previous one. How then, does one get from contingency to necessity?

And the point that materialists stop thinking though an issue before theists is well made. Materialism, by definition, hits a boundary of knowledge which theism comfortable traverses.

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It's an interesting argument, but I'm not sure why it's a boundary of knowledge. It's guesswork, isn't it, not that there's anything wrong with that.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's true. But I think that the philosophical traditions in the Abrahamic faiths would argue that no such being ought to be worshipped. The prohibition upon worshipping other deities is not contingent upon God having commanded it, but is a prohibition of natural reason like don't murder. Many atheists would say it was mere power worship also.
Anything that ought not to be worshipped is by definition not a deity.

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
@IngoB. I was particularly attracted to your conclusion that the only way to avoid contingency is through necessity. Whilst self-evident when I think about it, it's elegantly put.

I also liked your point that you can't avoid contingency with respect to a cyclic universe theory since one universe is contingent on a previous one. How then, does one get from contingency to necessity?

And the point that materialists stop thinking though an issue before theists is well made. Materialism, by definition, hits a boundary of knowledge which theism comfortable traverses.

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It's an interesting argument, but I'm not sure why it's a boundary of knowledge. It's guesswork, isn't it, not that there's anything wrong with that.

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I think it's more a case of how far you allow yourself to take a logical argument. If you rule out metaphysics and philosophy as a way of understanding the universe (as some materialists do stridently, and others decide to do because they can find no practical use for these perspectives) then you are creating a boundary to knowledge. "Guesswork" feels a little pejorative.

Feel free to come up with an alternative if I'm missing your point.

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