For a change of pace from my latest forays
in political economy, which is a very contingent and immanent topic, I’m going
to devote Today’s post to a quite transcendent one (in the most strict sense),
which kept me pretty busy in a previous stage of my life, and has been a
background preoccupation during all these intervening years. A short
introduction may be in order: there are a number of questions every thinking
person should be able to answer for himself, like the three Kantian ones
subsumed under “what is man?” (What can I know? What can I expect? And, How
should I act?). Between them I strongly feel the three ones I’ve used as title
are important enough, even if the answer is just a shrugging and a “who cares?”…
which is by and in itself a significant enough answer. Not one I would be
contented with, though, so I’m going to share with my patient readers a bit of
the answer I settled on for myself, without any intention of proselytizing or convincing
anybody (this is not how I roll at all, it is intended more as a way of
clarifying my position for myself, as it is by no means a clear cut one, even
after devoting so much thought to it).
Now there are certain areas where to
arrive at a satisfying position one must necessarily do some research, as
relying on one’s intuition and personal history alone will most certainly cause
the researcher to miss a lot of useful hints from the ones that have covered
that area in advance. No student of Physics would pretend it would be fruitful
to start pondering about the best way to represent the movement of solid bodies
without studying first Newtonian mechanics (and most likely Einstenian
relativity, for completeness sake), as a lot of ground has already been covered
by our predecessors, and it would be a major loss of time not to build upon
that. Similarly, a lot of consideration has already been given to the possible
existence of an all powerful being who is the ultimate cause of our (and
everything else’s) existence, so even if we reject every and all arguments from
authority it makes a lot of sense to spend some time reviewing what the main
contributions to this particular discussion have been. These, then, would be
your Cliff Notes on the main arguments presented for the existence of God in
the last 2,600 years:
·
The
first cause/ prime mover: for everything that moves/ changes there is a
previous cause that initiated the movement/ change. That cause has itself a
previous cause, and so on, so if we want to avoid an infinite regression, there
has to be a first cause that started it all. Aristotle gave the argument its
original formulation (probably he was already echoing previous doctrine) and
Thomas Aquinas codified it in a Christian guise in the XIII Century. It has
never been all that popular because it is not immediately obvious why a) that
first cause should be a person (have at least the features of intelligence and
will) ; b) what is really the problem with an infinite regression (if nature
has existed for an infinity of time many of those are to be expected) and c) to
what extent positing a first cause so back in time we really can not know much
about it is actually an explanation
·
The
ontological argument: we owe its original formulation to a XI Century monk
called Abelard, in a little delightful book that has become almost impossible
to grasp nowadays called Proslogion,
and it runs like this: as you can conceive of things more perfect than others,
there has to be something which is the most perfect you can conceive of. That
most perfect concept must include being all powerful, all benevolent and all
knowing (among other features). Now here comes the interesting part: that
concept has to necessarily exist, as existence is a perfection, and if it didn’t
it would be possible to conceive of something even more perfect. Thus that most
perfect concept is real. As obviously that most perfect concept is also known
as God, God is real, it exists. To say this little piece of logic (of sophistry
for its opponents) has been much debated would be a gross understatement. None
other than Kant (even the most casual reader of this blog knows how much water
the opinion of the Great K carries for me) dismissed it with the (arguably no
less obscure than the argument itself) dictum that “existence is not a
predicate of the subject” (so we can not posit the existence of something as
implying an additional perfection, as if it did not exist after all the previous
perfections ascribed to it would be fictitious, and the whole exercise of
conceiving something of which nothing more perfect can be conceived is invalid)…
let’s say for the moment I find Kant’s rebuttal not entirely convincing,
although not entirely devoid of merit either
·
The
argument from design: although in one form or another it has been around also
from the Stoics time, its clearest formulation (at least to us, distinctly
modern types, I’m not so sure it would have been intelligible at all to an
Athenian citizen in 400 AC) comes from William Paley, who almost
single-handedly spawned what is known as “Natural Theology” (never heard of it?
Do not worry, we’ll arrive soon at why). In the book of the same name (XVIII
Century, although it was published at the beginning of the XIX). According to
his most famed metaphor, if we saw a stone by the way we would not be much surprised,
as from studying it we may discover the blind processes that originated it, but
not much more. If we, however, saw a clock, with all its intricate pieces
finely adjusted and assembled, even if we knew nothing of the subdivision and
measuring of time we could assume a purpose behind the device, and the clarity
of a purpose would signal the existence of a thinking, willing intelligence
behind its creation. What Paley developed in minute detail is how the natural, biological world is a mechanism like the
clock (not that it is deterministic, mind you, although he shared most of
Newton’s strict causalism, but that would be a discussion for another day),
that in its intricate design and apparent adaptation to the purpose of living
everywhere betrays the existence of a designer. I’ve highlighted the “biological”
part because it is in the living world where Paley saw the most convincing
evidence of design, in the extraordinary adaptation of living organisms to
their environment. And the fact that his opinion was so celebrated (it was
mandatory reading in most disciplines in Cambridge, to the extent that the very
person that truly demolished the whole thing was thoroughly conversant with it)
explains why the appearance of an alternative explanation of that adaptation
has been so culturally significant. I’m talking, of course, about the Theory of
Evolution, but before dwelling on it we will linger a bit on a previous
criticism of this argument (previous even to Paley’s formulation of it).
The high point of that criticism is normally
assigned to David Hume (which for many “debunked” or “demolished” the argument
from design, to the point that he supposedly rendered it invalid almost single
handedly). In his book Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion (published in 1779, three years after the
author’s death due in part to the procrastination and hesitations of his good
friend Adam Smith, founder of classical economics) he has his main characters
discuss the possibility of deducing the existence of a supreme being from the
orderliness and convenience of the Universe, only to dismiss it as the product
of a very incompetent deity, or a cabal of uncoordinated ones, as there was so
much inconveniences and disorder side by side with the aforementioned. There is
not so much demolishing or debunking as Hume apologists would like to claim, as
the whole argument is constrained by the dialogue form, where different
characters express different opinions and it is hard to tell what the author
really thinks (this is pretty characteristic of the Scottish philosopher, which
liked to be pretty equivocal in some of his stances, specially the ones that
could get him in trouble). However, the most critical and acerbic one, Philo, is
the one most modern readers tend to identify Hume with (although in a private
letter to a friend he claimed to align himself with the more moderate Demea). I’ve
grappled myself for a long time with the Dialogues,
and I’ll just finish with the rhetorical flourish with which the very skeptic
Philo ends his participation (I’m quoting from memory, as my copy of the book
is not presently by my side): “nobody has a deeper recognition of the greatness
of divinity than me. Nobody can be so fool as to deny a clear design, a clear
purpose all around us”. Coming from the mouth of the avowed representative of
the uttermost doubt, it is pretty significant, and in other writings I’ve
vouched that it is the closest to his heart, truest declaration of what Hume
actually believed (the passage is conveniently forgotten by the very numerous atheists
that want to make good ‘ol David their patron saint, of course).
But of course, that would not be the last word
about the plausibility of the argument from design, and little after Paley
published its greatest defense the whole thing would be (now truly) obliterated
by one of his countrymen, the notorious Charles Darwin. But how that come to be
will be the subject of another post…
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