13 May '16 11:44>2 edits
Originally posted by josephw[b]"I would try a philosopher, like the great Spinoza, who argued that there is indeed a reason for everything that exists:.."
[b]"I would try a philosopher, like the great Spinoza, who argued that there is indeed a reason for everything that exists:.."
...
What exists is explained by its creator. Rational explanations for what exists comes from its creator. If not, then it's not rational.[/b]
So? That's just a no-brainer. I knew there was a reason for everything that exists before I knew Spinoza existed. What's your point?
My point is that I do not have to sit on my toadstool thinking stuff up from scratch. I can instead read, consider and discuss the accumulated wisdom of others who have put a lifetime of thought into these questions and who were in turn well informed about what others have thought and said. Because there have been many competing voices over time, I have also learned to be selective about the weight I place on different sources of potential wisdom and to read their opinions critically and in the light of reason, in so far as I have developed that capacity. As Spjnoza said himself, if it was a simple thing to achieve wisdom then there would be evidence of that in the wisdom of the people around us; but we know instead that it is a long and difficult path which many fail to even attempt and many others make only poor progress.
"To know a thing is to know its cause."
What's that supposed to mean? We know we exist, but many do not know how or why.
Your appeal to ignorance is not effective. There are many ignorant people. We are all born with limited insight and spend our lives learning - obviously that means that we know things late in life that we would not have understood even vaguely earlier on. There are also many insights which can only come to us after a huge amount of effort. Some cannot be achieved within our limitations. Some cannot be achieved without specialist training - for example, mathematics is fundamental to many scientific principles.
"Others sharing this opinion have included Leibniz, Einstein and Godel but they came after Spinoza."
Who? I prefer to go directly to the source of creation for accurate information.
You claim to have a privileged access to divine guidance that is lacking for ordinary mortals. Should I abandon all my learning and all my ability to reason and instead submit to your authority on the basis of this claim? I confess that I am not persuaded.
"Your argument that God, if he made mistakes through ignorance or acted irrationally through arbitrary whim, would not be God,.."
I never said that. What I said was that "God doesn't make mistakes. If He did then He isn't God". One cannot even begin to think about God's nature without first understanding that God is omniscient. Once that is understood one never questions God.
Well actually I did not misrepresent your statement and do not need to change my words in the light of this.
What does it even mean to say one "thinks about the nature of God"? Is God's "nature" even accessible for us to think about? In my case, it means only that I question the claims made by mortals about their diverse and often confused notion of what they imply by the term God. You see, it is quite a clever trick but a dishonest one to pretend that you have the authority of God and that I may not question your opinions and your pronouncements. Many deeply religious people do indeed question God, not infrequently by addressing him directly, and it is hard to envisage how one might even begin to escape the oppressive authority of religious leaders without questioning. Look for example at the Protestant movement in the Reformation to translate the Bible into the vernacular languages of the people, and the fear of the bishops that once people form their own interpretations of the Bible then all hell would break loose - as of course it has done. No - your demand that one may not question God is open to a lot of debate even within the fold of the deeply religious.
"...is one that Spinoza has also proposed. He considered it blasphemous to conceive of an irrational God."
I would be more concerned about what God thinks about what one thinks about God.
Yes. Imagine if that were possible. Would you understand what you observed?
"It follows. of course, and you must agree, that reality is explicable."
I've heard many explanations about reality. Most are inexplicable. If God is reality's author, then reality is defined by God.
I fear that your concept of "inexplicable" is not universally shared. To say something is "explicable" does not mean that there is no possible level of scepticism that would be unable to find something to quibble about and you are of course typical of those who defend the claims of religion (indeed, the claims of a religious sub-group) by an astonishing display of extreme scepticism applied unilaterally to your rivals and not at all to your own wild and highly convenient claims.
To say that "reality is defined by God" is an empty phrase, the rattling of an empty can.
"To deny that anything is explicable is to deny that it exists."
Illusions are inexplicable because they don't exist. Rational thought doesn't include false reality. Truth and lies don't mix.
Rational thought has historically generated many very reasonable and rational theories about reality that have been falsified by later work.
Apart from well intentioned mistakes, truth and lies mix all too readily in some quarters. That is why we need rational thought. That is why we must ask questions and not defer to authority. I assume even you will not claim that religious leaders never lie.
"To be quite clear about this, it follows that there is a rational explanation for what exists and that all that exists is rationally explicable."
What exists is explained by its creator. Rational explanations for what exists comes from its creator. If not, then it's not rational.
Rational thought is only productive if you concede that God is rational, which takes you back to my opening argument. If God is irrational, arbitrary and whimsical, then rational thought will not resolve any useful questions whatever - everything will be a random mess that might as easily be different. If God is rational then we can use reason to establish our understanding of nature; explanations will be found through reason and not through God (though of course any divine help is always welcome to those who enjoy a good riddle).