Theism and Deism

Ever since leaving the Christian world (which was thirteen years ago!), I've struggled with finding the best way to characterize my current beliefs. Almost overnight, I went from having a full, prepackaged framework for my belief system to now just having a bunch of beliefs about a bunch of different (often related) topics, without any sort of overarching framework for them. Christians disagree with each other about lots of different issues, like free will and divine simplicity, but those who hold to a traditional theology typically have a shared set of core beliefs about ultimate reality (e.g., that God is perfectly just and good, that Jesus is God, that humans need redemption, and so on). That's not to say that there aren't strikingly different systems within that framework of core beliefs, just that the framework itself helps to make everything feel more cohesive.

Goodness and Rationality in Light of the Moral Argument

I recently wrote a post where I talked about how I'd much rather align myself with irrational people who care about empathy and compassion than with rational people who don't. I wrote another post after that about why I am drawn to perfect being theology even though I don't accept the claims of revealed religions. Since then, I have been taking a lot of notes and doing a lot of work at trying to write out the versions of each argument from natural theology that I find convincing. I haven't posted them yet because I'm going through them a bit slowly.

This past week I've been doing a ton of thinking about moral arguments for the existence of God, and that has recently triggered some further thoughts on the relationship between goodness and rationality. What I've discovered, I think, is that people who care about empathy and compassion and who strive to treat other people with dignity, even at great personal cost, are acting very rationally, even if they don't realize it, and even if they hold beliefs about the world that don't make much sense. In other words, there is a sense in which good people are far more rational than people who embrace violence and hatred.

Perfect Being Theism without Special Revelation?

Perfect being theology holds that God is, well, a perfect being. However, the meaning of "perfect" in this context is ambiguous. Usually it is associated with classical theism, which holds that God is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and so forth. But these concepts are also heavily debated.

While it would be nice if we could avail ourselves of the testimony of some special revelation, like an inspired written text, I personally do not think there are any plausible candidates for an authentic special revelation. I used to treat the Bible as a divine revelation, but I came to reject that view (and still reject it) for reasons that I've discussed elsewhere. I've never been drawn to the Quran or any other religious text, and I have some reasons for doubting that God would communicate to us through written texts anyway (although I freely admit that I could be wrong). As a result, I am limited to what I can learn from philosophy and natural theology as well as from personal experience.

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

(Also known as the argument from contingency)

It's called the Leibnizian argument because it's a modified version of an argument developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

The Argument

1. Everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore, the universe has an explanation for its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
4. The explanation of the universe is not the necessity of its own nature.
5. Therefore, the universe is explained by an external cause.

Assessment

Goodness and Rationality

I grew up a conservative Baptist setting, where fundamentalist thinking was the norm. Certain beliefs were deeply ingrained in me that took a very long time to critically deconstruct. Some of these beliefs were:

• Every person is intrinsically evil
• Every person is evil from birth
• Every person is either saved or damned
• Damnation is the default
• Damnation means going to hell after you die
• Going to hell means eternal, conscious pain and torment
• Most people are damned
• I am one of the lucky ones who is saved
• But I still deserve to be damned

Basic Views Related to Epistemology

Today I have been doing some reflecting on knowledge, rationality, and justification. I think it would be helpful to briefly write out my current basic views so that I can keep them in mind more easily and, if it ever becomes necessary, revise them.

Justified True Belief

Knowledge is an essentially contested concept. The traditional definition of (propositional) knowledge is "justified true belief." The problem with this definition is that it is easy to think of examples where a belief is true and justified, yet seemingly fails to count as knowledge. I often think of a specific case that came up back when I was first learning about epistemology.

Reflections on America's Political Climate

I've always been deeply interested in topics related to philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. By nature I'm a curious person so I've always been drawn to the "big questions" of philosophy: Why does something exist rather than nothing? What is the good life? Do we have free will? And so on. I think about these kinds of topics constantly, and I enjoy writing about them and working out my thoughts on them.

Inevitably, however, some new crisis in my country will happen, and I will find myself dealing with a sense of disconnect between the stuff I like thinking about and writing about, and the harsh realities of everyday existence in the world. This morning I woke up to the news about how an ICE agent shot and killed an American citizen in Michigan, a mother whom the president has now falsely accused of being a professional agitator. It's yet another case where video evidence blatantly contradicts the official narrative. It's so typical of what's been happening in the country. And then of course there is the troubling recent event of the Trump administration's illegal kidnapping of a foreign leader all for the admitted purpose of bringing Venezuela's natural resources under American control.

Final Reflections on Alexander Pruss's Discussion of Finitism

In a recent series of posts, I have been talking about Alexander Pruss's discussion of finitism in his book Infinity, Causation, & Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Pruss maintains that it is impossible for an infinite series of causes to precede an event, so he embraces a sort of finitism called causal finitism. Most of his book is aimed at showing how causal finitism is capable of resolving numerous paradoxes related to infinity.

As part of his discussion, Pruss devotes a small section to arguing against a more general finitism, which holds that it is impossible for an actually infinite number of things to exist. He presents six arguments against finitism, which I have discussed in the previous three posts. Perhaps the main failing of Pruss's discussion is that he does not differentiate between mathematical finitism and metaphysical finitism. My preferred position is metaphysical finitism. As for mathematical finitism, I have no position to stake out. In that sense I am agnostic toward it, but I am inclined to be skeptical of it because it seems unnecessarily radical.

Alexander Pruss's Arguments Against Finitism, Part 3

In this series of posts I am looking at a number of arguments against finitism given by Alexander Pruss in his book Infinity, Causation, & Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). So far I have looked at four arguments (although it's technically five, since one of them involved two different versions). In this post, I will look at the final two.

Alexander Pruss's Arguments Against Finitism, Part 2

I'm continuing my discussion of Alexander Pruss's Infinity, Causation, & Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Specifically, I am looking at his arguments against finitism.

Alexander Pruss's Arguments Against Finitism, Part 1

I have been slowly making my way through Alexander Pruss's Infinity, Causation, & Paradox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). This book is interesting and at times very technical, so it is often difficult for me to understand, but paradoxes related to infinity are one of my favorite topics, so I find myself going back to this book every so often and giving it another try.

An Argument for Finitism, Part 2: Objections

In my last post I gave an argument for (metaphysical) finitism based on the absurdities and logical impossibilities that would result if an actually infinite number of things could exist in reality. I used the Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment. I also pointed out that while there are prohibitions in mathematics on performing operations like subtraction when dealing with actual infinities, those prohibitions would not apply in a real-world scenario. So it would seem that finitism is correct, or at least that it has a great deal of plausibility.

Now I would like to briefly consider some objections to the argument. I know of a number of objections that could be made, but I want to focus on two in particular because they seem to be the most common objections that come up, and other objections often turn out to be variations of these two. Each of the objections we will consider claims that finitism is false because we can point to examples of actual infinities that exist in reality.

An Argument for Finitism, Part 1

Finitism is the view that only finitely many things exist. Different types of finitism can be identified based on what we mean by "exist." Metaphysical finitism holds that an infinite number of things cannot be instantiated in mind-independent reality.

Instantiation of something means that there is an instance (or an example) of that thing. Mind-independent reality is whatever exists "out there," in the real world, independently of human thought (it leaves open the question of whether reality is ultimately dependent in some way on a divine mind). Anything that can be instantiated in mind-independent reality is said to be metaphysically possible.