01 March 2007
Belief in God as a pre-rational commitment (2)
12:13 PM
A reply to ‘Q’, continued
As I mentioned in this previous posting I owe an explanation for why I hold belief in God as a basic belief and, therefore, a pre-rational commitment. There are different arguments for belief in God as basic. Alvin Platinga is one who has done much of the work (going back to a 1986 article in the journal Faith and Philosophy) on the belief in God as "properly" basic. See for example the article, “Intellectual Sophistication and Basic Belief in God" (here). My own reason (which does not discount anything Platinga has written on the subject) has to do with certain limitations, weaknesses, even failures of arguments for the existence of God.
Typical arguments for the existence of God must involve the employment of either inductive logic or deductive logic. (That’s obvious enough.) Both have their limitations. And it is these limitations that lead me to accept the idea that belief in God is a pre-rational commitment.
In an inductive argument a finite set of facts forms the basis for moving from the known to the unknown; and in making that move we must actually take a step of more beyond the evidence. For example if Mark is accused of murder and we want to make the move from what we know about the murder to knowledge that Mark is the one who committed the murder we must gather the relevant facts and see if they warrant the conclusion that Mark is guilty. Here are some things we need to know. 1. What was the time of death? 2. Was Mark at the scene at or about the time the murder was committed? 3. Did Mark have the means to commit the murder in the way that it was committed? 4. What would be Mark’s motive in committing the murder? Whatever the answers to these questions we must bear in mind that we are able to know that these are some of the questions which need answers because humans have documented experiences with varieties of killing. We know how to proceed from ignorance of Mark’s guilt to warranted belief in his guilt because we know what constitutes murder and we know Mark, or at least enough about him to know how to determine his guilt.
Let us say that the victim was bludgeoned to death. Let us also stipulate that a hair follicle found at the scene puts him there, and that eyewitness testimony not only puts him at the scene but puts him there within an hour, plus or minus, of death. But, let’s say that the victim was struck on the top of the head, that other physical evidence (e.g. direction of blood spatter and wounds on the victim’s back) suggests that the victim fell to the floor after being struck, that Mark is a wheel-chair bound quadriplegic, and that neither his chair nor anything at the scene of the crime could have given him the elevation needed to strike the killing blow. (Let’s also agree that Mark is not faking his disability!) We shall have to look elsewhere for our murderer.
None of this is the case when it comes to God. For one thing we have a problem with definitions that we do not have regarding Mark. We have experience of humans, even of Mark. We don’t really have to worry about defining ‘Mark’ into order to investigate his role in a murder. If we are to begin with nature in investigating God’s existence, we are going to find that nature doesn’t do a very good job of providing us with a definition of ‘God’.
We can set up the problem in this way. We want to know if the universe (i.e., the small part of it we have knowledge of) gives us evidence of the existence of God. For purposes of discussion let us define ‘God’ as "God is a Spirit, in and of himself infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection; all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, every where present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" and “creator of the universe.” Surely we can tell whether the universe gives evidence of the existence of such a being.
But can we?
Let’s say that someone says that the universe actually tells against the existence of ‘God’ as we have defined the term. The universe, if it tells us anything about God, tells us that God may not be infinite in perfection: the universe that this putatively perfect God created is certainly not perfect. If our beliefs must conform to the evidence before us then we must conclude the existence of an imperfect God. And given that fact, we are probably warranted in questioning the wisdom of God.
Of course this is true only insofar as our intuitions about the universe are correct. They may not be. This also depends upon our definition of perfection: lacking nothing. If the universe was created by God as defined above and if it does precisely what God intended in creating it then it is perfect. The problem is that nothing in the universe tells us anything about its purpose, or if it even has one. So we might feel constrained to conclude that the universe exists to inflict suffering upon us. But we could be wrong. On the same reasoning we might also conclude that the combustion engine exists solely to pump carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Who knows? Whatever the case, we cannot tell by observation of the facts of nature.
On the other hand, one might say, certainly if the God who created the universe also created us then our intuitions about the universe ought to be correct, oughtn’t they? Perhaps, but only on the assumption that nothing has happened in human history to affect our intuitions. Christianity asserts that something has happened to affect our intuitions. If that is correct (but how can we know by simply studying nature?), then we may not trust our intuitions fully.
We simply cannot adduce a sufficient amount of empirical evidence to establish the existence of God, at least not as we have defined God, for present purposes. Neither can we appeal to the empirical evidence to falsify theistic claims. If we are going to limit ourselves to knowing God by empirical studies of nature, then we cannot know whether God has reasons, which even we would find sufficient, for creating the universe He has created, even a universe in which evil is permitted to exist. We could only know these reasons if God told us these reasons; nature won’t tell us. Nature doesn’t tell us anything.
I started this posting by referring to both inductive and deductive reasoning. I’ll have to post on the problem of deductive reasoning in a subsequent posting.
As I mentioned in this previous posting I owe an explanation for why I hold belief in God as a basic belief and, therefore, a pre-rational commitment. There are different arguments for belief in God as basic. Alvin Platinga is one who has done much of the work (going back to a 1986 article in the journal Faith and Philosophy) on the belief in God as "properly" basic. See for example the article, “Intellectual Sophistication and Basic Belief in God" (here). My own reason (which does not discount anything Platinga has written on the subject) has to do with certain limitations, weaknesses, even failures of arguments for the existence of God.
Typical arguments for the existence of God must involve the employment of either inductive logic or deductive logic. (That’s obvious enough.) Both have their limitations. And it is these limitations that lead me to accept the idea that belief in God is a pre-rational commitment.
In an inductive argument a finite set of facts forms the basis for moving from the known to the unknown; and in making that move we must actually take a step of more beyond the evidence. For example if Mark is accused of murder and we want to make the move from what we know about the murder to knowledge that Mark is the one who committed the murder we must gather the relevant facts and see if they warrant the conclusion that Mark is guilty. Here are some things we need to know. 1. What was the time of death? 2. Was Mark at the scene at or about the time the murder was committed? 3. Did Mark have the means to commit the murder in the way that it was committed? 4. What would be Mark’s motive in committing the murder? Whatever the answers to these questions we must bear in mind that we are able to know that these are some of the questions which need answers because humans have documented experiences with varieties of killing. We know how to proceed from ignorance of Mark’s guilt to warranted belief in his guilt because we know what constitutes murder and we know Mark, or at least enough about him to know how to determine his guilt.
Let us say that the victim was bludgeoned to death. Let us also stipulate that a hair follicle found at the scene puts him there, and that eyewitness testimony not only puts him at the scene but puts him there within an hour, plus or minus, of death. But, let’s say that the victim was struck on the top of the head, that other physical evidence (e.g. direction of blood spatter and wounds on the victim’s back) suggests that the victim fell to the floor after being struck, that Mark is a wheel-chair bound quadriplegic, and that neither his chair nor anything at the scene of the crime could have given him the elevation needed to strike the killing blow. (Let’s also agree that Mark is not faking his disability!) We shall have to look elsewhere for our murderer.
None of this is the case when it comes to God. For one thing we have a problem with definitions that we do not have regarding Mark. We have experience of humans, even of Mark. We don’t really have to worry about defining ‘Mark’ into order to investigate his role in a murder. If we are to begin with nature in investigating God’s existence, we are going to find that nature doesn’t do a very good job of providing us with a definition of ‘God’.
We can set up the problem in this way. We want to know if the universe (i.e., the small part of it we have knowledge of) gives us evidence of the existence of God. For purposes of discussion let us define ‘God’ as "God is a Spirit, in and of himself infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection; all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, every where present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" and “creator of the universe.” Surely we can tell whether the universe gives evidence of the existence of such a being.
But can we?
Let’s say that someone says that the universe actually tells against the existence of ‘God’ as we have defined the term. The universe, if it tells us anything about God, tells us that God may not be infinite in perfection: the universe that this putatively perfect God created is certainly not perfect. If our beliefs must conform to the evidence before us then we must conclude the existence of an imperfect God. And given that fact, we are probably warranted in questioning the wisdom of God.
Of course this is true only insofar as our intuitions about the universe are correct. They may not be. This also depends upon our definition of perfection: lacking nothing. If the universe was created by God as defined above and if it does precisely what God intended in creating it then it is perfect. The problem is that nothing in the universe tells us anything about its purpose, or if it even has one. So we might feel constrained to conclude that the universe exists to inflict suffering upon us. But we could be wrong. On the same reasoning we might also conclude that the combustion engine exists solely to pump carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Who knows? Whatever the case, we cannot tell by observation of the facts of nature.
On the other hand, one might say, certainly if the God who created the universe also created us then our intuitions about the universe ought to be correct, oughtn’t they? Perhaps, but only on the assumption that nothing has happened in human history to affect our intuitions. Christianity asserts that something has happened to affect our intuitions. If that is correct (but how can we know by simply studying nature?), then we may not trust our intuitions fully.
We simply cannot adduce a sufficient amount of empirical evidence to establish the existence of God, at least not as we have defined God, for present purposes. Neither can we appeal to the empirical evidence to falsify theistic claims. If we are going to limit ourselves to knowing God by empirical studies of nature, then we cannot know whether God has reasons, which even we would find sufficient, for creating the universe He has created, even a universe in which evil is permitted to exist. We could only know these reasons if God told us these reasons; nature won’t tell us. Nature doesn’t tell us anything.
I started this posting by referring to both inductive and deductive reasoning. I’ll have to post on the problem of deductive reasoning in a subsequent posting.
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About Me
- James Frank Solís
- Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
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