Originally posted by sonship
Now, let's get back on track. Here's the initial formulation I proposed:
(1) If justice is only imperfectly realized, then it doesn't exist in the first place.
(2) Only God can perfectly realize justice.
(3) Hence, God is necessary for the existence of justice.
To which you said
[quote] Premise (2) may well be true. But Premis ...[text shortened]... poken to communicate anything about Himself to man. I don't think that takes history seriously.
It makes it no more a dilemma by introducing a third valid alternative.
Clarify and explain why you don't understand that.
I don't understand that because it seems to do nothing of the sort. Rather, it chooses one horn of the dilemma and then asserts, apparently on the basis of nothing which amounts to question-begging, that it does not suffer from a usual objection regarding that horn. Again, here is what you quoted:
”…. But Christian theism holds that human life has value and purpose because humans reflect God's very nature and that the purpose of human life and history also reflect God's nature. So the value and purpose of life are neither arbitrary nor grounded in something outside God. They are grounded in God's nature."
Again, the fundamental dilemma regards explanative priority, and there are only two options. There's an underlying commitment here that is something like "If X is reflective of God’s nature, then X has value and purpose". But, there are two ways this could be realized, depending on the nature of how they relate. On one hand, it could be that X has value and purpose because (or in virtue of the fact that) X is reflective of God's nature. On the other hand, it could be that X is reflective of God's nature because (or in virtue of the fact that) X has value and purpose. If you're saying that there is a third option here, you haven't provided it. The text you have quoted simply chooses the first one. And there are several serious objections that attend that horn. Chief among them is the arbitrarity objection.
You could take the initiative to write about your viewpoint more. You don't have to take a completely defensive posture waiting for me to raise objections I might have (though I realize I said I would).
Do like you did in the opening OP. Explain something about why supervenience is the best view of Physicalism.
Nah, I'll just wait until you present your arguments against supervenience physicalism. I guess you have some reason to think such presentation is relevant to this thread? I don't know why you think my launching into some argument in favor of supervenience physicalism would be in keeping with the OP. It would have nothing to do with the OP as far as I can tell. I don't claim that a commitment to supervenience physicalism is in any sense necessary for matters of high existential seriousness. This seems to differ materially from your commitments related to the existence of God.
"Get back on track." If I arrive at the destination of showing is more likely that God is than is likely that atheism is in the realm of our moral sense, any track is good enough for me.
So could you please clarify what exactly you are trying to show? The first formulation I provided (and which you stated was fair) works to the conclusion that
God is necessary for something like justice. Now you seem to be content with arguing toward something considerably weaker and more watered-down: that given facts regarding the human moral sense,
it is more likely that God exists than not. Please, figure out what exactly you intend to argue. If you want to abandon the first formulation and not attempt any reformulation of it, then okay. But then what are we discussing here?
And I don't think you have an answer for the parallel I made between intelligent design of our physical being entails the same intelligent design of our moral being. The latter you called "childish". That implies the former is also a childish assumption. Some who disagree with you on the former notion i don't think do so childishly. i mentioned Newton and Einstein.
At bottom, what I claim is childish is endorsing a moral directive unquestioningly – that is, without giving any thought to what would serve to justify such a directive beyond merely the fact that it is externally imposed by some authority figure. Please re-read the other thread that I specifically started on this very topic (and to which I have already provided the link) to see why I think this deliberative behavior is reasonably classified as childish. Now, your question seems to be: why does this not simply transfer to cases regarding "intelligent design of our physical being"? Why am I not thereby committed to labeling general belief in intelligent design as essentially childish too? First, they involve totally different types of deliberative reasoning. Moral deliberation regards
practical reasoning over courses of action; whereas deliberating about whether or not intelligent design is true is an appointment with
theoretical reasoning about descriptive matters and explanation. Now, it may be that what is essentially childish is unquestioning endorsement of something handed down by an authority figure
regardless if it is a matter of practical reasoning or a matter of theoretical reasoning. That may very well be right. But, that said, there is nothing regarding general belief in intelligent design that necessarily suggests that the belief is based on nothing but unquestioning, blind deference to an authority. For all I know, the relevant views of Newton and Einstein (supposing you have faithfully redescribed them, which I don't know and don't care here) are based on genuine and intellectually honest study of the evidence, even if I wouldn't happen to agree with them. Now, in contrast to this, a childishness to moral deliberation is actually systemically built into the very fabric of some particular theological voluntarist views. And it is for this reason and related reasons that I claim that such views are essentially childish. Again, please see the other thread for details.
This brings me to perhaps the most important point here: I certainly don't claim that all theistic moral views are childish (see the other thread, where I make this point explicitly). It is only a specific locus of views, of which yours is a member, that I claim has this feature. So, you cannot even reasonably infer from my view to the general idea that "intelligent design of our moral being" is childish, let alone from there to the general idea that "intelligent design of our physical being" is childish.
07 Sep '16 12:59
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