Quick note on Trump

I came accross this on facebook. Forgot all about it I think it should be noised about for the election: Joe Hinman September 30, 2018 · Shared with Public I just watched face the nation, The Fearless leader has done more damage than even I realized! The guest was a man from the department of commerce he was saying Trump keeps squeaking about what great accomplishments he's made, bit even his major underlings do not realize the harm he;s done, Example: only the department of energy has the expertise to know if Iran can build an nuclear weapon at this state. But Trump officialism have not even asked then because they know that. When told this Trump said "they are not military what do they know?" No one likes the government but the truth is over the course of the 20th century the feds built a vast data collectivization machine in the various federal agencies. All Trump has done is to destroy that data collection/dissemination ability. Another example he says the public no loner has access to the major data on global warming.""

Occam's razor shaves the Multiverse

Multiverse is the idea that our space/time is merely one "universe" in a huge limitless number of parallel worlds. Atheists often use this concept to argue against the fine tuning argument by saying with all those universe out there the odds of hitting one that can bare life is not so great. Our life bearing universe is not as improbable as the FTA would have us believe because when we consider that it's just one of a limitless expanse of other worlds then it's not so improbable that one would have life. We just happen to be it, if we weren't we wouldn't know about it. We would not be here. Sometimes they also argue that against the cosmological argument on the grounds that the universe is eternal and infinite and parallel words have been popping up forever. Then there's no way to say "here's the moment of creation."

Atheists have another favorite tactic and that is to argue that Occam's razor rules out God because God is not the simpler idea. There they are confusing it with Parsimony. Occam was priest and he believed in God he didn't think the razor got rid of God. For that reason I've always been somewhat peeved by their use of this argument. Moreover, what the razor really says is no not multiply entities beyond necessity.[1] The thing is you see, atheists assume that since they don't believe in God then is not necessary so God is multiply beyond necessity. That's the argument made by those who at least know the real version of the argument but they don't know what it means. Let's try to understand it first by understanding Occam's nominalism. four senses of nominalism:

(1) Denial of metaphsyical universals: applies to Occam.

(2) reduce one's ontology to bare minimum, streamline categories: applies to Occam.

(3) Nix abstract entities, depending upon what one means here Occam may or may not have been a nominalist in this sense. he did not believe in mathematical entities but he did believe in abstraction such as whiteness, or humanity.

Ockham removes all need for entities in seven of the traditional Aristotelian ten categories; all that remain are entities in the categories of substance and quality, and a few entities in the category of relation, which Ockham thinks are required for theological reasons pertaining to the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Eucharist, even though our natural cognitive powers would see no reason for them at all. As is to be expected, the ultimate success of Ockham's program is a matter of considerable dispute.[2]

He was not getting rid of God. Occam's razor never allows us to deny what spade calls "putative entities" which would definitely include God. It merely bids us referain from positing them without good reason. Of course the many choruses of atheist propagadna slgoanizing would have it that this does include God,[3] but with my 52 arguments we know better, don't we?[4]In fact for Occam humans can't really know what is necessary, "For Ockham, the only truly necessary entity is God; everything else, the whole of creation, is radically contingent through and through. In short, Ockham does not accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason.."[5] Wait a minute, not a contradiction because all the reasor says is refrain form multiplying entities without good reason, not rub them out of existence. Note that he includes God as the only truly necesasry entity. Thus atheist are violating Occam's razor in trying to use it on God.

Occam did not have a razor:

"The concept of Occam’s razor is credited to William of Ockham, a 13-14th-century friar, philosopher, and theologian. While he did not coin the term, his characteristic way of making deductions inspired other writers to develop the heuristic. Indeed, the concept of Occam’s razor is an ancient one which was first stated by Aristotle who wrote “we may assume the superiority, other things being equal, of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses.”[6]

Yet this raises the question of the Multiverse. Is the multiverse necessary? It's a matter of empirical question and there is empirical evidence to support it. Claims have been made of hard data proving Multivese, but when investigated they evaporate. Here's a physicist who opposed string theory and multiverse he argues that his evaluation of the papers finds irresolvable problems.

In recent years there have been many claims made for “evidence” of a multiverse, supposedly found in the CMB data (see for example here). Such claims often came with the remark that the Planck CMB data would convincingly decide the matter. When the Planck data was released two months ago, I looked through the press coverage and through the Planck papers for any sign of news about what the new data said about these multiverse evidence claims. There was very little there; possibly the Planck scientists found these claims to be so outlandish that it wasn’t worth the time to look into what the new data had to say about them. One exception was this paper, where Planck looked for evidence of “dark flow”.[7]

If hard evidence turns up for it then we have to deal with that on it's own terms. Until that time Multiverse should be shaved with Occam's razor. We don't need it to explain reality, it's only advanced to keep from having to turn to God. It's naturalistic so it's an arbitrary necessity at best. Arbitrary necessitates are logical impossibilities, contingent things jumped up to the level of necessity to answer a God argument. It's not we are going to disprove the unnecessary entity but we are going refrain from advancing it's existence as an assumption until such a time that real empirical evidence makes it necessary. Therefore, Multiverse should be taken out of the issues of God arguments.

sources


[1]C.K. Brampton, "Nominalism and the Law of Parsimony." The Modern School Men, Volume 41, Issue 3, (March 1964), 273-281. the sentiment of that slogan "don't multiply entities beyond necessity" is in line with Occam's thinking although he didn't actually say that.

[2]Spade, Paul Vincent and Panaccio, Claude, "William of Ockham", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Fall 2011 (substantive content change) [new author(s): Spade, Paul Vincent; Panaccio, Claude]

[3] Spade, et al, Ibid.

[4] 42 God arguments on Doxa, and 10 more on Religious A prori.

[5]Spade, Ibid.

[6] FS Farnam Street The Danger of Over Simplification: how to use Occam;s Rzzor without getting cut"
https://fs.blog/2017/05/mental-model-occams-razor/

[7]Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong,May 22, 2013 blog: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ Woit, Ph.D. particle theory form Princeton, Post doctorte in phsyics and math from Berkeley, tught at Columbia since 1989.

Joseph Hinman, "Occam's Razor Shaves the Multiverse," Metacorck's Blog. (June 12, 2013) http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2013/06/occams-razor-shaves-multiverse.html (accessed June 8.2019)


____________________________

God,Science, and ideology,a book by Joseph Hinmman

God.Science, and ideology, by Joseph Hinman, is a great book. Ot argues that positions which teach the superiority of science over religion in such a way as to negate the truth content of the religious is not a scientific position but an ideological one. The books takes down such atheist greats as Dawkins and discusses the strongest God arguments.

This is an important book that spans an immense literature in a balanced and very readable form. For anyone interested in why some believe and others do not, this book will inform you of the entire range of literature in which not only can the proper questions be asked, but the reader can evaluate the often hidden ideological nature in which answers are proposed Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology and LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies

"Hinman is highly stimulating, brilliant in places. It is rare to find a book so exuberant yet still rational."

--Lantz Fleming Miller, Ashoka University

https://www.amazon.com/God-Science-Ideology-examining-religious-scientific/dp/0982408765

No connection between Jesus and Mithra

There is still a strong current of Jesus mythicusm on the net. It used to be much stronger. In the days of Ashayra S. one saw copy cat savior stuff everywhere. We do not see that nonsense as much now but it is stil there. My favorite target to disprove was those who claimed Christianity,and Jesus, were copuied after Pagan sources especially Mithrism.

The Mythic Mysteries are very complex, and the only real similarities to Jesus are minute ones.. Most of these alleged similarities are suspect or unimportant. It is often claimed by skeptics on the Internet that "there is so much similarity" but I find very little. Mithra comes from Persia and is part of Zoroastrian myth, but this cult was transplanted to Rome near the end of the pre-Christian era. Actually the figure of Mithra is very ancient. He began in the Hindu pantheon and is mentioned in the Vedas. He latter spread to Persia where he took the guise of a sheep protecting deity. But his guise as a shepherd was rather minor. He is associated with the Sun as well. Yet most of our evidence about his cult (which apparently didn't exist in the Hindu or Persian forms) comes from Post-Pauline times. Mythric rituals were meant to bring about the salvation and transformation of initiates. In that sense it could be seen as similar to Christianity, but it was a religion and all religions aim at ultimate transformation. He's a total mythical figure he meets the sun who kneels before him, he slays a cosmic bull, nothing is real or human, no sayings, no teachings.

1) no Virginal Conception

Mithra was born of a rock, so unless the rock was a virgin rock, no virginal conception for him.[1] David Ulansey, who is perhaps the greatest Mithric scholar of the age, agrees that Mithras was born out of a rock, not of a virgin woman. He was also born as a full grown adult.[2]

2) No crucifixion or resurrection.

There no story of Mithras death and no references to resurrection. The only similarity about him in this relation is that his shedding of the Bull's blood is said by H.G. Wells (Out Line of World History ) to be the prototype for Jesus sacrifice on the cross. But in reality the only similarity here is blood, and it wasn't even his own. It may even be borrowing form Christianity that made the shedding of blood important in the religion. Gordon says directly, that there is "no death of Mithras"[3]

3) No Savior, no baptism, no Christmas

Moreover, one of the major sources comes from the second century AD and is found in inscriptions on a temple, "and you saved us after having shed the eternal blood." This sounds Christian, but being second century after Christ it could well be borrowed from Christianity [4] "Mithra was the Persian god whose worship became popular among Roman soldiers (his cult was restricted to men) and was to prove a rival to Christianity in the late Roman Empire. Early Zoroastrian texts, such as the Mithra Yasht, cannot serve as the basis of a mystery of Mithra in as much as they present a god who watches over cattle and the sanctity of contracts. Later Mithraic evidence in the west is primarily iconographic; there are no long coherent texts".[5]

4) Most of our sources Post Date Christianity.

(a) Almost no Textual evidence exists for Mithraism

Most of the texts that do exist are from outsiders who were speculating about the cult. We have no information form inside the cult.[6]



David Ulansey (the Major scholar of Mithraism in world):

Owing to the cult's secrecy, we possess almost no literary evidence about the beliefs of Mithraism. The few texts that do refer to the cult come not from Mithraic devotees themselves, but rather from outsiders such as early Church fathers, who mentioned Mithraism in order to attack it, and Platonic philosophers, who attempted to find support in Mithraic symbolism for their own philosophical ideas. "At present our knowledge of both general and local cult practice in respect of rites of passage, ceremonial feats and even underlying ideology is based more on conjecture than fact."[7]

) And Cumont himself observed, in the 50s

"The sacred books which contain the prayers recited or chanted during the [Mithraic] survives, the ritual on the initiates, and the ceremonials of the feasts, have vanished and left scarce a trace behind...[we] know the esoteric disciplines of the Mysteries only from a few indiscretions."[8]
(b) Roman Cult began after Jesus life

Our earliest evidence for the Mithraic mysteries places their appearance in the middle of the first century B.C.: the historian Plutarch says that in 67 B.C. a large band of pirates based in Cilicia (a province on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor) were practicing "secret rites" of Mithras. The earliest physical remains of the cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism reached its height of popularity in the third century.[9]

(c) No Continuity between Ancient Persian past and Roman Cult

Throughout most of the twentieth century Franz Cumont so influenced scholarship that the entire discipline followed in the wake of his assumption that the Roman cult was spread by the Persian cult. In the early 70's David Ulansey did for Mithric scholarship what Noan Chomsky did for linguistics, he totally redefined the coordinates by which the discipline moved. Ulansey showed that the Roman cult was not the continuance of the Persian cult, that there was no real evidence of a Persian cult. He showed that the killing of the great comic bull which latter became the major event in Mithraism, and the parallel from which Jesus Mythers get the shedding of blood and sacrifice, was not known in the Persian era. This would be like showing that the story of the Cross was not known to Christians in the first century. The major likeness to Christianity and the central point of the cult of Mithraism was not known in the time of Christ, in the time Paul, or for at least two centuries after:

There were, however, a number of serious problems with Cumont's assumption that the Mithraic mysteries derived from ancient Iranian religion. Most significant among these is that there is no parallel in ancient Iran to the iconography which is the primary fact of the Roman Mithraic cult. For example, as already mentioned, by far the most important icon in the Roman cult was the tauroctony. This scene shows Mithras in the act of killing a bull, accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, and a scorpion; the scene is depicted as taking place inside a cave like the mithraeum itself. This icon was located in the most important place in every mithraeum, and therefore must have been an expression of the central myth of the Roman cult. Thus, if the god Mithras of the Roman religion was actually the Iranian god Mithra, we should expect to find in Iranian mythology a story in which Mithra kills a bull. However, the fact is that no such Iranian myth exists: in no known Iranian text does Mithra have anything to do with killing a bull.

[10].

(5) Mithraism Emerged in the west only after Jesus' day

. Mithraism could not have become an influence upon the origins of the first century, for the simple reason that Mithraism did not emerge from its pastoral setting in rural Persia until after the close of the writting of the New Testament canon.[11]

(6) We Don't know what any of it means.

As Ronald Nash said: "No one can be sure that the meaning of the meals and the ablutions are the same between Christianity and Mithraism. Just because the two had them is no indication that they come to the same thing. These are entirely superficial and circumstantial arguments."[12]

(7) Mithraism was influenced by Christianity

a) Roman Soldiers Spread the cult.

Roman soldiers probably encountered Mithraism first as part of Zoroastrianism while on duty in Persia. The Cult spread through the Roman legion, was most popular in the West, and had little chance to spread through or influence upon Palestine. It's presence in Palestine was mainly confined to the Romans who were there to oppress the Jews. Kane tries to imply that these mystery cults were all indigenous to the Palestinian area, that they grew up alongside Judaism, and that the adherents to these religions all traded ideas as they happily ate together and practiced good neighborship.

b) Mithric Roman Soldiers Influenced by Christians in Palestine

But Mithraism was confined to the Roman Legion primarily, those who were stationed in Palestine to subdue the Jewish Revolt of A.D. 66-70. In fact strong evidence indicates that in this way Christianity influenced Mithraism. First, because Romans stationed in the West were sent on short tours of duty to fight the Parthians in the East, and to put down the Jewish revolt. This is where they would have encountered a Christianity whose major texts were already written, and whose major story (that of the life of Christ) was already formed.[13]

There is no real evidence for a Persian Cult of Mithras. The cultic and mystery aspect did not exist until after the Roman period, second century to fourth. This means that any similarities to Christianity probably come from Christianity as the Soldiers learned of it during their tours in Palestine. The Great historian of religions, Franz Cumont was able to prove that the earliest datable evidence for the cult came from the Military Garrison at Carnuntum, on the Danube River (modern Hungary). The largest Cache of Mithric artifacts comes form the area between the Danube and Ostia in Italy.[14]

The only real simiarity between mythrism and Christianity is the shedding of blood Both use that image in different ways and it means different things to each. As with most Jesus Myther arguments there is mo basis for the copy cat savior theory based upon upon Mithrism.


Here is a link on my original website Doxa in which I look at other figures said to be Patterns for Jesus. No copy cat savior Notes


[1] Marvin W. Meyer, ed. The Ancient Mysteries :a Sourcebook. San Francisco: Harper, 1987,201,

[2]David Ulansey. The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World. New York: Oxford U. Press, 1989.

[3] Richard Gordon. Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996.96.

(Meyer, p 206).

[4] M.Meyer, (editor) The Ancient Mysteries : A Source Book , San Francisco: Harper, 1987,170-171,204.

[5]Edwin Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History," https://leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.html

[6] Cosmic Mysteries of Mythras (--visted sept 22, 2024) http://www.mysterium.com/mithras.html


[7] David Ulansey, Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Manchester U. Press, 1975,437.

[8] Franz Cumont. The Mysteries of Mithra. New York: Dover, 1950.152)


[9] David Ulansey, Cosmoic Mysteries of Mithras (website) http://www.mysterium.com/mithras.html

[10] Ibid.

[11] Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1903), 87ff.

[12] Ronald Nash, "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?" Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994, 8

[13]Franz Cumont, Op Cit 87ff.

[14] David Ulansey, website, op cit..

____________________________

God,Science, and ideology,a book by Joseph Hinmman

God.Science, and ideology, by Joseph Hinman, is a great book. Ot argues that positions which teach the superiority of science over religion in such a way as to negate the truth content of the religious is not a scientific position but an ideological one. The books takes down such atheist greats as Dawkins and discusses the strongest God arguments.

This is an important book that spans an immense literature in a balanced and very readable form. For anyone interested in why some believe and others do not, this book will inform you of the entire range of literature in which not only can the proper questions be asked, but the reader can evaluate the often hidden ideological nature in which answers are proposed Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology and LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies

"Hinman is highly stimulating, brilliant in places. It is rare to find a book so exuberant yet still rational."

--Lantz Fleming Miller, Ashoka University

https://www.amazon.com/God-Science-Ideology-examining-religious-scientific/dp/0982408765

Jeff Lowder fine tuning bait and switch

Jeff Lowder at Secular Outpost, argues against William Lane Craig's fine tuning argument. His objective is to show that even if the argument is valid it doesn't establish probability for God.

Lowdwer's syllogism of the argument:

1. The life-permitting nature of the universe’s initial conditions is either the result of chance, necessity or design. (Premise)
2. It is not the result of chance or necessity. (Premise)
3. Therefore, it is the result of design. (From 1 and 2)

This argument is clearly valid, i.e., the conclusion follows from the premises. We want to know the probability of (3). The probability of (3) will depend upon the probability of (2). If we have a very weak degree of belief that (2) is true, say we think Pr(2)=0.25, then, by itself, this argument only warrants the belief Pr(3)=0.25. N.B. I’m not claiming that (2) has an exact numerical probability equal to 0.25; that value is simply an example to illustrate the point.

Excluding it as a result of chance means showing the improbability of a given variable. For example hitting the target levels necessary for large open bodies of water on a planet. If that is extremely improbable then it's less likely that it "just happened" as the result of chance. The very fact of target levels and the extreme improbability of hitting them all argues against necessity. The universe did not have to turn out as it did. as Paul Davies Tells us:

Paul Davies:

"You might be tempted to suppose that any old rag-bag of laws would produce a complex universe of some sort, with attendant inhabitants convinced of their own specialness. Not so. It turns out that randomly selected laws lead almost inevitably either to unrelieved chaos or boring and uneventful simplicity. Our own universe is poised exquisitely between these unpalatable alternatives, offering a potent mix of freedom and discipline, a sort of restrained creativity. The laws do not tie down physical systems so rigidly that they can accomplish little, but neither are they a recipe for cosmic anarchy. Instead, they encourage matter and energy to develop along pathways of evolution that lead to novel variety-what Freeman Dyson has called the principle of maximum diversity: that in some sense we live in the most interesting possible universe."

"Some scientists have tried to argue that if only we knew enough about the laws of physics, if we were to discover a final theory that united all the fundamental forces and particles of nature into a single mathematical scheme, then we would find that this superlaw, or theory of everything, would describe the only logically consistent world. In other words, the nature of the physical world would be entirely a consequence of logical and mathematical necessity. There would be no choice about it. I think this is demonstrably wrong. There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for reality." [2]

We can eliminate necessity and even Andre Linde himself tells us the probabilities are overwhelmingly against life, meaning it is most unlikely that the universe's life bearing aspect would come about randomly.[3] That means premise two checks out and thus the argument is valid. But I think Lowder is attacking the soundness by brining arguing that the fine turning argument doesn't include all relevant material, that will change the probability factors.

At this point he's going to pull an interesting bait and switch. He's going to transpose fine tuning into design argument so he can argue the counter design argument. But first he brings up the idea that FT dies not reflect all the data:

Second, such arguments fail to embody all of the relevant, available evidence. .... It may well be the case that, by itself, the life-permitting nature of the universe’s initial conditions does make it more probable than not that the universe is designed. But that doesn’t entail that, all things considered, the total available, relevant evidence makes it more probable than not that the universe is designed. In order to defend that claim, you have to look at all of the evidence, including the evidence of evolution, biological role of pain and pleasure, nonresistant nonbelief, etc. And once you do that, it’s far from obvious that the total evidence favors theism, much less Christian theism.

What he's calling "relevant data is anti-design data, FT is a from of design but does it have the same implications such that anti-design evidence would  count against it? Most of us know that evolution is not counter evidence to God. God can use evolution so how is that counter? There is the extinction aspect. The cruelty of nature. He fleshes some of it out thusly:

We also know that so much of our universe is hostile to life due to things such as containing vast amounts of empty space, temperatures near absolute zero, cosmic radiation, and so forth. Given that our universe is life-permitting, the fact that so much of it is hostile to life is much more probable on no-design than on design. So once all of the evidence about cosmic life-permitting conditions has been fully stated, however, it’s far from obvious that facts about cosmic “fine-tuning” favor design over non-design.

That only matters because he's brining in the conventional design arguments or bait and witch. In the conventional design argument the argument turns u[on things looking designed fitting together and seeming like the result of a plan. That's why empty space life threatening aspects are taken as counter design evidence they don't paper life so they are not part of a plan. All he's really doing there is to turn the conditions that make life improbable (counts for FT) into evidence for unplanned universe. That's because he switched arguments. In FT the only appearance of planning is so many totally improbable things working out. All that empty space bad water and so on is actually pro design if the deign is FT. In other words with FT the only aspects of design are where the target levels are hit and how overwhelming  the odds against hitting them. None of his counter design stuff really matters.

 

 

 

Lowder also said:

on the basis of Purdue University philosopher Paul Draper’s work, Craig’s appeal to cosmic fine-tuning is a textbook example of the fallacy of understated evidence. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the life-permitting conditions of our universe are more likely on design than on no-design. That fact–if it is a fact–hardly exhausts what we know about the habitability of our universe. [4]

 

That's just a fancy way of reiterating that one must include all the material so I've already dealt with it.

 

 

 

 

 see my FT argument on Religious a priori 




[1] Jeffery Jay Lowder, "WLC Denies That Anyone Has Ever Died a Sincere Seeker Without Finding God" Secular Out Post, January 2, 2016 (blog URL)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/02/wlc-denies-that-anyone-has-ever-died-a-sincere-seeker-without-finding-god/  Accessed 1/10/16
all quotations from Lowder will be from this source.

[2] Paul Davies  "Physics and The Mind of G: The Tempelton Prize Address,"First Things, August 5 (1995) On line URL:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24  accessed 1/20/16

[3] Andre Linde,"The Self  Reproducing Inflationary Universe, Scientifi9c American Nov 19994, 48-55

Now Linde is confident that the new inflationary theires will explain all of this, and indeed states that their purpose is to revolve the ambiguity with which cosmologists are forced to cope. His co-author in inflationary theory. Physicist Paul Steinhardt, had doubts about it as early as his first paper on the subject (1982). He admits that the point of the theory was to eliminate fine tuning (a major God argument), but the theory only works if one fine tunes the constants that control the inflationary period.

John Horgan, “Physicist slams Cosmic Theory he Helped Conceive,” Scientific American Blogs, December 1, 2014. on line, URL http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physicist-slams-cosmic-theory-he-helped-conceive/ accessed 10/5/15. Horgan interviews Steinhardt.

“The whole point of inflation was to get rid of fine-tuning – to explain features of the original big bang model that must be fine-tuned to match observations. The fact that we had to introduce one fine-tuning to remove another was worrisome. This problem has never been resolved."

[4] Fallacy of understated evidence

(Taken from Secular Outpost):

INTRODUCTION: "Paul Draper has usefully identified a fallacy of inductive reasoning he calls the 'fallacy of understated evidence.' According to Draper, in the context of arguments for theism and against naturalism, proponents of a theistic argument are guilty of this fallacy if they 'successfully identify some general fact F about a topic X that is antecedently more likely on theism than on naturalism, but ignore other more specific facts about X, facts that, given F, are more likely on naturalism than on theism.'[1]

 

My forgotten Existential Theology

Paul Tillich 1886-1965

Existentialism was huge 60 years ago, it's totally forgotten today, being out of sink with the zeitgeist of scientism. I don't care, I am an existentialist, it give meaning to my life and existentialism with it's self authentication must be prepered to disregard popularity. How do I define the term? Existentialism, is an intellectual movement, essentially a philosophy but it's themes developed beyond philosophy and spread over all hummanties.It centers upon the notion that humans are compelled to be free. It seeks to find one's meaning in the realization of what to do with freedom. It tends to be highly individualistic and not systematic those are reflections of the consequences of freedom which culentates in individuality. It is often associated with niotion of life as meaningless or absurd. Exitentialissm has aso been associated with atheism and it is from the rootless notion of the abyss in place of God that existentialists such as Sartre and Neitzshe base their notions of life as meaningless and absurd.

As an intellectual movement that exploded on the scene in mid-twentieth-century France, “existentialism” is often viewed as a historically situated event that emerged against the backdrop of the Second World War, the Nazi death camps, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which created the circumstances for what has been called “the existentialist moment” (Baert 2015), where an entire generation was forced to confront the human condition and the anxiety-provoking givens of death, freedom, and meaninglessness. Although the most popular voices of this movement were French, most notably Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as compatriots such as Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the conceptual groundwork of the movement was laid much earlier in the nineteenth century by pioneers like Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche and twentieth-century German philosophers like Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Jaspers as well as prominent Spanish intellectuals José Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno. The core ideas have also been illuminated in key literary works. Beyond the plays, short stories, and novels by French luminaries like Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus, there were Parisian writers such as Jean Genet and André Gide, the Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the work of Norwegian authors such as Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun, and the German-language iconoclasts Franz Kafka and Rainer Maria Rilke. The movement even found expression across the pond in the work of the “lost generation” of American writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, mid-century “beat” authors like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, and William S. Burroughs, and the self-proclaimed “American existentialist,” Norman Mailer (Cotkin 2003, 185).[1]

I was strongly drawn to existentialism when I was an atheist, when I became a Christian I was naturally interested in findig out about Christian existetialism.I had heard of it, it seemed silly to me from an atheist point of view. Wth religious experience it suddenly made a lot of sense I began to define myself as a christian existntaist.To me this means an empnasis upon personal relationship with God,meakomga leap of faith, placing above systematic theology and chruch authority, although it's not an excuse to ignore either. It also means an awareness of God as the source of meaning and rationality in life.

Free Will and The Leap Of Faith: The Christian Existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers: (1883-1969) argued that the concept of Free Will makes all Faith essentially (pun intended) Existential:  that one is ultimately free to choose or not choose faith, or, for that matter, which or what faith to choose from:  you must choose whether to be a Catholic, or a Baptist, or a Hindu, or a Muslim, or an atheist. Ultimately, you and you alone are responsible for this choice.[2]

Soren Kierkegaard(1813-1855). SK is super nuanced and provides the reader witha rich world one could spend one's life in his writtings,I aca only toucj the surface SK lived in a society where everyone was a christian,what that meant in his setting was that everyone went to chruch follow teachings by wrote and never had to think about it the ret 0f the week, For Kierkegaard this was abhorrent,for his faith was an individual choice based upon a leap of faith.[3]

In 1846, Kierkegaard wrote, "The leap becomes easier in the degree to which some distance intervenes between the initial position and the place where the leap takes off. And so it is also with respect to a decisive movement in the realm of the spirit.[4]

Twp Other major christian existentialists are Paul Tillich (1886-1965) and Reinhold Neibhur. Tillich was a major thinker of the 20th century and led the way in Christian eistential thought. He was German and came to America in the 30s to escape the Nazis.His popularizing work on Christian existentialism is The Courage to Be.[5] But one of my favorite books from which on can learn a great deal about theology, including the existential, is Tillilch's History of Christian Doctrine.[6]Tilluch jas been ny favrite theologian for a long time,I am especially drawn to his notions about God as tye object of humanities ultimate concern. Out of this notion that God is being itself. He also put that as God is the ground of being.

Niebuhr (1892=1971) was German American. He is best known for his great great book Moral Man, and immoral Society.[7] One doesn't hear much of Neibuhr now days but he was a major figure in the 20th cetntury.He was oneof the firt acadmics to oppose the war in Vietnam.Two things I like about his thought: (2) People can be moral but in group and as society they have a harder time, it's much easier to be carried away by class interests in the group. (2) He translated the literal view of doctrines like the Genesis creation myth in terms of Anxiety broughto y sekf transcedence is what leads to sin. One finds this in his major work, The Nature and Destiny of Man, in two volumes.[8]



NOTES

[1] Kevin Aho, "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = .

[2] "Christian And Theological Existentialism," University of Idaho, no date https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258/lecture%20notes/christian_existentialism.htm

[3]Ibid.

[4] Soren Keirkegaard,"concludig unscientific post script to Philosophical fragments....," Translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941, pp. 326–327.

[5] Paul Tillich, The courage to be,New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.

[6]______________, the history of christian thought, New York City:Touchstone books, 1972.

[7]Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society two volumes,Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013, originally published by Scribner in 1932

. [8]_______________, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol I, and II, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press; 1996/ first published 1943 taken from his Gilford lectures.