Our strong intuition
What is ‘God’? Nicholas Beale offers one answer:
On the loving bit, philosophically I’m inclined to offer “Loving Ultimate Creator” as a defintion of God. That is clearly fundamental to Christianity and I think broadly consonant with Islam & Judaism. It offers a philosophical explanations for Anthropic Fine-tuning the intelligibility of the universe, the existence of objective morality and beauty, and our strong intuition that love is the most important and fundamental aspect of the universe.
Whose strong intuition that love is the most important and fundamental aspect of the universe? Who is the we in that ‘our’? Beale and Polkinghorne? Theists? Human beings in general?
I don’t know, but I know I have no such intuition. My intuition would be more that love is not an aspect of the universe at all, but rather an aspect of animal mental life. Yeah in a trivial sense that makes it an aspect of the universe, because that’s where it’s located, but the most important and fundamental aspect? No. Maybe Beale just means that as a grandiose way of saying important and fundamental to human beings…but that’s not clear.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks “fine-tuning” requires an explanation. It’s like a lottery winner saying “what are the chances would it would have been ME?!”
The only thing that requires an explanation is the rampant ego-centrism of people who go on about fine-tuning.
Even the notion that the tuning is so fine assumes our knowledge of physics to be much more comprehensive than we have any right to claim. For all we know, there might be some as-yet-undiscovered properties of matter such that it’s inevitable that every 15th star will have a planet that develops life on it.
Oh, thank you Jakob!
I can’t understand the point either, but everyone seems to take it very seriously. Indeed, I have heard Dawkins, in a debate or discussion, remarking that, if the cosmological constants are very fine-tuned, there would be something remarkable about that. And that’s just what I don’t understand. Here we are, so the constants, whatever they are, had to allow us, however fine tuned they are!
As to Nicholas Beale, I agree Ophelia. This is incredible. How can one so easily move from, “Philosophically this is a definition consonant with Judaism, Islam and Christianity”, to an explanation for the so-called fine-tuning of the universe? How love gets thrown in here – I mean, has he read the bible and the qu’ran?!, or computed the sum of suffering in the world at any given instant?! – is quite beyond me. Has love been a characteristic feature of theocracy (which it should be if there is LUC, and theocrats, by definition, surely, are seeking to do the LUC’s will)?
No, love is quite clearly a characteristic of the mental life of animals, and rather faltering at that. Love is not a dominant characteristic of anything that I know. Nor should all life be considered a gift, as the fine-tuning argument would suggest. There is something worryingly egocentric about this argument, as Jakob points out.
Ah, theology – where one always starts with one’s desired preconceived conclusion and trims the evidence and reasoning to fit. In reference to the X-Phi article & thread, I wonder if a brain scan of a theologian in the midst of such rapturous rationalizing would be roughly identical to, say, a Cato or Heritage institute “scholar” composing yet another free market fundamentalism position paper. I have my suspicions about what such an experiment might reveal…
No doubt G, the more approriate scan technique would be sonar, as used by bats and dolphins for detecting tiny food elements in large empty spaces.
G.Thats not realy a fair comparison Cato or Heritage papers are at least based on evidence?
Richard,
G’s point is that their conclusions have nothing to do with the purported evidence. Cato and Heritage are engaged in the same exercise as theists – casting around for excuses to support their pre-determined conclusions.
It’s this idea that God “offers an explanation” of anything that I find troubling. The universe exists “because of God”; human beings exist “because of God”. Sure, it (arguably) offers *an* explanation, but not a *good* one. You may as well answer the question “Why does my microwave heat things up?” with “because of God”. It’s just not a good explanation.
“Whose strong intuition that love is the most important and fundamental aspect of the universe?”
Someone with daddy issues usually in my experience.
No, I don’t see love as a fundamental aspect of the universe nor as very common in human relations. However, if you listen to enough pop music, you’ll find the idea that love makes the world go round. As I recall, Dante had the same opinion.
The influence of half-remembered reading of Teilhard de Chardin in their youth perhaps?
Nicholas Beale is saying some remarkably odd things over there.
Yes Indeed! What else would you really expect from a lay oblate brother belonging to an Anglican (Benedictine) order in Alton Abbey, Hampshire, UK?
By the time he has finished the interesting discussion over at the blog talkingphilosophy.com he will be thinking of hopefully converting you to becoming a Companion of Our Lady and Saint John?!?
I guess I would expect something different from someone who ventured onto a philosophy blog. Mea culpa.
I think the idea behind the book, “Questions of Truth” is indeed brilliant.
http://www.questionsoftruth.org/authors/
Jeremy and OB could do a book composed of distinctly diverse elements. Just a thought.
Thank you Marie-Therese. I’ve just glanced at the questionoftruth site. What an extraordinarily strange place. Like stepping through the looking glass. Take this, from the foreward:
No we shouldn’t! What on earth is the connexion here? One is posited in equations and confirmed in evidence, the other is dreamed of in myths and described in unreliable texts. What on earth could have led anyone to make such extraordinary claims?
Do not mention it, Eric.
I say, whatever about trying to convert OB to becoming a Companion of Our Lady and Saint John. I am sure Dom Nicholas’s (of Alton Abbey) writings on Jane Austen would be to her most welcome and pleasing.
I reached great heights in Alton – but that was only in the towers!!!
What about this,
“commendably clear those who would most benefit from reading it are fundamentalists and atheists who believe that the religious are manifestly irrational” FT
Blimey, you surely have to hand it to them – as they know how to pull good punch, right?
Smack! Wallop! Phew!
LOVE? For my money the best anthropomorphic description I ever read of the universe depicted it as a giant gastro-intestinal tract.
Brian
The days of ignoramuses drawing to a close? The debate on talkingphilosophy continues to be lively. 80 responses to Julian’s article to date. It will be interesting to meet him on Tuesday. One of the interlocutors, who teaches philosophy at Southern Methodist University (!!) admits that he does not seriously consider the possibility that Christianity is true, comparing it to “roundsquareism”.
He thinks that JK is a man, that is laughable!!
It would be if one were in France, I guess.
“…our strong intuition that love is the most important and fundamental aspect of the universe”
“The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is non-intuitive”
I wish they’d make up their minds…
“Love is the most important and fundamental aspect of the universe”? I don’t know what that means. Whose love, and for whom? And fundamental how?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the people who say things like this are groping for words to describe a real and important human feeling (the sort of feeling people get when awed by some natural beauty or some really great work of art), but I wish they’d be more coherent about it.
Some people who say things like this are groping for words to describe a real and important human feeling, but Nicholas Beale isn’t one of those; he is using words to pseudo-justify his existing beliefs.
And then, I don’t really see why groping is necessary, or at least such wild groping as that. I don’t see why people can’t talk about that real and important human feeling without confusing it with the universe.
This is the “creepy uncle” definition of God. ;-)