Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Metaphysics

Providence and Natural Reason

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Epictetus, the former slave turned stoic philosopher, made an eccentric argument for God’s providence in the smallest of human affairs. He argues by reducing to absurdity, as far as he can manage, four the five following views:

  1. There is no god.
  2. There is a god who is unconcerned for the cosmos.
  3. There is a god who cares for the heavenly sphere only.
  4. There is a god who cares for the general affairs on earth, not the details.
  5. There is a god who cares for the affairs of men.

“Concerning gods, there are first those who say there is no divinity. Secondly, that there is but he is lazy (inactive) and unconcerned; and he makes no plans concerning anything. Thirdly, there are those who say that he exists and makes plans, rather only for the great and heavenly things, but for those of earth, nothing. Fourthly, there are those who say he makes plans for things upon the earth and the things of humanity, but in general and not for each one. Fifthly, there are those like Odysseus and Socrates who say, “Whither I move, I escape not your notice.” 

Epictetus 1.121.  Epictetus. Epicteti Dissertationes Ab Arriano Digestae. Medford, MA: B. G. Teubner, 1916. Print. 1.12, “[1]Περὶ θεῶν οἱ μέν τινές εἰσιν οἱ λέγοντες μηδʼ εἶναι τὸ θεῖον, οἱ δʼ εἶναι μέν, ἀργὸν δὲ καὶ ἀμελὲς καὶ μὴ προνοεῖν μηδενός· [2] τρίτοι δʼ οἱ καὶ εἶναι καὶ προνοεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῶν μεγάλων καὶ οὐρανίων, τῶν δὲ ἐπὶ γῆς μηδενός· τέταρτοι δʼ οἱ καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, εἰς κοινὸν δὲ μόνον καὶ οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ κατʼ ἰδίαν ἑκάστου· [3] πέμπτοι δʼ, ὧν ἦν καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς καὶ Σωκράτης, οἱ λέγοντες ὅτι οὐδέ σε λήθω Κινύμενος.”

So those are the five positions. His arguments against them, at a first pass, seem rather empty. They hinge on one assertion, “One ought to follow the gods.” But if there are no gods, then the assertion is worthless, or worse, because it isn’t harmless but harmful, as one who follows the gods follows delusions rather than wisdom. Here’s his refutation:

Therefore, before anything else, it is necessary to inquire into each to these, [to determine] if it is sound or unsound to affirm it. For is there are no gods, how is it our purpose to follow them? 2. Epictetus simply assumes that following the gods is the standard human goal for any thoughtful person. If then, on the other hand, they [the gods] exist and are unconcerned, how can this [to follow them] be sound? But if in fact, they exist and they care, but if there is no communication to humanity from them, and for that matter neither any to me, how is it [to follow them/the life of ethics] sound? Therefore, all these things considered, the good and beautiful man intends to submit himself to the one who manages the whole just as the good citizens submit themselves to the law of the city-state.

Epictetus 1.12 3. [4]Πολὺ πρότερον οὖν ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι περὶ ἑκάστου τούτων ἐπεσκέφθαι, πότερα ὑγιῶς ἢ οὐχ ὑγιῶς λεγόμενόν ἐστιν. ειʼ γὰρ μὴ εἰσὶν θεοί, πῶς ἐστι τέλος ἕπεσθαι θεοῖς; [5] ειʼ δʼ εἰσὶν μέν, μηδενὸς δʼ ἐπιμελούμενοι, καὶ οὕτως πῶς ὑγιὲς ἔσται; [6] ἀλλὰ δὴ καὶ ὄντων καὶ ἐπιμελομένων ειʼ μηδεμία διάδοσις εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἐστὶν ἐξ αὐτῶν καὶ νὴ Δία γε καὶ εἰς ἐμέ, πῶς ἔτι καὶ οὕτως ὑγιές ἐστιν; [7] πάντα οὖν ταῦτα ὁ καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθὸς ἐπεσκεμμένος τὴν αὑτοῦ γνώμην ὑποτέταχεν τῷ διοικοῦντι τὰ ὅλα καθάπερ οἱ ἀγαθοὶ πολῖται τῷ νόμῳ τῆς πόλεως.”

Now, in many places, Epictetus argues for God’s existence, as the one who orders all things (and he from this appears to infer the existence of gods as well) from the order of all things and from the rational mind of humanity. But he does not refer to those arguments here. He basically says, “If one is to follow the gods, it cannot be true that they do not exist, do not care, or do not communicate with us. Since we must follow the gods, these propositions cannot be true.” So what gives? What makes “following the gods” an axiom of rational life? I think I have five answers:

  1. In Stoic philosophy, there were three orders of discourse: ethics [right, wrong, happiness, politics, etc], logic [the laws of thought, nature of consciousness, rhetoric, grammar, etc], and physics [the nature of things, cause and effect, etc]. Ethics was conceived of as simultaneously the art of discovering right from wrong and the art of flourishing. “One ought to follow the gods” is a necessary postulate for moral reasoning. So it’s as if Epictetus was saying, “If one is obligated to do right/be happy, then god must be real.”
  2. The gods were seen as either interminably separated from us or that but condescendingly kind to our nature. This is taken to the nth degree in Christian theology. Epictetus, elsewhere says that human beings bear the image of God in their minds [Discourse 2.8]. So the idea is that a monotheistic God [orderer of all things] and the various minor gods represent the ideals of human nature. So much so, by the way, that elsewhere Epictetus says that the human mind is equal to Zeus’ mind in its capacity to avoid evil and choose goodness.

So if we accept that gods are, at the least, mythic representations of indispensable human ideals, then maybe the gods are indispensable. But this argument doesn’t quite satisfy unless we grant the gods some existence outside of the human mind, as that existence is precisely the point. But if God is the necessary postulate of moral science because otherwise moral imperatives have no force behind them, then his argument is at least reasonable, if not sound. “We must as good as possible, only the gods are consistently as good as possible, therefore we must follow the gods. Corollary: If there is such a state as, “as good as possible,” there must be gods to emulate.”

I find Epictetus’ view of God’s providence to be enriching if slightly anemic as Satan is a missing figure. But his view of providence allows for comparing any man seeking to do the right thing in the face of trouble to Hercules fighting the boar and overcoming the challenges before him. This view is harder to hold in the teeth of the evils of the world that harm children, but Epictetus knew the evil of this life and perhaps better than any who live today. Either way, whatever faces us is a challenge from God to do the good, somehow, even Satan in all his anti-providence, becomes for us an obstacle to overcome and finally, being overcome, simply a step along to path of Christ to God who makes us more than conquerors.

References

References
↑1  Epictetus. Epicteti Dissertationes Ab Arriano Digestae. Medford, MA: B. G. Teubner, 1916. Print. 1.12, “[1]Περὶ θεῶν οἱ μέν τινές εἰσιν οἱ λέγοντες μηδʼ εἶναι τὸ θεῖον, οἱ δʼ εἶναι μέν, ἀργὸν δὲ καὶ ἀμελὲς καὶ μὴ προνοεῖν μηδενός· [2] τρίτοι δʼ οἱ καὶ εἶναι καὶ προνοεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῶν μεγάλων καὶ οὐρανίων, τῶν δὲ ἐπὶ γῆς μηδενός· τέταρτοι δʼ οἱ καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, εἰς κοινὸν δὲ μόνον καὶ οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ κατʼ ἰδίαν ἑκάστου· [3] πέμπτοι δʼ, ὧν ἦν καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς καὶ Σωκράτης, οἱ λέγοντες ὅτι οὐδέ σε λήθω Κινύμενος.”
↑2 Epictetus simply assumes that following the gods is the standard human goal for any thoughtful person.
↑3 [4]Πολὺ πρότερον οὖν ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι περὶ ἑκάστου τούτων ἐπεσκέφθαι, πότερα ὑγιῶς ἢ οὐχ ὑγιῶς λεγόμενόν ἐστιν. ειʼ γὰρ μὴ εἰσὶν θεοί, πῶς ἐστι τέλος ἕπεσθαι θεοῖς; [5] ειʼ δʼ εἰσὶν μέν, μηδενὸς δʼ ἐπιμελούμενοι, καὶ οὕτως πῶς ὑγιὲς ἔσται; [6] ἀλλὰ δὴ καὶ ὄντων καὶ ἐπιμελομένων ειʼ μηδεμία διάδοσις εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἐστὶν ἐξ αὐτῶν καὶ νὴ Δία γε καὶ εἰς ἐμέ, πῶς ἔτι καὶ οὕτως ὑγιές ἐστιν; [7] πάντα οὖν ταῦτα ὁ καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθὸς ἐπεσκεμμένος τὴν αὑτοῦ γνώμην ὑποτέταχεν τῷ διοικοῦντι τὰ ὅλα καθάπερ οἱ ἀγαθοὶ πολῖται τῷ νόμῳ τῆς πόλεως.”

“Natural” Atheism

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The ever-interesting Bruce Charlton explains why people are “naturally atheists.”

The fact that all modern public discourse excludes the divine.

As a modern child grows up, he becomes socialised, he becomes trained in modern public discourse of many kinds: school work, everything to do with the mass media, sports, pastimes, hobbies… and all of these exclude the divine.

It Just Isn’t There. The lexicon of objects that function in the system exclude the divine; the causality of the system excludes the divine.

As the child reaches adolescence – these modes of thought become more dominant, and they become habitual to the extent of being simply taken for granted; and eventually they become so habitual as to be extremely difficult to break out from.

This process is exacerbated in the world of work, where nearly all jobs exclude the divine (in whatever social system, the law, medicine, science, government, politics, police, the military, engineering – as well as the mass media and academia) – becoming competent means internalising these ‘materialist’ ways of thinking; thus, excluding the divine.

Dallas Willard once remarked, though I forget where, that Christians will never become convincing until they reacquire the ability to speak of Christianity as something known to be true.

Thoughts on Theodicy

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One of the most famous reasons to reject the existence of God is the existence of evil. Either evil or God can exist, not both. The dilemma relies on the supposition that these three propositions cannot all be true at once

  1. God is all good.
  2. God is all powerful.
  3. Evil exists.

In modern atheist rhetoric, the whole thing is stated as though not a single Christian, Jewish, Muslim, otherwise religious person has ever noticed the potential logical hang up with believing these three things. Thus a non-Christian or atheist of some sort will point out that a good God would stop evil, a powerful God can, but evil happens therefore either proposition 1 or 2 isn’t true…therefore in a non-sequitur of immense proportions, “if God is not all powerful or all good by my definition, then God does not exist.”

Now, many solutions to the problem of evil have been proposed and of them some are logically sound solutions. This is very important because the rhetoric works like that:

  1. If I can make you feel confused about the problem of evil, then you are irrationally believing in God.
  2. I stated the problem of evil, therefore you are confused,(or even if you’re not), therefore God does not exist. (I know it does not follow, just thinking of discussions at dinner parties.)

The more sophisticated version is here:

  1. Believing in God does not comport with reality if the problem of evil creates a contradiction.
  2. The problem of evil does entail a contradiction.
  3. The law of non-contradiction states that contradictory statements cannot both be true.
  4. Therefore one of your beliefs (God is powerful, God is good, and evil exist) is false.

Here’s the thing. As long as there is, as far as I know, one logical solution to the problem of evil (even if you do not think that solution is true), then it loses its force as an argument.

The argument against God’s existence from the existence of evil does not require the discovery of a 100% true solution to be rendered null. It simply requires a demonstration that the propositions are not necessarily contradictory. This is why we still use Newtonian physics despite the existence of other models that apparently create a contradiction. There is not, that I am aware of, a definitively true, solution to the relationship between classical physics, quantum mechanics, and physics approaching the speed of light. But a plausible account is what allows the propositions of those systems to be held until a truer solution is produced.

With respect to the theistic problem of evil, Vox Day, a video game programmer and fiction author, has written a brief but poignant response to the classical problem of evil:

As for the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving God should wish to stop and be able to stop evil, to say nothing of the idea that the existence of evil therefore disproves the existence of such a god, well, that doesn’t even rise to the level of midwittery [this word, which I know I heard growing up, is a Voxism on the internet].

 

One has to have a truly average mind and remain ignorant of basic Biblical knowledge to find either of those concepts even remotely convincing.

 

Imagine the Sisyphean hell that is the existence of a video game character, literally created to die over and over and over again. Does the misery of his existence prove that the video game developer does not exist? Of course not. Does it prove that the developer has any limits upon him that the video game character can observe? Of course not. Does it prove that the developer has any particular enmity for the character? Not at all.

 

Now, it does prove that the developer is not all-loving. But then, the Christian God is not all-loving. He plays favorites. He loves some and He is very specific about others for whom He harbors not only antipathy, but outright hatred. It is fine to attack the idea of an all-loving god, but it is a mistake to assume any such attack is even remotely relevant to the Christian religion.

Vox’s points evade the objection to God’s existence on the grounds of analogy. If a video game programmer makes a game whose characters have awful experiences, the programmer still exists. On that score, our objections to God’s existence on the grounds of our experiences in life don’t square with the logical arguments nor the testimonial evidence that God/gods exist(s).

He also notes that God, in Scripture, plays favorites. There is a sense in which that is true. I would say that Scripture does tend toward the notion that God is love and thus all-loving. But God being all loving does not mean, as is mistakenly supposed, that God is equally nice to all. His point still stands, even if one of his premises needs fine tuning. It’s more accurate, I suppose, to say that God is love in the same way that God is good. God is the height of goodness in a sense that is infinitely superior and also infinitely other than our own.

Aside from Vox’s objection, it is also the case that many people who suffer the most god-forsaken experiences and torments, like Jesus on the cross and still end up believing in God and God’s love. So the argument against God’s existence from the existence of evil fails on evidence of the experience of many religious persons. Of course, one could respond that they’re experiencing severe cognitive dissonance.

As mentioned above, there are several other solutions to the problem. Many of them are falsifiable, many are compatible with one another, and some contradict others, but they take any logical bite out of the objection to God’s existence because of evil):

  1. God created evil on purpose (Calvin, Augustine, Edwards, Jung, etc).
  2. Evil is an aberration within creation. (Open theism, classical theism, Anabaptist thought)
  3. A creation with the possibility of evil is a necessary precursor to a creation without evil (Irenaeus, Dallas Willard, Plantinga, and Swinburne)
  4. Evil is non-existent, it is simply a good thing going against its nature by means of deformity or free will. It is a designation for such things as deviate from God. It is not an actual subsisting thing (if no wills existed besides God’s, none of creation could be evil no matter how desolate, because existence is good).  (Aquinas, Eastern Orthodox thought)
  5. Creation entails difference from God, thus the possibility of evil, precisely because creation is not God.
  6. God is not all good.
  7. God is not all powerful.
  8. God is all powerful and all good, but those do not mean what you think they mean.
  9. God finds the problem of evil abhorrent too, hence the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, and the promised new creation. God is solving it in creation and space-time history.

On the Importance of Philosophical Reasoning for Biblical Exegesis: Edward Feser and Romans 1:18-23

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Introduction
In my mind, the ability to engage in philosophical reasoning in order to tease out the implications of particular interpretations of the Bible and other truths is indispensable for reading the Bible and teaching it to others.

Example

Edward Feser, in a post titled, “Repressed Knowledge of God?” comments that the common interpretation of Romans 1:18-23 is mistaken. Here is the passage in question from the ESV, I would translate it differently, but it reflects the most common interpretation:

Romans 1:18-23 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (20) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (22) Claiming to be wise, they became fools, (23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The common interpretation is that the atheist is the person to whom these verses refer. This can be seen in the writings of many schools of Christian apologetics. The idea is that atheism is always a matter of intellectual dishonesty because the Bible teaches that knowledge of the God of the Bible is so obvious that it can only be suppressed by sheer force of will. Personaly, I think that some people are atheists because they accept bad arguments just like some people believe in God for silly reasons.

Without thinking about Christian theology, the psychology of all atheists, and broader philosophical conclusions, the text of Romans 1:18-23 itself militates against seeing atheists in this passage. The passage is not about people who believe in no gods, but rather those who have good reason to worship the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, but choose to worship idols.(See the footnote of this post about the passage in question for an alternative interpretation). The passage gives good insight into the results of idolatry, which is related to atheism, but it is not directly about atheism at all.

Feser, without attempting to exegete the Bible passage in question, refutes the view that God’s existence is so obvious as to only be denied on purpose rather handily. Here is the relevant portion of his argument:

Do we have a natural tendency to believe in God? Yes, but in something like the way in which someone might have a natural aptitude for music or for art. You might be inclined to play some instrument or to draw pictures, but you’re not going to do either very well without education and sustained practice.  And without cultivating your interest in music or art, your output might remain at a very crude level, and your ability might even atrophy altogether.

Or consider moral virtue.  It is natural to us, but only in the sense that we have a natural capacity for it.  Actually to acquire the virtues still requires considerable effort.  As Aquinas writes: “[V]irtue is natural to man inchoatively…both intellectual and moral virtues are in us by way of a natural aptitude, inchoatively, but not perfectly…(Summa Theologiae I-II.63.1, emphasis added), and “man has a natural aptitude for virtue; but the perfection of virtue must be acquired by man by means of some kind of training” (Summa Theologiae I-II.95.1).

Now, knowledge of God is like this. We are indeed naturally inclined to infer from the natural order of things to the existence of some cause beyond it.  But the tendency is not a psychologically overwhelming one like our inclination to eat or to breathe is. It can be dulled.  Furthermore, the inclination is not by itself sufficient to generate a very clear conception of God.  As Aquinas writes:

To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude… This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching… (Summa Theologiae I.2.1, emphasis added)

In other words, from a philosophical point of view, to claim that God’s existence is only and ever obvious, is simply untrue. Now, that does not automatically mean that Paul doesn’t teach the falsified point of view. But for those with a conservative evangelical definition of the Bible, it means alternative interpretations should be sought.