Samuel Clarke: Reasons for God (reject, God)

[Buttons*]

Starting with definitions:

Dependent being - a being dependant on casual activity of other things
- (existance of the dependent being EXPLAINED by the existance of things that caused it)
Independent being - a being not dependent upon the casual activity of other things
- (existance of independent being explained by its very nature)

Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)

- For something to exist, there must be a reason why it does.

Big question - Why is there something rather than nothing?

So, using all these definitions and terms, we then go to Clarke's cosmological argument. This is supposed to be an improved way to explain and determine St. Aquinas' work on the philosophical proof of God.

Cosmological Argument

1) In nature, there exists at least one dependent being
2) A dependent being is not an independent being
3) For something to exist, there must be an explanation for WHY it exists.
4) The chain of dependent beings that are caused cannot extend backwards into infinity becase then there would be no explanation for why there are dependent beings!
5) There MUST be an independent being which can explain itself as well as what it has caused
Conclusion: This being is God

[Buttons*]

3 is the one I have a problem with accepting. I dont think that there has to be a reason for everything. Does anyone either accept or reject this argument? why or why not?

[doppelgänger]

The only premise that could be logically proven is number 2. And premise 5 directly negates premise 3.

[Random]

I find it to be a fairly sound argument: premise 5 doesn't negate 3 if you believe there genuinely is a Top Five of Causation such as how, why, what, where and when to everything: which there is or must be, logically, in a deterministic cosmos. Like all theologically tinged arguments, it boils down to Necessity: is the propositional God surplus to the requirements of the question? Epistemologically, the answer is a resounding NO. Also, the point must be made that arguments for or against the existence of anything are absurd in and of themselves because existence is a concept which may have no actualy reality in higher or god-like states of Awareness: think nirvana.

[Mike182]

Originally Posted by Buttons*

Starting with definitions:

Dependent being - a being dependant on casual activity of other things
- (existance of the dependent being EXPLAINED by the existance of things that caused it)
Independent being - a being not dependent upon the casual activity of other things
- (existance of independent being explained by its very nature)

Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)

- For something to exist, there must be a reason why it does.

Big question - Why is there something rather than nothing?

So, using all these definitions and terms, we then go to Clarke's cosmological argument. This is supposed to be an improved way to explain and determine St. Aquinas' work on the philosophical proof of God.

Cosmological Argument

1) In nature, there exists at least one dependent being
2) A dependent being is not an independent being
3) For something to exist, there must be an explanation for WHY it exists.
4) The chain of dependent beings that are caused cannot extend backwards into infinity becase then there would be no explanation for why there are dependent beings!
5) There MUST be an independent being which can explain itself as well as what it has caused
Conclusion: This being is God

conclusion isn't a reasonable step from the premises. all the conclusion is looking for is something that people can be depend upon, that does not in any way depend on something else. this could just as easily be an idea or a concept, the idea of a God does not prove a God... unless you're going to add the ontological arguments to the mix as well?

[ChrisP]

Boffins. Every one of you.

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by Buttons*

3 is the one I have a problem with accepting. I dont think that there has to be a reason for everything. Does anyone either accept or reject this argument? why or why not?

There does have to be a reason for everything from our perspective.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Godlike

I find it to be a fairly sound argument: premise 5 doesn't negate 3 if you believe there genuinely is a Top Five of Causation such as how, why, what, where and when to everything: which there is or must be, logically, in a deterministic cosmos.

No, even then premise 5 still directly negates premise 3 because no matter how you approach the problem, you cannot escape that you'll end up with something that "exists" without having a how, why, what, where and when. "Belief" can't solve that problem. It can only facilitate ignoring it.

The way you've phrased it, Conor, premise 3 simply negates premise 5. But it's the same inescapable contradiction. Cause and effect is incredibly useful, but it is not "true."

[doppelgänger]

Nietzsche sums up the basic misconception about cause and effect quite nicely in book three of Will To Power:

The phenomenalism of the "inner world." Chronological inversion, so that the cause enters consciousness later than the effect. We have learned that pain is projected to a part of the body without being situated there - we have learned that sense impressions naively supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, on the contrary, conditioned by the inner world; that we are always unconscious of the real activity of the outer world. The fragment of outer world of which we are conscious is born after an effect from outside has impressed itself upon us, and is subsequently projected as its "cause".

In the phenomenalism of the "inner world" we invert the chronological order of cause and effect. The fundamental fact of "inner experience" is that the cause is imagined after the effect has taken place. The same applies to the succession of thoughts: we seek the reason for a thought before we are conscious of it; and the reason enters consciousness first, and then its consequence - Our entire dream life is the interpretation of complex feelings with a view to possible causes - and in such way that we are conscious of a condition only when the supposed causal chain associated with it has entered consciousness.

The whole of "inner experience" rests upon the fact that a cause for an excitement of the nerve centers is sought and imagined - and that only a cause thus discovered enters consciousness: this cause in no way corresponds to the real cause - it is a groping on the basis of previous "inner experiences," i.e., of memory. But memory also maintains the habit of the old interpretations, i.e., of erroneous causality so that the "inner experience" has to contain within it the consequences of all previous false causal fictions. Our "outer world" as we project it every moment is indissolubly tied to the old error of the ground: we interpret it by means of the schematism of "things," etc.

"Inner experience" enters our consciousness only after it has found a language the individual understands - a translation of a condition into conditions familiar to him; "to understand" means merely: to be able to express something new in the language of something old and familiar. E.g., "I feel unwell"; such a judgment presupposes a great and late neutrality of the observer - the simple man always says: this or that makes me feel unwell - he makes up his mind about his feeling unwell only when he has seen a reason for feeling unwell. I call that a lack of philology; to be able to read off a text as a text without interposing an interpretation is the last developed form of "inner experience"- perhaps one that is hardly possible.

There exists neither "spirit," nor reason, nor thinking, nor consciousness, nor soul, nor will, nor truth: all are fictions that are of no use. There is no question of "subject and object," but of a particular species of animal that can prosper only through a certain relative rightness; above all, regularity of its perceptions (so that it can accumulate experience).

Knowledge works as a tool of power. Hence it is plain that it increases with every increase of power.

The meaning of "knowledge": here, as in the case of "good" or "beautiful," the concept is to be regarded in a strict and narrow anthropocentric and biological sense. In order for a particular species to maintain itself and increase its power, its conception of reality must comprehend enough of the calculable and constant for it to base a scheme of behavior on it. The utility of preservation - not some abstract theoretical need not to be deceived - stands as the motive behind the development of the organs of knowledge; they develop in such a way that their observations suffice for our preservation. In other words: the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the measure to which the will to power grows in a species: a species grasps a certain amount of reality in order to become master of it, in order to press it into service.