Vulcan's Mercy

THE HOUSE THAT GOD BUILT

Recently I encountered a curious argument made by some atheists to deny the existence of God.  Christians (as do Jews and Muslims) state that God is the creator of the universe.  They argue that this belief is supported by the evidence that:  [1] The universe is a finite entity that had a beginning, thus it had a cause (i.e., it was created), and [2] the universe has characteristics conducive to our existence that pure chance cannot account for, thus it was designed (i.e., its creator was intelligent).  The atheist argument counters this by denying that the universe was caused, or created, and that which is not created does not require a creator.

The Christian argument is easy enough to understand.  Picture the universe as a house.  A house has a purpose.  It provides shelter and comfort.  To fulfill that purpose, the house needs to be planned to that end, and then built according to the plan.  Now picture God as the architect and builder of the house.  As such God is external to, independent of, and superior to His work.  There exists God and distinct from Him exists His creation, the universe:  The house that God built for us.  A Christian no more confuses God with the universe than he would confuse a builder with a house.  The builder exists prior to and outside of the house.  He is not part of the house.  He is not dependent upon it.  The same goes for God’s relationship with the universe.

Yet, the curious atheist argument against this denies that the universe was created, because the universe is everything that ever existed.  Because a creator must exist apart from his creation, and because the universe is everything, nothing exists apart from the universe, and so there is no place for a creator of the universe to exist.  Thus, by definition, the universe can have no creator.  In short, the atheist equates the universe to reality.  The Christian demurs.  While the word universe can be loosely used to mean reality, when he uses the word in relationship to God, he means that bubble of space-time we live within and its contents, namely man and nature.  So, the Christian does not use the word universe metaphorically like the atheist.  He uses it concretely to identify that astronomical structure called the cosmos and all that dwells within it.  He means something definite by it, which has a beginning and boundaries.  That is to say, the universe is caused.  It is created.

The difference between the atheist and Christian on this score can be boiled down to this:  The atheist says R = U, where reality is R and the universe is U.  The Christian says R = G + U, where God is G.  The Christian justifies his statement by observation of the universe, which:  [1] Indicates that it is not eternal and so caused, and [2] reveals the marks of craftsmanship and so was caused by an intelligent agent.  Therefore, both creator and creation exist.  Now let’s turn to the curious thing about the atheist’s statement.  He does not premise it upon observation of the universe.  It arises from a philosophical maxim, the primacy of existence.  At face value this maxim declares that to be real, a part of reality, a thing must exist.  That’s true but trivial.  God and His creation both exist; they are both parts of reality.  So how does the atheist’s invocation of the primacy of existence refute R = G + U in favor of R = U?

He does so by making the maxim non-trivial.  He imports substance into it by making an assumption about the relationship between matter and consciousness.  When an atheist states that existence is primary, he is stating that matter exists prior to consciousness.  He supports this statement by arguing that consciousness cannot exist unless there already exists something else to be conscious of.  According to him that “something else” must be matter, because a consciousness conscious of only itself is conscious of nothing.  (Briefly, this is begging the question.  The atheist is excluding from argument what the Christian states is necessary to God:  A realm beyond the universe in which the requirements for the existence of consciousness may differ from that within the universe.)  Thus, the primacy of existence means the primacy of matter.  Because our universe of matter plainly exists, we need no other explanation of why it exists or how it came to exist.  The brute fact that it does suffices.  Consciousness exists as a derivative of matter.  Consequently, the atheist argues that to believe that a consciousness, such as God, exists prior to or apart from the universe is to put the cart before the horse.

All of which is a roundabout way of making the case for materialism – and a rationalistic case at that.  Facts do matter, and the Christian argument that God is the creator of the universe has the virtue of accounting for the facts established by science and commonsense.  Of course, in doing so, the Christian opens the door to a realm beyond the universe, the supernatural, God.  Situated as we are here within the universe, we cannot obtain direct knowledge of God without revelation.  However, we can draw conclusions about Him from those marks of craftsmanship He left upon the universe in the same manner as we may learn about the builder of a house from examining his work.  Thus, starting empirically from a foundation of fact about the universe, a Christian can use his reason to get a glimpse as to the nature of God.

In contrast, the atheist offers no explanation for the facts of the universe and justifies this failure to do so by rationalizing a primacy of matter.  This will not do.  For instance, the existence of life within the universe is a profound fact, for which the primacy of matter provides no account.  Nor does it shine even the dimmest light upon other facts such as the existence of consciousness, reason, and free will within the universe.  Finally, it is silent regarding the highly peculiar characteristics of the universe that have made it habitable for conscious, rational, volitional creatures such as human beings.  The primacy of matter comes down to nothing more than an assertion by the atheist that matter must be the cause of it all, because if a consciousness superior to the universe were, then that consciousness must be God.

As I said at the outset, this atheist argument is a curious one.  This is because the ones who make it pride themselves as hard-headed realists and men of science who will have no truck with the superstition that is religion.  Yet they take it as an article of faith that matter and not God is the cause of all that there is and blissfully ignore how their materialism negates as nonsense free will, morality, beauty, and transcendence of our mortal coil.  Moreover, they possess a stubborn lack of interest in how the wonders of life, consciousness, reason, and free will came about and thrive in, at least, our little corner of the universe.  Their mantra is that science will somehow explain all this, if not now, eventually.  Their most unscientific faith in the revelatory powers of science would be charming if it were not for the accompanying lack of gratitude for the house God built for them.

APPARENTLY IT'S NOT A JOKE

I thought I was being over the top in skewering the multiculturalists by calling yesterday's holiday "Genocidal Maniac Day".  As it turns out, at least one of their crowd does call Columbus Day that and is serious about it.  Click here for the rant by this seriously confused fellow.

HAPPY GENOCIDAL MANIAC DAY ...

... or, as the more even-tempered among us call it, Columbus Day.

A half a millennium ago Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.  To say that, I know that I have sinned against multiculturalism, for I am viewing that event from the parochial perspective of Western Civilization.  Indeed I am and I do so gladly, because that perspective is the one that best informs me of what is true.  All cultures are not equal, and none are the equal of the West with its mighty foundation upon ancient Athens and Jerusalem.

With that in mind, we need not whitewash the conflict and strife that ensued after Columbus opened up the Americas to Europeans.  American Indians suffered greatly.  Often from the evil of conquest, mass-murder, and slavery that Europeans, especially the Spanish, inflicted upon them.  More often from the unavoidable consequences of disease and dislocation arising from the clash of isolated Stone Age cultures with an advanced cosmopolitan one.

While we should regret the loss of life, we need not regret the loss of Indian culture.  The pre-Columbian societies of the New World were generally brutal.  There were no Rousseauvian utopias of noble savages.  The mightiest civilizations built by the Indians, the empires of the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas, were totalitarian states sustained by subjugation, fatalism, and human sacrifice.  The advance of Western Civilization across the Americas ultimately freed the Indians from this tyranny (albeit imperfectly as evidenced in many parts of Latin America today).

More important, however, is that in the Americas, especially along the Altantic coast of North America, Western Civilization found fertile soil to flourish as haven for millions and millions, including those Indians who joined this new society.  The ideals of the West, the seeds of the rule of law, individual liberty, and private enterprise, bloomed in that soil and were most fully realized with the audacious founding of continental-scale republic when the Founding Fathers hammered out the Constitution of the United States of America.  In the two centuries since, what they created has been a beacon of hope for the oppressed, the ambitious, and most of all the ordinary who want nothing more than the freedom to live a good life by their own means.

We can celebrate the hope that America brings to all mankind as a great achievement of Western Civilization, and so we can celebrate today the man who turned the corner of history to make it possible.

PULLING STRINGS

I nose around in philosophy because to answer the question "What should I do?", it is helpful to know the answers to "What is true?" and "How do I know that?"  It's no coincidence that the three great branches of philosophy -- ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology -- address these three questions.  So philosophy is important and is more than an avocation for me.

But it's not a vocation.  By trade I'm a machinist, not a philosopher, and so constraints upon my time limit what I can read about the science of wisdom.  So when I put two and two together and gain an insight by dint of my own reason, I don't doubt that others already know what I figured out.  I know there is plenty of writing on philosophy that I have not gotten to.  Nevertheless, I am pleasantly surprised, once I get around to reading some philosophy here or there, to learn of a similar perspective on what I had been pondering.

For instance, I have persuaded myself that there are basically two methods of objective knowledge:  Scientific and aesthetic.  Scientific knowledge is that gained through measurement.  By counting, specifying, and delimiting -- i.e., quantification -- we can say this is true, because if it weren't our yardstick would immediately and plainly tell us so.  In other words, scientific knowledge is that which is reducible to a verifiable or falsifiable statement.  For example, the mean diameter of the Earth is 7,918 miles.  That is a scientific fact.  So are the statements that dogs have four legs and France is in Europe.  By counting miles, specifying anatomy, and delimiting continents these scientific facts are subject to verification or falsification, and so we can have great confidence in them because our measures show they are true.

Yet, all that is true is not knowable scientifically.  I know that all of you who are reading this are conscious beings.  But there is no objective measure by which I can establish that any human being possesses consciousness.  I know that I am, because I experience it.  However, no one else can experience my consciousness and I can experience no one else's.  Yet the fact that all human beings are conscious is as true as the sky is blue on a clear day.  This truth is aesthetic knowledge.  Though it cannot be quantified, and so reduced to a scientifically verifiable or falsifiable statement, its explanatory power is in its qualities that are in harmony with all else we know to be true.  Its truth lies in its beauty.

Because beauty is objectively identifiable, aesthetic knowledge is as objective as scientific knowledge.  The identity of beauty is the proper form and purpose of a thing, and nothing exists without the qualities of form and purpose (or formal and final causes as the Aristotelian might put it).  In the case of consciousness, or the soul, it is the form of the matter that composes the human body.  Form and matter together are the substance that is a human being.  Without consciousness that substance cannot be, hence no human being.  Thus we know through the qualities of form and purpose, without any manner of measurement, all human beings are conscious.  That is an aesthetic fact.

But here's the rub about aesthetic knowledge.  It is as objective as scientific knowledge, because an aesthetic fact is true without regard to anyone's awareness of it.  But it is not necessarily as certain as scientific knowledge, because no attempt to quantify it will subject it to verification or falsification.  It's just not possible.  Thus our comprehension of an aesthetic fact will be restricted.  Indeed, we may at best only apprehend its truth, relying upon its harmony with all other knowledge to have sound reason to believe it is true.  Yet doubt, also for sound reason, may well persist.  (And so the need for the virtue of tolerance, another topic for another day.  In the meantime, I recommend this short essay by Bill Vallicella.)

Because doubt of an aesthetic fact is not just possible, but often reasonable, great controversy can arise over it.  The commonest example is the existence of God.  Another example, currently in hot debate, is string theory (well, the "string conjecture" would be more accurate), which is the idea that the basic constituents of matter and energy are not points but one-dimensional strings.  And here is where I finally get to my pleasant surprise of discovering that others have been propounding with eloquence what I recently stumbled over on my own.  What is beautiful leads us to what is true, as John Rose of First Things discusses today in regard to the great divide among physicists over the epistemological standing of string theory.  Rose's commentary gives a glimpse as to how the aesthetic method is gaining prominence with the practitioners of the scientific method.

I only hope that the scientists don't make as much a hash of it as they have science.

PUSILLANIMOUS POSTMODERNISTS

Robert Miller posted this note today at the First Things website.  He describes how postmodernist artists (or should that be "so-called artists"? or maybe just "poseurs"?) roar about their courage to speak truth to power, yet quail when that power is something other than tolerant of their posturing.  For instance, a German opera house shut down a postmodernist production of Mozart's Idomeneo, rewritten to end with a display of Mohammed's severed head (among insults to other religions), fearing violent reaction by Islamic jihadists.  Miller sums up this shining example of postmodernist courage:  "Postmodern art can exist only in a tolerant, liberal society of the kind postmodernists affect to criticize but are actually parasitic upon."