Servile Conformist

Hamblin and Peterson: Might as well be a couple of rocks.

I hate literary pablum. I hate it even more when pablum is presented to a large audience in the place of thoughtful and informed writing. Bill Hamblin and Daniel Peterson gave the internet another steaming bowl of pablum with all the usual pretense of scholarship and intelligent writing but it fails to deliver on every front.

I’ve seen these two whine on Facebook about how they only have 800 or so words and that they can’t publish some detailed account of someone’s philosophy or belief. Such whining is baseless, because that isn’t being asked of them. Is it so hard to express something interesting about Aristotle’s God in 800 words? Not really.

PROTIP #1: Stop Wasting Words.

If you have 800 or so words to write about the God of Aristotle, don’t open with an unrelated story about Galileo. What does the other throw  of Aristotelian Science in the Medieval University have anything to do with Aristotle’s Metaphysics? The answer is, precious little. This anecdote doesn’t serve your purpose, why include it? Why not just include an anecdote about the perceived distance between man and God in the Aristotelian schema?

PROTIP #2: Stop Being Illiterate

Seriously. There is no consensus among scholars who specialize in the works of Maimonides, Al Farabi, or Thomas Aquinas that they failed to incorporate and synthesize an Aristotelian philosophy into their faith. I doubt the both of you are even aware about the growing interest in Neo-Thomistic philosophy where plenty of modern Catholic philosophers attempt to meld biblical and Aristotelian thinking. Is any of that successful? I don’t know and more importantly, Hamblin and Peterson are not even aware they don’t know.

PROTIP #3: Actually Read Aristotle

I have a feeling neither Hamblin nor Peterson did much more than glance at some kind of gloss of Aristotle before writing that piece. I take a dim view of their scholarly ability to be anything but lazy and shallow, so it didn’t actually surprise me they couldn’t get much right about the 12^th book of Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’. So when they make this complaint:

The unmoved mover, endlessly contemplating itself because it's the only thing in the universe worthy of its notice, seems unlikely to pay any attention to the sufferings of less worthy beings such as, say, humans. And if it truly affects all other things but cannot be affected, there appears little point in praying to it. One might as well pray to a rock.

I knew poor Aristotle was in for a rough mishandling. In the interest of Philosophy proper, here is a passage from the previously mentioned book (1072a21-8 ):

There is, then, something which is always moved with an unceasing motion, which is motion in a circle, and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. Therefore the first heavens must be eternal. There is therefore also something which moves them. And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way: they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of wish…

What’s this? Desire gives the means for the unmoved mover can cause motion without moving itself? Interestingly enough, Aristotle described heavenly bodies as capable of feeling a love and desire for God (‘On Heavens’ 285a29), could it be that the entire world has a desire for God? In this same chapter we read(1075a11-25):

We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the universe contains the good or the highest good, whether as something separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts. Probably in both ways, as an army does. For the good is found both in the order and in the leader, and more in the latter; for he does not depend on the order but it depends on him. And all things are ordered together somehow, but not all alike- both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are connected. For all ordered together to one end…all share for the good and the whole.

It is simply dishonest for an actual reader of Aristotle to come to the same conclusions Hamblin and Peterson did, because Aristotle certainly ascribes order and goodness to the entire world because of the eternal mover and it makes little sense to say that God achieved this by kicking off a series of causes, but ultimately remains aloof.

In the 7^th book of the ‘Metaphysics’, Aristotle equates God as a way of life, because God’s thinking about primary substances is what started the creation of the universe and in that creation is a desire to manifest itself in perfection. When creation desires or thinks about God, it is doing so to be more like God, this gives the order and goodness we find in the universe because God is order and goodness.

So there is a consistent way for someone who holds to an Aristotelian kind of philosophy to conceive of God as this prime mover who doesn’t directly meddle in the affairs of creation. For example, take a righteous paragon (I dunno, like Abraham maybe) who is ever turning his mind to God and exercising his ability to close in on the perfection of his being, so that he is able to better apprehend the will of God and share that inspiration. Such an event might look like God is giving something to Abraham directly, but a close inspection of categories and causation as expounded by Aristotle could reveal the opposite (Maimonides comes close to this view in his ‘Guide For The Perplexed’).

I know Deseret News isn’t exactly a shining example of informed commentary, but when it employs a couple of PhDs in good faith to produce a short and insightful column, it should get that. Instead, Peterson and Hamblin just sort of make shit up and don’t care about the consequences. It is a wonder why they got removed from NAMIRS.

Philosophy First, Then Theology

Over on the blog Intrepid Lutherans, Brian G. Heyer has a post about presuppositional apologetics where he gives a very positive review of the method. He makes this very interesting comment (bolding mine):

That particular debate takes a line of reasoning which departs from the usual and important combat of evidences, and it addresses the presuppositions of truth, morality, and logic. Instead of arguing the plenary examples of how the physical scientific evidence shows a young earth, or the historical evidence of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the logical assertion of presuppositional apologetics is that the absence of God is impossible.

The post reminded me of something James White often says: “Theology matters”. Dr. White often says this because he feels that scripture and the study of what scripture says (which falls under the purview of theology) should determine what a Christian believes. While I don’t often get involved over matters of what Christians should or should not do, I couldn’t disagree more. Dr. White is often critical of William Lane Craig because he believes (and probably with good reasons) that Craig’s theological beliefs are not supported by scripture and that Dr. Craig seems to place more emphasis on using philosophy to determine his theological beliefs instead of scripture.

All this may be true of Dr. Craig, but I can’t help but believe that sound biblical thinking can still lead to bad philosophy. Consider one of my previous posts about trying to ground a notion of truth in the person of God; if S5 modal logic and first order logic hold, any attempt to do so will make all truths necessary. To drive this point home again, I want to consider something that Christian Philosopher James N. Anderson wrote.

The Most Influential Books That Have Impacted Me: # 1 & 2

One of meat-space friends posted a question on a social media site that asked everyone what are some of the most influential books you’ve ever read. He wanted people to understand “influential” as having the most impact on your worldview. Asking this type of question always invokes a bit of story telling because important books are often embedded into the context of our lives. I’ve decided to list 5 books that have made a major impact on me.

1. Marcus Aurelius’ 'Meditations'

This is the first philosophy book I read from front to back and actually felt I had a decent understanding of. I picked up a Penguin edition of the Meditations at Bagram Air Force Base for free (from some box of library books donated “4 TEH TROOPS”)  late 2004 on my way to some hovel called Asadabad. It was lost on me then I was just a stones throw away from the ancient site of Kapisa founded by Alexander the Great. It also would have been meaningless to me that the hovel I was traveling to was the birthplace of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī, the great 19^th century Islamic thinker.

 

More thoughts on Chris Bolt

Chris Bolt offered a brief comment here on our last exchange (bold emphasis is mine):

According to the text, Cretans are always liars. Taken in the strictest sense it follows that if a person is a Cretan, then that person is a liar. But should the claim be taken this way? Perhaps the statement simply means that virtually every Cretan is a liar, or Cretans in general are liars. If so, then Pat’s concern disappears, because the Cretan who uttered this statement need not have been a liar, and there is no contradiction.

YES! "According to the text" All we have is the text. Here is the bit of text from Titus under consideration (bolding mine):

Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται

Considering this is taken from Callimachus'  Hymn to Zeus, we see the same phrase in the Callimachus text (bolding mine):

Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται  

The bolded word (ἀεὶ) doesn't exactly have a large ranging semantic domain; it pretty much means always, perpetually, every single instance, and so on. I wouldn't say, "taken in the strictest sense" but taken in the only sense that the text and context allows. Incidently, Paul borrows from Epimendes again in the Acts 17:28, where Paul famously engages with pagan philosophers at the Areopagus. 

Chris goes on to say:

But I think there is a much better common sense response to Pat’s concern. Note that the text does not claim that Cretans always lie. Rather, Cretans are always liars. A liar is a person who lies. Liars are often known for their propensity to lie. Some habitually lie. My mother would say they “lie like a dog.” But very rarely, if ever, does a person do nothing but lie.

Chris may state a common sense view, but it is a view not allowed by the text nor the context. Saying x is always y means that in every instance x can be y, it will be y.

But enough about Titus, I wanted to take some time to restate what my intent has been with our recent engagement:

First, If an apologist is going to make use of the “Impossibility to the Contrary” they are going to have to resolve paradoxes like the liar paradox.

Second, How an apologist goes about resolving these problems has to remain consistent with their theology and in Chris’ case, the sovereignty of God and revelational epistemology. Grounding all knowledge and truth in God’s nature while accommodating paradoxes is going to be no easy feat.

And third, all of this is also going to impact what kind of transcendental argument can be made. The weaker and weaker the TAG gets, the easier and easier it becomes to deflate. Van Til offered some wildly strong metaphysical claims, but I’m a little disappointed to see apologists backing off them.

In any case, I hope this moves the discussion forward.

Offering a response to Chris Bolt Part 2

This post is a follow up to this one.

Conventional notions of truth and falsity in our natural language and in our everyday discourse are what I consider to be a useful fiction. It is not that these every day notions are just flat our wrong, but they are the products of our natural language, which is a messy and vague affair. I adhere to a correspondence theory of truth or to put it more finely, a proposition is true if and only if the proposition’s satisfaction conditions have the relevant truth maker(s).

I’ve been persuaded by Alfred Tarski  that the best way to pursue and understand truth when it comes to object languages and logic, is that truth is a hierarchical affair. Propositions must have their satisfaction conditions met from another source not itself. The paradox Chris Bolt and I have been discussing is a paradox rooted in epistemology and metaphysics. We have been looking at a proposition that simultaneously meets and does not meet the satisfaction conditions, the truth doesn’t seem discernable prima facie, but let us take a closer look and see if we can’t make sense of the issue.

 

Offering a response to Chris Bolt Part 1

Chris Bolt was kind enough to offer a lengthy reply to one of my posts concerning Presuppositional/Covenantal apologetics. The reply was insightful and clearly pointed out where I did not make issues clear enough. I’m going to take things a bit out of order for organizational purposes, so if I get anything out of context I accept the full blame. I'm also going to split my two posts up, to make it easier to read instead of giant post. This first post should be rather uncontroversial, I just want to explain myself better and explain some of Chris’ remarks to atheist readers. The second post will deal with the issue of a semantic paradox and the Presuppositional/Covenantal options for response.

 

Can Presuppositional Apologists Account For Logic?

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve read from Van Til and starting to wonder if Presuppositional/Covenantal apologists even have, in principle, an argument that is valid. Let me use Chris Bolt from Choosing Hats Blogs as an example.

 

Behold David: His name was much academically elite

The man smiling back at you on the right is none other than the (in)famous David Nutting of the Alpha and Omega institute. He has been in Minnesota as of late, giving talks at Universities on the issues surrounding the Evolution/Creation debacle that crops up every now and again in American courts and is the galvanizing issue that binds most active secularists together. I attended one of David’s presentations on a lark (his better half was feeling ill and I wish her a speedy recovery), but ended up being the only person from my local SSA branch to attend. This left me with the burden of reporting the event and the end result is this blog post.

To those readers not familiar with me or my blog, I want to remove any pretense of objectivity. I’m an atheist who has little interest in the current debates that surround these issues, nor do I care about persuading people to join my cause. I don’t have much interest in the natural sciences outside its intersections with philosophy and religion and do not even begin to have the knowledge needed to deal with the various claims that Mr. Nutting brought up in his presentation. No need to go getting mixed up in the business of my betters, I say.

What I hope to provide is some insight and feedback that others can use to reflect on, and what knowledge I do have I’ll certainly bring to the table when appropriate.  So with that in mind…

 

 

Atheism + Outdated thinking.

So I’ve gotten a few requests to share my thoughts on a so called “New Wave” of atheism called Atheism+. I’ve hesitated because I really don’t want to add to the dog pile of criticism that seems to be a war of conflicting personalities. I’ve finally relented and I’ve decided to post my thoughts because I wasn’t seeing anything that really reflected my thoughts being put out by anyone else (sure as shit ain't this or that).

The best place to start is with my friend Dan Finke, in a post describing his visit to my school he made mention of a lively discussion he and I had at lunch:

 

Absurdist Ontology

The first ontological datum for Camus is his notion of the absurd. It is important to remember that the absurd is not some characteristic of the universe; rather what Camus calls the absurd arises from the relationship between the universe and the human conscious, a relation that requires both to be ontologically distinct.