Post by unkleE on Aug 12, 2008 13:17:33 GMT
Ever since I read, and was hugely influenced by, CS Lewis when I was a teenager, I've been a believer in the arguments for God's existence based around the human mind. Lewis used an argument about human reason in Miracles, and about ethics and (maybe, I can't be sure) freewill in Mere Christianity. The arguments can't prove God exists, but they make a good case (I think) for his existence being the most reasonable, perhaps the only reasonable, option.
All three arguments are based on starting with the assumption of naturalism (no God, the natural world is all their is), which means that the human mind evolved by natural selection, which selects (in the long run) behaviour which increases the probability of survival. On the naturalistic assumption, our brains are controlled by physical processes, and there is no "us" or mind controlling the brain - consciousness is just an emergent property of the brain and its processes. This, it is argued (requires more than I am summarising here), leads to the conclusions that:
(1) we have no freewill (in the sense that we can make any choices outside the decisions which the physical processes lead to),
(2) we cannot know if our reasoning processes lead to true conclusions, and
(3) ethics are that which helps individuals and societies survive, and have no objective truth.
Now these are not all that revolutionary conclusions for some naturalists:
1. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga continues to champion the argument that naturalism undercuts reason, which is self contradictory, and thus disproves naturalism - see a recent discussion of it in Books & Culture. I think it is generally agreed that, in formal logic terms, he has not been able to prove the argument (that never happens in such arguments), but he has made it into a strong case.
2. These three aspects of human thinking (freewill, reason and ethics) are the unstated assumptions in most metaphysical argument. Even if we cannot rigorously prove these arguments, we can reasonably ask atheists to demonstrate that their viewpoint can explain these things that their arguments assume. I don't think this can be easily done.
3. While the academics seem happy to accept that we don't have as much freewill and ethics as we would once have thought, the average person doesn't think the same. Evolutionary ethics can sound fine, but try writing to your local paper explaining that a pedophile should not be punished by law because his actions are just the result of natural selection! Some atheists are quite uncomfortable with the conclusions of the more academic naturalists.
4. John Polkinghorne wrote: "there is an implausibility in those who seek to reduce parts of [our] experience to the status of epiphenomenal, an implausibility repeatedly exemplified by our inability outside our studies to live other than as people endowed with free agency and reason."
I think the arguments can be useful, at the very least in cutting some of the ground from under atheistic arguments.
All three arguments are based on starting with the assumption of naturalism (no God, the natural world is all their is), which means that the human mind evolved by natural selection, which selects (in the long run) behaviour which increases the probability of survival. On the naturalistic assumption, our brains are controlled by physical processes, and there is no "us" or mind controlling the brain - consciousness is just an emergent property of the brain and its processes. This, it is argued (requires more than I am summarising here), leads to the conclusions that:
(1) we have no freewill (in the sense that we can make any choices outside the decisions which the physical processes lead to),
(2) we cannot know if our reasoning processes lead to true conclusions, and
(3) ethics are that which helps individuals and societies survive, and have no objective truth.
Now these are not all that revolutionary conclusions for some naturalists:
- "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Francis Crick.
- "Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent." William Provine, Professor of Biological Sciences at Cornell University.
- "new neuroscience will undermine people’s common sense, libertarian conception of free will ..... The net effect of this influx of scientific information will be a rejection of free will as it is ordinarily conceived .... Free will as we ordinarily understand it is an illusion generated by our cognitive architecture." Joshua Greene and Jonathon Cohen, Department of Psychology, Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, Princeton University.
- Daniel Dennett (if I have understood him) has written two books trying to convince us that although we don't have real freedom, freedom from external compulsion is all we need.
- Most social commentators seem to assume evolutionary ethics these days.
1. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga continues to champion the argument that naturalism undercuts reason, which is self contradictory, and thus disproves naturalism - see a recent discussion of it in Books & Culture. I think it is generally agreed that, in formal logic terms, he has not been able to prove the argument (that never happens in such arguments), but he has made it into a strong case.
2. These three aspects of human thinking (freewill, reason and ethics) are the unstated assumptions in most metaphysical argument. Even if we cannot rigorously prove these arguments, we can reasonably ask atheists to demonstrate that their viewpoint can explain these things that their arguments assume. I don't think this can be easily done.
3. While the academics seem happy to accept that we don't have as much freewill and ethics as we would once have thought, the average person doesn't think the same. Evolutionary ethics can sound fine, but try writing to your local paper explaining that a pedophile should not be punished by law because his actions are just the result of natural selection! Some atheists are quite uncomfortable with the conclusions of the more academic naturalists.
4. John Polkinghorne wrote: "there is an implausibility in those who seek to reduce parts of [our] experience to the status of epiphenomenal, an implausibility repeatedly exemplified by our inability outside our studies to live other than as people endowed with free agency and reason."
I think the arguments can be useful, at the very least in cutting some of the ground from under atheistic arguments.