Yet There Is Method In It

Continuing my series on the gospels, I read Luke. Probably being the last of the synoptic gospels to be written, the evolution of the stories was very noticeable, as details were inserted and potentially difficult passages removed. I guessed the order the gospels with written was Mark-Matthew-Luke, and this interpretation is in agreement with most historians. There is a fascinating diagram showing the proportions of overlap between the synoptic gospels on wikipedia.

There are several places in Luke where the narrative in Mark has added detail inserted before it returns back to the original Mark based events. For example when he calls Simon (Peter) and Andrew for the first time to be “fishers of men” (Mark 1:16-18, Matthew 4:18-20) they “straightway” follow Jesus. But in Luke, he talks to Simon on his own and Jesus does a quick fishing trip miracle (Luke 5:1-8) which is serves as a parable instead of a literal statement. So this is an example of a simple event narrative being expanded to being a dual purpose story/parable. (Or somehow both versions are literally true, which seems unlikely. Two separate events?) Similar expansions and insertions are used for love thy neighbour and the parable of the good samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), an angel appearing at the mount of olives (Luke 22:44), Jesus talking to the other two being crucified (Luke 22:39-43) and Jesus meeting Herod (Luke 23:7-9) (this seems particularly arbitrary).

I can’t remember if I have ranted on the blog before about Jesus being strongly anti-materialism and extremely anti-wealth. When I mention this to Christians, I usually get some equivocated answer about “cultural changes”. Anyway the strongest statements I have found is Luke 14:33, Luke 12:33, Luke 6:24, (rich man told to sell up) Luke 18:22, Mark 10:21, Matthew 19:21, (widow’s mite) Mark 12:42-44, Luke 21:1-4, (instruction to apostles and disciples) Mark 6:8, Matthew 10:9, Luke 10:4, Luke 22:35, not to mention the camel/eye of needle thing (Mark 10:25, Matthew 19:24, Luke 18:25). This is also backed up by Jesus’s example in life. I don’t think this could be much clearer! (Obviously, I personally feel we need to culturally reinterpret the Bible – to the extreme in fact, but this is a central point in the text and not lightly ignored.) On a related note, Nietzsche point it out it is weird saying one should give away your possessions when this burdens the recipient with just what you cast away!

The point at the end of the parable of Lazarus is strange:

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Luke 16:31

Which implies Jesus did not expect his resurrection to be persuasive. But it might be possible to justify the whole exercise on other grounds.

Prophesy gets a good watering down in Luke:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:20-21

I guess they got bored of waiting for the earlier predictions in Mark and Matthew:

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. Matthew 16:27-28

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. [9] And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power. Mark 8:38-9:1

This also makes the kingdom a perspective rather than an event or place. This allows a great number of metaphysical inventions to escape their Pandora’s box. (I should write more on that some time.)

Finally, Jesus’s last moments. What is going on there? Three different versions are reported in three gospels. The biblical literalists have a particularly poor response on this conflict: they claim that all three are true but each narrative omits details. This is done because each author has a different “perspective”. This is pretty much an admission that the gospels are not literally true. (As if we needed that admission!)

Anyway, I now know why I was taught Mark at school, it has the least spin and “improvements” compared to the other synoptic gospels.

Anti Citizen One

I continued into read the gospel according to Mark. There are a few interesting things at the start of Chapter 6. He seems to have met his “brothers” and “sisters” (6:3) in his home country. This may be an interesting case of translation ambiguity. Brothers and sisters in the local culture could indicate his cousins or not, it is hard to say. There seems to be controversy on this point, at least among Internet commenters. After stating people were generally unfriendly and “offended”, it goes on to say:

And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. Mark 6:5

Which is a bizarre claim for an supposedly omnipotent being (see also 10:40). The implication is possibly that he could not because of the lack of faith. Apologists claim that “he could” might be better translated as “he would”. This might wash, if the problems were not compounded in 6:6, with Jesus being “amazed”, which implies he is not omniscient. A sceptic like me is not surprised that miracles don’t happen in unfriendly audiences, because they are not as credulous (this would also be consistent with psychology and experience). Alternatively, Jesus did seem to follow a pattern of rewarding faith with miracles. On that theme, Jesus claims that no signs from heaven will be given to that generation (Mark 8:12) but I guess he forgot he was due to be resurrected, which is lucky “corrected” in Matthew 12:39 (and Luke 11:29). The gospel according to Mark seems to contradict that this sign was the primary goal of Jesus’s appearance. This also raised my eyebrows:

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. Mark 10:18

Which implies Jesus does not consider himself good. To argue otherwise is torturing language beyond the limit (except for possibly a bad translation, which is torture enough). The prohibition against exercising political authority is very interesting (10:42-43), which might be worth a read for most US and UK politicians (not to mention many others).

The incident of looking for figs on a fig tree, when it was not even the season for figs is an interesting note on the arbitrariness of Christianity (11:13). However there is probably an even deeper message when this incident is raised in 13:28 when it is considered as a parable. This might imply the original story really a parable and not a description of a real past event. Or it could be both a real event and used as a metaphor. The point is parts of the narrative shift between events and parables and we are not necessarily told which is occurring. Imagine if the source material for Mark 13 was lost, many would claim a miracle had occurred in Mark 11. And if Mark 11 was lost, people would claim Mark 13 contained the a parable of the fig tree. Given the murky history of the bible text and the general illiteracy of the time, we can safely assume some relevant sections were omitted (and the irrelevant retained). Since any part of the Bible could have important missing contextual information, the whole descents into a post-modern enigma. This also makes my earlier points somewhat redundant but I am not too concerned. The primary cultural impact of the Bible has been under the assumption it was true based on a rather superficial reading (such as in my limited capability).

Anti Citizen One

It’s been a while since I looked at the Bible. I thought I’d have a read to refresh my memory, after Pullman’s retelling, I’d go back to the original the more popular version. I’d thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the Gospel According to Matthew. These points are not from a post-modern perspective at all. I am mainly interested in mainstream culture, religion and the implications of Matthew.

Jesus claims he has only come to address the Jewish people (10:5, 15:24), but sometimes he seems more concerned with gentiles (21:41, 22:5). He is a critic of religious institutions of his day (15:9, 23:5-8) and these points probably apply to modern institutions (which is a central theme of Kierkegaard). There are strong statements against having or valuing wealth (6:25, 19:21, 19:23), which might be food for thought in the recent UK elections and those putting economic factors as the most important issue. He taught pacifism and non-judgementalism, to the point of “resist not evil” (5:39, 7:1, 26:52), which is contrary to most political systems (and many moral systems). I was amused by the prohibition on public prayer in 6:5-6, which is contrary to national prayer days mooted in the US and in a narrow interpretation, against church going!

There are many instances of Jesus addressing God is a separate entity (7:21, 10:32) and at least once God addressing Jesus as a separate entity (3:17). They don’t seem to share knowledge or their intentions (26:39). There is not much impression of the unity of these two beings. It is also strange that Jesus predicts the world will end within the lifetime of his disciples (16:28, 24:34). History is full of attempts at predicting the end of the world (it probably appeals to human psychology) but predictions have so far ended with egg on face.

The uniqueness of the resurrection might be contrasted by the other instances of rising from the dead in the gospels. This seems to have been a relatively common occurrence (9:24-25,27:52-53). A significant part of the narrative is given over to Jesus curing illnesses. Perhaps this impresses the intended audience of the Bible, but it is not particularly relevant and quite odd give the relative sparseness of the recordings of Jesus’s teachings.

I also noticed two verses saying truth faith can move mountains (17:20, 21:21) which seems at odds with common experience. On one hand Jesus mainly spoke in parables. On the other, he made the claim twice and in both times it was to explain how miracles are be performed. Obviously, this point can only be a criticism to believers of religious miracles based on faith. I mention it because it was raised by Dostoevsky in the Brothers Karamazov. Since we don’t see mountains move in modern times, we can conclude that true faith no longer exists (or decide not to read the Bible this literally).

The motivation of Judas for betraying Jesus is left unstated. It seems rather bizarre considering the circumstances. Imagine if Dostoevsky had written the Bible, it would have been the central issue of the narrative!

Anti Citizen One

I finished Plato’s Republic. It is the first ancient philosophy book I have read first hand. I obviously knew them second hand via Russell and Nietzsche and so on. It is a very different style and it is rather naive compared to the more modest and more obscurantist modern philosophy. It is very inventive and imaginative, I can’t deny Plato made a contribution to philosophy. I certainly was surprised how easy he was to understand! The book features several famous ideas including the parable of the cave and the myth of Er. My appreciation was perhaps through the optics of Popper’s Open Society and Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (and Birth of Tragedy), so it perhaps is unsurprising that Plato fails to impress because of 2500 years of hindsight!

Plato loves the dialectical style, reduction to the absurd and argument from analogy. The frequent use of analogies reminded me of C S Lewis’s style. Perhaps Lewis belongs in the ancient world? The problem with argument from analogy is it is a very circumstantial. As Hume said:

Unless the cases [being compared in the analogy] be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon. (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)

To be sure the analogy is sound, it is necessary to make future tests to verify the properties of one entity is shared with a second. If we have no experience of one of the instances being compared in the analogy, the validity of the analogy is sheer speculation. Plato for instance compares the “true being of things” with the Sun. Since no specific resemblance can be verified, the analogy is no more than an opinion or guess. (This also dispatches the Design Argument.) He also uses false dichotomies several times, which is most annoying. They generally follow the pattern: 1) A or B is true, 2) A is absurd, 3) therefore B. Of course the first step may be invalid…

In another place he seems to accidentally imply his theory of “true being” is simply opinion. He already stated that opinion cannot inform us about the “true being” of things.

[...] in my opinion, that knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can make the soul look upwards,[...] (emphasis mine)

[...] opinion [is] concerned with becoming, and intellect with being [...]

So we might ask, how does Plato know beyond mere “opinion” about his “true” world?

I found other sections amusing, in terms of what propaganda must be fed to the masses, in order to keep them under control. He insists that we must call God absolutely good because it is an effective tool for social control, along with various other ideas. Most of these ideas were directly absorbed into Christianity (by St. Augustine). Consider the well known problem of evil; it is not even an issue if we admit the existence of evil gods? As Popper pointed out, The Republic was intended to be a political manifesto for a Plato headed dictatorship of Athens. Compared to the flak that Machiavelli and Nietzsche get for their ideas having political consequences, the ideas of Plato are far, far, FAR closer to justifying genocide, slavery, racism, propaganda and tyranny. (I know Plato condemns “tyranny” but this only seems to be tyrannies where he is not in control. Be careful of Plato’s words!)

Plato’s attack and planned censorship of the tragic poets (Homer, etc.) was certainly a surprise to me, I did not expect such an open attack on one of the most famous Greek cultural icons. He also attacks democracy. And objectionable types of music. And the equality of humans. For almost everything we associate with the ancient Greeks, Plato wanted to destroy it (to attain a “blank slate” as he calls it) as a starting point for his utopia. This lead to Nietzsche labelling Plato an “anti-Greek” along with the “Socratic equation” (also adopted by Plato), which is allegedly “reason = virtue = happiness”, being called “the weirdest equation ever seen”.

Anyway, fascinating stuff.

Anti Citizen One

PS Plato’s calculation of the unhappiness of tyrants and philosophers is almost a foreshadowed unintentional parody of utilitarianism, IMHO.

I have been recovering from a stomach thing (“the father of all afflictions”). The good news is I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. It was awesome, but certainly not light reading. I had maintained notes of approximately 50 recurring characters! For this literary genre, the length is second only to War and Peace. I mention this book on this philosophy blog as it is a dense philosophical and psychological work. Apart from the many moral situations faced by the characters, they are not afraid to discuss social, spiritual and philosophical issues in depth. Also, it is not obvious to me the author is pushing a particular agenda, although others have dismissed Dostoevsky as merely pushing orthodox christian propaganda. He seems to make a strong case for and against christianity and moral relativism.

The character Alexey (Alyosha) is perhaps the closest to the author’s ideal man, in this work. Prince Myshkin from this earlier book, The Idiot, is perhaps a higher ideal. But both love humanity and the world. Both are deeply religious and principled. They rush around trying to fix everything and usually, tragically fail (is this the author’s ideal!?). Indeed, Myshkin is driven to insanity by his high principles. Alexey keeps his head but is more human and more passionate than Myshkin. He is after all, the son of this father: the “sensualist” Fyodor Karamazov.

Ivan: “It’s a feature of the Karamazovs, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base?”

Alexey’s brother Ivan Karamazov is an intellectual, a strident moral relativist and possibly a strong atheist. His view is: given the rejection of God and an afterlife, the are no laws to say “love thy neighbour”, therefore “everything is lawful”. This brief expression, rather like a sound bite, borders on a false dichotomy, but Ivan (and the author) is smart enough to not over simplify. He is referring to the existential questions raised by the apparent absence of objective morality. When Ivan is attributed with “everything is lawful”, he said it plainer as “But in my wishes I reserved myself full latitude in the case”. Full latitude in this context includes murder or indeed any other action.

Rakitin: “And did you hear his [Ivan's] stupid theory just now: if there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful?”

Ivan also states his parable of “The Grand Inquisitor”, in which Jesus returns to Earth, but is taken from the people by agents of organised religion and told he is now superfluous considering the current aims of the church. The inquisitor recalls the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness and which are metaphorically faced by the church. The church now chooses differently than Jesus’s choices in the biblical story. This amounts to an accusation of the atheism of organised religion. This chapter has been published separately from the rest of the book.

I was interested to read an expression of the eternal return, which just precedes Nietzsche’s statement in The Gay Science (1880 vs 1882). Although they seem to have expressed the same concept, the way the idea is described is strikingly similar. Dostoevsky has Ivan, driven towards insanity by (possibly misplaced) guilt, hallucinating a devil appearing and talking to him. Nietzsche also writes of a demon appearing at night to foretell the eternal return. Nietzsche appears to have discovered Dostoevsky between 1886 and 1888, based on his sudden gushing praise in Twilight of the Idols. Gypsy Scholar thinks they both may have found the idea in Heine.

Devil to Ivan: “Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth — and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious…”

I mention this as the idea is given far higher weight in Nietzsche, being a central theme in Thus Spake Zarathustra. In Karamazov, the world view which Dostoevsky calls by short hand “underground” is touched upon, as Dimitri is faced with the possibility of being sent to Siberia for 20 years (singing hymns to God from underground). This was of course discussed in depth in Notes from Underground, which serves as a sort of preface to his longer masterpieces. I am inclined to think that Smerdyakov is the most underground character in the book, in competition with Rakitin and Ivan, on bad days.

Anti Citizen One

PS The Onion reports on a film adaptation of many peoples experience of the book…

I finished Pullman’s “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” in a few hours reading. It is certainly an original and subtle subversion of institutional religion, even compared to His Dark Materials. I don’t want to spoil the style and plot but I think I can say it is a retelling of the gospel story. It has many slight twists which make it a perfect book for fans of postmodernism. Competition between truth and history is explicitly discussed. Most of the famous stories are included but modified to make them more naturalistic; meaning they occur in a manner that is consistent with everyday experience. There are many references to events and artistic works that have since occurred. I detected hints of the medieval history of the church, Plato, Blake, Kierkegaard (Abraham And Isaac) and perhaps a discrete hint of Monty Python (“Penny for an ex-leper?”).

I was playing with the idea of listing gospel messages that are contrary to mainstream contemporary Christianity. Well, Pullman did it better than I could!

Anti Citizen One

Just some quick notes that I want to brain dump on the is-ought problem. The conclusion of the problem is that prescriptive statements cannot be derived from purely descriptive statements. One way to avoid this issue is to use prescriptive statements as axioms (e.g. you should be good). But this might allow us to posit a axiom “you should be bad” and we would have no a-priori way to prefer one over the other. We might also remember many cultures have the concept of evil spirits and they probably should not be obeyed. So having a divine nature does not necessarily imply human obedience.

A pragmatic approach might be that prescriptive statements are based on psychology and not on rational argument. This would probably be compatible with neuroscience which seems to suggest we confabulate justifications for almost any action. This would not be acceptable to mainstream theists since we need free will and choice to enable “sinners” to be enable them to be held accountable. I only recently heard that some groups believe in a judging God but without people having free will – I have dropped my expectations of them making any sense, naturally.

Anyway, have fun!

Anti Citizen One

Whilst staring at the stars the other day I entered into a reflection about Pascal’s Wager.

The wager in brief posits that reason is insufficient to prove the existence of God and thus provides no rational justification for belief, but this is a problem about the limits of reason, and not a negation of God. In the absence of reason then Pascal suggests that living one’s life as though God exists is possibly infinetely more rewarding (if said God does turn out to exist) as opposed to infinite recriminations if one lived life as though God didn’t exist only to discover that one is wrong.

There is a plethora of criticism attached to Pascal’s Wager from almost every philosophical position regarding God.

I personally think the Wager is often misunderstood or misinterpreted for specific philosophical ends. However the Wager is by its simplicity open to such attacks.

What is the wager? Well it certainly isn’t an attempt to prove the existence of God. God is merely a probability.

It is however two other things (other than an exercise in probability); firstly it is a proto-existential work (and is increasingly identified as such) for it attacks certainty and celebrates choice, secondly it is an ethical proposition, for if we expand the idea of ‘living as though God exists’ then we are making statements about what type of life ‘God’ wants us to live.

The first element is frequently neglected by Pascal’s critics (more of which in a moment). The second element is the main focus of such criticism.

Without going into any great detail the ethical element of the Wager leaves different people (theist and atheist alike) with a bad taste in their mouths. For even though Pascal was rejecting certainty and the role of reason in proving the existence of God, and even though God was reduced to a conceptual possibility, the promise of reward and its inverse the threat of punishment (the main ethical theme of the wager) is de facto heavily loaded with Judaeo-Christian assumptions about the nature and intention of God. However in his rejection of reason there is no attempt to validate or justify these assumptions.

One attempt may be suggested, an ontomystical justification. i.e. revelation. One may say that the assumptions that one has about God are based on revealed messages either personally recieved or generally read in scripture. This justification however collapses under the weight of cultural relativism, why should one revelation (i.e. Judaeo-Christian) be any more valid or acceptable than another (i.e. Hindu)?

The answer of course is that other than through cultural conditioning, there is no reason why one set of revelations should be more relevant than another.

This reflects another criticism of the Wager, that religious belief is not explicitly a conscious choice.

Yet this does not seem to me to completely kill the wager off. All it does is reflect the limitations of it. It is if you like a closed wager, it only works and its conclusions are only valid if one accepts the various underlying assumptions contained within it and just as importantly if one aspires to achieve the most desirable end result.

This last bit, the desire to achieve the most desirable end result smells a lot like utilitarianism and the felicific calculus. (1.How strong is the pleasure? 2. How long will it last? 3. How likely or unlikely will it occur? 4. How soon? 5. How often? 6. Or not. 7. How many will benefit?)

Dawkins in the God Delusion posited an anti-Pascal wager, which goes as follows “Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc.”

It does alas bore me, only because it says nothing that Pascal hadnt actually considered himself. Also the anti-wager again is a closed system, its conclusions work best when one accepts certain assumptions, and its most desirable end result (a better fuller life). Needless to say the latter, the most desirable end result relies upon the assumptions being acceptable in order to be desirable. In Dawkin’s case (without doing a deep analysis) one of the assumptive areas is that God-probability is minimal therefore maximal Godcentric-activity is a disproportionate use/waste of time.

I’m not however an enemy of the anti-wager. The anti-wager works just as well as the wager, as does any number of variations on the God-theme. In fact the wager can probably be rewritten and reformulated in any number of ways if one plays around with the necessary assumptions.

And this diversity is rather good. It reflects the existential character of it that is so often ignored.

It was the Utilitarian character of it that struck me most in my early reflections, or rather its Utilitarian and Hedonistic applications. If one rejects Pascal’s necessary assumptions his wager simply doesnt work (nor is it desirable). And it is quite possible a la Dawkins to formulate a different wager that is based upon a different set of ethical values and assumptions and desirable outcomes.

Whatever way it has no bearing upon the existence or non-existence of God (who remains in the wager game simply a probability). It does however belong to the field of ethics and existentialism and as such is probably worth a lot more attention than it gets.

I was originally going to call this post “Bentham’s Wager” to reflect the Hedonistic alternatives (life’s too short, live life to the full; eat, drink and be merry for tommorow we die; be prepared for you do not know when the hour will come, etc.) But I settled upon calling it Babe Ruth’s wager after the bachannalian and iconic Baseball player, who once when asked to expound upon his philosophy of life, and sport, declared:

“I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

The Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski who rejected his former Marxism and embraced a humanistic rationalism proposed this law of the infinite cornucopia.

Which suggests that for any given doctrine one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which one can support it.

An example given is theology and the bible. For any doctrine a biblical theologian wants to believe there is never any shortage of biblical evidence to support it.

The centre of Kolakowski’s conceptual universe was the individual – a rational and freely acting subject, aware that there is a spiritual side of life, yet eschewing absolute certainty of either an empirical or transcendental sort: “I do not believe that human culture can ever reach a perfect synthesis of its diversified and incompatible components”, he said. “Its very richness is supported by this very incompatibility of its ingredients. And it is the conflict of values, rather than their harmony, that keeps our culture alive.” (extract from the Daily Telegraph Obituary of Kolakowski in 2009)

What role then the philosopher?
It was not the philosopher’s role to deliver the truth, but to “build the spirit of truth” by questioning what appears to be obvious, always suspecting that there might be “another side” to any question. The true philosopher should approach any issue with scepticism and humility: “A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading”, he said.

Comment on previous post: ‘Picky point I guess, but the argument from design makes no reference to “good intentions” – that would be a moral telological argument (a combination of more than one set of assumptions).’

You are right that my point is not well developed in this area but I omitted a full explanation because it is rather verbose with perhaps little reward. The design argument that most people remember is “the universe looks designed therefore designer exists” but this is really only part of the full argument. The more complete statement of the design argument is the Watchmaker Analogy or similar, which is really in the same “family” of arguments as the teleological argument.

To move beyond a superficial application of the Watchmaker Analogy, we must ask “what attributes of object X that makes us think it is designed?”. Often, it is only an argument from ignorance that makes people conclude something was designed (which is a fallacy). But it is more legitimate to consider an argument by analogy and compare the design process (and to remember that “similar causes prove[/imply] similar effects, and similar effects similar causes”). So, a divine designer is compared to a human designer and both share attributes that make the comparison possible – usually the designer wants the designed object to achieve some teleological goal. A potential difficulty is we must be able to determine the “teleological purpose” in a particular object, as a step in the argument before we conclude there is a designer. (Because we must assume a teleological purpose exists, I now notice that we are in danger of circular argument.) My hand waving reference to “good intentions” was a nod to this ill defined set of designer attributes. By a “good” designer, I am also thinking “competent” and “motivated” designer, with less emphasis on the moral aspects. This would probably be clearer with a concrete example, but I have never heard one I liked.

To relate this back to my post on the problem of evil, we again see the difficult in assessing the teleology of things (which itself is a defense against the problem of evil argument). If we start trying to define criteria that may be used to assess teleological purposes, we are forced to start making assumptions on the designer (e.g. a motive) which may be without basis, particular in context of the design argument. (Random thought: what if the designer wished to create a universe that appeared to have no designer? Can we a priori know a designers attributes?)

Since I am rambling on about the design argument, Hume also raises a further objection in making an analogy between human process and divine process, due to us having no a posteriori knowledge of the latter (at least within this argument).

“That all inferences, CLEANTHES, concerning fact, are founded on experience; and that all experimental reasonings are founded on the supposition that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar effects similar causes; I shall not at present much dispute with you. But observe, I entreat you, with what extreme caution all just reasoners proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases. Unless the cases be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon. Every alteration of circumstances occasions a doubt concerning the event; and it requires new experiments to prove certainly, that the new circumstances are of no moment or importance.”

“To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite that we had experience of the origin of worlds; and it is not sufficient, surely, that we have seen ships and cities arise from human art and contrivance.” Dialogues concerning Natural Religion

The point being that we can only draw analogies between things that we have previously experienced and analogies are merely inductive in nature.

And I will one day have to destroy the concept of “irreducibly complexity”, I have a good rebuttal in my head. Hint: are natural process always additive?

Anti Citizen One

PS The BBC just did a piece on the problem of evil.