sdht0

In short:

Q: Why do lions exist and unicorns don't, even though it could have been otherwise?

A: Because of the physical laws and initial conditions of our universe.

Q: Why these particular physical laws and initial conditions and not something else?

A: Impersonal First Cause

Q: Could there be other universes with unicorns or anti-gravity?

A: Possible but unknown. This multiverse could still be based on an impersonal First Cause.

My takeaway remains the same: A personal God is a logically valid possibility, but not a logical necessity, contrary to what the book claims.

Yeah for sure. Money and kids, as you had warned :)

So it seems I completely misused the word artifact above. I'll try again.

So my naturalist view is bottom up rather than top down. It is not that H2O exists and I'm trying to explain if the parts explain the whole. I'm saying the only thing that really exists is the First Cause. Everything else is an artifact (say) originating from different arrangements of this base reality.

I think it misleads us to try start with the concept of H2O and ask, is it made of its parts or is it something more. We should instead start with the base rules and see where they end up. In our universe, we end up with electrons and protons and when they combine in different ways, the behaviors of H and O and H2O emerge. And in general, any universe that starts from the physical laws of our universe but say different initial conditions will likely have H and O and H2O in it (there are caveats but the general idea holds).

To clarify, H and O and H2O are weakly emergent entities out of the artifacts of electrons/protons, similar to the copper in your example. The behavior of electrons and protons/neutrons completely explain the behavior of atoms and molecules.

And when electrons say annihilate by combining with a positron, then the artifact in this case is the say particle physics and energy conservation, whose behavior completely explains electrons and positrons, which then are emergent entities.

The naturalist claim is this happens all the way down to the base rules, which are the core never changing artifacts out of which all properties/behavior is emergent.

Thank you for detailed response.

> to summarize where we are at this point

I think it's a fair summary, yes. I hope you understand by now my views on the words "sustains" and "caused": (possibly) passive, not active.

> Whereas your position is that concepts are meaningless, or somehow like 'images' perhaps, or cardboard cut-outs, and perhaps only exist in human minds

Ah no. I'll try to clarify.

So what is our overall goal? We exist. We sense a universe. And we're trying to explain where we and this universe came from. By logic, there has to be some First Cause. But we don't know the properties of this First Cause directly. We can only observe the effects and try to surmise what First Cause can consistently explain all the effects we see. Makes sense? Now given our observations, there are multiple hypothesis that fit our observations. Personal God. Impersonal physical laws. Brain in a vat. Simulation in a matrix. Etc etc. I got pulled into this (fun) conversation because the book claimed that it can logically show that the First Cause has to be a personal God. And my attempt has been to show that the questions raised in the book can be explained by impersonal physical laws as well. I'm not saying that the First Cause is definitely impersonal. I'm only claiming that given our current observation as of today, impersonal physical laws can explain all of our observations and we don't need the personal God hypothesis to explain anything (logically). Only by including observations such as divine resurrection does a personal God make sense, but that is beyond the scope of the book (and hence I've tried to stay away from in this conversation, even though it does interest me to know your views on that aspect as well).

> I think the key difference is whether the concept of a unicorn or anti-gravity has existence independent of our minds.

Okay so regarding the concepts. I definitely agree that concepts exist outside human minds. That's what I mean by logical possibilities. Now I said that impersonal physical laws can explain the universe we see. Imagine instead that there was no universe. No First Cause. Nothing. And yet, all logical possibilities, including entirety of mathematics, would still "exist". So taking the physical laws of our universe as an axiom, the entire history of our universe would still logically exist (think of it as sort of a blueprint or wireframe), right? And in this ghost universe, lions will "exist" and unicorns won't. Do you see what I mean? The concept of a lion is not contingent on actual instantiation, but definitely needs the logical axioms of a universe.

> > If I point at a particular lion and say "what makes it a lion?, what do you say?"

To take another example, it is hard to imagine what the concept of a triangle would mean without first assuming the axioms of geometry, including points and straight lines. Triangles depends on those base concepts and exist in this larger world of geometry. Similarly, I'm saying to explain "what makes it a lion?", it is both necessary and sufficient to state the physical laws + initial conditions of our universe, not instantiated but logically. And as soon as we state the axioms, the corresponding ghost universe will naturally contain in it life and evolution and lions by logical implication. In this sense, lions exist outside human minds, not independently, but as part of this larger logical universe. God may be needed to give concrete life to the axioms, but the rest can be just a natural outcome without separately needing God to cause each thing individually.

> some explanation is needed as to why the concept of a unicorn lacks existence as a concrete object but the concept of a lion has existence as a concrete object.

Now of course there are many many possible logical universes: Our exact universe. Our universe but anti-gravity. Our universe but unicorns popping into existence 14 billion years after a big bang. Our universe but with a personal God. All logically valid possibilities. I think this covers what you mean by physical laws being contingent. And the question is, which among these universes do we actually live, given our observations. And logically, it is possible (and as a naturalist is obviously more likely to me) that we live in a universe which started with one set of rules (the First Cause) which instantiates the ghost universe implied by those rules into a concrete reality. This is what I mean by "bursting forth". The eternal immaterial First Cause in my version is just a one set of rules (out of many possibilities), from which the universe as we see it emerges as naturally as all the patterns of a Game of Life emerges from its rules. Whether this is actually reflects the true reality or not is up for discussion, but this fits our current data, and hence disproves the exclusive theistic conclusion of the book, which is all I'm trying to establish in this conversation.

> Hydrogen has an actual (not potential) property of being burnable. > It isn't actually wet (like water) or potentially wet.

Sorry I was being sloppy with my words here.

> Do you agree that hydrogen and oxygen lose all their properties when they become part of water, due to the bond they form? Am I being fair when I say this implies that the substances themselves cease to exist as complete entities, and continue to exist only as part of something else that is now itself the complete entity?

This is again a case where I seem to agree with the sentence but our takeaways are very different, possibly because we're attaching different meanings to the words "lose all their properties" and "cease to exist". And I'll refer again to the concept of (weak) emergence to explain how I think about these things. All there is in reality is a set of base rules, which are the physical laws that govern this universe and gives properties to base entities (whatever they are). Of course we don't know the full story yet. But whatever we know so far: quantum mechanics (fields) + general relativity (spacetime), that emerge out of the base rules, gives a huge explanatory power to our ability to understand and predict how the universe works.

It is also important to realize that in our everyday conversation, we heavily use multi-level abstractions. To reuse an example I read, say my partner asks, why is there a pizza delivery at our door (and say it is), there are many possible answers. Because I ordered pizza. Because I was hungry. Because we live in a capitalistic society which allows things like pizza delivery. We can keep asking why, and will ultimately end up with a base reason: Because of the physical laws and initial conditions of the universe (or because God willed it so). So which is the correct answer? All of them. At different levels of abstractions. Hence, emergence. And of course, we have to use the right abstraction when answering questions. Saying the initial conditions of the universe as an answer to there is pizza might be okay as a geeky joke at a physics conference, but will probably only lead to an unhappy partner if used as an answer at home :)

So back to the hydrogen example. All that exists are the base rule. H/O/H2O do not "exist" in the base rules. Instead, they are emergent out of the base rules at some level of abstraction. H itself consists of protons and electrons, with protons made up by quarks etc. So when H combines with O to form H2O, think about what happens to the electrons and protons in the H and O. Do they change in any sense? No. They keep being electrons and protons. So what changed? Only the emergent properties of a group of H and O. And only at the level of everyday human experience. When we look at the H inside water and the H in a hydrogen tank, we will still find electron and protons behaving in the exact same way. So nothing has changed there. What has changed is what is in the vicinity of H. When there are only other H in the vicinity of H and O2, it has the property of being able to burn. Why? Because it has a free electron that gives H the property of being able to attract an O. But once it has succeeded on attracting an O, and thus is in the vicinity of O (not O2), the property to burn has "ceased to exist". But only in the sense that it is latent due to the presence of O. H still is a complete entity and O still is a complete entity, but in the presence of each other, some properties become latent. And sometimes electrons can actually completely cease to exist, say by colliding with a positron and turning into photons. But even here, what matters is that all these interactions are consistent according to the base rules, say of conservation laws. This is the beauty of emergence.

Now I also realize that your critique is of "reductionism". I am not particularly attached to this word if that helps. I only aim to explain why I think that the God the proofs are trying to show is only needed at the edge of the hierarchical chain. We may need God to explain how the universe started. But once it got going, physical laws can (and do) completely explain the rest. We don't need God to separately explain lions and hydrogen and gravity. Consider the idea from the book of me giving $20 to Alice. So sure, I caused Alice to have $20. Now say Alice, unknown to me, gives the $20 to Bob. Thus I caused Bob to have $20. But only indirectly. I didn't even know Bob existed. Similarly God sustains the physical laws and the physical laws sustains the next level and so on, until lions emerge out of the linear/hierarchical causal chain.

[0] https://youtu.be/6avJHaC3C2U?t=297, highly recommended video

> But the physical laws of the universe are not like that.

I already agreed to this when I said that "the later is just from empirical observations. As I said before, if tomorrow God does choose ;) to reveal Himself in a convincing manner, I'll have to change my views completely. Similarly if unicorns start popping in and out of existence.", which covers your first 2 paragraphs that you didn't need to spend time defending.

> then said Cause must be causing some concepts to exist, and not others. > something on the part of the Cause that is causing one to exist, and the other not.

Let me put it this way. Do you have any way of showing that the First Cause has any choice as to what it is causing? Yes, out of all logical possibilities, lions exists but unicorns don't. Do you have a way to showing (logically, not the Bible) that the First Cause can cause unicorns to exist? My overall point is that the First Cause itself may only have the power to only cause lions and no power to cause unicorns. Because that is all what we see right? How can we attribute choice until we actually see that alternative choices are being made? It could have been otherwise but did it?

Anything that exists depends on God. Fine. Everything that could exist but doesn't, if they existed, would also depend on God. Fine. But how can we then turn around and say that God has the power to create everything that could exist? That doesn't follow. We can only attribute enough power to God to only be able to cause the things we do see exist. Can God create lions? Yes. If unicorns popped into existence tomorrow, can we say God can create them? Sure. Given that unicorns don't exist today, does God have the capacity/power/will to bring them into existence? Unknown. Do you see the difference? This is what I mean by impersonal vs personal.

Which is why I've been saying that it is only empirical observations (resurrection, etc) that can show will. Otherwise omnipotence is just an empty claim. It is logically possible that I could fly, but I'm bound by gravity, and hence cannot. Similarly the First Cause could be bound by rules to be able to cause only the universe we see and nothing else. Other logical possibilities exist but may not within its power.

> But the natural sciences cannot provide a complete explanation of the lion's existence and the unicorn's non-existence, because (among other reasons) the the natural sciencse themselves are one concept rather than another

Again, it's all empirical. Yes, tomorrow unicorns could start popping into existence and then we'd have to revise what we think of the universe. But until then (this is crucial, my claims are contingent on observations), apriori natural laws seem to be able to explain everything we see. No personal God needed. If you want to continue believing in a personal God, of course all power to you, but it'd be incorrect to continue to claim that God is the only logically possible explanation, as per the book. There are other possible explanations that fit our observations, as of today.

> The behavior of water cannot be explained by considering the properties of hydrogen and of oxygen

This is the home ground of science, and if someone could show this to be true, there are Nobel prizes waiting for them, just for starters. But it is not true. To use words from the book, hydrogen has many potential properties, including burning (which makes it combine with O :)) and being wet (when combined with O). These properties are actualized based on the key ideas of emergence and locality. Potential properties of natural objects (and I consider artifacts such as computers to also be natural) are actualized based on where they are in spacetime. Electrons "know" nothing about wetness. They continue to behave like electrons, including repelling other electrons and attracting protons. And yet when many such interactions occur in the vicinity of other electrons and protons, atoms and water and wetness emerges in that group. There is nothing mysterious or contradictory about these higher level properties. So this line of thinking definitely doesn't work. Again, this is all from empirical observations. If tomorrow water changes its properties or the sun rises in the west, we can come back to it.

> If you tear it out, its behavior fundamentally changes

Similarly, emergence and locality.

> But the only way it can define this 'certain way' is by referring to a real lion. > Reductionism is therefore circular.

Not at all. Think of the game of life (GoL). Simple rules + initial conditions = glider (say equivalent to the lion). Glider exists, contingent on the GoL rules. No circular reasoning needed. Similarly, (some) physical laws + initial conditions = lion. Where is the circular reasoning? Somehow you seem to be starting with the concept of lion apriori and saying that is the "real" lion and physical laws are some mathematical details. But why? Real lions only exist in the context of these physical laws, both logically and ontologically. Triangles only exist in the context of straight lines. Etc.

> The fact that one can explain a thing's behavior according to its parts in no way implies that it is 'nothing more' than those parts as they would exist separately from that thing. Methodological reductionism does not imply ontological reductionism.

It's a claim but can you give some examples where it holds true? I think the only place I've heard this "strong emergence" claim is consciousness. But that's an open question and if that's the only example then we can agree to disagree. Everywhere else we look, weak emergence holds.

> Only in the sense that God wills that which is good for everything. We'd know of His existence, but He would be very distant and unknowable.

Yup, which I'd say is compatible with an impersonal First Cause and hence compatible with being an atheist or naturalist.

> The Trinity and the Incarnation are complete game-changers in this regard, which is why they are the absolute foundational teachings of Christianity :-)

For sure. Empirical observation :)

Some further thoughts:

* There is a crucial assumption in the 5 proofs that I think is worth thinking about. Given that something exists (I, the world, causes, parts, etc), it follows that there must be a First Cause/God. Also given ex nihilo nihil fit, it follows that the First Cause has to be eternal. The debate then is about the rest of the qualities, which I'm distinguishing as impersonal vs personal. However, note that this reasoning relies on the apriori fact that the world exists, from which we (and the proofs) intuit the presence of a First Cause. This still does not answer the big question: why is there anything at all? [0] There could have been no world and even no First Cause. We can imagine that there would exist only logical possibilities but no ontological "existence". There would be just be Nothing. Yes, the First Cause is eternal. But why? How did the First Cause arise in the first place? I think it's a valid question but it's unclear what the answer could be. One possibility is that logical existence is all there is. [1] But in any case, the eternalism of the First Cause, as in the proofs, is contingent on cogito, ergo sum and is not a necessity beyond that. I find it an interesting realization.

* I am curious what you exactly mean by "the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa". One reading of it clashes wildly with all of our scientific investigations. From being a civilization which attribute everything to Gods and angels--making the sun go around the sky and natural calamities and good luck and bad luck---we've managed to figure out that we don't need such an attribution. Simple rules can generate a lot of complexity. Thus emergence and not God is what makes the world go. But the above statement seems to bring those ancients ideas back somehow. What am I missing?

Also, I think even granting PPC and that the whole determines the parts still does not prove will. God can still be bound by some underlying rules. I don't know if logic alone can lead us to God's free will, until we have some empirical proof such as God actually willing unicorns into existence instead of lions. Even for humans, just saying I have will ("I can will myself to fly but don't want to") doesn't really count until I show it.

* I'd like to hear your thoughts on my earlier question. If Christianity were to be shown as "false" as the other religions, and thus no human religion can demonstrate divine providence, how much will your belief in a personal God remain? Just from the proofs, do you think you will still strongly take a loving caring God who actively created and sustains this universe to be true?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts when you have the time.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/13/epis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

Huh. Maybe you have a proper example of a hierarchical series then?

I'm thinking God -> object1 -> object2 -> object3. Is this not what the book means?

> the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa

Good. I think we can agree to disagree at this point. I try to reach the core premise of viewpoints I don't agree with and I think we have reached it here. I'll try to explain my viewpoints a bit more, but I imagine you'll remain unconvinced. Well, my own overall takeaway is still that I don't need the (personal) God hypothesis to explain the universe (yet) (~Laplace).

I'll say this though. You promised much better arguments than what I had encountered before. I'll admit I found my readings of natural theology pretty interesting. My exposure to arguments beyond using the Bible was only the Kalam Cosmological argument. Many of the ideas in Feser's book and blog articles were a refreshing take, and I had to think a bit about them before I could pinpoint the core ideas and where I disagree. So thank you for that.

> This unity determines the particles' behavior

To me, an empirical study of the universe we sense seems to indicate that the properties of the parts completely determines the properties of the whole. After we have explained the properties of H and O, the properties of H2O are completely fixed and determined. The game of life starts with a simple set of rules and an initial state, and the wonderful patterns that emerge [0] are completely determined after that. Same for the Mandelbrot set. Same for everywhere we look.

My question is, what will help convince you that the behavior of a whole can be determined by its parts? Is being able to accurately predict its behavior by predicting the behavior of just the parts not sufficient? What is left after accounting for the behavior of all the parts of a lion? What is in this essence of lionness that cannot be explained just from the combined behavior of cells?

> The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another.

See here we agree. Our universe has a particular set of laws and initial conditions that could have been otherwise. Science takes this as a premise and studies what happened after that. But now take a Laplace's Demon [1] and ask, given the premise, does the universe contain [2] a lion? Answer: yes. Does the universe contain a unicorn? no. Does the universe contain a forum called hacker news where sdht0 and geye1234 are discussing natural theology? yes. I don't see why we need a God who is choosing things to exist or not. We may need God to fix the premise, but everything after that can be God-free. I'll try to explain my viewpoint another way:

> And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

This is a statement I can agree with, but our takeaways are so different. Imagine a canvas with a lion but no unicorn. If I'm correctly interpreting your concept of "willed", you're saying that there is a God who has two cutout images, that of a lion and a unicorn, and He decided to put the lion on the canvas but not the unicorn. I'm saying, there is a "God" who has a computer program, consisting of just 0s and 1s, which when run on a computer controlling a brush drew a picture of a lion on the canvas.

So I'm just repeating myself now, but regardless of the essences of the objects that inhabit our universe, their existence and behavior is completely determined once the laws and initial conditions have been set as a premise. The question of course remains, where does the premise come from? Here I'm open to possibilities. First Cause. God. Eternal physical laws. Etc. When I read the 5 proofs, that's what I thought, that the books are showing the existence of God at this level. At the edge/beginning of the chain. But you seem to have something else in mind (also as per your other comment) which I don't understand/agree with.

I think you'll agree that given the axioms of mathematics, 2+2=4 is true and not even God can change that. In the same way, as a naturalist, I'm saying that given the laws of our universe (whatever they are) and the initial conditions, lions exist and unicorns don't and even God cannot change that. I'll freely agree that the former is from logic and hence necessarily true. But the later is just from empirical observations. As I said before, if tomorrow God does choose ;) to reveal Himself in a convincing manner, I'll have to change my views completely. Similarly if unicorns start popping in and out of existence.

> I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

I'm not sure how to separate those. Doesn't the concept of a lion contain the fact that a lion hunts for food? Which needs biology, chemistry, physics, etc to explain. Or by concept do you mean just the shape? Then is a statue of a lion an actual lion? Like I'm trying to imagine how to explain to an alien from another galaxy the concept of a lion. How can we do that without explaining the entire history of life of Earth, etc?

[0] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon

[2] I'm assuming a deterministic universe for simplicity, but it can be sufficiently adapted for the quantum nondeterministic universe by taking about a tree of possibilities and whether any or how many of the branches have some property.

This is probably the closest we can get: Installing Windows the Arch Linux Way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtxedkuUCas

> I disagree with the reductionist account of a table that is I think implicit here

Even the proofs imply a reductionist account no? The first proof says: the table holds up the glass, the floor holds up the table and the earth holds up the table. And then asks, what holds up it all? Answer: necessarily God. But then God is at the edge (first) of this causal chain and the table is still holding up the glass (directly), no? And God is holding up the universe (directly) and everything in it (indirectly). Thus, saying that God is holding up the glass would be misusing the usual meaning of the term "holding up".

> you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary.

This is obviously true. It is slightly amusing that this is then used to imply that God choose what things actually exist, while I as a naturalist take it to mean we have to empirically look at the world to determine what exists.

> Do you think the attempt succeeds?

Alright. So I suppose I don't think the attempt succeeds, no.

Take a table. It has a quality: it's solid. As compared to air, which is gas. However, in what sense is it meaningful to say that an individual atom is solid or gas? Isn't it true that concept of solid or gas only comes in when there are a group of atoms, none of which individually have a "state"? Yes of course, the property is inherent (eminently or virtually as you say) in an atom, but it only materializes in relation to other atoms, not individually. And so on down the abstraction levels.

The book defends PPC with arguments that are quite weak and only work they are talking about the same emergent level. Yes, giving $20 works only when I have $20. But do atoms which constitute me also have $20 dollars? It's absurd no? The concept of owning $20 does not "exist" at the level of atoms. Same for the argument about evolution. Within genetics, the same DNA is evolving into different forms. But again, what about the atoms constituting the DNA?

So no, I don't think it makes sense to talk about qualities that emerge in higher levels to hold at the lower levels. First Cause doesn't have the quality of tables, states of matter, or human will directly, only in an indirect weak sense. The book says it too: "explanations in terms of potentialities may often be only minimally informative", but this "minimalness" makes all the difference! How can this minimally informative quality expanded to be maximally relevant when talking about the First Cause? Yes, the First Cause in a causal chain leads to human will. Minimally weak sense. Wondering how you think instead that First Cause has will "in the same sense as human beings or in some greater sense".

> part of the effect (the human intellect) is not material > given some things in reality (human beings) have a will

I will note that these are agree-to-disagree statements, given the basis of consciousness is an open question for now. From my naturalistic perspective, humans only have emergent "free" will, not libertarian free will, which is what theists usually mean by the term. But I'm happy to accept these statements for this discussion and am more interested in understanding why First Cause needs to have any will, given human will.

> the equation of atheism and science

Ah sorry I didn't mean to imply an association, only that both atheists and scientists, from their perspectives, would have no qualms with (and in fact should necessarily accept) an impersonal First Cause.

> we can't understand the full details of how God can will

I'm quite wary of arguments that invoke the "beyond the capability of our minds to understand" clause. But I get it, let's see if A: "we can nonetheless safely say what is not the case: that God lacks will" holds up. I don't think the book makes a good case for A and only offers B, hence my comment.

In general, I think the quibble again is in the definition of the term existence.

* Logical existence: Everything, that is not logically inconsistent, logically necessarily "exists". God has no say here. This is the logical metaphysical landscape, with mathematics and all possible universes with all possible constituents such as tables and unicorns.

* Ontological existence: A small small subset of the metaphysical landscape that we experience with our senses. Here, some things "exist" and others don't. This is what we want to talk about right? What we think about when we ask the questions: where did this come from, who caused this, etc. At least I exist. Thus something exists. Ex nihilo nihil. And thus, a First Cause sustains this something's existence. And the question then is, of the things that do exist, how much control does First Cause have for their existence?

I think your argument above switches between these two definitions, hence the disagreement.

> You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed.

Yeah I read this, but not sure if I agree. That infinite detail would contain its history and details of its components, no? And that would lead to a description of an entire universe, where we can judge whether it makes sense for that things to exist. But anyway, doesn't matter for our present purposes. We can take unicorns to be metaphysically true as an axiom, for instance.

> There is nothing about a lion that makes its existence necessary, and nothing about a unicorn that makes its non-existence necessary.

This is perhaps true for metaphysical existence, but the ontological existence of a lion and the non-existence of an unicorn can absolutely be determined by the physical laws and the initial conditions of our universe. As far as we have probed our senses, the physical world seems to be, with absolute consistency, following a set of laws. All the First Cause has "control" over (right now) is selecting/sustaining what the laws and initial conditions were. The rest of the entire history of the universe is then already logically implied, either deterministically (single line) or probabilistically (a tree), including +lions and -unicorns. First Cause has no say whatsoever.

> Therefore, God is causing lions to exist, caused dinosaurs to exist at one point but no longer does, and has never caused unicorns to exist.

> I disagree with the reductionist account of a table that is I think implicit here

> the parts can only be understood in terms of the whole

This is the core of the disagreement then. "Existence", by which I mean to take this physical universe that we experience with our senses, is empirically reductionist. No God is needed to explain why the Sun rises or why tables retain their form. Each emergent level [0] has a necessary and sufficient cause from the level below it. Tables -> atoms -> quarks -> QFT -> ? -> First Cause. In this sense, First Cause is causing and sustaining the universe. But again, passively, not actively.

Theists obviously disagree with this. But my point is, just from the proofs as the book claims, why can we claim that God chooses unicorn not to exist? All we can say is God chose/is the First Cause physical laws, no? The non-existence of unicorns is implicit in the laws (and initial conditions). No choice needed. And since I have shown an alternative explanation that is consistent with the proofs, a personal God is not a logical necessity, is it? Theist will have to rely on the Bible (etc) for that, not logical proofs.

And also:

> has never caused unicorns to exist.

> If the universe 'burst forth' from God, then anything that could potentially exist, would exist.

Well we don't know! We cannot make any claims about what "exists" beyond our universe. It is absolutely possible that unicorns exist in some other universe. It is possible that the entire metaphysical landscape has ontological existence. We just don't know. And thus these statement cannot be considered true (or false) with any certainty.

[0] Except the origin of our universe and consciousness. The former will ultimately have a brute force First Cause. And the later is an open question right now (a gap).

> Technology has been quite detrimental to humanity

I don't think we can make a blanket statement like that.

Technology does connect us, makes us smarter, give us vast access to knowledge, etc. And yes, it also enables the bad habits. There are 8 billion of us. Of course technology won't have the same effect on everyone. And would a world without technology be not detrimental to humanity, i.e., for the 8 billion of us as a whole?

For sure.

I read some more of Feser's writings. And the more I read, I more I see that the quibble is less about what is and more about what we should call it.

The major thrust of the book is that the proofs show the God exists, hence everyone should be a theist. But you see, the terms God and theist are not defined that well. God, in the context of the book, is an entity that has some qualities that are defined to be something "analogous" to the usual meanings of the word. And that creates a lot of ambiguity in the message. More so because theism is not defined at all.

"The real debate is between theists of different stripes—Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, purely philosophical theists, and so forth—and begins where natural theology leaves off.", the book says. Well here's a thought. Let's take Christians. They necessarily believe that the God revealed in the Bible is True. Moreover, they believe the God of all the other religions are necessarily false [0]. Now of course, as the book itself says, whether Christianity is true or not is outside the scope of the proofs. So for the sake of this discussion, let's say that yes the God the proofs is true (necessarily), but no human religion, including Christianity, is true. That is, God hasn't revealed himself to humans directly. Where does that leave us? Should we still be a theist? A "purely philosophical theist", as the above quote says? What would that mean? What should the beliefs of a theist without any of the current religions be?

In other words, what difference does the presence or absence of this proof of God make in our lives to be able to define us as a theist or an atheist? God may be perfectly good and all knowing and all the rest of the qualities. Alright, so what? Does it have any implication for our lives? At this point I expect the theist to jump in and say (among other things), yes of course it matters. God is the perfect role model, and we imperfect humans should try to elevate our lives to try and match his perfectness. This I think is fine. However, I think this is compatible with being an atheist! Attempting to reach our maximal potential is a valid goal regardless of whether that perfectness is already "actual" or not.

And that is my overall point. That's why I tried to point out the "personal" qualities earlier. When I resist the term theist, for me personally, I am resisting the idea that God is somehow actively participating in the daily affairs of the universe. That He sets the rules for what is good or bad, not as the perfect being, but as defined in the Bible (or other books). That there is a judgement of the our actions and we go to heaven or hell (or cycle of rebirth based on karma, etc). And this later part is I think where most of the disagreement between theism and atheism is. And these later ideas don't (and cannot) come from the proofs. Moreover, there is a subtle flip in the meaning of the terms even when discussing the proofs. For instance, take the first proof. Everything has a (hierarchical) First Cause. Let's call it God. God is the cause of everything. Hence, God causes everything to exist. But you see, there is a flip from the passive "is a cause of" to an active "causes". Which then naturally is taken to mean a God with a will who has the power to cause the universe but also has the capacity to choose to create or not create the universe. And that is I think an unjustified misreading of the words "cause". To make an analogy, electrons "cause" tables to exist, without having any active godly qualities. God can similarly cause and sustain the universe, without having any active role in it.

So yeah, in short, natural theology as described here can actually be compatible with philosophy of science/metaphysics in my reading, and the quibble is more about terms and boundaries. The main challenge for theism is to show the next step, that God revealed Himself to us. Because only that can show that God is personal/active rather than impersonal/passive. And that can only be shown empirically I think, not through philosophical ponderings.

I probably didn't manage to express my thoughts fully, and I hope you'll try to read into the spirit of the message when pondering it.

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-do-believers-of-a-god-defend-this-...

> prove the existence of something that is other than the universe

I'm not sure. I think the proofs show some base entity that is needed to sustain the universe. But is it something apart from the universe? Whatever exists, say God and His creation, all together constitutes the universe. Of course by universe I mean the totality of reality that the proofs refer to.

Perhaps you mean that the something "other" always exists even though the universe might not have. As I say in the other comment, God might not have a choice in creating the universe, so this is an open question that cannot be discussed within the context of the proofs.

Yes the first one, if the distinction needs to be made.

I'll even go further and claim that distinction itself is meaningless and only matters when say organizing university departments.

What needs to be kept in mind is emergence. Chemistry emerges from physics, then biology from chemistry, ecology from biology, etc. Experimentally verified God will become the base level out of which physics emerges from in the other direction. In that sense, physics' domain perhaps includes everything. But it all depends on how we define the terms.

> the purpose of the intellect is the attainment of truth

This I wholeheartedly agree. Maybe you'll enjoy reading this blog post [0] that proposes Truthism as life's goal.

[0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious...

Sorry I couldn't get back sooner.

> pp.205-229

I am on the ebook, but I assume you mean Chapter 6, which I did read but as you can imagine, the arguments are not convincing to me. I think the meaning of the terms omnipotent, omniscience, goodness, etc is quite fluid in the book, so let's try to pin those down.

I posit that an impersonal God, let's call it iGod since you nitpicked ToE, serves as a final answer coming out of the proofs. Let's grant it all the qualities that the proofs need. iGod is what causes and sustains the universe. However, since iGod is impersonal, He did not choose to create the universe. Ultimately, He does not have any will. He just is. Maybe you at least agree that atheism/science is compatible with iGod in this sense.

And that is the key difference from theism, which needs a personal God (pGod) with a sense of will. As the book says (emphasis mine):

* "Since God exists in the fullest possible way, he must have the capacity to act in the fullest possible way."

* "God apprehends all the things that could exist, and causes some of those things actually to exist while refraining from causing others of them to exist."

I don't see how this sense of a will follows from the proofs. iGod, the unmoved mover/unactualized actualizer, may not have any control over actualizing. The universe can just burst forth naturally from iGod without any sort of active decision to bring it forth. The book's defense of this sense of free will, where God is free to choose not to cause the universe, is simply that "the freedom of the divine will is mysterious to us", which I think you'll agree is not any sort of proof. If you can show me how a sense of will arises from these or other proofs, I'll reconsider my position, since this is the keystone to the rest of the qualities I'm calling personal. Without will, the meaning of the rest of the personal qualities become the same as iGod's.

Some quick comments on the rest of the qualities:

Omnipotence: I am not sure if we can extend the quality of iGod causing "any given thing to exist" just from observation of this one universe. More concretely, I am still thinking about whether the purely actual actualizer being unique holds. But in any case, if iGod's omnipotence means that it causes and sustains "any given thing to exist", that is fine. But this is a passive power. If pGod's omnipotence means that He has the power to cause anything but can withhold a subset of them based on a willful decision, then that is not an outcome of the proofs. As I said, the will part matters.

Omniscience: To give a sense of where I am coming from, I'll give two example. Base axioms in mathematics cause all the rest of the theorems to be true or false, in an eternal sort of way (as also discussed in the 3rd proof). But it's absurd to attribute omniscience (about mathematics) to mathematics. And electrons cause emergent phenomenon such as electricity and working computers, yet they don't "know" anything about these emergent levels built of top. Similarly, iGod, in an impersonal way, causes the universe, following a chain of causation. But in what sense can we attribute a sense of knowing in iGod? Again, it just is. Without proving a mind/will, using the word omniscience is I think a mistake and just leads to miscommunication.

Goodness and love: I think these only exist in an emergent level of reality, i.e., in human minds. You'll agree that atoms that constitute our physical bodies don't have these attributes, right? I posit that in the same way, iGod, the impersonal base reality which constitutes everything else, also does not have these attributes. The book (and your comment) is redefining the terms (goodness = lack of imperfection, love = "that God creates things entails that he loves them") to mean something different from how we use it in our everyday conversation and which is why I think using these terms is again a mistake. We're free to use whatever terms we like of course, but it just leads to a miscommunication that makes these discussions more murky than they need to be. In any case, goodness/love in pGod again needs a sense of will to make them useful, because otherwise by the same definitions iGod is also good and all-loving.

> God cannot possibly lack anything ... It would be impossible to cause something that you don't in some sense have yourself

I understand the sense of what you're saying here, but I want to make a distinction between base qualities and emergent qualities. For example, atoms "lack" the quality of being a table, even though a table is constituted entirely by atoms. Tableness is an emergent quality. In the same way, iGod only has the properties needed to actualize the next potential that in the causal chain gives rise to entirety of reality, including our universe. But that does not mean iGod itself can be attributed the quality of being an atom or a galaxy or a human body. Causing some quality to exist down the causal chain does not mean it is meaningful to port those qualities back up the chain. In the context of the proofs, all we can be sure of is that some First Cause base reality iGod exists. But the minimal qualities we need to attribute to iGod do not use terms like goodness, love, evil, etc without entirely redefining those terms. But theists cannot then turn around and use the same words back with their original meaning in the same context.

There is a lot more I can say of course, given its a book length discourse. I'll just say one more thing. The book criticizes and rejects the idea that "science is the only genuine source of knowledge". I think this is a common misunderstanding of what science is. The books says "The trouble now is that scientism becomes completely trivial, arbitrarily redefining “science” so that it includes anything that could be put forward as evidence against scientism." But that is what science, or more precisely, the scientific method is!

For instance, if the 5 proofs had actually logically and definitively proved that a personal God exists, then yes, that knowledge would become part of science.

Conversely, is it not true that the actual bedrock of religions are the books/revelations. Imagine a world where were no such revelations. Would people have as much faith in a personal caring God just on the basis of proofs?

And if the revelations were actually shown to be true, that would become part of scientific knowledge. Say God appears on Earth today and agrees to undergo scientific observations of His nature (say by turning water to wine or parting the ocean under experimental scrutiny), then naturally His existence will have to be accepted as part of reality.

The scientific method is used by everyone, whether consciously or unconsciously and to the best of their ability, to survive and understand the reality we observe. There is no other way to judge right from wrong. Scientists obviously use it to study physical reality. And theists use it for instance to judge which among the various religions (and which denomination within a religion) is actually true. Yes, that is also an application of the scientific method, looking at the arguments for the different religions and judging which one (or none) seems to be true. The disagreements come in when we don't have enough data to make a definitive judgement between the alternatives. And that's where all the wonderful imaginative ideas continue to exist.

Alright, it took longer than expected. I wasn't able to give full attention to all the arguments of the book, but I think I got the main arguments and counter-arguments.

So the thesis of the book "Five Proofs" is as it says in the intro---the real debate is not between atheism and theism---by trying to show that God, as accepted by theists, definitely exists.

By God, the book means an entity with certain qualities, which I'll divide into two sets:

* impersonal: simplicity, immutability, immateriality, incorporeality, eternity, necessity

* personal: will, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, love

My main criticism of the five proofs is that, even if accepted, they can only used to demonstrate the impersonal qualities above. The book bolts on the personal qualities with thin arguments that don't follow from the proofs. And this has been my observation in many such discussions, that the meaning of the word "God" switches mid-conversation to fit the conclusion.

An impersonal "God" is actually compatible with naturalism, because here "God" is just a word being used to describe the ultimate nature of reality. So whatever the ultimate nature of reality is, if one wants to call it God, that's totally fine. To differentiate my perspective, I'll call that ultimate reality the Theory of Everything (ToE) instead. ToE has all the impersonal qualities, ToE is what sustains the universe, ToE is eternal and immutable, etc.

* ToE is what sustains the hierarchical series at each moment.

* ToE is base part out of all other composite parts of made of.

* I don't see why "there must be a necessarily existing intellect which grasps all of the logical relationships between all propositions". Truth and logic just are. They don't need to be grasped by anything to exist. However, if one wants to call this collection God/ToE, that's fine. But it doesn't follow that such a God is omniscient (as there isn't any will that "understands" in such a collection).

* I don't really see how the Thomistic Proof is different from the Aristotelian Proof, but in any case, I think ToE can be the essence of this universe's existence.

* "There must be at least one necessary being, to explain why any contingent things exist at all". Yes, the First Cause, but ToE and not a personal God.

ToE/God, with the impersonal qualities, can be the final conclusion from all the 5 proofs. But theists need "God" to be something extra. They need God to have the above personal qualities as well. And that cannot be shown with the proofs. Because the reality we observe is consistent with an impersonal ToE creating and sustaining it. ToE doesn't need to have a will, or to be perfectly good, or to love its creation. These qualities don't follow from the proofs at all. So personal qualities can only be accepted if one accepts some revelation to be true. But that is outside the scope of this discussion. All I want to show is that the thesis of the book is incorrect and atheism is back on the table.

To reiterate, something cannot come out of nothing. Cogito, ergo sum. Something (I) exists. Hence there is some brute-force First Cause for this something. Theists call this First Cause God. Atheists can call this ToE (say). I claim that God = ToE at this point. Theists go one step further to give personal qualities to God, who willed this universe into existence (but could have chosen not to) and cares about its constituents, including humans, whose prayers and actions He listens to and judges, and has revealed himself at least once (if not more). Atheists reject this second part. I instead adopt a naturalist viewpoint modulated by Bayesian Reasoning. If I find some strong evidence for a personal God, I'll of course have to change my mind and become a theist.

> sees what he wants to see

Most definitely. Though I do think (hope?) we humans can rise above our limitations to grasp the actual Truth quite a bit.

> The book Five Proofs is not the same set of five that Aquinas very briefly summarises

Alright I got the actual book now. To correct the mistake, I'll give the book a honest read and post my impressions here in a day or two. I hope you can be around to respond if I got something wrong. If not, nice talking to you!

> all your objections can be answered

I've been promised such many many times, and every single time the arguments have fallen hilariously short of the promise. For instance, the "Five Proofs" are basically a variation of the statement: I insist X has to exist, and X=God. The simple refutation is: Nope :). X can be reasoned about in other ways. Maybe I'll take a look at the other resources at some point, but my credence is low those will have any solid arguments either.

I often wonder why such arguments are taken so seriously. I've honestly tried to see if they have enough substance to make me change my mind. But each time I become more convinced religious arguments are simply wish fulfillment. Moreover, the word is God is so flexible that it's hard to pin down the exact thing people have in mind when discussing religion. And so it'll continue. As long as we live and let live without imposing viewpoints by force, that's okay!

> what justifies our choice of a particular prior

Right that's a good question. I'll point to an answer Sean Carroll gave in an AMA episode [0] of his Mindscape podcast:

  The pros and cons of Bayesian reasoning are almost all in the choice of a prior. People who are pro-Bayesian will say, look, as long as your priors aren't completely crazy, if you collect enough data, the priors cease to matter. [...] The promise of Bayesian reasoning is that data overwhelms your prior ultimately. And therefore, there is no algorithmic way of choosing what your prior should be. It's a little bit fuzzy to say when things are priors and when things are posteriors because we all have certain inclinations, intuitions, pictures of the world, and that's perfectly okay. But as a good Bayesian, you shouldn't be too worried about picking your priors. You should be mostly worried about updating those priors when data comes in, when information comes in.

> Chains of reasoning have to bottom out somewhere

Absolutely. We should do our best to keep asking the why question, but at the end, we'll be left with a brute-force fact. The question then is, where do we stop, right? In the context of this thread, religion wants to say, God is the final answer. What caused God? Nothing, God is His own cause (kalam cosmological argument). And as a naturalist I'd say, the universe can be its own cause. There's no rational inconsistency there, contrary to what the kalam argument claims. Theists and atheists give different credence to these two viewpoints. And until we have more data, the question cannot really be settled with certainty. So both will keep trying to justify why one viewpoint should have a higher prior over the other, based on secondary evidence.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/04/03/ama-...

Maybe we can get the best of both worlds by taking hand written notes on a tablet?

> Since the past has resembled the future in the past many times, that gives us evidence that the past resembles the future

Ah not evidence in the strict sense of the world. I mean in the sense of probabilistic Bayesian reasoning [0], which I think we all use in some form (consciously or subconsciously) in forming our beliefs of reality. Since the laws have been stable in the past, we can hold a strong credence (say 99%, but never 100%) they will continue to hold in the future, until new data proves otherwise. Same reason we don't think twice before stepping into an airplane, trusting the .

In general, our intuitions do develop from our empirical evidence and logic. How can it be otherwise? Even our evaluation of which religion is true depends heavily on our upbringing and which ideas we are exposed to the most, which feed our intuition.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/

> I think the context matters.

Fair enough :)

> He/she is, however, on the lookout for contradictions

I'll just note that contradiction is not the right term in context of the premise. Rather, it'd be discrepancy that when studied further will become part of normal science: that the laws of physics evolve over time.

> But does a scientist in doing science have some kind of burden of proving this premise

To be a little clearer, yes, scientists do not need to prove the premises in everyday research. However, they do need to kept in mind when reasoning about reality. The current scientific premises are based on strong observational foundations. We have data to show that experiments done 50 years ago give exactly the same results today. If tomorrow the results change, then the premise will most definitely come under question.

> Uncertainty is part of the human condition

Definitely. Cogito, ergo sum is the only absolute surety we have. Everything else is Bayesian reasoning :)

Same for believing the floor is real vs the resurrection might not be. I've empirically tested the claim about the floor and it has never failed to hold up. When it does, I'll have to update my priors. But we only have one data point for the resurrection and thus have no real way to make strong judgements about what's the actual reality behind the resurrection.

> Well, religion being an exclusive arbiter of reality

Sorry I didn't mean to imply arbiter of reality to the exclusion of science, although religion did try back in the day when science was getting off the ground. Today, religions make specific claims about reality for which science doesn't have an answer (gaps). However, when asked why one should believe those specific claims (eternal heaven/hell after death) but not other contradicting claims (reincarnation), the answers ultimately fall back to taking it on faith. And at that point, one gets to basically pick and choose which faith-based answer feels the best.

> I think God's existence can be proved rationally

We have to be careful here by what "God" means. God as in a First Cause is trivially true, but is not what most people mean when they say God. The existence of the God of religions, i.e., a personal all-loving human-caring God who listens to human prayer can only be shown true or false empirically. In my comment, I posited alternative universes, for example, the Devil acting as God. Which universe we actually live in among a large number of possibilities is not something that can be proved rationally.

> empirical basis of Christianity specifically (evidence for the resurrection) is sound

Yeah, I remain unconvinced and give higher explanatory power to human affinity for divine miracles (see followers of modern age "gurus"), ability of hearsay to go "viral" (especially in an era without books and modern scientific knowledge), and a new religious movement asserting stories for a "greater good".

In addition, as I already mentioned, even if the resurrection is true, the only thing we can be sure of is that certain "magic" can go beyond the usual laws of physics. That's it. There could be a number of reasons behind the resurrection. The Devil playing games. The Matrix scientists testing a "what-if" scenario. A fallible God trying to do some good. And of course, a genuine all loving God.

Christianity would have been so much convincing if Jesus had mentioned at least a few futuristic but concrete facts that only God could know, and that future generations could verify happened exactly as written in the Bible.

> A thing can only be changed by something else

I can only say, why? :) By a universe, I mean a set of physical laws and a bunch of stuff those laws act upon. Nothing prevents say a cyclic universe where both laws and stuff exist without a beginning, just evolving from big bang to big crunch to big bang, repeated ad infinitum.

> each of us should examine our own beliefs, and not only ask "What if I'm wrong?" but "How would I know if I were wrong"?

The final arbiter is repeatable verifiable data. Everything else to subject to doubt.

So how would I know if naturalism is wrong? God could come down again in a public revelation and agree to undergo a scientific scrutiny His nature. Who can then deny His existence?

Lacking that, how do I know religion is wrong? Well, religion plays two roles: a source of strength in this world full of suffering, and an explanation for our existence. The former is necessary for many people and will probably never go away. But the second role has always been that of a "God of the gaps", with the gaps drastically shrinking with improving scientific knowledge. All arrows are point to a naturalistic explanation of the universe. So pending some strong "evidence", none of the religions seem to be correct in the second role. To me, it is better to say "we don't know yet" than accept something on "faith", especially when it comes with seemingly arbitrary commandments on practical matters of life.

> instead of this being evidence that there were supernatural beings of some sort

This is a good point. I think this would make sense if there was some sort of consistency in these claims. However, almost every religion assert their own mutually exclusive claims on how the world is, and wants us to take up those claims on faith. It is easier to consider these claims as wish-fulfillment of the first role I mentioned above, than any sort of proof for actual divinity.

> But belief in Christianity is sort of logically prior to rational argumentation. [...] I don't think we can really make any progress by trying to argue about the foundational premises themselves, if that makes sense.

Yes! I think this is the crux of the matter. I also think this is why discussions involving religion are often unsatisfactory to me. This very thread started with a discussion on _evidence_. And the rest of the discussion is from a _rational_ perspective. But then evidence or rationality only work with scrutiny, including and especially of the axioms. So if discussions on Christianity start with the _premise_ that Christianity is true, then can there really be any further discussion? For instance, elsewhere in a comment you wrote:

> a Christian, in thinking rationally, is not forced to ask "what evidence do I have for this belief?"

In everyday life, this is fine. But when discussing Christianity rationally, questioning the premise is an important part of the process, no?

I present some of my own thinking below. I am taking Christianity only as an example in the context of this thread, but it applies to any revealed religion.

"I" exist. Presumably the universe I experience also exists. Why? There's a First Cause that brought them into existence. We can call it God. This is the closest religion and science can get, because this definition of God is without any pre-defined qualities. For instance, God can be non-dualistic (God _is_ the universe, or in other words, the universe is its own cause), and even mathematical (Physics' Theory of Everything, Mathematical Universe Hypothesis). We only have a set of possibilities here.

But Christianity then takes certain leaps.

* God is omnipotent and omniscient. Why? Even a God that is only finite in power and knowledge could have created this universe. Think "super-scientists" in a base reality. So do we really have to take God to be limitless in His capacity?

* God is all-loving and personally cares about His creation. Why? God could have just created the universe and stepped aside, not caring at all about human prayers or actions. So do really have to worry about Heaven and Hell, especially as defined in Christianity?

* God is Good. Why? A fallible God (or even the _evil_ Devil) could have created this universe. It would explains the problem of suffering, or why God seemingly revealed Himself multiple times with conflicting mutually exclusive instructions, perhaps due to incompetence or deliberate manipulation. So say God did actually reveal Himself as the life and tribulations of Christ. Is Christ a reliable arbiter of what is true and good? What if it was the Devil who came down multiple times as Christ/Allah/Buddha, just to mess with humanity? This is an important question I think, and would love to hear if there is a better justification than a priori faith.

Faith plays an important role for many of my family members and friends and by no means would I want to take it away. But I do get interested whenever religion wants to be an exclusive arbiter of reality and what's right or wrong. And every time, I have found it to fall short of all its claims.

> I can of course do the same with the PR, but then it loses its convenience. :)

Not at all. A PR still retains all the other useful features like separate threads for comments which be individually marked as done and CI checks. And not all PRs need a local checkout for a review.