Natural Teleology: More Thomas Nagel (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Sunday, February 10, 2013, 13:02 (4302 days ago) @ David Turell

From my neutral position on the agnostic fence, I have objected to David's claim that anthropomorphic gods are "worthless". His own god apparently has a "fixed" personality which we cannot know, but is self-aware and planned the universe and evolution, with the goal of producing us.
 
Dhw: So why assume that he had goals in mind, did all this planning, engaged in all this detailed scientific analysis and execution, and yet had no human-like reasons for doing so (e.g. boredom, entertainment, curiosity, education) and himself underwent no development?-You now proceed to repeat my own arguments, and then, oh bliss, join me on my agnostic fence: "I am not implying God is human-like or not human-like. I just don't know." Good. So I trust you will now agree that anthropomorphic gods are not worthless. I went on to say it made sense to me that the attributes of the creature mirror the attributes of the creator, but perhaps we should call this a deomorphic view of man rather than an anthropomorphic view of God. You replied: "You are very likely correct. We and God reflect each other, but it is always my point that we have no guide as to how far to carry that comparison." Good. So anthropomorphic gods are not worthless and God's personality is probably not fixed.
 
You and I agree that nothing can come of nothing, but I do not agree that this makes God a "necessary being".-DAVID: Yes, it does. We must have a planner for the complexity. We agree there is a first cause. By philosophic definition that is 'necessary'.-You have split up my argument, which is that the necessary first cause need not be a self-aware planner. You reject chance and you reject the panpsychic alternative, so of course YOUR necessary first cause is a self-aware planner, but there are plenty of people who do believe in chance or different versions of panpsychism, with the first cause being unselfconscious energy, i.e. they do not have to assume that something came of nothing. By all means reject their beliefs on the grounds of complexity, but do not assume that the only alternative is something from nothing.
 
DAVID: You've said you reject the idea of God because you cannot imagine such a being. [...] you won't carry our agreements to a logical conclusion despite the imagination problem. God must exist to explain what we see.-I do not reject the idea of God. It appears that I am even more open to different concepts of gods than you are. As I keep trying to explain, my form of agnosticism entails neither believing nor disbelieving ... I consider chance to be as unlikely a creator of life as an eternal, infinite, self-aware form of energy, and as an eternal, infinite, "intelligent" but not self-aware form of energy. One of these concepts must be true, but I have no idea which one. Our agreements concern the complexity of life and the unlikelihood of chance, but the "sea of confusion" (your metaphor for Nagel's position) clearly engulfs your own concept of God, and since so many people have so many different concepts, not only of gods but also of what may have produced the universe and life, I would suggest that the logical conclusion is: we don't know, we can't know, and therefore we shall have to keep an open mind.