Condition of Possibility

[Madouc]

So I met this guy at a party who was a recent philosophy grad from Princeton. We got talking about our beliefs and he described himself as a Catholic. I queried him on this (Why Catholic as opposed to any other flavour of Christianity? Why Christianity over any other religion, etc.), and he later sent me an email admitting maybe he wasn’t a Catholic after all and expounding his beliefs thus:

Here is the manifest world of our perception; A structure I identify as God is *the* condition of possibility of this manifest world; Therefore God exists.

I am a process panentheist. I don't see God as an entity, but as a certain process. This process is not the world, but supports the world's existence. First, there is the property Being itself in virtue of which all beings are beings. God, on my view, is not this abstract entity Being, but the outflow - the giving - of Being itself to all beings. This outflow uniquely secures the perceptual availability of the world. This metaphysical process of outflow, on my view, is what Christians mean *analogically* when they say "it is because of God's love that the world exists." (This is a doctrine and explanation that appeals to me a lot.) It's just that they did not have a sufficiently philosophically sophisticated language to pinpoint what that love is, in terms of metaphysics. The expressive function of our language is very limited, so we can only describe this metaphysical process by analogy as love. My concern for God stems from my abiding interest in trying to understand perception, what it is to be perceptually open to qualitative features of the world.

Why consider this process God? Well, because I think it is absolutely crucial to *revere* and *worship* this process so we can proceed with our lives in its knowledge and image, keep it closest to us, closer to us than ourselves. This is, as I see it, the only way that can let us affirm life despite its tragedies, the only possibility of sustaining hope in love and goodness. I don't think we can, for example, achieve this hope by being theologically tone-deaf.

So God is the condition of possibility for existence like space is the condition of possibility for 3D objects. The process by which God brings about the condition of possibility for existence is analogous to love. We should worship and revere its knowledge and image as it’s crucial to self-affirmation and hope.

Am I reading this correctly? Has anyone come across this view before and what do you think about the validity of this argument?

I’m not sure I understand the whole “condition of possibility” argument, but as far as the outflowing love aspect goes, it seems to me like he’s anthropomorphizing what he has identified as a natural process. Also, how is it possible to come to any conclusions about such a process in terms of its knowledge and image? If it has an image, surely it is the universe as it exists – how do I emulate the universe other than by being in it, which I’m already doing (as well as everything else in the universe)?

I suspect he will accuse me of oversimplifying the argument. Can other, more philosophically well-read, members of the forum give me input on this?

[pchams]

Prime Mover?
I'm not of the esteemed group you mention in your last sentence but,
We don't know where all this energy came from, or how it's intertwined, so, I guess,
it's no different to pray to a process than a physical or spiritual god.
Still, it's as silly, as there is no evidence that a process is any more sentient, or deserving of worship than the old bronze age gods.

[PixyMisa]

It's drivel.

[athon]

Am I reading this correctly? Has anyone come across this view before and what do you think about the validity of this argument?

God has become a term anybody seems to be able to use to represent nearly any notion. I fail to understand that, to be honest. To me, the term 'god' always carries the connotation of a conscious entity who has a will.

I've met people who claim that the laws of the universe are god, or that our ability to think is god, or choice is god, or quantum bubbles and superstrings and all other kinds of bollocks is god...but it boggles the mind why people feel the need to take a word, hollow it out and fill it with their own navel gazing.

Words are useful when they convey meaning as strictly as possible. It is ridiculous when somebody says 'oh, by 'god' I mean something totally ungodlike that has no connection with what anybody else thinks'.

:rolleyes:

Athon

[KingMerv00]

Why consider this process God? Well, because I think it is absolutely crucial to *revere* and *worship* this process so we can proceed with our lives in its knowledge and image, keep it closest to us, closer to us than ourselves. This is, as I see it, the only way that can let us affirm life despite its tragedies, the only possibility of sustaining hope in love and goodness.

How does worshiping a unintelligent process give one hope? That's like me worshipping the sun. Sure I'm glad it is there but prostrating in front of it is a waste of time.

[sphenisc]

How does worshiping a unintelligent process give one hope? That's like me worshipping the sun. Sure I'm glad it is there but prostrating in front of it is a waste of time.

Only then will He bestow the gift of vitamin D.

[Madouc]

I have already replied to him, questioning his definition of God and by asking him how he had reached any conclusions about what this God’s morals or desires are. His response is really… verbose. I have difficulty understanding some of this, partly because I am not well read in philosophy, but also I suspect, partly because post-modernist academe encourage long, convoluted arguments. But anyhoo:

Me: It seems to me that what you have labeled as ‘God’ is very different from what most ‘Christians mean’, either analogically or otherwise. Maybe Archbishop Rowan Williams would agree with you, but what the vast majority of Christians mean by ‘God’ is an entity with defined characteristics and a desire to interact and interfere with the universe and the humans that inhabit it. This God sets out moral rules, answers prayers and is, according to doctrine, an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent entity (of course I don’t agree that these characteristics are at all compatible, but that’s another email).

Philospher Theist: This interpretation of God draws from theological works by Maimonides, Leibniz, Spinoza, St Thomas Aquinas, Buber, Karl Barth and so on, which, though not stereotypically Christian, is well within the roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Although, admittedly, it is a controversial development of this tradition. And I also personally draw quite a bit from Taoism (my only interest in Chinese philosophy). (For example, notice how the idea of Tao, the Way, points towards a process rather than an entity. Taoist metaphysics is deeply fascinating. I almost did research on this in HKU had I not decided to write a different book instead.) If your atheism is against the God that "sets out moral rules, answers prayers", etc, then I am wholeheartedly with you. (To digress a bit: I never considered the purpose of a prayer to be that of being answered. My more astute friends, for example, do not pray so that God will give them what they want; they pray to sustain inner strength, like a meditation.) I personally think it's quite idolatrous to think God is so intimately bound up with our trivial affairs. But if one is to set about critiquing or salvaging Christianity, I would suggest hearkening back to these authors, not to the vulgar, idolatrous God of Sarah Palin or Joe Sixpack. This is something that Ditchkins , as pointed out most notably by Terry Eagleton, has not done so effectively. But then again, this raises an interesting question, as to whether the God of philosophers/theologians can be reconciled with the God of the masses, or whether such a conception of God could be brought to the masses. At present, the two have not been reconciled.

To me this just raises the question of how the theologians have more insight into God that Palin/Sixpack?

Me: But even accepting your God hypothesis, how are you able to know anything about it? Through what process can you reach any conclusions about it?

Philosopher Theist: Your question is not just relevant to God, but really to any sort of philosophical inquiry. For example, we talk about minds, matter, nature, possibilities and necessities, and so on. Surely, we do not know anything about these philosophical topics in the way that we know science, that is, by direct empirical investigation. Philosophy, by and large, proceeds from the armchair. (Though there is a budding movement called experimental philosophy.) You can't just look into the world and see what's there. (But that's not what science is anyway. Any empirical observation is not unmediated by theory. In the end, which theory we choose is really a pragmatic choice, based on some structural constraints on the whole science. But I digress.) We start with reasonably acceptable premises, which we hope most people would find sensible and common-sensical, and we proceed to make logical inferences, some of which are admittedly quite crazy. That's all we can do. Now you may dispute whether that really counts as *knowing* anything. But this is really not so different from, say, mathematics. Mathematics proceeds with axioms and then infers properties about numbers, sets, and other abstract entities. These are not empirically verifiable. So the case for philosophical knowledge, such as knowledge of God, is really no worse off than the case for mathematical knowledge. Now you may think that philosophical inquiry as such should really have no status as knowledge because it lacks direct empirical correspondence (but there is, of course, indirect empirical correspondence), so we should really just opt out of investigating these matters and ignore the whole subject matter. But then again, there are people like me who are interested in these questions, so we proceed about it in the way we can. I have to emphasize that we go by small, falsifiable steps, and very rarely do we arrive at anything with certainty, if ever. Philosophy, and philosophical theology especially, is always open to scepticism, and that's why there are so many lively debates and arguments going on even today.

Philosophical arguments are typically more intricate, confusing, longer, more mind-numbingly boring than scientific statements, due to the nature of its specific difficulty. Though that is not to say it is unscientific or against science; it is not.

Yeah, no s*** it’s more confusing, longer and more mind-numbingly boring. But my impression was that mathematics were at least independently verifiable, no?

PT: Why consider this process God? Well, because I think it is absolutely crucial to *revere* and *worship* this process so we can proceed with our lives in its knowledge and image, keep it closest to us, closer to us than ourselves.

Me: This is where it really breaks down for me. I can revere nature, but I don’t worship it. I can strive to understand the universe and its processes better, but again, why does it follow that I should worship anything? Or are you using a non-standard meaning of ‘worship’? And why keep it closer? If it just is, in the underlying process of the universe, why does it require getting even closer to and anyway how do you get even closer to something that’s already integral to everything? Does it demand this? If so, you’re attaching a characteristic to it. And if you’re implying a characteristic, you’ve reached this conclusion by what standards of evidence? What do you mean by ‘closer than ourselves’?
[I]I also asked a whole lot of questions about why he thought God wanted to live his life a certain way, i.e. stay away from drugs, not be promiscuous. Not that these aren’t good ideas, but how did he ascertain that this was something God specifically wanted.

PT: So to answer your previous question: what do I mean by 'worship'? I mean worship in the sense of this fundamental re-organization of concern around God. Roughly, this is to become devoted to reciprocating and spreading his (its?) love to me to others: agapé, to be wide open. Satan certainly believes that God exists, but he does not strictly speaking believe IN God, in the way that would refigure his patterns of concern. Satan is not an atheist, but he is certainly not religious. Mere theism or deism does not amount to being religious. The outflow of Being itself into beings is not yet another cosmic process, something so inhumane and third-personal as, say, the interaction of quarks and electrons. This is something we can fundamentally connect to and feel for, something towards which we can stand in awe, and for reasons more than mere scientific or aesthetic curiosity. I will elaborate on this on another email.

Worship on this view is not something we can choose to do or not do once we attain a conception of God. Worship itself is part and parcel to attaining the conception itself. Without worship, any view of God is defective and incomplete. To have a conception of God, it is not enough to merely settle things down in theory and leave it at that. The theory itself is not attainable without a suitable attitude and response. Take the concept of grossness. What is it for someone to have such a concept? Would we qualify someone who recognizes something as gross but who is meanwhile not reactive towards it in a specific attitudinative manner a person who grasps what grossness is? I think not. Bearing that very attitude - the attitude of repulsion - is essential to acquiring the concept itself. That is to say, in philosophical terms, that grossness, beauty, colors, values, and the like, are response-dependent concepts, concepts that require certain types of responses to count as mastering them. The same, I tentatively think, goes for acquiring a conception of God (hence my conception is as very incomplete) - it requires a certain affective and attitudinal engagement. If you would allow me to lax the definition of worship a little, the specific affective and attitudinal engagement with the world required to have a conception of God is what I mean by worship. Contrast this with the awe we feel towards the beauty of the dance of electrons. We acquire the conception first, and then we feel the awe. The acquisition of the conception and the attitude do not work in tandem. My view is that a proper grasp of what it means for Being itself to outflow to beings (which is really quite abstract and in the air when you come to think of it) requires a determinate mode of affective and attitudinal engagement: worship. That is why worship is crucial to understanding this process: this idea of God itself is so baffling and incomprehensible that we require a suitable guidance of affect. Otherwise God would be a mere theoretical construct, a mere play of concepts without traction. If one has a conception of the outflow of Being into beings but has not proceeded to worship it, then it means he has not grasped the conception at all. It is for this reason that agapé is so important to belief in God. If you believe IN God, and not merely believe that he exists in the sense that Satan does, then, at least within the Christian domain, the ethos of agapé follows.

Tl;dr?

I almost didn't, but eventually forced myself.

It seems to me that he’s saying a concept of god necessarily requires worship just as the concept of “grossness” requires a degree of revulsion.

I could get on board with feeling awe, but does it necessarily follow that one has to worship and revere a God as he describes it? Also, I don’t get how agape follows from “condition of possibility of existence”. Bad stuff flows into being also.

PT: I don't really see God as an authority prescribing moral codes. In fact, the very idea of agapé itself is rightly kept quite vague - it is almost a non-prescription. I am a moral particularist. I don't think there are universal moral principles that always apply to each and every situation. Case by case, the particularities of what is required of us is perceived through care and affect, which opens our eyes to the unique reasons demanded by others in those situations. At least ideally it should be like this. This same capacity and sensitivity is required, I think, to understand what we mean by God. Therefore agapé and God are deeply interconnected. On my view, you cannot really have one without the other. If you have had one, then you have already had the other.

What does he mean?!

OK, assuming I am correct in my translation…

“Moral decisions require care. Considering God also requires care. So God and the Agape that moves us to strive for moral choices are related.”

But my problem with this is that you can pretty much replace “God” with anything that requires careful consideration.

Or can anyone offer a better translation?

PT: On the other hand, recall my view that God, this outflow, supports the manifest world. Now by the manifest world, I don't merely mean the world of qualitative colors, of tactile feels and shapes. Values, I would argue, are also manifest, also directly perceived. Therefore my idea of God has moral (as well as other manifest-related) consequences for me because it supplies a constitutive account of why the manifest, colors, values - moral or aesthetic - and the like, are *real*, *in the world*, and not merely a projection of our sensibilities. In philosophical jargon, I am a moral objectivist, I believe that moral demands exist in the world and not merely in subjective desires, and I think this conception of God gives it a good account.

But if God is the “condition of possibility of existence” surely bad moral decisions and unpleasant values are equally valid outcomes.

[fls]

God has become a term anybody seems to be able to use to represent nearly any notion. I fail to understand that, to be honest. To me, the term 'god' always carries the connotation of a conscious entity who has a will.

I've met people who claim that the laws of the universe are god, or that our ability to think is god, or choice is god, or quantum bubbles and superstrings and all other kinds of bollocks is god...but it boggles the mind why people feel the need to take a word, hollow it out and fill it with their own navel gazing.

Words are useful when they convey meaning as strictly as possible. It is ridiculous when somebody says 'oh, by 'god' I mean something totally ungodlike that has no connection with what anybody else thinks'.

:rolleyes:

Athon

It seems that what is really being said is that it is valuable to have a sense of belief, a way to force meaning and purpose out of indifference. The actual object of that belief is mostly irrelevant, except that it takes a form which feels comfortable to the individual. It doesn't really make any sense to pick apart any individual's concept of God, as it rarely represents any sort of rational concept, but rather only what can be made palatable to that individual. It can serve as a sort of anthropological/psychological/sociological study to tease out necessary and/or sufficient characteristics these individual gods may have. But it doesn't really seem to have any sort of metaphysical meaning.

Like you say, the important bit is that people feel the need to hollow out the word and fill it with their navel gazing. What they fill it with is immaterial.

Linda

[Lothian]

So I met this guy at a party who was a recent philosophy grad from Princeton.20% of the time philosphers talk bollocks. The other 80% they spend thinking about what bollocks to say next.

[Careyp74]

How does worshiping a unintelligent process give one hope? That's like me worshipping the sun. Sure I'm glad it is there but prostrating in front of it is a waste of time.

This waste of time that is being described is what a lot of religious people will say keeps everyone in peace harmony. Sounds good in an Orwellian way, but we know that it isn't needed. "They" won't believe it.

[KingMerv00]

This waste of time that is being described is what a lot of religious people will say keeps everyone in peace harmony. Sounds good in an Orwellian way, but we know that it isn't needed. "They" won't believe it.

The Aztecs had a similar belief involving the sun and your chest cavity.

[BNRT]

As a philosopher myself*, I'd like to say a few things. Firstly, his replies are really verbose and don't always directly answer the question. However, this is not required in philosophy and could maybe be described as 'bad' philosophy. (Look, for example, at Popper, who is quite easy and nice to read.)

Second, on a quick read-through, it seems that his argument for the existence of a god hinges on being. Something like:

1. Things are, or have being.
2. Being must be given or maintained by something.
3. This something is god.

The second premisse is crucial and not at all trivial or self-evident. I think it was Immanuel Kant who refuted something like this, Anselmus' ontological argument, in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Qritique of pure reason). I'm not 100% certain though and I haven't read it myself.

Maybe this will help a little?

*I'm 'merely' a student, so by no means exceptionally well read. But as I desire ('philos') wisdom (sophia), I am a philosopher.

[Bikewer]

Folks with a background in philosphy can be very tedious to discuss such things with.

We have a couple on the "Atheist" group at facebook. The one fellow is a believer, and is always going on about the "unmoved mover" and similar ancient notions that came out of "pure reason" thinking. He's a big fan of Aristotle.....

Another comes down on the atheist side, but his posts tend to be lengthy and boring...

Perhaps it goes with the territory.

[Beerina]

Why consider this process God? Well, because I think it is absolutely crucial to *revere* and *worship* this process so we can proceed with our lives in its knowledge and image, keep it closest to us, closer to us than ourselves.


*Revere*? Worship?

Be amazed that 1. anything exists, and, 2. that that was the method it came to be, perhaps.

But a quick look around shows there's nothing such creator thingie potential whatever somehow deserves worship just on principle.

[Last of the Fraggles]

It's drivel.

I'm glad someone else thought so. I couldn't even read all the way through it. It's meaningless nonsense.

Only 2 thoughts cross my mind:

1. I'm glad I didn't meet this guy at a party.

2. I thought Princeton was supposed to be a pretty good school. They churn out this sort of crap?

[fls]

*Revere*? Worship?

Be amazed that 1. anything exists, and, 2. that that was the method it came to be, perhaps.

But a quick look around shows there's nothing such creator thingie potential whatever somehow deserves worship just on principle.

If the important thing is to have belief (rather than whether the thing believed in is rational or exists), then worship ensures/engenders belief. This makes it clear that the desired outcome is belief, not recognition of something real.

Linda

[Pure Argent]

This guy's a pompous idiot trying to make himself look smart. Ignore him.

[Madouc]

Linda: I don't think he would agree that this was his position. In fact, he assures me that as an ex-atheist and former physics student, he was convinces by rigorous logic and reasoning as to the existence of God. Of course, I'm still waiting to see these brilliant arguments...

Actually he has sent me the lectures from the professor that converted him. I'm not particularly looking forward to ploughing through them if the student's penchant for sheer wordiness is any reflection.

[Pure Argent]

Linda: I don't think he would agree that this was his position. In fact, he assures me that as an ex-atheist and former physics student, he was convinces by rigorous logic and reasoning as to the existence of God. Of course, I'm still waiting to see these brilliant arguments...

Actually he has sent me the lectures from the professor that converted him. I'm not particularly looking forward to ploughing through them if the student's penchant for sheer wordiness is any reflection.

If these are anything like the arguments we see on this site, prepare to be overwhelmed by fallacies. Bare assertion and circular logic are favorite.

[Madouc]

Oh for Pete's sake. This is how it opens:

You either rehearse a scientifically established Materialism about life and death, or you preach.
To do the first, to rehearse Materialism, roughly the claim that the mind is merely the functioning of the brain and nervous system, so that a mind cannot survive the death of its brain, is just to insult peoples’ cherished religious beliefs, and their consequent hopes that they and their loved ones are not obliterated by death. And that is not very helpful, is it?


But it's what's TRUE! If the truth hurts people's feelings, it doesn't make it any less true!

[BNRT]

I highly doubt that's from a philosophy course...

ETA: Well, at least not how I know philoophy.

[Mashuna]

Oh for Pete's sake. This is how it opens:

You either rehearse a scientifically established Materialism about life and death, or you preach.
To do the first, to rehearse Materialism, roughly the claim that the mind is merely the functioning of the brain and nervous system, so that a mind cannot survive the death of its brain, is just to insult peoples’ cherished religious beliefs, and their consequent hopes that they and their loved ones are not obliterated by death. And that is not very helpful, is it?


But it's what's TRUE! If the truth hurts people's feelings, it doesn't make it any less true!

And that's why we mustn't criticise Sylvia Browne. In case it spoils people's cherished beliefs that their loved ones are happy and spouting trivialities from beyond the grave.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Aside from the stuff already mentioned (what good does it do to revere and worship a process? etc.), I have trouble with the sloppy use of language:

Well, because I think it is absolutely crucial to *revere* and *worship* this process so we can proceed with our lives in its knowledge and image, keep it closest to us, closer to us than ourselves.

Assuming the antecedent of "its" is "this process", what does it mean to "proceed with our lives in its knowledge and image"? Does "proceed with our lives" mean somehting different than simply "live"? These words seem devoid of any meaning.

Further, how does one keep this process "closest to us"? How can "closer to us than ourselves" have any meaning at all? (For that matter, even generalized, does "closer to X than X itself" have any meaning?)

[Madouc]

I'm not very far in yet, but this stuff is offensive. It's basically hashing out the following "if good and wicked people die alike, then any good actions are meaningless; but if rightousness is saved by God, then it's importance is preserved even after death!"

Yeesh.

I probably shouldn't comment so soon and give it a fair go. But it's just... so... long...

[Marduk]

This guy's a pompous idiot trying to make himself look smart. Ignore him.

Agree, his claim that Panentheism is in line with Judaeo christian tradition is garbage, he is confusing panentheism with pantheism
:p

[Madouc]

Oh, but he was so very definite in correcting me when I said he sounded more like a pantheist than a Catholic...

[qayak]

In fact, he assures me that as an ex-atheist and former physics student, he was convinces by rigorous logic and reasoning as to the existence of God.

Translation: I was an atheist and a physics student. One is a hard position to hold and the other is a hard subject to learn. My brain was starting to hurt and I was afraid of it turning to mush, so I dropped out of physics and started to believe the first load of crap that came down the turnpike. My brain is now very mushy but it no longer hurts. I can see the pain in the eyes of everyone I talk to about my beliefs. If only they would join me, their brain wouldn't hurt either!

[fls]

Linda: I don't think he would agree that this was his position. In fact, he assures me that as an ex-atheist and former physics student, he was convinces by rigorous logic and reasoning as to the existence of God. Of course, I'm still waiting to see these brilliant arguments...

Of course it will be something he considers rational. We all think our beliefs are rational, while we can easily see the irrationality of others' beliefs.

Linda