Monday, October 24, 2011

Where the fun begins

Continuing to read on in the "Core Questions In Philosophy (Elliott Sober)" and at the beginning of Part II;chapter 4 I found my self stuck on a disagreement with the text. Part II is also where the fun begins, part I is a description of the mechanics of classic western philosophy, which is not to say it isn't useful or interesting, which it is.

Back to the point where I got stuck. It's in the definition of God (God-A), used by Saint Thomas Aquinas "God is a person or being who is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient) and  entirely good (omnibenevolent) [all-PKG], that the author seems to take somewhat as a given, although the author does comment on that this is not the only definition. But even in the referred to chapter 11, it's not questioned that God be a being of gender, only that 'he' might not be all-PKG. I do understand the need to limit the scope in order to more easily be able to illustrate the process of philosophical testing of arguments.

But why not test the basics of the premises to see if they are true. If you set out to prove a being with big ears and a long trunk exists, you'll probably come up with an argument for the existence of an elephant. What if the object of proof doesn't have big ear or a trunk, if the object to be proven is the effect of the long trunk, the sound coming out of it.

In my definition of God (God-E) [see my previous post] I dismissed part of the all-PKG God-A definition and the fact that God-E is is a physical being, furthermore my view is the God-E is not the cause but the effect.

It's like the sound when you whistle, just because you have a mouth doesn't mean that there is the sound of you whistling, but if you had no mouth it would be impossible to hear you whistle. God is like the sound, not like the mouth.

Then there's the problem that humans have a need to be able to explain everything, and when faced with something that they  have not been able to explain, they've taken the short cut of assigning it to the doings of the Gods. These God-X's are something totally different to the God-E and can in part be dismissed by modern science.

Still the fact that our capability to understand is limited and renders us inherently unable to understand everything hold open the possibility for God-X's to exist.But God-X's doesn't have to be all-PKG.

From the point of view of a dog. A dog probably doesn't understand the inner workings of an internal combustion engine, but still the engine exist as some thing the dog doesn't understand. Even if the dog would consider the maker of the engine a God-X, this God-X or engineer, as we call them, doesn't have to be all-PKG, just PKG-enough to produce the engine.

So far the argument (that I feel I'll need to revise at some point) includes:
God-A, is a composite of a wrongfully interpreted God-E, as the cause not the effect, and the God-X's.
There are things we are unable to understand because of their complexity, that could be the workings of God-X, but could also be random events.
God-E, is the effect of love (in the form of compassion, caring, etc..) between beings

Only where and when there are beings capable of love between each other, can God-E exist

That would make for, God-A not be one necessary all-PKG entity, God-E a contingent effect and God-X would be the non-all-PKG maker of Paley's watch.

But Paley's watch need not have a maker, it could just be the product of a long string of random events, some of which we are incapable to understand. If the theory of mass-energy conservation is correct the string of events doesn't have to have a beginning or an end, it might as well be a circular chain of events.

Now what would be really interesting to know is, have I fallen for some rookie fallacy or is there some solidity to my argument?

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