A Kierkegaard Quote

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

Soren Kierkegaard 

Notes on Dreadful Freedom

(Originally Written October 22, 2009 in The Journal)

OK Ashley, you've heard my sob stories about loneliness and depression and this new unrequited love. You've heard of the destruction of my body, the breaking of my heart and the crushing of my soul. But now let's witness my glory - my mind. How about some philosophy.

Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene

Chapter 1 - Why existentialism

Existentialists insist on their essential optimism that man makes himself.

Existentialism in a sense is a reaction against the speculative idealism of Hegel.

Existentialism comes from Kierkegaard's phrase "existential dialectic".

In existentialism, existence is prior to essence. This means that the consciousness of one's own soul comes before anything else becomes clear.

Existentialism revolts against system building and focuses on more pressing human concerns.

The relation of cause to effect is measured by the efficacy of an act.

The relation of cause and effect is indistinguishable from means and end.

Sartre and Dewey (pragmatists) criticize philosophies of the past for stabilizing the norms that kept ruling parties in power.

Pragmatism and existentialism are similar in aim at first glance.

Sartre resets values from past to future. The past value is an emphasis on the bourgeois privilege whereas if values are set with the future in mind it leads to revolution.

Pragmatism fails though because fact cannot produce value. Science cannot distinguish between good and evil.

Value for Sartre lies between the way things are and the way things ought to be. The success of man (and failure) lies between the thing as it is and the thing as it should be.

The perception between the way things are and the way they should be is the fundamental insight of existential philosophy.

Values are created solely by the acts of man. What they take as good or bad, beautiful or ugly in their quest to give meaning to a meaningless world.

Positivistic ethics aims at being descriptive not normative.

As in Kantian ethics, existentialists claim there is no good or evil apart from will and there is no will without freedom.

Existentialism does not derive values from mere facts.

Some existentialists demand a return to faith in the Christian God as a necessary way out of our present moral chaos (Marcel & Kierkegaard).

Atheistic existentialists however claim that the return to the Christian God is removing the freedom of man and basing values once again on facts, though these facts are not sense-data but cosmic in origin.

Chapter 2: Soren Kierkegaard: The self against the system

The aim of Kierkegaard, his one problem was: to find out where the misunderstanding lies between speculation and Christianity.

Kierkegaard believed that the misunderstanding had its roots in the nature of personal existence.

Kierkegaard's work has a slight anti-scientific tone but it is really a revolt against Hegelian speculation.

Camus had a very strong anti-scientific tone.

Kierkegaard worries that by focusing on physiology and explaining the whole man in its scope will cause man to lose sight of the important field of ethics.

Kierkegaard argues that the system in never capable of explaining existence until it is complete and thus becoming timeless. Existence as it is happening is never complete and thus, the system is incapable of explaining existence.

Kierkegaard criticizes the systematizers by claiming that they build a palace to live next door in the barn.

The system builders acquire far flung knowledge and ignore the simple understanding of one's self, which is the only important understand.

The system, in its grandeur is deceiving. It uses wordy logical fallacies to appear logical.

Kierkegaard does not propound an orthodox form of Christianity. He denies any "objective truth of Christianity", instead stating the whole problem for every serious Christian is their own path to faith.

Kierkegaard focuses on the inwardness of the subjective journey of the one real entity (the individual) to the infinite being, known by faith.

Kierkegaard turns from the impersonal and trivial truths (though consistent) to the passionate truth realized only subjectively and meaningful. This truth is meaningful because it is contradictory.

By embracing total subjectivity, Kierkegaard renounced all abstraction and left only contradiction and paradox. Since abstraction is gone one cannot transfer through words one's experience to another. paradox is the only way and this is indirect communication.

Philosophy for Kierkegaard, like Kant is focused on the question, what is man? It deals with human problems, not the essence of cosmic reality.

Kierkegaard relies heavily on Plato, not Neo-Platonism, but the Dialogues themselves.

Kierkegaard states we live, or ought to live, in the awareness that here and now may be our last moment.

Existentialism focuses on the contingency of life.

Existentialism pays close attention to the meaninglessness that continually underlies the significance in human life.

A Reading List

(Originally Written April 1, 2009 in the Journal)

Books to Explore

Viking History
Heimskringla (History of the Kings of Norway) - Snorri Sturluson

Voltaire
The Fables of Reason: A study of Voltaire's contes philosophiques - Roger Pearson
La Religion de Voltaire - Rene Pomeau
D'Arouet a Voltaire- Rene Pomeau
Voltaire & English Literature, Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century
Voltaire en toutes lettres
Voltaire: A biography - Haydn Mason
Voltaire - Haydn Mason
Voltaire dans ses Contes - Jacques Van den Heuvel
Disabled Powers: A Reading of Voltaire's Contes - Robin Howells
Complete Works (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation) - Voltaire

Existentialism

Soren Kierkegaard
Jean-Paul Sartre
Martin Heidegger
Karl Jaspers
Paul Tillich

Other Books

Personal Knowledge - Michael Polanyi
Lectures on the Religious Thought of S. Kierkegaard - E.O. Geisman
Kierkegaard - Walter Lowrie
A Short Life of Kierkegaard - Walter Lowrie
Something about Kierkegaard - David Swanson
What is Existentialism - William Barrett
An Introduction to contemporary German Philosophy - Werner Brock
Existentialism - Guido Ruggiero
The Future of Mankind - Karl Jaspers

Notes on Sisyphus (The Myth of Sisyphus)

(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Sisyphus is an absurd hero. He has contempt for the gods and a passion for life.

His punishment was eternal labor to a futile end. "This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth" (Camus).

Sisyphus had to push a rock up a hill only to have the rock roll back down when it reached the top. Camus admires Sisyphus on the way down the hill. He leaves the heights and goes back to the valley. He marches to his torment and in that moment, he is stronger than his rock.

The walk to the rock from the top is his conscious moment. To be conscious is to overcome the torment.

Scorn your fate and you overcome the depth of it.

The absurd man is the master of his days.

Appendix

(Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka)

The human heart only labels as fate that which crushes it.

It is through humility that hope enters in. (These are detestable to Camus. The philosophers who leap by deifying the absurd, i.e. Kierkegaard, Kafka, or Chestov).

To the philosophers like Kierkegaard, Kafka and Chestov the absurd of their existence assures them of a supernatural reality. The absurd leads them to God.

The Absurd man seeks what is true, not what is universal

Notes on the Absurd Creation (The Myth of Sisyphus)

(Originally written October 13, 2008 in the Journal)

Notes on Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus

Absurd Creation

To create is to live doubly. They know to begin with and work to enrich and enlarge through examination of what they know.

The absurd man concerns himself with experiencing and describing - not explaining and solving.

Does the Christian explain and solve? Does he do this as an apologist or as a believer? Or does the Christian resolve the conflict through faith (creating a paradox out of an inconsistency) and merely experience and describe?

The universe is attractive, not for its depth but for its diversity (quantity not quality). Explanation is futile, but sensation (experience) remains.

"The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded, it is false... the artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work" (Camus)

"The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete" (Camus)

Art is carnal.

Thought provokes art but the creation of art is the repudiation of the provoking thought.

Art cannot be the end, the meaning, or the consolation of life.

Art is bad when it tries to explain existence in total. Art is good when it is a slice of experience.

"If the world were clear, art would not exist" and "expression begins where thought ends".

To think is to create a world (or to limit one's world, which is the same thing)

Camus desires to liberate his universe of phantoms and focus on flesh-and-blood truths, of which he cannot deny (This sounds a bit Cartesian).

The heart of man is full of stubborn hope.

Kirilov

In Dostoevsky, existence is either illusionary or eternal.

Dostoevsky is convinced that life is an utter absurdity for anyone without faith in immortality.

The independence which Kirilov gains (Dostoevsky's The Possessed) is the independence of serving God, of being god himself - this is a painful independence for him.

Ivan Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov), like the great assassain of God, Nietzsche end their lives in madness. Camus praises this: "But this is a risk worth running, and faced with such tragic ends, the essential impulse of the absurd mind is to ask - what does that prove?" (Camus).

All is well, everything is permitted, nothing is hateful, dreadful freedom - these are the mantras of the absurd mind.

Dostoevsky, like Kierkegaard, follows out the absurd logic only to metaphysically reverse at the end (there is a God, necessarily). Thus, hope in the eternal, an abandonment of the temporal.

Dostoevsky's works deal with the absurd problem, but are not absurd works. His works offer a reply (the leap); whereas, true absurd works offer descriptions, not replies.

"It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life" (Camus). [What? Who? This is a contradiction. The entire thrust of Christianity is the eternal life].

Ephemeral creation

The art and artist are inseparable. The entire body of work by the artist is his one creation. Each piece complements, chastises, or corrects one another. (Experience is emphasized in this, a lifetime of experience infused in a lifetime of work).

"From death, for instance, they (the art) derive their definitive significance. At the moment of death, the succession of his works is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own conditions to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses" (Camus).

Art finds its importance in the demands it makes on the creator and the opportunity it affords him of getting closer to his naked self.

Diversity is the home of art.

There is no barrier between being and appearing.

The illusion of another world binds man; hope binds man.

Notes on An Absurd Reasoning & Absurd Freedom (The Myth of Sisyphus)

(Originally Written October 10, 2008 in the Journal)

Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays

Myth of Sisyphus

An Absurd Reasoning

"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)

This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?

Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.

The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.

The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.

Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.

The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).

The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.

The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).

Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.

The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.

Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).

So Camus' way is thus:

1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
  - There is no hope
  - There is continual rejection
  - We must be dissatisfied

The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.

The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.

The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.

Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.

The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.

Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.

Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.

Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.

Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".

The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.

Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.

The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).

Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.

The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.

Absurd Freedom

What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.

One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).

The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.

The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.

Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.

Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.

The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.

Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.

To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.

Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.

The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.

The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/

Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)

Notes Theistic Proofs, Teleological emphasis

(Originally written March 5, 2007 in Book 13)

It seems implausible that all religious people have been deceived completely. The existence of a Transcendent God is more plausible than a completely skeptical outlook on life.

"It seems much more likely that such self-analyzing and self-critical men as Augustine, Blaise Pascal and Kierkegaard were not totally deceived than that total skepticism is right. Unless it is true that no person in the history of the world has ever really been truly critical of his religious experience, then it follows that the reality of God has been critically established from human experience" (76).

Part 2: God & Reason

5 The Function of Theistic Proofs

Most theists are not satisfied with proving God's existence on experience alone. They went to establish rational proofs.

The Modern attitude toward proofs for God

Since the time of Plato, philosophers have offered proofs for the existence of God.

There are four basic categories of theistic proofs:
1) Teleological - argument from telos (design or purpose)
2) Cosmological (aetiological) arguments from causation
3) Ontological - argument from onto (being)
4) Moral - argument from morality

Peter Koëstenbaum stated that theistic proofs are "logically invalid, epistemologically defective and axiologically misplaced" (80).

Proofs are Psychologically Unconvincing

Rational proofs are generally unpersuasive to non-believers.

Some argue that the mystical theology, not rational theology is the draw for religion. William James thought this was so because human needs are deeper than the rational.

"Psychological persuasion precedes rational demonstration" (81).

Proofs are logically invalid

If God does not appear in any of the premises he cannot appear in the conclusion because a conclusion cannot be broader than the premises.

Also, if God appears in the premises than the argument begs the question.

Proofs are Epistemologically Defective

This argument holds that even if God exists we cannot rationally know that he exists.

Kant held that we can only know the thing as it appears to us and not the thing in and of itself.

Proofs are ontologically inadequate

This argues that what is rationally inescapable may not be real. We may be able to devise a rational argument for there existence of God, but that does not mean God exists.

The inescapability of a rational argument is based on the principle of non-contradiction but the principle of non-contradiction, while being rationally inescapable has not been proven to be necessarily true.

Proofs are Axiologically Misplaced

The proof for the existence of God should not be the prime importance of one's religious experience.

Relating to the Modern Attitude Toward Proofs

Modern criticism are of value to theists today, but should not warrant a retreat to fideism.

Proof or Persuasion?

If people are never persuaded by proof then there is not intellectual integrity in the world.

While a rational proof may not play as crucial a role as Rene Descartes held it to, it does not follow that it plays no role at all. Even if if were true that people always believed in God apart from evidence, it does not follow that they believed against the evidence.

A proof for God, if it is successful, leads only to the belief that there is a God, not necessarily a belief in that God.

Disbelief does not always indicate disbelief.

Why do some great minds reject theistic proofs?

1) Some atheists accept no kinds of proof.
2) Some do not allow the types of arguments for God that they allow elsewhere.
3) Some choose not to commit themselves to God despite the evidence.

A lack of persuasion by a theistic proof is not necessarily a fault of that proof, it is a result of a personal choice.

Proofs and logical validity

A formal invalidity of a single proof does not mean all proofs are invalid.

Even if no one has stated a formally valid proof yet, it does not follow that one won't ever be stated.

Logical validity is not purely objective.

Not all rationally acceptable demonstration need to be valid deductions.

Are all Theistic Proofs Epistemologically Defective?

Kant's objections are rested on the unfounded assumption that all true knowledge is modeled after the empirical/mathematical knowledge of Newtonian science.

Kant's consistent agnosticism is not livable because it is self-defeating.

The dichotomy between phenomena and noumena is an unfounded assumption.

Each argument or theistic proof must be examined on its own grounds. One cannot reject all theistic proofs a priori.

Is the Rationally Inescapable Real?

Admitting that theistic proofs are rationally inescapable would be a triumph for theism. Because if theism is rational than atheism is irrational.

People believe that reality is rational and to deny that a rational argument is valid, but not real is to state that a reality is not rational.

To deny that rational is real is to deny that logic or reason has any place in reality.

To state that logic does not apply to reality is self-defeating.

Are proofs Axiologically Misplaced?

Proofs can play a practical and a critical role.

Theoretical proofs should not be used to replace immediate help for immediate needs, but immediate needs should not eliminate theoretical proofs altogether.

6. Theological and Moral Arguments

4 Kinds of attempts to prove the existence of God:
1) Teleological
2) Moral
3) Ontological
4) Cosmological

Teleological Proofs and Problems

The teleological argument in a nutshell is this: the apparent design of the universe is evidence of an intelligent architect

Paley's Watchmaker

William Paley (1743-1805), the archdeacon of Carlisle, gave one of the most popular forms of the teleological argument: Paley argued that if one were to come across a watch in an empty field one would rightly conclude that it had a maker because of its design. The world is even more complexly designed; thus, there must be a world maker.

Cleanthes' Greater Machine Maker

In Hume's 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' the theist Clenches offers this teleological argument:

1) All design implies a designer
2) Great design implies a great designer
3) There is great design in the world (like that of a great machine)
4) Therefore, there must be a great Designer of the world

Cleanthes' argument extends beyond Paley's in four ways:
1) He uses other illustrations of design (human eye, male-flame relation, a book, and a voice from Heaven)
2) Makes it clear that the teleological argument is an argument from analogy and that like effects have like causes
3) Denies that chance could cause a voice from heaven
4) Insists that irregularities in nature do not detract from the argument

Mill's objection to the Watchmaker's Argument

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) objected to Paley's argument and then posited one he considered better.

Mill weakened Paley's argument but did not destroy it.

He argued that Paley's argument is built on an analogy. He stated that analogy is weak when there are dissimilarities. Also there is a significant difference between a watch and the world. Thus, Paley's argument is weak.

Mill built his argument on his "method of agreement".

Mill's argument:
1) There is an amazing concurrence of many diverse elements in a human eye.
2) It is impossible that random selection brought this concurrence.
3) The method of agreement argues for a common cause of the eye.
4) The cause was a final (purposing) cause, not an efficient (producing) cause

Mill admitted that if evolution were true, then this argument would be weak.

Hackett's rejoinder on Analogy

Stuart C. Hackett argues:
1) All composites that involve the relation of complex means so as to produce a significant result are composites of whose cause purposive intelligence is an indispensable aspect.
2) The space-time universe is a composite in which complex means are so heated as to produce significant results.
3) Therefore, the space-time universe is a composite of whose cause purposive intelligence is an indispensable aspect.

Alvin Plantinga, while not a proponent of the teleological argument points out that criticism of analogy principles is not as strong as it appears to be.

Russell's Evolutionary Disproof

Bertrand Russell offered a disproof of the teleological argument from evolution:
1) The adaptation of means to end in the world is either the result of evolution or else the result of design.
2) This adaptation is the result of evolution.
3) Therefore, this adaptation is not the result of design.

Russell's argument does not disprove the teleological argument. It (at best) forces a modification because:

1) There is no logical reason why adaptation cannot be the result of both evolution and design.
2) Natural selection has not been shown to fully account for all adaptation.

Hume's Skeptical Alternatives to Teleology

Hume stated that if the world were designed that the design would be either:
1) Different from human designs
2) Finite, since the effect is fine
3) Imperfect, because there are imperfection in nature
4) Multiple
5) Male and female because males and females generate this way
6) Anthropomorphic

Or that there is no design

1) The apparent order in the world arose via chance

Alvin Plantinga agrees with Hume's criticism of the teleological argument stating that there may exist a "smidgin of evidence" for design, but that one ought not infer designer from a minute amount of evidence.

Since the time of Hume a teleological theist must show that both the teleological argument woks and that disproofs of teleological arguments are wrong. (It must show that God exists and that the world did not arise from chance).

Taylor's Anticipatory Design

A.E. Taylor hoped to account for evolutionary and chance alternatives with his argument. His argument states:

1. Nature reveals an anticipatory order; it plans for its own preservation.
2. Nature's advanced planning cannot be accounted for by physical laws alone.
3. Mind or intelligence is the only known condition that can remove these improbabilities against life emerging despite these improbabilities.
4. The mind or intelligence that explains anticipatory adaptations cannot be explained as a result of evolution.
5. Darwinian natural selection cannot explain the advance planning evident in nature.

Clark: Design and Thermodynamics

R.E.D. Clark argues against chance by using the second law of thermodynamics

1. Whatever had a beginning had a beginner
2. The Universe had a beginning (as evidenced by the second law of thermodynamics)
3. Therefore, the universe had a beginner who is intelligent and moral.

Intelligence and morality imply personality, thus the Beginner must be personal.

The New Teleological argument:

1) The Universe resulted from either design or chance
2) It is highly improbable it resulted from chance
3) Therefore, it is highly probable it resulted from design.

A loophole in the Argument Against Chance

There is an immensely small probability that the universe happened solely by chance. But, this is an a priori notion. In actual fact, which is a posteriori, it may have occurred by chance despite the remoteness of that chance.

Julian Huxley, a defender of evolution estimated that the odds against evolution were 3 million zeros (15 pages of zeros) to one. Huxley argued that natural selection was the process of overcoming these odds.

Tennant: Filling in the Loophole of chance

One argument against the teleological argument is that the design in the knowable universe may be only temporary and fragmentary.

F.R. Tennant admits that this is a possibility, but only a highly improbable one.

Tennant states that:
1) Mere possibilities of the unknown or unknowable world cannot be used to refute the probabilities within the knowable world
2) There is no evidence to support that the thesis that the knowable world is a lie to the unknowable world
3) The knowable universe is interwoven and interdependent with the unknown universe
4) Thermodynamics shows complexity; random development to be unlikely
5) Chance rearranging of matter cannot explain mind or intelligence
6) The qualitative greatness of human values outweighs the quantitative immensity of the unknowable world

Kant: Ontological defects in the Teleological Argument

Kant rather than offering a disproof for God or completely disregarding the teleological argument, insisted that it was inconclusive.

He stated that we cannot move from experience of design to the idea of an absolutely perfect and necessary being.

The teleological argument does not provide evidence for a creator, but indicates an architect.

The argument yields the highest cause, but is not a sufficient basis for religion. The sap from the highest actual cause indicated by experience to the highest possible cause demanded by pure reason is an unjustifiable ontological leap.

Ducasse: Cosmological Problems in the Teleological Argument

C.J. Ducasse claims that the teleological argument suffers from a number of defects:
1) It does not prove a perfect creator (evil, waste and disease show a lack of purpose)
2) Designers can be inferior to what they design
3) The teleological argument has the same defects the cosmological argument was:
-If the world needs a designer, then so does that designer (ad infinitum)
-If everything is caused, there can be no first cause

Ducasse offers this in replace of the teleological argument:

1) The most economical explanation is probably the correct one
2) The world is more economically explained by a purposeless craving within man than by some intelligence beyond the world
3) Therefore, it is more probable that the world is the result of purposeless craving than of intelligent design

This argument is lacking in several ways:
1) The principle of economy may not be appropriately applied to the cause of the universe
2) Assuming that the best cause will come from within the universe, but not from beyond it begs the question
3) How is a purposeless craving a more economical explanation than that of a God?
4) How can a purposeless craving result in purposeful activity?

The teleological argument is not definitive as it stands, but it does:
1) Make it probable (not certain) that some kind of intelligence is behind the design of the world (chance is possible, but not probable)
2) Favor the unity of this cause
3) Not demand that the cause be absolutely perfect
4) Does not ipso facto explain the presence of evil and disorder in the world?
5) Is dependent on the cosmological and moral arguments to establish these other aspects of a theistic God
6) Is really a causal argument from effect to cause, only it argues from the intelligence nature of the effect to an intelligent one.

The teleological argument depends on the cosmological argument in that it borrows the principle of causality.

Reality and the Existential Need for God

(Originally written March 1, 2007 in Book 13)

Philosophy of Religion
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan

The Meaning of Reality

"Reality is more than a subjective condition of human experience" (64).

In dealing with religious experience it seems there is no surefire way of separating the hallucinatory from the real.

There is always the possibility that one's supposed religious experience is actually explainable by purely psychological phenomena.

All experience is subjective, hence religious experience is subjective.

"Religious transcendence must be more than a subjective condition in religious experience before it should be called 'real'" (64).

Reality is more than merely a projection of human imagination.

Religious transcendence is not real if it is merely a projection of human nature.

Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was really a projection of humanity's ideal man.

Karl Marx believed that religion was a projection of man's hope for the superman in heaven.

Reality is more than an object of wish-fulfillment.

Freud believed religion is an illusion, not in the sense that God is not real, but that it came about from man's wish that there be a God.

Reality is more than a subconscious force in human experience.

Carl Gustav Jung called the collective subconscious the real, but this is insufficient.

"Reality means to have an independent existence"

Transcendence, in order to be real, must exist outside of the mind of those who conceive it and must exist outside of the experiences of the people who experience it.

"Reality means to have an objective existence" (67).

Objective existence means to exist in and of itself, independently of other things.

The Need For Verification

Deception and illusion are possible so there must be some means of determinism whether there is a basis in reality for religious experience.

Kierkegaard held that the need to give evidence for God is evidence of one's choice to reject God.

Kierkegaard believed verifying God's existence was ridiculous,: "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it". (68).

Kierkegaard held that in order to offer a proof for God's existence one must presuppose that God exists.

He believed that faith, not reason, brings one to God.

Alvin Plantinga echoes Kierkegaard in stating that a belief in God is "properly basic".

Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one needn't require verification; i.e. "I exist" or "there is a past".

There is a difference between the basis for believing that there is a God and the basis for believing in God.

"One needs evidence to know that there is a God, but one needs faith to commit oneself to the God that the evidence indicates is really there" (68).

Verifying the Reality of Religious Experience

People sense a basic need for God and this is the beginning of religious experience.

Theists and atheists alike have a feeling of dependence and a sense of contingency. But, is there really a God to fulfill the need people sense?

The Need for the Transcendent

Freud analyzed the human need for religion as a purely psychological need.

Religion was an infantile neurosis of mankind for Freud.

The Sense of Absolute Dependence

Freud did not deny the validity of people having religious experience.

"Science can never overcome a human's finitude or sense of cosmic contingency" (70).

Friedrich Schleiermacher takes the sense of cosmic need as the essence of religion.

A feeling of absolute dependence is a religious experience.

There is a need for the Transcendent because of the feeling of absolute contingency.

People sense a need for some Transcendence, whether or not it is really there.

Humanity's Being Unto Death

Martin Heidegger characterized human life as "being-unto-death".

Fear of death or nothingness is the anxiety of all man.

"I am, but I need not be and will not be" (70).

Asking about why one is are evidence of human ontological dependency.

Paul Tillich held that finite beings are ungrounded and must search for grounding, an ultimate grounding.

Does the need for God as ontological grounding of one's being imply that there is really such a grounding?

The Existential Need for God

Jean-Paul Sartre said he needed religion, he needed God and "Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself" (71).

Sartre maintained that humans have more than a psychological need for God. Sartre held that humans have an existential need for God.

Essay Idea: Needs for God
-Psychological
-Existential
-Ontological
-Religiou
-etc.

Sartre held that "To be man means to reach toward being God" (71).

Man is seeking to be self-determined and self-caused.

The existence of a person cries out to God to give it definition and essence.

Sartre held that while this is man's need and goal, the whole concept is absurd. How can man transcend himself to discover himself?

The need for God is a fundamental, existential need, even if there is no God to fulfill this need.

God and Experience

(Originally written February 27, 2007 in Book 13)

Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Eugene, OR 2003

Part 1 - God and Experience

1. The Nature of Religious Experience

"Religion is an experiential issue, not a merely intellectual one" (Geisler, 13).

The Meaning of Experience

Experience is the awareness of a subject that individuals have.

Experience can be viewed two ways:
1) Generally
2) Specifically

General experience is the totality of consciousness.

Specific experience is the experience of a certain event in one's life.

Experience in general is the basis for particular experiences.

Primary awareness is the most basic level of experience. It's the basic unreflective consciousness of an individual.

Secondary awareness is the consciousness of being conscious. Remembering, reflecting, relating and reasoning occur in secondary awareness.

Secondary awareness presupposes primary and awareness.

The Meaning of Religion

Religion is difficult to define in a universally accepted way.

By using Wittgenstein's notion of "family resemblance", philosophers of religion can state that no two religions have identical characteristics, but all religions exhibit typical characteristics to some degree.

Awareness of the Transcendent is usually included in most definitions of religion.

There are at least two senses in which religious experience involves transcendence:
1) Self-Transcendence: the process of overcoming the conditions of one's finitude
2) The Transcendent: the object of religious experience

The Christian God is one form of the Transcendent. The two terms are not equivalent.

Transcendent means two things:
1) Going beyond one's immediate consciousness while is somehow always known to be there.
2) Religious transcendent is the ultimate, that which is Beyond beyond where no more beyonds can be sought for.

Religious Experience Distinguished from other experiences

Religious experience is often closely associated with three other types of experience:
1) Moral
2) Aesthetic
3) Secular

Religious experience in contrast to moral experience

Some equate religious experience and moral experience. Kant defined religion as "the recognition of all duties as divine commands".

Soren Kierkegaard drew the sharpest distinction between a moral duty and a religious duty. Moral duties express one's universal duty, but that religious duties hold the individual as a particular as higher than the universal. Basically Kierkegaard claimed that a moral experience responds to a moral law, whereas a religious experience responds to the moral Law-giver.

Morality is a responsibility to the world; religion is a responsibility to beyond the world. "Morality tells a person what he ought to do; religion can help him do it" (20).

A religious experience has a broader scope of commitment, the commitment is different in kind, the object is higher, and its object has the power to overcome and unify.

"Morality is a matter of duty; religion is a matter also of desire" (21).

Moral mistakes can be overcome by religious experience.

Religious Experience in contrast to Aesthetic Experience

Schleiermacher states that science is speculative, art is practical and religion is intuitive.

Kierkegaard views the aesthetic, moral and religious as three dimensions of one's life:
Aesthetic - level of feeling
Ethical - level of deciding
Religious - level of existing

Aesthetic is simply knowing, religion is what one chooses to live.

"Aesthetics involves a sense of wonder and amazement; religion involves a sense of worship and adoration" (24).

The religious experience experiences what is ultimate; the aesthetic experience, regardless of how profound, is not ultimate.

Religious Experience in contrast to purely secular experience

There is a difference between humanistic and secular experience.

Humanistic experience can still be an experience of that which is transcendent.

"The fact that purely secular experiences are difficult to find is testimony to how incurably religious man is" (25).

That which is unable or unwilling to transcend in any direction is non-religious.

The transcendent is difficult to find, so some have given up the search. Others are completely unwilling to search for it.

Some refuse to commit to the Transcendent because they wish to honor themselves as the ultimate.

There are two ways in which a person can be irreligious or purely humanistic:
1) He is unable to see the Transcendent
2) He is unwilling to submit to it

The universality and reality of religious experience

Few, if any, have attained a state of complete secularism. "Most secular experience is quasi religious" (26)

Human kind as a whole has been religious. "To be human means to reach toward God" (27).

"The mere universality of religious experience is by no means a guarantee of its reality or a sure indication of its unreality" (27).

Can we demonstrate the existence of God?

(Originally written February 20, 2007 in Book 13)

Can we demonstrate the existence of God?

Objections

1) Can never demonstrate an infinite cause from a finite effect.
2) God's existence is known through faith. Reason cannot prove matters of faith.
3) Even a demonstration that's logically valid may not correspond to reality.
4) We are limited by being enclosed in a finite universe, which we cannot escape. God exists outside of the universe, thus we cannot demonstrate his existence or non-existence.
5) Every argument for the existence of God must first assume His existence, thus all arguments are circular.
6) No argument for the existence of God is ever going to convince who doesn't already believe.
7) God's essence is the middle term, but we cannot comprehend God's essence.

Explanation of 7)

All birds are egg layers (major premise)
All penguins are birds (minor premise)
Therefore, all penguins are egg layers (conclusion)

"Birds" - the middle term
"egglayers" - major term, always the predicate of the conclusion
penguins - minor term, always the subject of the conclusion

The essence of God must function as the middle term, but we do not have any comprehension of the essence of God, so it cannot function that way.

8) There is no such thing as metaphysical knowledge. All knowledge is limited to experience.
9) God cannot be proven by scientific experiments.
10) The term 'God' is meaningless.

Can we demonstrate the existence of God?
Based on Summa Theologic 1, q. 2a.2

Objections revisited

1. A priori objections
2. A posteriori objections

A priori objection #1

Religious language is meaningless
- Ayer, Wittgenstein, logical positivists
- In order to be a meaningful a statement must be, in principle, verifiable

A priori objection #2
- We cannot validate religious experience empirically
- Flew

A priori objection #3
- What is rational, needn't be true
- post modernism
All dragons have wings
All monsters are dragons
Therefore, all monsters have wings

A posteriori objection #1
-Knowledge of God can only be based on faith
- Kierkegaard

A posteriori objection #2
- We cannot apprehend God's essence

A posteriori objection #3
- The finite can never extend to the infinite
- Alfred North Whitehead

A posteriori objection #4
- Presuppositionalism: Since God is first in Being, we must begin with God
- Kierkegaard, Van Til

Transcendental argumentation

Ways to draw valid logical inferences
1) Deduction - formal inferences from premises
2) Induction - probable conclusions from observations

We know there is a world
- What are the conditions that are necessary for there to be a world?
- We cannot look outside o the world to find God
- If there is a God, there could be evidence for a God in the world.

Any attempt to simply close the option of there being theistic proofs are purely arbitrary.

Can the finite attain infinity?

Georg Cantor's set theory

{1, 2, 3, 4 ... infinity}
{1, 2, 3, 4

but the set of real numbers, which is infinite is longer than the set of integers, which is also infinite.

Metaphysical infinity is more than mathematical infinite.

Important considerations

- Distinction between that something exists and comprehending its essence.

Distinction between ontology and epistemology.
-Ontology (being)
-Epistemology (knowing)

Ontologically, God exists or he doesn't.

Theistic proofs deal with the epistemological question: "Can one know that God exists".

Ontology - God exists
Epistemology - Ascertaining the ontology

Arguing in a circle.

God exists
Therefore, he has shown his effects
Therefore, he has ...
Therefore, he has ...
Therefore, God exists.

Believing the ontological statement that "God exists" and then providing an epistemological proof is not circular, so long as one does not assume it in the actual argument.

Assignment: argue for the ontological argument.

Dreadful Freedom - Marjorie Grene

(Originally written December 20, 2005 in Book 1)

Dreadful Freedom
Marjorie Grene
1948

Chapter 1 - Why Existentialism?

Existentialism is (in some sense) a reaction against Hegel.

Existentialism's first principle is that existence is prior to essence.

Existentialism can come off as a more complex version of pragmatism. Both attempt to shift value from the past to the future. Dewey and Sartre have similar shifts of the definition of value. However, Sartre proposes a philosophy that supports a constant state of revolution, whereas Dewey would replace the old dogma with an emphasis on maintaining a progressive society (this is still dogmatic, just less precise).

Both systems state existence before essence, but pragmatism moves philosophy from speculation to practical outputs; whereas existentialism focuses in on a stream of consciousness. Pragmatism uses science; existentialism uses sense-data to promote scientific research.

"It is a different kind of existence whose priority to essence is proclaimed by the two philosophies" (Green, 9).

Pragmatism fails to recognize that pure facts and pure science cannot produce values. It can only add or detract from them.

Some existentialists believe that a return to faith in the Christian God is "a possible and even necessary way out of our present moral chaos" (Green, 13). The atheistic existentialist however contends that values must be founded on objective facts.

Both a return to God and a value system based on facts "seek to escape our ultimate, inexplicable and terrible responsibility for the values that we live by, by giving them a cosmic rather than a human... source" (Green, 13).

Chapter 2 - Soren Kierkegaard: the self against the system

Kierkegaard's problem was to find out what the misunderstanding was between speculation and Christianity. He contends that the problem is rooted in individual existence. (He uses the term 'speculation' as understood in Hegelian speculation).

He condemns empirical science: natural science is dangerous, especially physiology's attempt to take over ethics. He states that it is bad to treat ethics like a natural science, to make it an illusion of statistical averages.

He asks, "Do I need to know how the movement in the nervous system works in order to believe in God and love men?" (Green, 16).

Kierkegaard is afraid that by embracing natural science we will lose ourselves to it and forget that which is important, God.

Kierkegaard contends that the only important thing worth understanding is one's self.

Kierkegaard is limited by the Christian paradox: man's experience is nothingness before God, but it still fulfills his existence.

He contends there is no objective truth of Christianity.

He states that the problem for the sincere Christian is subjective. It is not to build a theological system, but to find the way to heaven for themselves. The Christian is only aware of his own personal existence and the existence of God.

Kierkegaard focuses philosophy into the question: "what is man?"

What is man?
-What can I know?
-What ought I do?
-What may I hope?

Kierkegaard attempted to fuse Plato & Christianity.

Kierkegaard and modern existentialism both held to the awareness that here and now may be the last moment as a central idea.

"Pragmatism is afraid to face evil" (Green, 27). It is also afraid of facing the ultimate puzzle of individual humanity.

Kierkegaard drowns himself in paradoxes and word plays. Some of his most profound passages are difficult to decide whether their profoundness lies in an amazingly brilliant insight or such incredibly word trickery.

Can Man Live Without God? Appendix

(Originally Written September 22, 2005 in Book 1)

Can Man Live Without God?
Ravi Zacharias
1994

Appendix A

The theory that there is insufficient evidence for theism contains three logical blunders:

1. The move to atheism by default is not an academically credible switch to make when there are many other choices

2. To state that 'I am an atheist because there isn't enough evidence for theism' implies a logically satisfactory defense of atheism they do not possess. They hold it even though it is logically indefensible while at the same time rejecting theism on the basis that it is logically indefensible.

3. Atheism cannot be defended and that is why it has become a softer version of agnosticism.

Nietzsche may have created an environment for Hitler, but what about the crusades under Christianity?

The difference is that under the philosophy of Nietzsche, Hitler's ideology was permissible. The crusades were a political endeavor that was disguised as an outlet of Christianity. It takes a path starkly different than that of Christ's philosophies.

Appendix B

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Believed that "I think, therefore, I am"

Defends the existence of God by stating that the human mind cannot come up with the concept of a perfect mind because a man's mind is imperfect. It therefore must have been placed into the imperfect mind by the perfect mind, which is God.

Defends the existence of God by stating just as a triangle by definition must have three sides, so a necessary being must exist. God is necessary and therefore, He exists.

Descartes reduced God to an innate idea.

David Hume (1711-1776)

Believed knowledge could only be derived by experience.

Anything that transcends a man's finite existence on earth is meaningless. God and creation are therefore not worthy to question about.

Believed that man has no soul

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Attempted a synthesis between empiricism (British philosophy) and rationalism (Continental European philosophy)

Kant's theory of knowledge (summary): Raw material consists of the outside world which is perceived by the senses, but that is inevitably processed by the human brain. It is the mind's perception of the object that we see, not the object in reality.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

The individual's ability to choose is of the supreme importance. Choosing God is a 'leap of faith' that affirms God's existence, but recognizes it as an intellectual absurdity.

Three stages of life:
-Aesthetic
-Ethical
-Religious

From Kierkegaard's journal: "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die". Thus, truth is relative to the individual.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Believed everything in life could be reduced to sheer will.

Belief in the superman. Superman was one who realizes the human predicament but who nevertheless creates his own values in the face of anguish or deprivation and can build his life in triumph over it.

Elizabeth (Friedrich's sister) called Hitler the superman

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Concerned himself with dilemmas and argued against God by making the debater against him choose one of his either/or postulates.

His presuppositions were however, wrong.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

A leading exponent of atheistic existentialism

Shifted from existentialism to a version of Marxist sociology later in life.

Sartre's philosophy led to the bloodshed in Cambodia

Man must choose for himself and author his own values.

Argued against the existence of God by stating that man cannot find God by himself.

Possibly disavowed his life's philosophy on his death bed.

Can Man Live Without God - Chapter 4

(Originally written September 15, 2005 in Book 1)

Can Man Live Without God?
Ravi Zacharias
1994

Chapter Four - The Homeless Mind

Antitheism hopes to create a literal and figurative utopia where goodness is derived apart from God. Unfortunately, these goals are shattered by failure without reverting to sheer pragmatism.

Immanuel Kant tried to establish a moral impetus within man and to postulate a system of right and wrong from reason alone. Kant set the groundwork for intellectual demagogues of both the Democratic West and the totalitarian Soviet Union.

The USA is to become the USSR without God.

Kant had two theories:
1) That goodness was rational and morals were rational. Thus, all rational beings would be drawn to them.
2) Kant believed that the first theory was contained within mankind and had the capacity to perform these moral and good deeds. By our reason we therefore know what is right and by our will we can do what is right.

Kant believed that God is not essential to reveal morality since man can come to morality by reason; but, he does not deny that God has given some commands. Antitheists praise the first part of this and conveniently omit the second.

Kant's efforts to provide a rational basis for ethics and morals apart from God was unsuccesful but paved the way for existentialists like Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard proposed that rational beings don't gravitate towarads morality, but they have the choice to think of terms in ethic or not to think in terms of ethics.

This and other Enlightenment Age philosophies fail to produce coherent postulates because it leaves life meaningless. To establish morals there must first be the basis of human purpose and destiny. This can solely be arrived at through God. Dostoevsky said, "If God is dead, anything is justifiable."