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Reddit mentions of Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency

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Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency
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Found 2 comments on Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency:

u/ConclusivePostscript · 2 pointsr/Catholicism

> Fantastic, thank you. Are you saying you do believe in a systemized natural theology, and if so, whose (or does it most resemble)?

I am attracted to both Thomistic and Leibnizian cosmological-style arguments.

> what exactly did Kierkegaard mean by “Leap of Faith” and how does it relate to the common colloquial use of the term?

Kierkegaard doesn’t actually use that phrase. I believe it was Alastair McKinnon who first noted—in “Kierkegaard,” 19th Century Religious Thought in the West, vol. 1, ed. Smart et al. (1985)—that the term “leap of faith” does not occur in Kierkegaard but was an invention of his commentators. Kierkegaard does speak of “the leap,” but it is given different specifications depending on the context. Primarily it is used to refer to a qualitative existential transition (e.g., from the aesthetic to the ethical life, or the ethical to the religious life).

That said, there is still much to recommend the term “leap of faith” as naming the specifically religious transition. Some say it is more of a leap “to” faith, but both phrases highlight elements that are present in that concept—i.e., faith pertains to both the leap’s formal character and its teleological trajectory. However, faith is not the ultimate terminus for Kierkegaard; faith itself is directed to God. Thus Kierkegaard identifies “the good” with “the God-relationship” (Works of Love, p. 339); “to love God is the highest good” (Christian Discourses, p. 200).

> it seems to me he’s wanting to persuade “Christians” to be Christians, not just pay lip service.

This seems to me an accurate reading, and Tietjen’s recent book is good on that aspect of Kierkegaard.

> Yet I come across it all the time used by atheist materialists assuming it means suspending one’s reason and believing “just because”.

To be sure, it’s a versatile phrase, but for Kierkegaard at least it does not mean (and Kreeft in the above book points this out at one point, too) a leap “in the dark.”

u/AtheismNTheCity · 2 pointsr/CatholicPhilosophy

> This is seriously one of the weakest objection I've ever heard against the PSR. What does this even mean? Of course God is not obligated to create our universe or any anything for that matter. How does this affect the PSR? There is no explanation other than the 'because'.

It shows that the PSR is self refuting because even a god cannot satisfy it. To put it into a more logical form:

r/https://bit.ly/2wJRxaL

Please feel free to refute that.

> Next: the brute fact response. This still leaves our most basic thirst about understanding reality unquenched. The universe is contingent; there is no way around even when involving science, math, etc--whatever. If it is possible for it to not exist, it is contingent.

Our thirst is technically irrelevant, since we can thirst for things like the color of jealousy, which obviously has no answer. What matters is part of logic. Regarding the possibility of the universe not existing, that assumes it is logically possible that the universe not exist. But so too is god. It is not logically necessary that the god theists believe in exist because other conceptions of god are possible. Why does god timelessly and eternally exist with desire X rather than desire Y, when neither desire X or Y are logically necessary or logically impossible?


Logical necessity cannot explain this scenario. There is no way to show in principle why god had to timelessly and eternally exist with the desire to create our particular universe, and not one just slightly different, or even radically different, or no universe at all. The theist would have to show that it was logically necessary for god to desire to create our universe in order to avoid eventually coming to a brute fact. He can try and say "It's because god wanted a relationship with us," but that wouldn't answer the question at all. Why did god want a relationship with us? Is that logically necessary? Could god exist without wanting a relationship with anyone? And still, even if god wanted a relationship, why did he have to desire this particular universe? There are an infinitude of logically possible universes god could have desired that would allow him to have a relationship with someone else that for no reason god didn't timelessly and eternally exist with the desire to create. A theist can also try to argue that "our universe is the best of all possible worlds, and therefore god had to desire it." But this claim is absurd on its face. I can think of a world with just one more instance of goodness or happiness, and I've easily just thought of a world that's better.


The theist is going to have to eventually come to a brute fact when seriously entertaining answers to these questions. Once he acknowledges that there is no logically necessary reason god had to timelessly and eternally exist with the desire to create our particular universe, and that god could have timelessly and eternally existed with a different desire, he's in exactly the same problem he claims the atheist is in when he says the universe is contingent and could have been otherwise, and therefore cannot explain itself. Hence, even positing a god doesn't allow you to avoid brute facts. There is no way to answer these questions, even in principle, with something logically necessary.

> God, on the other hand, is an entirely different kettle of fish; if God exists, he must exist necessarily. Merely saying it is a brute fact does not get around this; it's getting at that the universe is not contingent. Some think that there could be an infinite chain of causes to get us here. Maybe so. But how does this help? The chain is still contingent.

Nope. If god with eternal contingent (non-necessary) desire X exists, there cannot in principle be a logically necessary reason why that god exists, since a god with another non-necessary desire is just as possible. Hence god is just as contingent as the universe, lest you want to resort to special pleading.

>This is more of the New Atheism that is pure sophistry. 'Simple Logic'. Yikes. There are good objections to the PSR; this is obviously not one of them.

Not at all. This is serious logic showing how even you cannot answer the basic questions of why does god timelessly and eternally exist with desire X rather than desire Y, when neither desire X or Y are logically necessary or logically impossible? The only possible answer must be contingent, since a necessary one is off the table.

>I am not a Catholic but here is a very sophisticated defense of the PSR. Pruss is a Catholic. Pruss is brilliant here as well.
>
>Timothy O'Connor has my favorite book on the topic here

It is impossible to defend the PSR and all attempts to claim otherwise depend on false arguments from consequence.