Tag: theism

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The Ultimate Mystery

By Jim Spiegel

A recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, featuring a conversation with Rizwan Virk, deals with the possibility (or likelihood) that we are living in something like a computer generated reality. Of course, what this really points to is the age-old notion that the world is the product of some ultimate consciousness, that is, God. Rogan, like all of us, understands the significance of this, which explains why he is uncharacteristically silent through much of the conversation. We are talking about the ultimate question here.

There are really just two fundamental worldviews: Either all comes from Mind or all comes from matter. There are many versions of each, but these are ultimately the two options. It’s really that simple. Those who take the latter view are materialists (or naturalists or physicalists, depending on one’s preferred nomenclature). They are also empiricists and typically regard science as the most reliable or perhaps only way to secure knowledge. Materialists believe in minds and consciousness, of course. They just believe that it is reducible to, or an epiphenomon of, physical reality

Those who take the Mind-most-real view reject strong empiricism, affirming that reason or mystical-religious experiences provide evidence for the reality of a supernatural realm. They do not deny the reality of the physical world but simply deny that it is the ultimate reality. They maintain that this material realm is in some way the product of the workings of an ultimate consciousness. Those among them who maintain that this Mind at the bottom of things is personal are generally called theists. For many such theists, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, theirs is a purely philosophical conviction. Most others subscribe to a theological tradition, such as Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Whichever view one takes, the conviction tends to be held very firmly, often dogmatically. This is despite the fact that whichever view one holds there are serious metaphysical problems and ultimate mysteries that defy ready explanation. This, I suppose, is symptomatic of human arrogance or insecurity or both. Plaguing both views is the ultimate metaphysical question: How did all of this get here? And even more basic is Heidegger’s famous question, Why is there something rather than nothing? (Ways of addressing this question are boundless. For a recent sampling, check out these, most of which miss the point or involve a confusion of some kind.)

Then there are the problems unique to each perspective. For the materialist, the most fundamental problem pertains to how consciousness could emerge from inert matter. The options here are numerous, including philosophical behaviorism, strict identity theory, functionalism, and property dualism. But they all face serious problems, such as that of 1) explaining the particulars of consciousness, including phenomenal qualia, subjectivity, and enduring selfhood, 2) accounting for human freedom, 3) accounting for moral truth, and 4) accounting for rationality—non-natural things like reasons, logic, and evidence influencing the world. Then there are the perennial problems of cosmology (explaining the origin of the universe and cosmic fine-tuning) as well as all sorts of empirical data pointing to the supernatural (e.g., mystical experiences, NDEs, OBEs, etc.).

Materialists may balk and minimize these problems all they want. It’s simple denial. Any self-respecting materialist will at least admit that these are genuinely significant problems with their perspective. It is no wonder that, after a half century of concerted atheism Antony Flew flipped from a materialist view to a Mind-most-real view (see his There is a God) and that the inveterate materialist Thomas Nagel has admitted that materialism is bankrupt and in serious need of overhaul, if not outright rejection (see his Mind and Cosmos).

But Mind-most-real proponents have no grounds to be cocky. They also face serious metaphysical problems. In addition to the ultimate metaphysical question—why is there something rather than nothing?—there are many other thorny questions: How could the ultimate Mind create something so radically different as physical matter? What is the substance of this Mind? How does this being causally act on the world? How much of the cosmos does the Mind control? Does this Mind have a moral nature? If so, then why evil—and why so much evil? Has the Mind communicated to humans? If so, which, if any, of the purported supernatural revelations is genuine? If one of them is, how do we resolve the countless interpretive problems?

As a Mind-most-real advocate, I am happy to be relieved of the problems plaguing the materialist view. But I naturally am interested in many of these other problems. However, as a Berkeleyan immaterialist, I think many of these admit of ready solutions. For on the Berkeleyan idealist view (which the great American theologian Jonathan Edwards essentially affirmed as well), the physical world just is ideas. And since minds naturally traffic in ideas, God’s production and causal influence on the world is not mysterious at all. (For in-depth scholarly discussions of a wide range of issues pertaining to idealism and Christianity, look here and here. And here is a London Lyceum interview with me on topic.)

But there is one particular problem unique to the Mind-Most-Real view that is especially deep and intractable: How does a Mind make another mind? In the theistic traditions, we learn that the primordial Mind (God) created all things. In the Christian tradition, at least since Augustine, we affirm that God created ex nihilo. So how did this ultimate center of consciousness—God—bring into existence minds like yours and mine ex nihilo? How does a subjective consciousness endow another thing/substance with subjectivity? And what exactly is the substance of each of our minds? How are our minds like and unlike the ultimate Mind?

One plausible philosophical answer is theologically problematic, at least from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy: The Mind did not create other minds ex nihilo but rather finite minds are aspects of the primordial Mind. This solution isn’t necessarily pantheistic, but it is panentheistic. (For an interesting discussion of this possibility, see Jordan Wessling’s chapter in this aforementioned book.)

As a convinced theist who believes that Christianity is the most reasonable version of theism, the question of ultimate reality is settled: Mind is most real. The likes of Antony Flew, Thomas Nagel, and Joe Rogan have recently been waking up to this fact, even if they aren’t ready to call themselves theists (or even, in the case of Nagel, a non-materialist). For me, then, the remaining ultimate mystery is just this: How does the Mind make other minds? This will be one of the first questions I ask that Mind when I get to the other side.

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Theism, Atheism, and the Significance of our Lives

By Jim Spiegel

One of the traditional complaints about atheism is that it offers no grounds for believing that life is meaningful in any significant sense.  Many old school atheists seemed to acknowledge this point.  For example, Bertrand Russell grants that the eventual desolation guaranteed by naturalism is grounds for “unyielding despair,” and atheistic existentialists like Sartre and Camus recognized that without God life appears “absurd.”  The new atheists are much more optimistic, insisting that life can be quite meaningful in the absence of God.

This makes me wonder whether life can really be as significant on an atheistic worldview as it is given the truth of theism and its correlative doctrine of an afterlife.  Suppose we conceive of the overall significance of an action as relative to its total impact on what follows after, in terms of causal influence and consequences.  Thus, for example, historians often refer to particular events, such as the assassination of Lincoln or the Treaty of Versailles as especially significant because of their impact on subsequent history.  That seems reasonable enough.  Now suppose we consider the significance of any individual human life along these lines as well, such that we recognize, say, that Martin Luther King’s life was especially significant because of all of the lives he impacted and continues to impact to this day.

Now with this understanding of life “significance” in hand, let’s compare the atheistic and theistic perspectives.  Given atheism (or to be more precise, “naturalism”), all life on Earth will eventually perish, say 10,000 years from now, and whatever impact our lives have had will cease.  I won’t say that the lives we led lose all significance as a consequence, but the significance of our lives will certainly be finite.  However, given theism and the perpetual afterlife promised on this worldview, there is literally no end to the impact of our lives, for not only may earthly deeds continue to influence others forever but our on-going choices and actions in the afterlife (Heaven and/or the New Earth, given Christian theism) will be endless as well.  Since there will be no end to our lives (at least for those who wind up in Heaven), there will be no limit to the significance of our lives or even individual actions, the effects of which may be felt and acknowledged for all eternity.

So, as we compare atheism and theism on this point, it turns out that the two worldviews could not contrast more sharply when it comes to providing grounds for the significance of human life.  Given atheism, however long earthly history proceeds, in the end it will be finite and so will the significance of our lives.  Given theism, on the other hand, the significance of our lives has no upper limit but approaches infinity.  In other words, if theism is true, then the significance of our lives is immeasurably great, while in comparison, without God the significance of our lives is infinitesimally small.  (I want to emphasize the comparative nature of my point here, for only relative to such a comparison could any degree of life significance be considered “infinitesimal.”)

So what does this mean?  Is this evidence for the truth of theism?  Not at all.  On the contrary, there are no implications here with regard to which of these two worldviews is actually true.  But what it does imply is that atheists who maintain that their lives can be just as significant (given the truth of their worldview) as those of theists (given the truth of theirs) are quite mistaken.  In fact, the difference is infinitely great.

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Solving the Euthyphro Problem

By Jim Spiegel

Among the issues debated between theists and atheists is the question of God’s relation to ethics.  Many theists, including myself, maintain that without God there is no foundation for ethics.  Not only does atheism fail to provide any ultimate motivation to live virtuously but the very concept of moral goodness is undermined.  Atheists, of course, beg to differ, insisting that the concept of goodness can be adequately understood in terms of natural facts about the world, such as pleasure or human survival.  And as for moral motivation, most atheists seem to maintain that the goal of making this life the best it can be provides sufficient grounds for good behavior.

Not only do atheists (typically) maintain that ethics (both the concept of the good and the incentive to live rightly) is possible without God, they also often argue that God actually undermines ethics.  That is, they claim, ethical theories that appeal to God are problematic at best and incoherent at worst.  And it’s interesting to see how often they trot out a 2500-year-old argument, originating with Socrates (who, ironically enough, was himself a theist).  The argument, commonly known as the “Euthyphro dilemma,” originally took this form:  Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is something pious because the gods love it?”  Transposed into the context of a theistic (rather than polytheistic) divine command ethic, the dilemma looks like this:

1. Does God command X because it is good

               or

2. Is X good because God commands it?

 The question might appear trifling, but it does have some bite to it.  If we opt for (1), then something besides God’s commanding a behavior makes it good.  That is, the standard for goodness is not God’s commands, which seems to flout the notion that God is the foundation of ethics.  On the other hand, if we go with option (2), then this prompts the question why God commanded X, so it is really no answer at all.  Now, one could insist that this “why” question admits of no answer and that God’s commands are ultimately arbitrary.  But, then, this implies that God could just as well have commanded that we rape, murder, and steal from one another and, consequently, such behaviors would have been just as moral as kindness, compassion, and generosity are now.  This seems absurd, so option (2) is no more appealing than option (1).

The theist appears to be stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place here—specifically the options of admitting either that God is not the foundation of ethics or that God’s commands are arbitrary.   Is there a way out for the theist who insists that God is foundational to—or in any way crucially related to—ethics?  Many atheists and agnostics believe this argument to be devastating.  But, really, the solution is quite simple (as evidenced by the fact that in every one of my philosophy classes in which this argument is discussed some student solves the riddle on his or her own, or else with just a little Socratic leading by yours truly).  Can you figure it out?  See if you can do so before reading the next paragraph.

The best response—as I see it anyway—is to take the approach of Thomas Aquinas, among many others, and go with option (1) but to qualify this in an important way.  Yes, God commands what he does because those things are good, but the standard for goodness is not something external to God.  Rather, the divine nature is the moral standard.  It is the character of God which determines how God commands us to behave.  This explains why Scripture often uses the term “godly” and “godliness” as synonyms for moral goodness or piety.  They are one and the same thing.  To be moral is to reflect the moral nature of God.  So each divine command is essentially a specific application of the general command to morally imitate God.  Moreover, given this approach, divine commands are not properly conceived as the source of goodness but rather they serve the function of making the standard of goodness known.  That is, the role of divine commands is epistemological, whereas God’s character is the ontological ground of ethics.

Of course, atheists and many others will object that defining moral goodness in terms of the divine nature begs the question, Why call God’s nature good?  But this question could be asked about any proposed ultimate standard for ethics (e.g., pleasure, human survival, universalizability, etc.).  If there is indeed a moral standard, then its goodness must be fundamental, absolute, and inexplicable.  The nature of God is far superior to any alternative proposal because God is a being, not a mere concept or ideal.  Moreover, this Thomistic approach has the additional virtue of paralleling the foundation of ethics to that in theistic ontology and epistemology, where we understand God to be the ground of all being and of all rationality, respectively.  (I would even extend this, perhaps more controversially, to the realm of aesthetics, and propose that God is the ground of all beauty.)  Here we see another dimension of the conceptual coherence of theism.