Atheists, Agnostics, Deists, and Theists

I once read a post on freethinker.co.uk about defining atheism/agnosticism/theism.  Unfortunately, that entry doesn't appear to be available anymore.  I really liked his diagram so I was quite unhappy to not find it again.  So, I'm going to move forward with my own diagram:

The colors are arbitrary, just the standard colors from Microsoft Word.

Edit: At long last I have finally found the original article, see here.

Now, the original diagram had parts of the extremes cut off.  The original author said he cut off the extremes because there are very few people that hold the extreme positions.  The ideas are NOT from current word usage and more from the traditional concepts behind the actual words.  The word gnostic in the diagram is in no way related to the term given to the heretical view called gnosticism (from ancient Greek) except to use the same Greek term, "γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge" (from Wikipedia).  Also, this table is not an attempt to make new terms.  There is an important distinction to be made though, philosophically.  The discussion about the existence or non-existence of God often asks, "On whom is the burden of proof?"  Well, the burden of proof is on the person that is making the claim.

If a gnostic-atheist stands up and says, "There is no god, and I know it."  That person bears the burden of proving that claim.  Also, the strict (original meaning of the term) agnostic, if he/she stands up and claims, "We cannot know whether or not god does or does not exist."  That too is a claim and must be defended.  Likewise, if the gnostic-theist says, "I know there is a God."  Then he/she must prove it.  Now, this is all philosophically speaking, and thinking like a debate wherein there are rules by which one must abide.  If, you're simply seeking a worldview that makes sense, there aren't really "rules," it becomes more about what evidences and arguments to which one is willing to listen.

I would argue that no truly honest thinking person would ever be on the top half of this diagram.  Here's the problem though, people talk "big talk" and in books, lectures, blogs, etc.  People talk like they know one way or another when really all the "gnostic" positions are lying to themselves and everyone else.  Here's something I heard a while back from Ravi Zacharias and lately I read from an apologist on Facebook, and though I don't know the exact words I'll try to capture it the way it comes to my mind:

To absolutely affirm a negative, is to claim infinite knowledge.  To affirm the negative that there is no God, is to claim infinite knowledge that there is no being that has infinite knowledge.

I assume you see the contradiction there, though some don't see how affirming a negative is claiming infinite knowledge.  Here's one way to think about it, I affirm the negative that there are no such thing as unicorns (an affirmation of the negative).  That means I know for certain that there are no unicorns anywhere or at any time.  Ironically, unicorns are often used as examples of things that everyone knows don't exist.  There's an interesting conundrum with that claim.  Take the initial premise that there are an infinite number of universes, a multiverse.  *This is a common claim which runs counter to the claim that the universe is uniquely fine-tuned for the existence of our galaxy and life itself.  So, here we are with an infinite number of universes, and within at least one of those universes a unicorn must exist.  If you don't think so, then you are misunderstanding the concept of infinite!

Back to the diagram.  There are so many positions on this continuum.  There's rarely anyone on the far extremes, but there are lots of people that sit somewhere in the middle.  People that don't think there's a god, but allow that there might be one.  People that think there might be a god, but aren't sure about his/her/its existence.  There are people that don't care and sit right in the middle.  Let's not redefine terms, let's stick to these ideas.  Language is vague and that makes things difficult.  People might say, "I'm an atheist," and they're really saying they're an agnostic-atheist.  Same with theists, some claim that God exists, and if they're being honest they mean they're pretty sure that God exists, but they're not sure.  I often hear internet-atheists claim that atheists aren't making claims at all, which is pure ignorance.  If you say you don't believe in god because there's no evidence you're not being honest with yourself or those you're dealing with.  There is plenty of evidence, the problem isn't the lack of evidence, it's what you will accept as evidence.  Will you accept a simple straightforward argument?  If not, if you try to explain it away with some kind of untestable theory (like the aforementioned multiverse) then it's not about a lack of evidence, it's about outright dismissal of evidence.

Edit: After a short conversation with a coworker there may be an edit in order for affirming a negative.  Here's a possible exception to the idea that affirming a negative requires infinite knowledge.  If I make the claim that there is no such thing as a square circle, I do not think it requires infinite knowledge to affirm a philosophically contradictory claim.  So, to say, there is no such thing as a square circle or a married bachelor, is affirming an already established contradiction and does not require infinite knowledge.  Here's an interesting point that this route would take an atheist should he/she go down the route of philosophical arguments.  Many atheists, including John Loftus (though to be fair, he only speaks out against the philosophy of religion and not philosophy itself), are against philosophy, and for good reason too.  Looking at this site, the logical arguments against theism are just weak.  I'm only an elementary philosopher and I can see through these arguments like glass.  Also, in all my discussions with atheists both face-to-face and online, they have always appealed to science.  In fact, all I've ever heard from atheists, including in their books, is the mantra "science, science, science."  Philosophy is on God's side, in a manner of speaking.

Finishing Up My Thoughts

Sorry about my last post I suffered from an acute case of blogpostthoughtinterruptictis, and since that post I've been on vacation in Ohio and Michigan so I haven't had a chance to finish my thoughts.

I've talked about how foundational epistemology is dangerous both in my previous post and in this post where I talked about Descartes' philosophy of cogito ergo sum.  If we're to use foundational epistemology, the foundation has to be rock-solid.

This brings me back to the relationship between epistemology, conspiracy theories, and the Jesus myth theories.  Much of my interest in the topic of the historical Jesus started with my listening to Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ on Audible.com.  I highly recommend you check it out since he puts the case for Christ so much better than I can especially in such a short space.

There are people out there that believe in crazy things and one of the craziest things someone can hold to is that Jesus, as described in the Bible didn't ever exist.  I forget where I read it and I don't remember the exact wording but Jesus the best documented first century person.  Now, many skeptics might say that that kind of statement is biased because it's based on the Bible, which they wouldn't/don't trust.  But, there are many problems in that kind of thinking.  First off, even with only a layman's understanding I know that it's foolish to throw out the Bible as a valid historical source.  The process of textual criticism has been thoroughly studied for so many years that it would be completely foolish to throw out that entire body of work.  And, according to textual criticism there are more sources for the Bible (as we currently have translated today) than ANY historical text.  This chart from Charm.org describes the situation perfectly:

Author	Date Written	Earliest Copy	Approximate Time Span between original & copy	Number of Copies	Accuracy of Copies
Lucretius	died 55 or 53 B.C.		1100 yrs	2	----
Pliny	A.D. 61-113	A.D. 850	750 yrs	7	----
Plato	427-347 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200 yrs	7	----
Demosthenes	4th Cent. B.C.	A.D. 1100	800 yrs	8	----
Herodotus	480-425 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Suetonius	A.D. 75-160	A.D. 950	800 yrs	8	----
Thucydides	460-400 B.C.	A.D. 900	1300 yrs	8	----
Euripides	480-406 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1300 yrs	9	----
Aristophanes	450-385 B.C.	A.D. 900	1200	10	----
Caesar	100-44 B.C.	A.D. 900	1000	10	----
Livy	59 BC-AD 17	----	???	20	----
Tacitus	circa A.D. 100	A.D. 1100	1000 yrs	20	----
Aristotle	384-322 B.C.	A.D. 1100	1400	49	----
Sophocles	496-406 B.C.	A.D. 1000	1400 yrs	193	----*
Homer (Iliad)	900 B.C.	400 B.C.	500 yrs	643	95%*
New Testament	1st Cent. A.D. (A.D. 50-100)	2nd Cent. A.D. (c. A.D. 130 f.)	less than 100 years	5600	99.5%*

*Not sure why there isn't a percentage of accuracy for all the texts.  The accuracy percentage was taken from comparing all the different copies and showing what percentage the copies agreed with each other.  The differences in the NT copies do not occur in major theological parts of the NT and do not affect the doctrines espoused by most Christian churches.

So, now that we've established the validity of the copies of the New Testament, let's examine how trustworthy a document of this type would have be in the light of the concept of conspiracy theories.

For these copies to be completely fake, dozens of people would have to all come together and collude to create a document over about fifty years.  They would have to get their stories straight, so they agreed, but not too much, because if the four Gospels were identical, it would be obvious that they were copying one another.  They would have to slowly, over time produce a variety of texts that don't sound like they're all written by the same people.  Then they have to all go out and convince others that what they're writing is a true, all the time knowing that it's a lie.  Think about the vastness of this lie.  The text says that Jesus appeared to over five hundred people at the same time (1 Cor 15:6), and remember these texts were written within 10-70 years of the events described and they even encourage people to seek out these people and seek the Truth.  So, if one really wanted to kill Christianity in its infancy, all one would have to do is point to a grave with a still buried Jesus and go, "Well, they're all liars."  Or, something more gruesome like put his body on display or something.  But no, early detractors from Christianity don't do anything like that.  In fact, according to scholars of ancient literature, the first century Jewish writings agree that there was indeed an empty tomb and they sought to explain away the issue with other stories like grave robbery.

This brings us to another important idea behind debunking the Jesus mythers.  Think about and compare people that believe in the moon landing conspiracy.  In today's day and age the people that believe such things are labeled nutjobs or crazy etc.  But, in all reality what does one risk to oneself by disbelieving in the moon landing or perpetuating a similar lie?  Nothing much, maybe a little ostracization for being abnormal, maybe derision from people who know the truth.  But, what happened to the people that perpetuated the story of Jesus?  According to this site it is highly likely that eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred.  Now, okay it does admit that some of the stories of their martyrdom are more speculative, but to say the least most of the disciples were killed for their beliefs.  Now again, we're talking about a conspiracy theory here right?  So, let's assume these apostles were the original source of this huge conspiracy, what happened to them after they spread this lie?  They paid for it with their lives.  So this conspiracy not only bears no benefit to the conspirators, it will most likely lead to their death.  This brings up an interesting question though.  Others will and have died for their beliefs so that doesn't prove Christianity as right or wrong.  However, there's a clear distinction that this objection misses is this: the many martyrs for various religions died and still die for things they believe with all their hearts as being true.  If they knew for certain that what they believed was a lie, they wouldn't have been as willing to go to their deaths.  According to Wikipedia Muhammad died of an illness, and Joseph Smith died at the hands of a lynch mob for apparently trying to set up a form of theocracy and trying to marry other men's wives.  Every martyr since these founders had set up their respective religions died because they believed the claims of the founders.

Still not enough?  Let's look at other sources.  Even if you still reject the Bible as historical at all, and hold on to the impossible theory that these men died for a huge lie.  There are other sources of evidence for the historical Jesus.  This site has a few of the non-biblical historical references for Jesus and according to the Strobel's book there are a number of things one can learn from non-biblical sources.  I don't remember the complete list as presented in the book, but here's what I remember.  He was born under questionable circumstances, He was considered from Nazareth, He performed signs and wonders, He was crucified, His followers continued to worship Him after the crucifixion claiming that He had risen from the dead, and these followers were regularly martyred for that belief.

So there you have it.  Still think Jesus was just a myth?  If so then you believe in the biggest most implausible conspiracy imaginable.  Hundreds of thousands of people had to be in on a lie and perpetuate that lie knowing that it would lead to their death.

View from Dobong Mountain (도봉산) Seoul S Korea

Conspiracy Theory and Knowledge

First off, let me point you in the direction of the article that made me think about this topic.  There was this article from HowStuffWorks.com about ten people that are considered really smart that have done really stupid things.  The list was interesting to me because it brought up the idea of how we know what we know and what it takes to convince us of something that we don't believe.  There's also this interesting article that I found more recently about a similar topic.  There was also an article about people refusing to believe in things that have been debunked by science but I can't find that link right now.  When I find it I'll add it.

So let's start off our discussion with defining 'conspiracy.'  Wikipedia defines it like this: "A conspiracy theory is an explanatory proposition that accuses two or more persons, a group, or an organization of having caused or covered up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an illegal or harmful event or situation."  Interesting that this definition has no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim.  Here are some doozies (that's the technical term) that I can think of myself that I know some people actually believe, this is in no particular order: The assassination of JFK (specifically that more than Lee H. Oswald was involved), the moon landing (it was totally faked), the holocaust deniers, the birth certificate of sitting president Barack Obama, any number of Biblical conspiracies including numerology and "Jesus mythicists," vaccination hysteria (the far extreme being the operative position), the 9/11 cover up, and the Erin Brockovich and the PG&E Hinkley groundwater contamination cover up.  This is just my own list of conspiracy theories that I've been thinking about in regards to this entry; it is by no means meant to be comprehensive here's another wiki article (nearly all the previous links were to wiki articles) that has a much more interesting list.

Starting off with the most difficult one, the JFK assassination.  First off, what is the question?  Is the conspiracy that more than one assassin was involved?  So what?  That doesn't really affect the world in any way.  If the conspiracy is that the US government intentionally covered up the fact that someone in power wanted to oust JFK by assassination, and blame it all on one lone gunman, that's more significant.  Here's my basic answer to that kind of conspiracy: Two people can keep a secret, if one is dead.  This old saying applies to the USG as well!  I recently commented on a video on Facebook about this, "The US can't keep ACTUALLY SECRET things secret (Snowden ring any bells?)! How in the world could someone believe that the US government could keep a secret so huge that thousands upon thousands of people would have to be in on it?"  The same critique applies to the moon landing hoax claim.  Do you really believe that the USG could collude with thousands of people to hide a lie that huge, and get away with it?

The moon landing is so much clearer to me.  Though the actual artifacts left on the moon by the Apollo missions cannot be seen with the Hubble telescope, it can be measured.  So, how much disbelief are you willing to suspend?  Does the movie Watchmen convince you that there really was a JFK conspiracy?  Then maybe the lunar laser ranging retroreflector experiment won't convince you that people really walked on the moon.

Another totally crazy one, basically this one gives even ordinary conspiracy theorists a bad name, is that people that deny the holocaust.  While WWII is fading into memories there have been enough actual eye witness testimonies and legitimately researched and peer reviewed historical texts that clearly document the truth.  How can people really close their minds to truth?

The reason I listed the Erin Brockovich case is this.  The plaintiffs were dismissed as conspiracy nuts at first.  Then, after a thorough investigation, they settled for somewhere around $333 million!  While technically a settlement is not an admission of guilt, it doesn't lend credibility to their counter-claim that there was nothing wrong.  My point was that not all conspiracies are false.  I'm not trying to claim that all seemingly crazy claims are false, but here's the deal, what will you accept as evidence and what will convince you that something is true (or false)?  Also, what will happen to your epistemology?  If your epistemology is foundational and one of these conspiracies is part of your belief system you could be in a world of hurt if it's proven untrue.  Foundational epistemology is dangerous!

Since this post is getting too long and I need some rest, I'll complete this discussion some other time.

If this characterizes your epistemology, you're doing something wrong.

Essay on Plato, Descartes, and The Matrix

This is an essay I wrote for my philosophy class last week.  I took a more informal approach than my professor wanted, and my grade suffered for it.  However, I think it's appropriate for my blog.

In all honesty I think this part of philosophy is one of the main reasons many people dislike philosophy in general.  Imagine you're an ordinary student attending an ordinary college and you bump into a doctoral student who's sitting at the college coffee shop and you strike up a conversation.  This student is doing some sort of doctoral work in epistemology and is working on skepticism.  What student would enjoy being grilled with such questions as, "How do you know that's true?"  And, even after giving what a regular person would accept as a common sense answer to that question.  The philosopher asks, "Well, how do you know that's true?"  The student gives another different explanation of justification, to which the philosopher asks again, "How do you know that's true?"  After only a few times most regular people would give up, shaking his or her head walking away from such conversations wondering why some people are so wrong in the head.  Here's another tack.  When I asked my wife some questions about justification and epistemology, after pressing the idea a bit she finally gave up and responded, "people need to think less and go to the beach more."  (We live on a sub-tropical island in the South Pacific.)  Epistemology, especially justification and skepticism can eventually devolve into an infinite regress.  Now, these questions may make for interesting movie ideas like The Matrix and Inception, but it's more akin to irritating to an ordinary non-philosopher.  So, let's talk about three different approaches to skepticism and how/why justification is such a hard topic.

First, and oldest of these three is Plato's cave analogy from Book VII of The Republic.  During this book-long conversation Plato brings up an allegory of people that are chained in a cave and the only things they can see are shadows that are cast along the wall.  An interesting side note, different philosophers see this allegory differently.  I noticed this as I had just listened to The Republic audiobook and then heard a philosophy lecture.  The professor giving the lecture seemed to twist the idea and the people making the shadows into the villains.  The point as I understand Plato's meaning in the allegory is not we should be necessarily be skeptical of reality.  It seems more about how philosophers are the only ones that really explore the depths of reality and it's our responsibility to go back into the cave and teach those people what we've seen.  Yes, every part of The Republic is full of depth and meaning, but the people stuck in the cave and their misunderstanding of reality is not, in my opinion, the point of the allegory. (Plato, Book VII)

Then in chronological order, we come to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.  Specifically, Meditation I paragraph 2 stood out to me.  I think this bit is key,  “ … it will not be necessary for me to show that the whole of these are false--a point, perhaps, which I shall never reach …" and this, "… it will be sufficient to justify the rejection of the whole if I shall find in each some ground for doubt."  Though it may seem like it and indeed people often take Descartes for a supreme skeptic, he is not setting out to cause people to doubt he’s merely searching for the only thing that he can really know for sure, without a doubt.  In this search for what can be known with epistemological certainty he says, we'll never reach the point where he could show everything to be false, nor does everything have to have some doubt, just the foundational ideas.  If the foundation is dubious the whole edifice can be considered faulty.  However, in the end, Descartes finds a foundation: I doubt, which is thinking, therefore I exist.  So despite all the doubting and tearing down of the edifice of knowledge, Descartes found the foundation and we can start from there. (Descartes, 1641)

Now we come to the 1999 pop culture treatment of skepticism.  Though not as deep as Descartes’ or Plato’s treatment of not being sure of what anyone knows, it’s still an interesting portrayal of skepticism.  How would it feel to be hooked up to some kind of super-computer?  It seems like it’d be impossible to know unless there were some way to break out.  There has to be someone there with the red pill offering answers to all our questions.  Despite the implausibility of a select few having the unexplainable ability to twist the matrix to their desires, including Neo’s (Keanu Reeves’ character) ability to twist reality and give himself god-like powers in the computer-world that is somehow controlling everyone else’s thoughts.  Though the movie does paint a rather interesting dystopian picture of what it would look like for computers to control everyone’s mind, it seems completely implausible to me.  Though of course, that’s just what the mind-controlling supercomputer would want me to think. (Wachowski, "The Matrix", 1999)

So, how can we escape these epistemological puzzles?  How can we prove that we’re not all in a deep Inception-like dream, or Plato’s cave, or haunted by Descartes’ evil demon? (Descartes, 1641, p. I 12)  Well, short answer is, we can’t.  Well, not enough that we could dispel all doubt and forever put to rest any metaphysical skepticism.  One challenge would be to ask the skeptic how one can live with complete doubt of everything at all times.  Also, the self-refutation of the claim that we’re in a computer, that doesn’t need proof that we’re in a computer.  In other words, prove to me that we are just brains in a vat or disembodied thoughts swimming through an intricate computer SIM world.  However, to me the best test for the metaphysical skeptic is to change something with your mind.  I’m not asking for a miracle.  I’m just saying that if all we consist of are brains floating around in a vats, we should be able, at least a small amount, to manipulate the world around us with only our minds.  I understand that to do so in front of a group of people would seem impossible because not only would one have to change their own mind’s perception of a thing, but everyone else’s as well at the same time.  However, in the privacy of one’s own room or even just one’s own mind, one should be able to change something simple.  Like the bending spoon scene in The Matrix, everyone, with practice should be able to convince oneself that “there is no spoon” and make it appear however he or she wanted.

Despite the character Cypher’s opinion that deception is better than the truth, I’m going to have to side with (well Morpheus and) Plato that it is much better to seek the truth and when one has at least caught a glimpse of it, pass it along so that everyone tries to unhook from the matrix or break the chains binding them in the cave.  Though we can never get to that point, it’s better to live as if that isn’t the case and seek out knowledge than to slog on or stick one’s head in the sand doubting that we even have heads.  Much like Professor Kreeft says of Aquinas building a huge philosophy on a single small foundational point. (Kreeft, 2009)  We can rest on Descartes’ cogito ergo sum and build our epistemology from there.  Even if we’re just brains in vats, at least we’re somebodies.  Even without a body, our minds still exist.  If this is some elaborate dream someday we’ll wake up.  We should build our noetic structure a bit like this dome:

(Geodome, 2004) and have the foundation, though shaky it may seem, if rooted deeply in the foundation that no matter what parts of the dome are doubted the pile upon which it rests is immovable.

Once we’ve established that foundation let us add some depth to the foundation by placing it in God.  That’s not to say that we cannot or should not take the existence of God on faith.  But, if one is driving down the road looking at street signs one cannot live as if every one of them is a lie.  And there are so many signs that point to the existence of God.  So, though I may have, like everyone else, started life taking all knowledge through the evidence of authority; I have since grown up and matured and thought through my philosophy quite a bit.  I have come to a point where the foundation is firmly fixed on my own existence and that existence only makes sense with the existence of God.  On that foundation I build my beliefs.  If someone were to prove to me without a doubt that JFK was assassinated by conspiracy with two shooters; my geodesic dome of knowledge wouldn’t fall apart.  In fact I see this as a kind of synthesis of foundationalism and coherentism.  I really only hold one (or two) basic belief as my central belief.  This is how the coherentism system gets started, with at least one or two foundational beliefs upon which other are built.  My foundation doesn’t depend on my senses.  If anything, my foundation can be said to be the only possible guaranteed a priori knowledge, that is, that I exist.  If I don’t exist and I don’t know that I exist, how can I be asking myself if I exist?  Sure, it might be that my body doesn’t exist and my senses are all untrustworthy, but I most certainly exist and I can use deduction, induction, blind faith, gut feelings, and whatever I want to justify any belief above the foundation.  Each different justification has its own level of importance in the structure that is my belief system.  I can’t escape the question, “how do you know?” any more than any other thinking person, but I can justify what I know in many different ways and the more I defend something the more difficult it is to take it away.

If only everyone could hang out in places like this.

References

Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on first philosophy. Raleigh, N.C.: Alex Catalogue.

Geodome -- Geodesic design software. (2004, November 11). Geodome -- Geodesic design software. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://geodome.sourceforge.net/

Kreeft, P. (2009). The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books.

Plato, The Republic, “The Allegory of the Cave” Book VII, 514A1-518D8.

Wachowski, A. (Director). (1999). The Matrix [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Bros. Pictures :.

The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: Part 5: Our Knowledge of and Language About God

Continuing the series on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas with lecture five how much can we know about God and what we can say about God.  Let's jump right in, Prof Kreeft starts off with an analogy of the premodern thinking with a preteen child, interested in the world around them, curious and asking questions about objective reality like, "what is God?"  They spend less time than modern thinkers who asked more subjective questions like, "How can we know God?" or "How can we express our knowledge of God?"  One is not better than the other, just different.

The three questions laid out are the same anyone can ask of anything, What is it? How can we know it? and How can we express it or communicate it?  The Greek word Logos (λόγος) is a powerful word to express all these ideas together, intelligible being/reality, human knowledge/wisdom/reason/science, and language/communication.  The ancients/premoderns focused on the first part, metaphysics, and moderns, starting with Descartes, were more concerned with the second question, epistemology.

After Thomas' five ways to God he summarizes the way he's going to approach these questions about knowing God (as quoted in the lecture notes, the brackets are Prof Kreeft's interjection):

"When the existence of a thing has been ascertained, there remains the further question of the manner of its existence, in order that we may know its essence. [“Essence” means “manner of existence” for Aquinas.] Now . . . we cannot know what God is but rather what He is not . . . therefore we must consider, first, how He is not, second, how He is known by us, and third, how He is named."

Though Thomas believes that faith, divine revelation, and religious experience are all valid ways of knowing God, this discussion focuses on philosophical/epistemological knowledge by natural reason.  Thomas seeks to show that there are (at least) four metaphysical principles that answer how man can  know God: creation, cosmic hierarchy, the analogy of being, and human reason as participating in divine reason.  If any one of these weren't true then man couldn't know God by natural reason.

Creation, this doesn't tell us much about God, but it does tell us some.  As Thomas' five ways show that God created the universe, now the fact that He did so tells us a bit about Him.

From effects not proportionate to the cause no perfect knowledge of the cause can be obtained. Yet from every effect the existence of its cause can be clearly demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from His effects even though from them we cannot know God as He is in His essence.

So we can know that God is a God of cause by the effects we see, though that doesn't tell us much about Him.  Not a complete rationalist/gnostic or agnostic, but a little more agnostic.

Cosmic Hierarchy, implied in creation is a sort of hierarchy that God is the top of the cosmic ladder of existence and mankind is somewhere on this ladder below God.  Incidentally, Thomas didn't think you could prove the existence of angels, but he thought it would certainly make sense that there be at least one level of existence between God and mankind, just as there are different levels between mankind and a slug.

Analogy of being, this goes along the same lines as cosmic hierarchy that along the cosmic ladder of existence there are bit of analogy.  In the case of life, there is an analogy in that there are lower forms of life but they're still life and there are higher forms of life.  The highest in divine life, not that God's existence mirrors ours but that we mirror God's existence because we get our existence from Him.  This same chain of analogy is in logos/orderliness.  Even the simplest pieces of matter are orderly.  In fact, to me the more order we see at these "lower" levels is a clear indication of design.  So, along the rungs of this ladder of analogy the higher levels have more order and reflect God's orderliness (and other characteristics) better.  Until you get to the top of the ladder, God, from which all orderliness and design comes.

Divine reason, this is not some mystical experience, it's more akin to the idea that all logic and reason finds its source in God.  This part of the lecture actually reminds me of presuppositional apologetics (as I've discussed with +James Hooks a few times).  To medieval logicians there were three basic acts to the mind conception, judgement, and reasoning from judgements.  First, one must recognize concepts, "man," "apple," "animal," "is," "not" etc.  Then one judges from these simple concepts, "man is an animal," "apples are not animals."  Then finally, the reasonable moving from premises to conclusion(s) "therefore man is not an apple."  Thomas is referring to all three of these acts in saying that man's intelligence is a dim reflection of God's divine intelligence.  God doesn't have to judge and reason, He just knows everything all the time, but mankind as a small reflection of that, can only do bit by bit.  As a dim reflection of God, we share in His divine reason/intelligence as participating in His intelligence.  One of the main presuppositions in this part of the argument is that God is rational/mind, not just a blind force.  There are many assumptions in Thomas' philosophy as it's more like a mapping of a complex universe than the dry-step-by-step-deduction-only-philosophy of the moderns.

Now, in light of these four assumptions we should try to understand what Thomas actually says about knowledge of God.  Remember that he's closer to agnosticism than rationalism (gnosticism).  Prof

Kreeft has this to say about the articles immediately preceding the ways to God in the Summa, "...God’s existence is not self-evident to us, though it is self-evident in itself. So it has to be made evident to us... God is not directly and innately known—our mind is not that strong—but His existence can be made known by reason, can be demonstrated—our mind is not too weak for that."  (Quote from the lecture notes, emphasis mine.)  This is from the next part of the Summa about being able to know about God.

Since the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of his highest power, which is the operation of the mind, if we suppose that the created intellect can never see God, it would either never attain to beatitude or its beatitude would consist in something else besides God. This opinion is against reason, for there resides in every man a natural desire to know the cause of any effect which he sees, and thus arises wonder in man. But if the intellect of the rational creature could not reach so far as to the first cause of things, this natural desire would remain void. But no natural desire is in vain.

So, we may not be able to fully know God in this life but we will attain sure knowledge of God in the next. Thomas uses this statement many times, that “no natural desire is in vain.”  Seems reasonable to assume that the desire for a more perfect understanding of something and that that desire can be fulfilled though perhaps not fully in this life.

There are two levels of understanding here that we must distinguish.  Comprehension and apprehension, we as created beings will never be able to surround in knowledge, God.  But, we will someday, be able to apprehend God. Just how far can we get? Thomas give four things we can know: He exists, He is the cause of creation, that He has a certain deducible attributes, and what He is not: He is not a creature and not at the same level as creatures.  In His being, He is infinite, unlimited being in itself, while creatures only have being in a limited way sourced from God.

According to Thomas outside of analogical knowledge our knowledge of God is only negative.  The reason for this is the fact that we are created, finite creatures and cannot know by experience things that apply only to God, like infinitude.  We can see the art that only resembles the Artist but we cannot know all that is in the Artist.

This next bit I really liked so I'm just going to let Prof Kreeft speak for himself (quote taken from the lecture study guide):

"I suspect that most of the time, belief or unbelief in God’s existence depends on understanding the meaning of the term “God.” I never met an atheist who I thought fully understood what an intelligent theologian like Aquinas meant by “God.” After talking for a while with an intelligent atheist I always find myself agreeing with him in denying the God he denies; only I claim that’s not the God Aquinas is talking about. For instance, a God who moves around in time and changes, and therefore gets either better or worse in some way, or a God that’s timeless and changeless by doing nothing. Both of these concepts of God are imperfect. Aquinas says God’s perfection is pure act, pure actuality, and pure activity of knowing and loving. He doesn’t change, He doesn’t learn truth because He is all truth, and He doesn’t fall in love for the same reason water doesn’t get wet: because He is love. "

I've seen this in many arguments against God, including my previous series from Prof McGinn.

This next question is also eloquently answered by Prof Kreeft, it's the question commonly brought up even as recent as this post on Google+.  The answer isn't really all that complicated!  It's a linguistic problem, that goes something like this: God has infinite power so asking this question is like asking if a rock could exist that infinite power couldn't pick up.  So, the easy answer is no, but not that God isn't all-powerful, it's a misunderstanding of infinite power.  A similar answer can be given to many of the questions concerning God.  Who created God?  That's like asking, what existed/happened before infinity past?  That's a contradiction.  My personal view is that we shouldn't limit God to a logical anwer, but within our limited perspective, these questions don't make any sense.

One last point (sorry these posts tend to be so long).  There are two more critiques of Thomas' view of knowing God.  One from Hindu philosophy that sees god as a meaningless personless entity, that beings cannot be eternal.  They see one of the definitive aspects of being as finite.  The recent pope John Paul II answered this with an ontological argument that personhood is the pinnacle of being not a defect of it.  One other argument is from science/logic, that says these arguments only give a start.  Which is exactly what Thomas wants to do here.  Build a foundation upon which the rest of theology can be built.

Discovering the Philosopher in You Part 5: Knowledge and Experience: Where Does Knowledge Come From?

Continuing the series on Discovering the Philosopher in You with Prof McGinn, lecture five is on Knowledge and Experience: Where Does Knowledge Come From?  Here Prof McGinn says that we're going to move on from the basic building-blocks of philosophy and getting to the more meat-and-potatoes questions of philosophy.  So here we are and where does what we know come from?  This is a question from epistemology (the theory of knowledge).  In the lecture Prof McGinn talks about two specific sides of this argument, the empiricists and the rationalists.

Before we cover those two sides of this issue, let's first talk about what we mean by knowledge.  It's not what you and I know.  It's more like how people attain knowledge in general.  One of the ideas set forth in different theories of knowledge is that we can and do know certain things without experiencing them.  Keep in mind this is not that you learned something without experiencing it.  Take math, you say you learned it from your teacher, which is a type of experience, but that's not what we are talking about because that teacher learned it from some other teacher.  What we're trying to get at, is where the first person learned math.  That's one way of looking at it; another is the idea that to know that 1+2=3 doesn't take experience.  Think about it.  How do you experience the numbers 1, 2, or 3.  The concepts of plus or equals?  It's not like you can experience these things like this cup of water I'm drinking.

The empiricists, notably all British, claim that knowledge can only be attained experientially.  One of the first things Prof McGinn mentions about the empiricists is one of the main things that makes me doubt their views and neutrality on philosophical questions.  He talks about one of the primary motives behind the empiricists was a desire to depart from religion.  If one starts out with a specific motive it's hard to stay impartial.  I know I'm not, but at least I'm honest about it, and I try to maintain impartiality in most things.  So, in order to get away from the ideas of revelation that religion relies on, which it does at least in some ways it relies on the idea that God reveals knowledge to His followers that is outside the realm of experience for those not involved in the revelation.  So to empiricists all knowledge comes from someone's experience.

The rationalists held an opposing view that at least some knowledge doesn't come from experience.  They don't deny experiential knowledge, that would seem counterintuitive.  However, they held that some knowledge is not derived from experience.  It's commonly referred to as "a priori" knowledge.  As opposed to "a posteriori" knowledge, which is experiential knowledge.  So, as opposed to the empiricists' claim that all knowledge comes from someone's experience, the rationalists claim that at least some knowledge is innate and cannot come from experience.  This other source of knowledge is often called "pure reason" hence Kant's writing The Critique of Pure Reason and a Critique of Practical Reason.

For this discussion I've always liked the example of the dark side of the moon.  Now I know astronauts have landed on and encircled the moon and they have experienced that in a way, but before they did.  Did we know experientially that there was a dark side of the moon?  No.  No one had ever experienced it or seen it or photographed it.  So at that time we knew from logical conclusions that if an object has one side it must also have another side, and even though we may have never seen it, we know it's there.

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Others argue that language is an a priori knowledge.  Most notably the famous linguist Noam Chomsky who argued that some form of grammar and linguistic ability is innate/a priori.  I tend to agree with this concept of a priori, except that it doesn't seem like it'd be knowledge as we typically think of knowledge.  More like skills or abilities, or even ways of thinking and pattern recognition, not necessarily knowledge.

One last comment...  The discussion of a priori (about which I had some interesting comments from a Google+ discussion) is NOT exactly like the debate of nature vs. nurture.  Also, genetically hardwired instincts technically don't fit with a priori knowledge either (sort of).  Whatever your view these are all very interesting questions about knowledge and while the debate isn't as heated as in the days of John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume (British empiricists) with René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant (not all rationalists but mostly), it is still an interesting discussion in epistemology.

I love sushi!  And getting good sushi is easy here in Japan

Discovering the Philosopher in You Part 2: Knowledge: How Should Knowledge Be Analyzed?

For those of you that missed my last entry, I'm working my way through a series of philosophy lectures by Prof. Colin McGinn of Rutgers University.  I find it kind of interesting that Prof McGinn chose to lecture in this order because in lecture one about skepticism the idea that we have knowledge or certainty (I'll be using the term knowledge for this entry but the two are more or less interchangeable in this context) is assumed.  I would think it might have made a little more sense to cover what is knowledge before questioning and being skeptical that one can have knowledge at all.  Nonetheless, we're on lecture two now about analyzing knowledge.  I apologize in advance because some of this stuff is considered dry compared to some other topics within philosophy.

Some of the first things we must consider when starting a philosophical analysis of something is what are the necessary conditions and what are the sufficient conditions for the idea being considered?  In this case, what is necessary for one to have or do to know something?  And, what is sufficient for one to have or do to know something?  The traditional answer to this question goes back to Plato's time (though I haven't personally studied Plato's epistemology), that is, a true, justified belief.  Belief, in this sense isn't the same as a religious or political belief (per se), rather a stab at the truth in thought.  One cannot think something is false and yet believe in it.  So, belief in its nature includes at least the attempt at truth, though one can guess at something and end up getting it wrong.  Justification is important for knowledge because, if one is to be rational, one cannot just say, "I believe this or that just because" or if one refuses to consider objections to one's beliefs they're being irrational.  Also, without justification things can end up being true by guessing and that's not complete knowledge either.  These things seem to be necessary conditions for knowledge, but as we'll see with the examples they aren't necessarily all the sufficient conditions for knowledge.  Let's move on to those examples because, to me, they're the fun parts of this concept.

Example number one to show how having simply true, justified beliefs are not enough to claim knowledge.  Suppose my brother comes to visit me every Tuesday afternoon, and it's a Tuesday and I'm expecting him and my friend, who is generally trustworthy, tells me my brother is at the door.  However, for whatever reason, my friend happens to be lying this time (the reason for the lie is not important), and my brother is not at the door.  At first we have an untrue, but justified belief that my brother is at the door.  However, as I'm going to meet my brother at the door, unbeknownst to my friend, my brother shows up at the door.  Did I know my brother was at the door?  No, not really even though it was true that he was at the door and I was justified in that belief.  But, no I didn't know that he was at the door at any time.  The second one is better (at least I think so).  You're driving through the countryside and you're seeing all the typical things one would expect to see, fields with bales of hay or straw, barns, livestock, etc.  Then, without realizing it, you are driving along and the things you've been observing, are now all fake.  So here we have justified beliefs (that the things we're seeing are real) but they're not.  Then, without your knowledge of it being so, there's a real barn in amidst the fake.  There, you have a true (at least about that one real barn) justified belief.  But that doesn't seem to be enough for knowledge in this case.

So there you have it, true, justified beliefs are required to have knowledge of something, but apparently are not the only things necessary to know something.  There have been many arguments and there doesn't seem to be any clear answer to what else needs to be added to true, justified beliefs to comprise true knowledge.  I certainly don't have the answers, again I'm just bringing up the question.  According to Prof McGinn's lecture it seems that there has to be some kind of causal relationship the truth and the belief(s) to be true knowledge.

Here's my only divergence from Prof McGinn.  I'm not saying that it's true knowledge, but I would posit that having a justified belief can lead to one believing that something is true to the point that it's true to that person.  Take the characterization of the mathematician, John Nash, in the movie A Beautiful Mind, the character played by Russel Crowe is plagued with delusions so powerful that he truly believes that they're real.  So, in effect, they become real to him.  It may not make any difference in reality, but to the individual things that are not true, with enough justification and powerful enough belief it can become real to that person.

What does this mean to you and me?  Honestly, not much.  I believe that there's a personal creator God.  There are many different justifications for that belief, they're generally covered in apologetics.  No one can prove or disprove the truth of that claim, but at least two of the necessary conditions for knowledge have been met for me.

Hiji Falls