Weblog of a Christian philosophy student

Weblog of a Christian philosophy student. Please feel free to comment. All of my posts are public domain. Subscribe to posts [Atom]. Email me at countaltair [at] yahoo.com.au. I also run a Chinese to English translation business at www.willfanyi.com.

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Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Friday, January 22, 2010

Do you need the concept of infinity to answer all 'Why' questions?

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does anything, God, the multiverse, XYZ, etc, exist? It's hard to come up with a satisfying answer to this question.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant put it this way: "Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer."

In the atheist picture, reality is often taken as a 'brute fact' that we cannot really explain. In the religious picture, God is often taken as a 'brute eternal fact' that also does not need explanation.

Perhaps the ultimate answer to the 'Why' question lies in the idea of infinity. Maybe we cannot understand the answer, or cannot accept it, because of the finite nature of our reasoning.

The finite starts from '0' and works its way up to potential infinity, never reaching actual infinity any more than someone can think of the largest possible number. On the other hand, the infinite is unbounded, limitless - it starts from 'infinity' and ends with 'infinity' - it never changes and has always been infinite.

So in infinite reality you're starting position is the infinite rather than '0'. So you're starting position in infinite reality, in a sense, is that there is 'something'. Metaphorically speaking, this means that in infinite reality the 'default position' would be 'something has always existed' and 'there can be nothing' would be a puzzling thought. But in finite reality, we find the existence of something - like the universe - more puzzling than if there was 'nothing' at all. Why? Probably because we start counting from '0' and can easily imagine a complete absence of stuff, which is not something you find in the infinite.

Christians tend to believe that there is a 'real' infinite out there, outside our heads, and that it's a person - God (as well as whatever else it may be). This is meant to undercut the 'Why' question because the infinite (which in religion can be taken to be a person) is fundamentally different to the finite and it doesn't need an explanation in the same kind of way.

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14 Comments:

Blogger AcesLucky said...

I was wondering if you could do an essay on "how to determine if something is true."

Cheers,

1/23/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

I might some day, but what I would say in it is that there are two types of knowledge: 'going out there and investigating stuff' knowledge and 'armchair' knowledge. Armchair knowledge isn't just philosophy. I don't think you can ever know what's true in any definite way with armchair knowledge - except on a small number of really obvious cases. With armchair knowledge, which I guess my site is focused around, you can only know what's a) probable, b) possible, c) what makes sense, and d) what makes the most sense.

1/24/2010  
Blogger AcesLucky said...

"The thetan has had innumerable past lives and it is accepted in Scientology that lives preceding the thetan's arrival on Earth lived in extraterrestrial cultures. Descriptions of space opera incidents are seen as true events by Scientologists."

It is unfortunate that what makes the most sense to people bears no resemblance to what's true. But people can obviously be led to believe and act on crazy things "as if" they're true.

If no one cares to determine if their beliefs are "true" then why not just call it what it is...

Make believe.

1/29/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

You can know what's probable based on the evidence you have. If you prodded Christians about evidence for their beliefs I think you'd find quite a lot of evidence, but it wouldn't necessarily be evidence an atheist would find persuasive. For example, the way Christianity is really different from all other religions. Or the character and sayings of Jesus make him sound like the real deal. Or the OT prophecies of Jesus seem somewhat hard to explain. Or all those arguments for the resurrection. I think that Christians have lots of reasons and arguments but unless they think about their worldview a lot they might not be able to bring them out and put them on the table.

1/29/2010  
Blogger AcesLucky said...

You wrote:

"You can know what's probable based on the evidence you have."
---

If you prodded Scientologists about evidence for their beliefs I think you'd find quite a lot of evidence, but it wouldn't necessarily be evidence a Christian (or Jew, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Hindu...), would find persuasive.

Why is Christian evidence "probable" for the Christian, but Scientologist evidence is NOT probable for the Christian? Why is Islamic evidence probable for Muslims but not for Buddhists? And so forth...?

It would appear that the "know what's probable based on the evidence" theory cannot be right, as every religion demonstrates the opposite of the theory.

So the question becomes even more important.

How do you KNOW that something is true?

(Hint: might verifiability play a role?)

1/30/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

"It would appear that the "know what's probable based on the evidence" theory cannot be right, as every religion demonstrates the opposite of the theory."

I mean 'armchair' knowledge in general, not just religious thinking and arguments.

Just because every side can bring arguments to their view doesn't mean we need to drop all of one type of argument and go with something else involving verifiability. We should look at the arguments for each view. They will not be equally strong.

"How do you KNOW that something is true?

(Hint: might verifiability play a role?)"

I agree that scientific types of knowledge can provide this kind of intellectual certainty. But unless God wants to be verified you can't run a scientific experiment on Him. So to analyse whether there's a God you need to resort to 'armchair' thinking.

1/30/2010  
Blogger AcesLucky said...

"Just because every side can bring arguments to their view doesn't mean we need to drop all of one type of argument and go with something else involving verifiability."

Why not? Arguments that can't be verified cannot be distinguished from fairy tales; and probably are.
--

"We should look at the arguments for each view. They will not be equally strong."

Any argument that cannot be verified is as weak as any other non-verifiable argument. Fiction that seems to correspond with reality is not strengthened by fiction that does not seem to correspond with reality. They are both equally false!
--

"But unless God wants to be verified you can't run a scientific experiment on Him."

Surely you aren't talking about the jealous god who wants to be worshiped for eternity! It is clear this god wants nothing more than to be in the spotlight all the time.

But whether he wants to or not, if we cannot verify his existence, we have no evidence that he does. He is whatever anyone makes up.

But if you are satisfied with "armchair" thinking why not believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The evidence need not be verifiable, anyway. And arguments are equally useless for establishing truth.

In other words, there is no difference between armchair thinking and delusional fantasy (like Thetans inhabiting human bodies). Doesn't it bother you that no one cares if any of it is true?

1/31/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

Well take the way that it seems easy to imagine lots of different laws of physics, and yet only the tiniest, tiniest proportion of them allow for any conscious life. The natural reaction, using armchair thinking, is to conclude that either there's a God, or a multiverse where there are trillions of other universes. This is a reasonable conclusion from armchair thinking.

Surely you aren't talking about the jealous god who wants to be worshiped for eternity! It is clear this god wants nothing more than to be in the spotlight all the time.

The fact that God wants us to worship Him is a very good thing. We're 'worshipping beings' - we're always worshipping something, whether it's ourselves, other people, ideas, luxury, etc. And God is the only person who cannot be tempted to do something evil, or give evil advice. So when we worship God we do something very safe. We entrust our actions to someone who will always lead us to do the right thing.

1/31/2010  
Blogger AcesLucky said...

Does it not bother you that everything you just said was completely made up?

Will the requirement for "truth" ever play a role in your Christian philosophy? Or will such a requirement destroy the philosophy?

2/01/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

Does it not bother you that everything you just said was completely made up?

How so? It's quite a popular argument for God's existence.

Will the requirement for "truth" ever play a role in your Christian philosophy? Or will such a requirement destroy the philosophy?

I want to do two things in my Christian philosophy. I want to show how Christianity makes complete sense, and also how it's probably true. But I can't prove that it's true with 100% certainty, but I'm OK with that.

2/01/2010  
Blogger AcesLucky said...

If you're serious about making sense, and as a bonus making sure that something is more than likely true, here is how to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=folTvNDL08A

Once you understand this concept, you'll understand why your explanations are so poor. (Sorry about the criticism -- but I am in fact offering a way to correct it!)

And you'll also understand why the explanations you've been given are extremely poor AND how to make them exceedingly better!

AND you will have an infinitely better avenue to making sure your explanations are more than likely true.

If your goal is "to show how Christianity makes complete sense, and also how it's probably true" then what you are about to learn will get you there light years faster. It is perfect for what you are trying to do.

2/07/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

I think it's a good TED talk, and it's interesting that this is the main reason why I became discontented with my studies in philosophy and political science at university. In both fields, it seemed that there were numerous explanations of phenomena that were all equally good and contradictory.

With Christianity we need to look at what makes Christianity different from all other religions. I think that one important area is that salvation in Christianity makes sense (in the final analysis). People just aren't capable of doing unto others as they would have ideally done unto them, no matter how hard anyone tries (even though almost everyone agrees with this standard). I think the solution must be that God does all the work in saving people.

2/07/2010  
Blogger AcesLucky said...

You clearly didn't finish watching the video, did you?

Towards the end, David explains exactly what makes a good explanation and what makes a poor one and why.

The fact that you wrote what you did clearly indicates you missed it entirely. Your entire second paragraph was completely irrelevant and the first paragraph would have been immediately solved... had you watched the video.

If your goal is to show how Christianity makes sense, it is important that first YOU make sense. Can you see how that becomes an important part of what you're trying to do?

Look at your second paragraph. It makes absolutely no sense. Here... you wrote:

"With Christianity we need to look at what makes Christianity different from all other religions."

Why? Who cares? It's ALREADY different. But does being different make it true? Scientology is different than Islam. Does that make Scientology true? Does it make Islam true? It makes no sense!!!

Will, for your own good finish the video. Or you'll just be wallowing in "what if's" while pretending a spec of it might somehow be true. But I assure you, even if it is, it won't make sense, so it won't make a difference.

In a nutshell... ALL of your explanations on every post are EASY TO VARY.

This means that ALL of your explanations are more than likely false.

You seem like a really good person. Figure this out, or you're wasting your time trying to make a difference.

Peace and Prosperity to Will,
Sincerely, AcesLucky

2/08/2010  
Blogger Will G said...

Well I had finished watching the video, and I don't agree that all my explanations are easy to vary. Some are, but that's because they are very speculative posts.

I imagine it's possible to believe only in explanations that are hard to vary. But that automatically takes a huge number of questions out of discussion, because science is nowhere near being able to answer them, and for all we know can never answer them. So why not speculate? And a lot of our speculations will be true, we just don't know beyond a reasonable doubt.

2/10/2010  

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