What is the most important question of all?
On the face of it, that question seems like a sensible one, even an important one. We ask many questions in life, and some are clearly more important than others. For example, the question “Where are my car keys?” is more important than the question “How many ducks are there in Belgium right now?” It’s possible, in principle, to rank questions in order of importance.
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Here’s a thoughtful email query I received with the title “Friendly Question about God and Logic”:
Recently, I have been reading about God and abstract objects and came across your article in Phil-Christi with Greg Welty regarding God and logic. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it both persuasive and useful. In doing further reading on your website I came across a follow up article where you argue that atheism presupposes theism (and so does every other ism) and your argument gets close to an objection to the claim that logic depends on God that I have long wondered about. In the article, in reference to Atheism you argue the following:
(1) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]
(2) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1)]
(3) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2)]
(4) If there are truths, they are divine thoughts.
(5) There is at least one divine thought. [from (3) and (4)]
(6) If there are divine thoughts, then God exists.
(7) Therefore, God exists. [from (5) and (6)]Consider the following reconstruction:
(1*) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]
(2*) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1*)]
(3*) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2*)]
(4*) Therefore, truth does not depend on God. [from (1*) and (3*)]Let me make explicit why I think (1*-4*):
(5*) The laws of logic are divine thoughts.
(6*) According to the aseity-sovereignty doctrine if God did not exist then nothing would exist.
(7*) If God did not exist there would be no divine thoughts.
(8*) Therefore, there would be no laws of logic.But if (5*-8*) hold, the proposition either God exists or He does not, would be a truthful description of that state of affairs and be an instance of the LEM. Likewise, the proposition God exists, would be false, not true. Not both true and false, thus an instance of the LNC.
Or another way of stating it would be:
If God did not exist then nothing would exist. But it seems that even if God did not exist there would be at least one thing that would exist, the state of affairs, nothing exists. Doesn’t that imply/entail that there is at least one truth about that state of affairs, the truth nothing exists? If that is the case don’t we have laws of logic?
I assume my objection is misguided in some way. If you have time to address this question and clarify my error I would appreciate it.
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Chris Bolt has some good comments on the old canard that “conversions do not come about through argument.” To his apt observations, I would only add the following:
Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, has was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. (Acts 17:1-4)
When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. (Acts 28:23-24)
Preaching instead of apologetics? No. Preaching with apologetics.
Nate Silver, the statistician and psephologist, correctly predicted the winner in 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, plus the winners of all 35 US Senate races. This time around he successfully predicted the winner in all 50 states, including the 9 “swing states”. (He also predicted the winner in D.C., although that wasn’t exactly a tough call.) On the morning of the election, Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model gave Barack Obama a 90.9% chance of winning a majority of electoral college votes.
If Silver can perfect his model, it opens up some exciting possibilities for future elections. For one, it will obviate the need for people to actually go to the polls and vote. Silver will simply run his stats and tell us how Americans would have voted had they gone to the polls. Just think of all the time and money this will save!
Conservative pundits are offering various postmortem reports following yesterday’s election, some of them appearing even before the patient was officially pronounced dead. My own analysis really isn’t worth a hill of beans, but the beauty of the blogosphere is that it doesn’t have to be to justify my sharing it.
As I see it, there’s a very simple explanation why the Republicans lost. Broadly speaking, the Republican Party represents conservatism (both socially and economically) and the Democratic Party represents liberalism. (If you don’t agree with this generalization, you might as well stop reading now.) Looking at the big picture of all the ballots held yesterday, not just the presidential election, it’s clear that America as a nation opted for moral relativism over economic realism. Over the last month I’ve closely followed the Twitter feeds of the Obama team and the Romney team, which gave a good indication of their core strategy to win over uncommitted voters. The Romney campaign (and Republicans in general) bet heavily on economic conservatism, and they lost. The Obama campaign (and Democrats in general) bet heavily on social liberalism, and they won. That pretty much tells you all you need to know.
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Having been recently promoted to associate professor, I was invited to give a short lecture at our Fall convocation service last week. The audio of the lecture (“The Atheist’s Guide to Intellectual Suicide”) is now available on iTunes U.
On a closely related note, check out these good thoughts by my colleague Mike Kruger on the current state of public debate over moral issues.
Previously on Analogical Thoughts:
In this week’s exciting episode, I examine the arguments of Shannon, Oliphint, and Craig. Do they show that God doesn’t think propositionally or that propositions couldn’t be divine thoughts? Does the doctrine of divine simplicity rule out Theistic Conceptual Realism? Should anyone care either way? We’ll be right back with some answers after the following short section break!
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I learned this morning that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, not content with regulating the size of people’s soft drinks, now wants to limit access to baby formula in hospitals. As a “pro-choice” liberal Bloomberg is eager to protect a woman’s choice to have her child killed in the womb, but apparently he’s not so eager to protect her choices about what to feed that child if she opts to keep him or her.
According to reports, new mothers in NYC hospitals will be lectured about the negative consequences of using formula instead of breast milk. But don’t expect to find new mothers-to-be being lectured about the negative consequences of abortion.
Commenter Jeff posed a question in response to an earlier post:
I was wondering though how you might respond to the view held by some in the Reformed camp such as Oliphint (I think at least, so don’t hold me to it) and Poythress that God does not think propositionally. I am not sure if they would advocate the contingency of propositions, then, but if you ever have the time, could you explain how the argument might still go through, or if the objection has no effect at all?
It depends on what exactly is meant by “thinking propositionally”. If the claim is that God’s thoughts aren’t dependent on propositions (conceived as truth-bearing abstract entities) that exist externally to God and independently of God, in some kind of self-existent Platonic realm, then I wholeheartedly agree. Welty and I have argued that propositions are divine thoughts, which would rule out that Platonist scenario.
However, if the claim is that God does not think in terms of propositions at all, then I strongly disagree. For that amounts to saying that God does not think in terms of truth and falsity. Propositions are conventionally defined as the primary truth-bearers (see, e.g., the recently revised SEP entry). Propositions are simply those entities that are non-derivatively true or false. If God has any true thoughts then it follows by the very definition of ‘proposition’ that God thinks propositionally. And, of course, God does have true thoughts. (How could God reveal truths to us without first having true thoughts?)
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