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Religious Belief is Warranted: Answering Stephen Law

Stephen law makes a very long argument about the principal of material causation as a means of arguing against irrationality of belief in God. the argument is way too long to include in full here.,I will try to summarize it briefly.

Summary:  Humans generate a lot of appealing ideas about reality, most of these ideas can't be proved empirically but they are beveled based upon personal experiences (x-claims). A high rate of these x-claims--ideas are based upon unseen agents with mysterious powers. The hit rate for disproof of x claims is high, That is to say claims have poor rate of being corroborated. The rates for claims to be proven false is high, on this basis he concludes that belief in God is not warranted. In answering a particular argument he summarizes the argument this way:

My claim is that we are highly prone to false positive X-claim beliefs when they are grounded in just ... [experience or testimony] and this provides us with a rationality defeater for such beliefs. Note, first, that the claim that such beliefs can be explained naturalistically plays no role in my argument. It's not the likely correctness of some naturalistic explanation for our proneness to false positive X-claim beliefs that provides the rationality defeater, but that proneness itself, which various naturalistic mechanisms have been invoked to explain. Indeed, even if it turned out our proneness to false positive X-claim beliefs had some non-natural cause (it turned out, say, that some mischievous demon is causing us mistakenly to suppose our dead ancestors, gods, etc. are revealing themselves), that wouldn't undermine the X-claim argument. Secondly, while diversity of X-claim belief plays some role in supporting the claim that we're systematically prone to error when it comes to X-claim beliefs, it is not - as it is in the argument from religious diversity - diversity alone that is supposed to generate a defeater, but that diversity in combination with considerable evidence for a proneness to false positive beliefs. It's that further evidence that gives the X-claim argument two significant advantages over arguments from diversity: it avoids both the 'proves too much' objection and the problem of self-defeat.

The diversity argument says  that diversity is weakness in belief. All the religions of the world claim to be validated by experience they all offer different solutions and different ideas. I will be dealing with that separately, another time. His defeater philosophy is crucial to the augment, The notion that new information undermines the basis upon which the belief came to be made in the first place negates or undermines the epistemic claims of the belief. Of course the examples he gives are tailored to show his argument is right. They have nothing to do with religion,  In choosing examples like this he may think the principles are shown as valid apart from the subject matter but it also biases the issue. One example is that of a factory worker who thinks they are producing red objects, Then he learns there's a red light that makes objects appear red. The new information negates the workers ability to hold the belief based upon personal observation. But this would matter exactly what the subject matter was,. As will be shown not all negations of testimony are equal.

I have tree objections:

(1) Anomalies can be absorbed into the paradigm:

If one merely examines the overall rate of false claims in a given religious tradition, or in thew of a given believer, it appears there many false claims. Yet belief is not based upon the net result of all of these claims, Most false claims pertain to minutia, they are unimportant. It's only the key ideas upon which faith rests. If we consider Thomas Kuhn's model of paradigm shits, which I think is indicative of how humans learn, it doesn't matter how many anomalies are found in a given paradigm as long as they can be absorbed into the model, then they are dismissedv asmere anaomolies. 

(2) Key beliefs can be substantiated

The epitome of the kind of claim Law called "x-claims" would be mystical experience. This is a particular kind of religious experience based upon feelings about God's presence and the sense of undifferentiated unity, It's not about visions or voices. Visions and voices might always be wrong but that not effect mystical experience. Because it is a personal experience mystical experience should be taken to be the most subjective and thus the epitome of the x-claim, Yet It is empirically validated with 200 studies peer reviewed psychology journals. This is the subject of my book, The Trace of God by Joseph Hinman, These experiences have long term positive effects and have been validated over and over, Their study is empirical and scientific, I wrote a book about it.  [2] See my article [3]

(3) Religion does what it is supposed to do, it works.

Religion is not about spirits and ghosts and unseen forces. It was, but humans have evolved in our understanding  beyond that point, It's about understanding the human problematic, the clusters of problems at the heart of being human that produce the human condition, That is what mystical experience is about, All religions mediate between the human problematic and ultimate transformative experience that resolves the problematic, The studies on mystical experience show that this process works quite well.

source

[1] Stephen Law, "the X-claim argument against religious belief (pre publication drat),"Stephen Law July 25, 2016, blog URL:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-x-claim-argument-against-religious.html  (access 8/12/16)

[2] Joseph Hinman, The trace of God: Rational Warrant for belief. Colorado Sprimgs: Rand Viaduct. 2014 availavle on Amazon: URL https://www.amazon.com/Trace-God-Rational-Warrant-Belief/dp/0982408714

[3] ____________. "Mystical Experi9ence: Empirical Knowledge of The Supernatural," Metacrock's blog July 17,2016 URL: http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/07/mystical-experience.html (accessed 8/17/16)

Principle Material Causality: Disproving ex apologist anti-God argument

Someone calling himself "The exapologiost" argues against the truth of religious belief based upon the assumptions of classical materialism, ie there are  no solid objects that are not createdby material causes. This would rule out any traditional misunderstanding of God. In fact he couches his argumeht in terms of an assault on "cl;classical theism," [1]

The Argument

The argument I’ll defend can be expressed as follows:

1. All concrete objects that have an originating or sustaining cause have a material cause of their existence.

2. If classical theism_cvc is true, then the universe is a concrete object that has an originating or sustaining cause without a material cause of its existence.

3. Therefore, classical theism_cvc is false.

Defines classical theism as (1) God is wholly distinct from the world, (2) God is the ordering and sustaining cause of the world (3) created the world out of nothing (4) "classical view of creation" he doesn't say what that means. He asserts what he calls the principal of material cause (PMC) which states that "concrete objects have a material cause whenever they have an originating or sustaining cause." Of course God is not a material Cause so thiat let's God out. By material cause he means a cause made of the "same stuff from which" the effect is made.

 When we examine the exapologist's appeal it seems his real concern is incredulity regarding exnihilo creation, It's because he can't accept physical material coming from nothing. He does appeal to an empiricists assumption that since our uniform experience of materialist causes is contradicted then we are warranted in assuming that all causes must be materiel. In addition  to this observatory his only real argument seems to be that apart from matter there's no potential or existence because to exist a thing must be made out of something.

My first argument would be that he had no real reason for thinking p1 is the case. It's basically begging the question. We have to be careful here because the skeptic could liken it unto the reverse situation where William Lane Craig argues that we see no contradictions to principle of causality and things dom't seem to ever pop into existence out of nothing,[2] In fact the skeptic who argues the PMC must agree with the observation. But in limiting reality to just material causes she assumes we know all causes. Craig's argument is just about causes period. We can also assume that there is a point at which we must stop the chain and account for all causes or assert ICR which is illogical [3] The two assumptions are not on a par because Craig's is more general and allows for more possibilities.They are alike in that they both assert the weight of empirical observe to unergird an assumption about reality. But Craig's principle is less assumptive. 

Secondly,  there are aspects of reality that could well be non material causes such as libertarian free will.That would mean we live in an open system. The true cause mystical experience, gravity working at action at av distance, antimatter, since it is matter's mirror opposite wouldn't it have to be immaterial? Moreover,this kind of assumption made bye ex apologia, that we can assert from empirical observatory t o all causes might be the fallacy of composition.Just became each individual physical object has a material cause doesn't mean that the whole does.


Thirdly, it's far from certain thiat we know that there are any material causes, The whole issue is clouded by the limitation of human knowledge, The most fundamental limitation in this regard is our inability to really say what material really means, The exapologist defines it as "cause made of the same stuff from which" the effect is made. But the truth of it is we don't know what mater is made of. We assume there's a distinction between matter and spirit because one is solid and concrete and can be seen and the other can't be seen. That doesn't prove by any means that what we regard as solid and material really is solid or material. After we know it's all made out of atoms and atoms are composed of sub atomic particles. We assume because we have labels for these things we know what they are, That doesn't really tell us what they are made of.

We keep talking about "particles", but this word doesn't adequately sum up the type of matter that particle physicists deal with. In physics, particles aren't usually tiny bits of stuff. When you start talking about fundamental particles like quarks that have a volume of zero, or virtual particles that have no volume and pop in and out of existence just like that, it is stretching the everyday meaning of the word "particle" a bit far. Thinking about particles as points sooner or later leads the equations up a blind alley. Understanding what is happening at the smallest scale of matter needs a new vocabulary, new maths, and very possibly new dimensions.[4]

Do we really know enough about matter and en ergy to say we can rule out all but"material" causes when we don't even know what they are? "But physicists now know that atoms are not solid little balls. It’s better to think of them as tiny electrical, “planetary” systems. They’re typically made up of three main parts: protons, neutrons and electrons. Think of the protons and neutrons as together forming a “sun”, or nucleus, at the centre of the system. The electrons orbit this nucleus, like planets." [5] 

The argument deal with material causes but all matter is energy. Energy is not matter so it's clearly not ture that everything has a material cause. This a technicality since they could just as easily argue "physical cause" and make the same point. Still we don't really know how physical physical things are since we don't really know what they are made of.

He argues against several straw man arguments once is good:

Finally, the theist might resist premise 1 by appeal to agent causal views of the self. Thus, they might argue that there are good reasons to think that (i) humans possess libertarian free will, that (ii) this is best explained on the assumption that the physical realm isn’t causally closed, ... This reply won’t work, however. For even if (i)-(iii) could be adequately supported – contrary to the opinion of the majority of analytic philosophers[8] – the falsity of the causal closure of the physical wouldn’t require positing the creation of concrete objects ex nihilo. Rather, at most, it would require the transferof pre-existing energy from the agent (who acts from “outside” of the natural causal order) to the physical realm.[9] 

Sorry philosophers have as much chance of voting God out of existence as Republicans have of voting in a rational nominee. That's just appeal to authority it is not appeal to expert testimony because philosophers are not experts on free will they are merely questioners.





Sources


[1] Ex apologist Philosophy of religion, "Theism and Material Causality,", blog, Dec 4, 2014, blog URL: http://exapologist.blogspot.ca/2014/12/theism-and-material-causality.html (accesssed 8/12/16)
[2] William Lnae Craig, "The Existence of God anmd begiominmg of the universe" Reasonable Faith on line resource URL: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe  (access8/13/16)
[3] ICR illiogical
[4] STFC “are there other dimensions,” Large Hadron Collider. Website. Science and Facilities Council, 2012 URL:http://www.lhc.ac.uk/The%20Particle%20Detectives/Take%205/13686.aspx
this is from the large Hadron colllider--I think they might something about the subject.
[5] Chris Baraniuk, "How do We Know that Things Are Really Made out of Atoms?" Earth, BBC, Nov 2015 on line URL:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151120-how-do-we-know-that-things-are-really-made-of-atoms
(access 8/12/16)

Argument from Ground of Being

1 whatever evokes the sense of the numinous warrants belief in God
2 Contemplating the Depth of Being evokes the sense of the Numinous
3 therefore, depth of being warrants belief in God



Paul Tillich did not like God arguments and he did not try to make them He didn't really need them because, as he put it, if you know being has depth then you know there's a God. Yet several commentators, such as John M. Russell,[1]  and Duane Olson [2] have seen the potential in Tillich's thought for an implied ontological argument i n his notion of the depth of being, I have a problem here because both arguments, and Tilliich's original thinking have a gap where the only link to the reality of God is intuitive, thus will be seen as unclear. Thus I set up my own argument based upon Tillich,

The key to understanding the Tillich ideas is to stop thinking of /God as a big man or even powerful force and think of it as a condition or state of being, I am not suggesting that this is all God is. God is still king of reality as far as I am concerned,. God has his own idea will and volition, But we come to rubber stamp  everything about God with this standardized image of the king on a throne, If God is not "blowing your mind," as we used to say in 60's parlance, you re not thinking of God, If you have God figured out and you can rubber stamped then you are not dealing with God. This is an  exercise in breaking the mold.It might be a helpful exercise to try thinking of God in terms of a zone the God zone) or a state of being. I still expect God to have will and volition and to blow away our convent well understood categories. We are like "flat landers" [3] talking about God's finger as though it's God.  Now examine the argument. Remember it's mot proof it's a warrant (justification) to believe:

The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not[4]

We discussed God and the Depth of Being last time
"The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means." 

Depth = God

"For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him." 

Analogy to truth: Tillich uses this idea to get across the unbounded condition (God is the unbounded condition the prius to subject/object dichotomy). Truth has to exist because if truth was said not to exist it would be true that it didn't exist. Thus truth can't fail to be. Moreover, this works by the ontological principle, we know it;s true if we know the meaning of the term. The link between this point about truth and God is one of the unclear points, How do we know God is truth, Thus I use it as an analogy,


Like truth, knowing that being has depth is knowing God is real. how to link being itself to God?  It's an intuitive sense. That's really the bottom line. The connecting link of how we hook up truth and depth of being to God is merely an intuitive sense, "Tillich's Bonaventurian claim that "God is most truly present to the very soul and immediately knowable...we thus therefore intuit God in himself directly without media..."[5]

There is an indication, there's a co-determinate, or a correlate.   In other words there is a "trace of God" or a correlate that we are able to associate with God like a finger print is associated with a finger or a track in the snow is associated with the creature that made the track, How do we know what is associated with God? The best example would be whatever evokes a sense of God;s presence,

The juxtaposition between finitude and infinitude evoked by the realization of our own finitude against, for example,  the backdrop of the night sky in the  desert can evoke a sense of the numinous. This is special sense of God's presence and unbounded love. Because this sense points to the reality of God it gives us a fit object of religious devotion, 

Like the issue of truth if we know what depth means we know being has depth and that helps us understand the nature of the sense of the infinite which produces religious sense. The difference is the actual experiences the numinous is empirical and not deductive. The analogy in the understanding of what depth means, If you understand what depth means you know being has depth, From that point you can go on to the initiative sense that connects depth to 'god, the sense which nay include the numinous, 




sources

[1] John M. Russell, "Tillich's implied ontological Argument." Sophia Vol. 32, no. 2, 1993, 5.

[2] Duane Olson, "Paul Tilloich and the Ontological Argument,"Quodlibet Journal: Volume 6 Number 3, July - September 2004 ISSN: 1526-6575 URL:
http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml  (accessed 8/9/16)
[3] flatLand the 20007 film (2007) aticle Wikipidia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland_(2007_film)


[4] Paul Tillich, the Shaking of The Foundations

[5]Russell, op cit, 4

Being has depth

Tillich equates knowing that being has depth with knowing that God is real. This will be the basis of the “realization” that is the end goal and object of my work in this regard. The development of an alternative to endless arguments that must be taken on faith before they prove anything is moving toward an understanding of realization as the alternative to argument. We have seen this quotation before but I will use it here again:

The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not.1

Depth roughly correlates with the hard problem in brain/mind studies and with Dasein in Heidegger's thought, "A Being in the world" is how the latter defines it. Heidegger has this phrase, "ready to hand." This is like a carpenter with his tools, He doesn't have to think about how to use them he's used so many times before they are part of him, he uses them without thinking,. That how being is for us,that's how consciousness is for us. That how the hard problem is like Dasein. If one understands the hard problem one probably understands what is meant by being has depth, Both Dasein and hard problem have in common that those aspects such as consciousnesses and being are truncated and are structured by our expectations and our red-to-hand experiences of then, thus we only truly examine the surfaced of being, or of consciousness. Modes of being are an example of depth, infinitude and religious experience of the numinous are examples of depth, things beyond the surface of just existing.


God cannot be understood as standing alongside other beings, as part of creation, not even as the most powerful part. If God is “a being” he is subject to the categories of finitude; especially space and substance.2 Even if we try to call him the “highest” or “most perfect” being, as Tillich said “when applied to God superlatives become diminutives.”3 In saying God is “the most powerful being” we are diminishing God from a status much more lofty than “most powerful being,” that of the ground of all being. “Whenever unconditional power and meaning are attributed to the highest being it has ceased to be a being and has become being itself.”4 He adds explicitly “the power of being is another way of expressing it.” 5 At this point Tillich begins to talk about the power to resist nothingness. This idea that being is the power to resist nothing is mystifying to modern Americans, probably to modern anyone who hasn’t studied phenomenology. One is given the impression that nothingness is pulling us under like water out of a drain and being is hanging on to the drain cock trying to keep from being sucked into oblivion. This is all conditioned by the historical circumstances of the German situation which marked the Philosophy of the early 20s. George Steiner discusses this in the Introduction to his work Martin Heidegger. 6 Tillich says that God is the power of being “in everything and above everything.” This “in everything” is one of those pantheistic sounding phrases but as will be seen, Tillich repudiates this. He asserts that Plato and other thinkers have always known about being itself. “Every since the time of Plato it has been known, although it has often been disregarded—especially by the nominalists and their modern followers—the concept of being as being, or being itself points to the power inherent in everything, the power to resist non being.”7 When theology ignores God as being itself it relapses into monarchal theism, the worship of the “big guy in the sky,” even if the concept is a more refined version such as “universal mind.” If the universal mind is part of the world and reacts in the world as though another aspect of the world then it is nothing more than a refined cover for the big man in the sky.

Even if God is seen as “universal essence” this is as wrong headed as speaking of God as existing or as a big man in the sky, or as the “highest and most powerful being.” That is to say it would leave God subject to being, to space, to time. As the power of the ground in all of these, and in all being, God transcends all of these and all being. One might quibble, “if God transcends all being then he is beyond being, he’s not real, he doesn’t “be.” But of course this is a quibble with Tillich’s stylized form of speaking. God transcends the content of being as an object in the world, and transcends the level of ‘the beings.’ God transcends our understanding, thus language becomes meaningless at a certain point. God transcends the essential and he existential. Being itself does not participate in non being, it is not in a dialectical relationship with non being as are “the beings.” I identified that dialectic as indicative of Tillich’s over all approached and tried to link to being itself, but being itself is not in a dialectic with non being it does not participate in non being. But of course that doesn’t mean Tillich’s overall approach is not dialectical, that’s part of his dialectical theology. God is “prior to” or “higher than” the split that characterizes finite being.8 For this reason, as Tillich tells us, it is just as wrong to identify God as “universal essence” as it is to identify God as “existing.” If God is identified with universal essence, with the form of forms, he is limited to finite potentialities. He argues that pantheism is really identified with the idea of the forms and pours god’s creative power into forms to which god is then bound. Thus the Platonic and the pantheistic are ruled out. This statement that God transcends the essential and the existential and that God is not a universal essence may sound like a contradiction with a phrase Tillich uses, creative ground of essence and existence. This is not really a contradiction. Transcendence implies participation in and movement beyond. So God is the ground of the essential and the existential without being based in them. God is the basis of them without being what they are. Water molecules are not wet. Photons are not bright.
There are two more deep structures that need to be discussed. One has already been discussed and needs further elaboration:


The quotation itself tells us why he says that if we know being has depth we can’t be atheists. He equates depth of being with the source of being, the source of life, and he tells us that the term “God” means depth. Literally the word “God” does not mean “depth.” He’s saying that the concept of God in modern theology and in the Christian tradition has always been that God transcends the level of mere things in creation. Depth of being means that being is not just the fact of things existing, nor is it only a surface understanding of the causes of things around us. The depth of being is the big picture, the idea that being is more than what we observe empirically, it is the spiritual sense, depth in profundity. He actually uses the term “depth” in more than one sense; suffering as in depth of despair, profundity, as in “deep meaning,” and transcendence, beyond the surface level. All of these uses are embodied in his essay.2 According to this statement, when we come to realize that there’s a lot more to being than just surface fact of existence, then we understand that God is real. Thus God and the depth of being are equated. This is because God is not a big man in the sky, but rather, God is the power of being, that to say the ground upon which all is has come to be and in which it coheres and continues. In the last chapter I discussed the possibility that this is the power of mind to perceive or to think the universe. The connection between the possibilities of consciousness as the basis of reality and the philosophical questions raised by this notion, as well as others related to it, form the basis of a good place to start exploring the depth of being.

Truth

Truth is the bane of all philosophical existence. It’s the Holy Grail that everyone is searching for. The Post moderns deny its existence or its significance; the moderns reduced it to the fact of things existing. No knows what it is but everyone has an opinion about it and most think they knew it when they see it. Truth is also segmented. There’s big truth and little truth. No one minds much if one finds little truths but it’s the claim that one has the Big Truth that draws skepticism. It’s not so much that the approach here discussed has a means of proving big truth, as it is that the concept of big truth, unknowable thought it may be, is necessary and can’t be denied. Attempts at denying the possibility of big truth end in self contradiction. Most atheists, skeptics (materialists, physicalists, reductonisits) define that which is true as “the way things are.” That is to say truth is merely a recognition of things in existence, or the state of reality. They tend to assume that this can only be recognized empirically. On the other hand, this empirical recognition and assumption about truth also assumes a correspondence between the ability of the subject and the nature of reality. All positions on truth, whatever details they entail, must assume this correspondence norm unless they negate the possibility of being ever being right, even about truth not being possible. To say truth is not possible requires the ability to know the truth. 9

Because we are talking about recognition of truth the question is about the subject’s ability to understand truth or the correspondence between subjects understanding and what is. This is called correspondence norm. It doesn’t matter what the details are in the understanding, the concept of doubt and rejection, or being able to say “X is false” also assumes the possibility that some Y is true. Thus, the only way to get around the concept of truth has to be to just avoid the issue or fane the inability to communicate. This is the basic tactic of Postmodernism.

Duane Olson says:

It is important to note that the argument for a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth, is on a different level than arguments about the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object. The correspondence itself may be conceived in terms of naïve realism, idealism, or a multitude of positions in between. Every theory about the nature of the correspondence, however, relies on the presupposition of a correspondence-norm that would make it possible to formulate, and affirm, deny, debate, or declare uncertain that theory. Put differently, the theory of the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object is another field of knowledge that is subject to the ultimate criterion of knowledge, which is what is disclosed in the idea of a correspondence-norm.To claim that the capacity to apply a norm is indubitable is the same thing as saying the subject bears an indubitable awareness of truth. In other words, when one analyzes the major postures toward judgments and shows how a norm of truth is presupposed as something borne by the subject in every posture, one is pointing out an awareness of truth the subject has, though it is something the subject may overlook, especially in doubting or denying particular truths. Through the reductio argument, one focuses attention on the fact that the subject bears a norm of truth, thus raising it to conscious awareness. I speak more below about the character of this awareness, but for now I simply affirm something Tillich presupposes, which is the identity between the affirmation that the subject bears a norm of truth and the subject’s awareness of this norm.As Tillich shows, the awareness of the norm of truth is the awareness of something unconditioned that transcends the distinction between subject and object. It is, as he puts it, “the identity of subject and object,”[xviii] or that which “transcends subject and object,”or “something beyond subjectivity[xix] and objectivity.”[xx] It is a transcending unity in which both subject and object participate and which makes possible all concrete affirmation, denial, doubt, and uncertainty in the knowing process. It is being-itself appearing in the theoretical function as that which is beyond subjectivity and objectivity, but that in which they both participate, and which makes possible the judgments in that process.10

The concept of transcendent truth is a prori. That truth is linked with the unconditioned. This is an indubitable depth of being.


These two, eternity and truth, come together in the next chapter (traditional arguments) to form Olsen’s idea of a Tillich based ontological argument. In that sense they fit my concept of signifiers of depth. At the same time they form the basis of other arguments, so they are really deep structures. Eternity is not some made metaphysical pie in the sky. There has to be, in some sense, something we call “eternal.” It’s absurd to think that all being began out of the big bang and a finite point in time and that’s the first that anything ever was and when it all dies in heat death that will be the last that anything ever was. An atheist who takes refuge in such notions is surely in for cold comfort (excuse the pun). If such a scheme was the case then that brief space of temporal reality (15 Billion years) would still mark a distinction between the temporal and the eternal. Thus the eternal but be even if only in default as the backdrop to the temporal. As seen above the temporal is an indicator of depth of being, because evokes in us the dissonance between temporal and eternal. That dissonance triggers mystical consciousness. 

Truth is a very important category as Augustine equated it with God in the same way that Tillich equated being with God. There is no ultimate contradiction between the two views; being is that which is, and truth is that which is. Being is a fundamental aspect of truth. With the divine we speak of eternal truth. Its this eternal nature of truth that evokes the sense of the numinous. The eternal nature of truth is what evokes the sense because it’s a direct reference to the nature of God.


The organization I impose upon these categories is this:

(1) Deep structures
epistemology
ontology
Metaphysics (reductionisms have competing metaphysics by collapsing the categories: transcendent truth comes under the category of metaphysics
(1) Meaning is an example of metaphysics
(2)Stereological drama
(3) Ethics and Morality


(2) Signifiers of depth

Signifiers of depth can be arguments. They are not arguments to prove the existence of God. Proving the existence is a dubious proposition in the first place because God is too foundational to reality to be an object of empirical research. God is not a thing alongside other things in reality, thus God can’t be given in sense data. This does not negate the reality of God anymore than saying that laws of physics are not things in reality negates the concept of physics. The arguments demonstrate the rational nature of belief by producing a warrant for belief. The warrant is a reason to believe, subjected to logical scrutiny like any other idea, and perhaps even empirical data. It’s not God that the data is empirical in relation to, but the reason for belief in God. The primary example but not the only one would be the religious experience studies that show such experiences convey transformative power. That in itself would be a reason to believe in the reality of the object of those experiences. Another example could be cosmological argument. Tillich has problems with that argument; I will discuss this in the very next chapter (arguments). Assume, however, that these objections can be overcome by understanding the cosmological order not as proof of God’s existence but as an indication of a rational warrant for belief, because it points to depth of being.


To see the importance of the question is to see the depth of being.


1Tillich, Shaking of the foundations 0p cit, (see chapter three) 52.

2 Ibid, 52-53
3 Ibid. 235
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 George Steiner, Martin Heidegger Originally ed. Fran Kermode, for Viking press 1978, New addition Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1987, online gooble books URL http://books.google.com/books?id=BXnOkU ... elf&f=true
Steiner talks about how the political and social situation of Post WWI Germany effected the sitation in philosophy of that era. The country was in collapse, people were starving, the ideal of Gemran high culture was in collapse, the idea of the nation and the culture wasting away to nothingness was evident. Earnst Bolck, Oswald Spangler and Karl Barth to name a few all produced major works at that time, and subsequently Heidegger using the concept “of nothing or becoming nothing, being pulled into nothing” as a philosophical construct.
7 Paul Tillich, ST1, 236.
8 Ibid.
9 Duane Olson, “Paul Tillich and The Ontological Argument.” Quodlibet Journal. Vol 6, no 3, (July 2004). On line URL: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml visited last, 22/12/10.
10 Ibid. Olson’s fn xviii is Paul Tillich’s Theology of Culture, 14, xix is Tillich ST1 207, XX Tillich HCT 164.
tse Roman numerals are chapters in tillich Systematic V.I not footnotes.

70 years ago

Hiromshima August 6 1945

God is Being Itself

Paul Tillich (1866-1965) 




I am setting a God argumemt for next Domesday. Last time I talked about warrant because I argue that belief is warranted not that God is proved to exit, today will discuss the meaning of God as being itself because that will be the crux of the argumet. 

Paul Tillich is most famous for saying that God is not a being but being itself. He is not the only theologian to say this. Less known for it but still a major proponent of the idea is John Macquarrie. Perhaps the third most prestigious theologian to support this claim, although he is not that well known for it is Hans Urs Von Balthasar. After process theology this is a probably the major modern theological movement, Oddly enough it doesn't really have a name, I've called it "existential ontology" the historical precursor idea is super essential Godhead. No one calls it that now. The German term being translated "being itself" is urgrund. Webster defines it as: Primal, original, or cause, of course from old high German,1 That tallies with Macquarrie's habit of also calling it "primordial being."

The notion of God as being itself; God is not a being alongside other beings in the universe, or in creation. God is the basis of all being. In fact Tillich does not speak of God as “a being” he leaves out the “a” but simply says that God is “being itself” not “a being itself.” Leaving out the “a” is essential to understanding the concept. This is essential because the whole concept turns upon the idea that God is above the level of things, above contingency, in a category by itself. True to the mystical concept Tillich understands that God is beyond our comprehension. God blows away all of our easy preconceived categories that we have taken for granted since we first learned to talk. Yet though God is beyond everything we name, think, or understand, he is beyond these things in a metaphysical sense; yet “God does not sit beside the world looking at it from outside but he is acting in everything in every moment.”2 Tillich understands omnipotence not as talk about what God can and cannot do but as “creative power.” It’s this sense of God as a dynamic reality working actively in concert with the natural world that endears him to the process theologians. 3

The concept Tillich lays out is immune to attack by atheists, who conceive of God in the way fundamentalists do, as a big man in the sky. They are constantly arguing “there can be no such thing as a necessary being.” But their argument applies to a big man in the sky, a localized individual being who is like others, one of many, and who functions in a very similar way to biological humanity. They can’t for the life of them seem to understand the concept that eternal necessary being doesn’t mean “an eternal necessary being” but “being itself” the thing that being is, the being- ness of being so to speak, rather an individual being. Dawkins argument that God is improbable (The God Delusion) is based upon these same assumptions. Thus the argument he makes would not apply to any Christians view because it assumes God is a big biological organism, but it applies even less to Tillich’s view because it assumed on top of that that God is an individual manifestation of being and thus subject to being. Anything using the indefinite article assumes one of many. A penny assumes there is more than one penny, and this particular penny is an example of the many pennies that there are. A being is one of many, it is an example of one of the many beings that there are. But God is not a single individual being. That doesn’t mean there’s more than one God, it means that God transcends the easily understood category that we take for granted. In New Testament God is “The God” (‘0 Theos). This is a way of speaking of the quality of divinity itself. Literally John 1: 1 says “The God.” “The word was with the God.” One could translate the word was with deity, or as “the word was divine.” 

 He equates depth of being with the source of being, the source of life, and he tells us that the term “God” means depth. Literally the word “God” does not mean “depth.” He’s saying that the concept of God in modern theology and in the Christian tradition has always been that God transcends the level of mere things in creation. Depth of being means that being is not just the fact of things existing, nor is it only a surface understanding of the causes of things around us. The depth of being is the big picture, the idea that being is more than what we observe empirically, it is the spiritual sense, depth in profundity. He actually uses the term “depth” in more than one sense; suffering as in depth of despair, profundity, as in “deep meaning,” and transcendence, beyond the surface level. All of these uses are embodied in his essay.4 According to this statement, when we come to realize that there’s a lot more to being than just surface fact of existence, then we understand that God is real. Thus God and the depth of being are equated. This is because God is not a big man in the sky, but rather, God is the power of being, that to say the ground upon which all is has come to be and in which it coheres and continues. In the last chapter I discussed the possibility that this is the power of mind to perceive or to think the universe. The connection between the possibilities of consciousness as the basis of reality and the philosophical questions raised by this notion, as well as others related to it, form the basis of a good place to start exploring the depth of being.

In his essay The Shaking of the foundations,5 Tillich discusses depth of benig and some things have been said about that already (chapter 3). At this point, however, I will depart from Tillich’s organizational scheme but not from is basic thought and intent. There are what I like to call “deep structures” in reality that can be observed, or teased out. These deep structures can be organized into ideas that might serve to illustrate the point of depth of being, or might ever serve the function of arguments either for the reality of God or for the rational nature of belief. This is what I call the “focal points,” or a term of my invention I also like, “signifiers of depth.” The signifiers of depth highlight the deep structures. These consist of Tillich’s ontological categories. These categories are empirically derived forms of speaking. Because they are ontological, considered with the nature of being, they are in everything, not limited to religion. We make our world out of the categories, which determines the content. When I say “our world” I mean the world of our constructs, the world in our minds that consists of what we understand and how we understand it. The cause of the big bang is not part of this world because we don’t understand it or observe it. The attitudes we perceive in others may be mysterious or they may be understood wrongly or rightly but what we perceive about them is part of the world of our constructs because we perceive and it registers upon our understanding in some way. It is out of this amalgam of understood constructs that the categories are forged. This is all empirically deduced by Tillich.6 The categories do not include the unconditioned (God) because it transcends our understanding. But we have ideas about God that are derived from experiences and teachings and these are part of the categories, but they are not the uncontained, they are not the reality of God they are perception of God. 

The categories are:

Being and non being, and the forms finitude.v 

The forms of finitude:

*time: central to finitude because it limits being

*space: to be special is to be limited by the possibility of non being

*causality: determinate of being enables symbol and logical interpretation

*substance: the nature or mode of being

When Tillich gets even more specific forms of finitude include at some point self and the world. Much was said about self and the world in chapter 3. Tillich teases out problems of insecurity relating to each category:

*temporal (finitude) = we die.

*spatial = limitation of space (another form of finitude) remind us that we are limited in duration and in reach.

*causality = remind us of being and non being

*substance = we limited to accidents of being;

All of these produce anxiety at the prospect of non being (death). This is where Tillich plugs in the object of ultimate concern. The fact that we have an ultimate concern and that we can be bothered by the prospect of our finitude and cessation of being points to the deep structures of reality; it shows us that there’s more there than just the fact of existence, there’s the fact of cessation of existence and that it bothers us. Sometimes atheists try to deny that they have an ultimate concern or that they care about death. Even if one doesn’t feel the ultimate concern it’s logically there, and all one need do is to read the literature of the world to know that for most of humanity death is the ultimate concern. 

Some atheists or skeptics might be inclined to say this is all just speculation and can’t be proved. Actually there is no reason to doubt any of this so far. We can deduce all of this; Tillich says it’s empirical, from the universally expressed observations and aspirations of humanity. These ideas, there is time, there is space, there is ultimate concern, time and space are forms of finitude and they remind us we are going to die, this is hardly arcane metaphysics or the ravings of a mad man. These are things most great writers throughout human history have said in one way or anther. The relationship of duration to finitude is deductive and hardly brain surgery. From these categories, that are more or less universally understood, we derive equally basic epistemological questions. These basic epistemological questions are indicative of the meaning and nature of being; they are born out of the way our insecurities about our own being strike us. We are caused to reflect upon what we know and how we know it. The fact that we are caused to reflect upon such basic aspects is indicative of deep structures in being; since being is more than just a surface inventory of things that exist, but must be understood in relation to how we know what we know, there is reason enough to consider that being has depth. These questions may sound silly to the uninitiated in philosophy, but they have a serious purpose in being asked. This has already been presented in chapter 1. Questions such as “why is there something rather than nothing?” “Why am I here?” “What is life about?” The very fact of these questions, and that they are asked seriously and at times with great longing indicates to us the depth of being.

What follows is a description of Tillich’s ontology. In giving it I am actually demonstrating the categories or “deep structures” and then I will discuss signifiers of depth. 

Sources

1 Webster's Online Dictioanry 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/urgrund
this is in the premium unabridged Websters but they included it imn thye free on line versiomn as some kind of special.

2  Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be. London and Glasgow: Collins, the Fontana Library, 1952-74.175

3 That is according to my friend Scott Gross who studied process theology at Claremont with Hartshorne, D.Z. Phillips.

4  Tillich Shaking

5 Tillich, Systematic I. 197

6 Ibid

Rational Warrant

March 25, 1922-December 4, 2009



I am re-visiting the rational warrant stuff because I'm going to introduce a God argument soon and this is my decision making paradigm. Warrant is part of any argument but I'm using as a paradigm I mean that I base decision about God not upon absolute proof of God's existence but upon the fact that I can warrant the claim that God is real. That means not that I can prove god existss but that I have sound and valid reason to think god is real.

Skeptics usually argue against a level of absolute proof. Some skeptics may claim that they don't demand absolute proof, but the level of most God arguments and most discussions about those arguments is undertaken with an assumption that the argument has to actually it's objective, that God exists. At least that's taken to be the objective. I understood things like way myself, yet my friends and I in our collegiate and undergraduate settings, our coffee shops and debate squad discussions Always hinted at a notion that there are levels of proof. I used to describe this in terms of "not mathematical level of proof but something more on a practical level." After doctoral work, in which I had not really thought about the issue for a long time, I discovered the intent war between atheists and theists and jumped in with both fists flying. I didn't really understand how how why but for some reason it occurred to me (almost instantly) that that second order of proof was the rational warrant belief. There was an article that I can't even find now, I don't remembered who wrote,it talked about propositions as things in which to place confidence rather than "prove" and the ability to place confidence in  a partially proved hypothesis. The basis justification for doing this is the "rational warrant." This soon became my standard position. I do not argue to prove the existence of God but to demonstrate the rationally warranted nature of belief. 

The levels of the term proof that I've discussed, in my internet sojourn, are "absolute" and 'practical." Rational warrant is any logical argument that warrants a belief, or a sense of placing confidence in a proposition. being "rational" means there are logical reasons to support it, being a "warrant" means it's a reason to believe something. Warrant is permission. so the aspect of an argument that logically demonstrates a reason to believe something is a warrant. Rationally warranted belief is confidence placed in a proposition (the belief) that is well placed as demonstrated by the warrant; the warrant is a sort of "permission" to believe or to place confidence.The practical level of proof I said is based upon the daily needs of life while the absolute sense of proof is jsut that, that which can be demonstrated to be 100% proved. There really almost no things in this life that can be proved that way. One of the big games the atheist play is to confuse the issue of belief by constantly demanding 100% absolute proof then denying that is their standard when pressed with the impossibly of the task. Pracical level of belief is confidence placed in a proposition on the basis of an ad hoc or incomplete basis. We might also it the "Thomas Reid level." That is, life is not going to stop and give us a chance to try out every single theory we can think of before we get back to make a decision about God belief. Life is moving on and we are going to die before we find out why we are here if we are waiting around for absolute proof. So the practical level is one that is ratinoally warrant, in which we can place confidence in a proposition because the proposition is justified logically even though we do not have absolute proof.

Rational warrant is nothing more than what logicians call 'warrant.' it's an established aspect of a logical argument. Attaching the Word rational to it only means that it's arrived at through reason. There's nothing magic about the term that, its not some ontological principle that has to be true no matter what, it's just a good old fashioned warrant for an argument. The only real difference in this and what people usually con true as logical argument is that the Aristotelian version of logic seems to demand necessity. That which is logically is necessitated by logic as the mandatory conclusion. Whereas rationally warranted conclusions are more or less permissive rather than mandatory. That is to say they are justified in so far as logic goes, but they are not necessarily the only logical conclusion. Atheists are always asking me "does this mean atheism could rationally warranted too." Theoretically it does, sure! It's still their burden of proof to show that it is. Atheists are always treating rational warrant as though its some sort of freak idea I made up myself that no logician would ever support. In fact all kinds of major logicians support it and it' easy to see that it's just a standard concept if one just does a modicum research one will see that logicians talk about warrant all the time.

  Stephen Toulimin (March 25, 1922-December 4, 2009) was an influential logician of the 20th century who can be singled out as a major figure in the development of a permissive sort of warrant principle. He was one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century, important developing logic, ethics, moral reasoning. He was most famous for the Toulmin diagram which was a way of diagramming an argument to understand it's logic, similar to a vin diagram only more complex. He was a giant in communication theory, Along with Kennith Burke he was probably the most sighted contemporary figure in days when I majored in the disciplined. That is probably why I tend to turn to him to explaimn warrant:

A warrant links data and other grounds to a claim, legitimizing the claim by showing the grounds to be relevant. The warrant may be explicit or unspoken and implicit. It answers the question 'Why does that data mean your claim is true?' For example: A hearing aid helps most people to hear better.The warrant may be simple and it may also be a longer argument, with additional sub-elements including those described below. Warrants may be based on logos, ethos or pathos, or values that are assumed to be shared with the listener. In many arguments, warrants are often implicit and hence unstated. This gives space for the other person to question and expose the warrant, perhaps to show it is weak or unfounded.[1] [2] Examples: (1) Claim: Sam is a citizen of the British crown. Data: Sam was born on Barbados. Warrant,. people Barbados is in the British commonwealth, People born in Barbados are citizens of the crown, the warrant is thie knowledge about birth place. (2) the claim: there is a fire. The data: there is smoke, the warrant: the degrade "where there is smoke there is fire." I could turn to Alvin Plantinga,. I was delighted to learn  through our private email correspondence that he also argues for warranted belief and not proof. He is not as clear about the nature of Warrant as is Toulmin, Plantinga writes about the overall debate over warrant in philosophy: In this book and in its companion volumes, Warrant: The Current Debate and Warranted Christian Belief, I examine the nature of epistemic warrant, that quantity enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief. In Warrant: The Current Debate, the first volume in this series, I considered some of the main contemporary views of warrant. In this book, the second in the series, I present my own account of warrant, arguing that the best way to construe warrant is in terms of proper function. In my view, a belief has warrant for a person if it is produced by her cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true or verisimilitudinous belief. In the first two chapters of this volume, I fill out, develop, qualify, and defend this view, exploring along the way some of the convoluted contours of the notion of proper function. In the next seven chapters, I consider how the proposed account works in the main areas of our cognitive design plan: memory, introspection, knowledge of other minds, testimony, perception, a priori belief, induction, and probability. Then, in Ch. 10, I consider broader, structural questions of coherentism and foundationalism. My account of warrant meets the conditions for being a naturalistic account; but in Chs. 11 and 12, I claim that naturalism in epistemology flourishes best in the context of supernaturalism in metaphysics. For, as I argue in Ch. 11, there appears to be no successful naturalistic account of the notion of proper function. In Ch. 12, I argue, further, that metaphysical naturalism when combined with contemporary evolutionary accounts of the origin and provenance of human life is an irrational stance; it provides for itself an ultimately undefeated defeater. [3] The problem is that in using warrant as a decision making paradigm I made it sound as though It's a stage in logic before proof is reached, That;'s not exactly true, At least in terms of Toulmin one would have to provide the link from Data to claim before one had a warrant, Any argument has to have that.I'm saying we can stop there as long as the claim is warranted, so we can say there is a God is a warranted claim and that;s all it need be, It doesn't nothing to be proved.One is justified logically in accepting the claim that there is a God if  there is this reason connecting the data to the claim, That reason is a warrant. So my arguments are about connecting data or some form of logical reason for belief to the claim of God and showing that the claim is justified, there is reasom to believable. That's all we need to prove. Why? Because God is beyond our understanding. If we exceed to Atheist demands of empirical proof for everything we will never believe anything, Life will not wait for us to spend 50 years deciding if God is there or not, Belief in God is highly beneficial that is proved over and over again,why wait? if we have a rational reason for belief why is that not enough to justify belief? Sources [1] "Toulmin's argumemt Model" Chaining Minds on line resource, website, URL: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/making_argument/toulmin.htm  (accessed 8/1/'16) for documentatiom they cite thevfollowing: [2] Toulmin, S. (1969). The Uses of Argument, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press [3] Alvin Plantinga, "Abstract: Warrant and Proper Function," Oxford Scholarship online, Nov 2003, On line Journal URL: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195078640.001.0001/acprof-9780195078640 (accessed 8/1/16)