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Day 28
Moral ethical views are interesting. And I feel like I begin every post like that but it is honestly my first reaction walking away from class... It is also nice being able to walk out of class with views unchallenged. It isn’t the most academically rigorous but, its nice. Today was essentially learning about 3 core beliefs when I comes to morals and that is that morals are categorized as one of the following. 1) Moral Nihilism, bless this view. The idea that there is no such thing as morals, and as a result, no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad. I’m firmly convinced by a single question that this is a false belief. Is it wrong for me to throw babies, and elderly women off cliffs? Was what Hitler and Stalin did wrong???? This is ripped straight from Thad’s “dipping a baby in hot oil for fun” example, but there are a million and one examples that prove the same thing, it is clear that there are right and wrong actions in this world. 2) Relativism: Cultural or subjective. More legitimate but still doesn’t foot the bill for me. They’re pretty similar, but essentially morality is determined by either the person or the collective. This brings me back to both the definitions we got for this unit about morality, and the first day of class “What is true for you isn’t true for me”... Definition-ally relativism seems to defy universality and impartiality, seeing that morality is determined by each person, it cannot be universal. In situation A with person P, it is wrong to do X, but in similar situation A, with different person O, it isn’t necessarily wrong to do X? Does that mean that maybe for Stalin, it was okay to starve and be responsible for the deaths of 45 millions people, but for someone else in his position, it would have been wrong? Moreover, if a society and a majority determines that hanging minorities, and enslaving others is morally okay, does that make those things actually permissible? That leads us to the third option. 3) Moral objectivity: Essentially, there are truths and whether or not humans like them, are aware of them, or adhere to them on mass scale, does not matter, they are still truths. For me everything seems to come back to religion, I like to this of this as “if you ask God a question about if an action is moral, what would be his answer?” Seeing that God doesn’t lie, and God knows all the truths, whatever answer He gives you, would be the objective moral truth. Interestingly enough, it was called in question, similarly to the chicken and the egg story. Are there truths that God believes because He is God and is aware of them, or did He invent all of the truths? This question seems not to impactful to me if I am being honest. Whether or not God made the truths, the truths are still true. Moreover, my specific religion maintains that God does not and cannot change His mind about certain things, so what is true will never change, but it is not offensive to think that there just are truths that God knows because they just simply are.
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 27.
Ethics! The beginning of Ethics! This ought to be fun. We started with definitions today, simple stuff. The 5 types of obligations that we should. Legal, Etiquette, Rational, Practical, and Moral, all with varying levels of repercussions if we don’t do what we should. Thad also detailed why morality is unique, and there are 4 reasons. 1) Its overriding-ness: the moral right and wrong overrides all the other types of right and wrong. 2) Impartiality: The fact that morality favors no person over the other, whats right for one is right for all. 3) Universality: How consistent morality is in every given similar situation. If in situation x it is immoral to do y, then in any similar situation z, y is always immoral. Lastly, 4) Reasonableness: Requiring people to [as I wrote in my notes] “Not pull things out of thin air”. Even though morality may be based off of gut feelings, one still needs to be thorough and flesh out their ideas logically. I am beyond excited to discuss one of my biggest grievances with an old friend. He hardheartedly believes that there is no action that he can do, while not affecting another individual, that is immoral. He uses this excuse mainly for smoking weed, and advocates that drug use is not inherently immoral. After class Thad already gave a super effective counter example. With my friend’s stance, he would also have to maintain that cheating on one’s partner is not immoral, unless they find out. Stealing may also work with this counter example. If I go to Gamestop, and take a crap game out of the clearance bin, and walk out of the store, it is clearly immoral to steal, even though the employees of that store have no idea, and the company doesn’t take a hit financially so they never notice either. I think that idea lends itself to become dangerous fast. If that is the case, then we wouldn’t have any safeguards for intellectual property either, piracy and copyright violations should not be punished either! Jaywalking too! The list goes on and on... Looking towards the future, I am excited to see people’s [myself included] concepts of right and wrong challenged. Whether or not someone is passionate about there being a God is pretty hit or miss, and the philosophy of the mind, and free will are all issues many people simply do not appear to take much stake in. However, everyone has morals. Everyone has a sense of what should be morally permissible or not and now we will see people’s “true colors”
Your Obedient Servant
N.P.
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Day 25
Last Friday’s lecture, on the incombatablist free will believer, was an interesting one. That is a mouth full, thus I am glad Thad gave us a name for it: Libertarianism. Of course, it’s not Gary J it is just a branch of beliefs when discussing free will and determinism. The belief in uncompromising free will is by and large [to me] the most comfortable one to have. It seems to not clash with other beliefs that I hold and it is much, much, better than the alternative; determinism. Determinism may seem comforting because it lends itself to a “everything will work out in the end” mentality, but I think it is comforting to those who do not really want to “create their destiny”. Growing up, I learned early that if I wanted good grades, then it should be up to me to put my pencil to paper and make my way. Again going back to my hero’s tale, it is widely agreed on that Hamilton was solely responsible for his successes. He took himself for destitution to founding father, and to say that it was determined that way, and that none of his choices can be attributed to him as a person, robs not only him of his greatness, but every single person we consider great. If Hamilton’s success wasn’t determined by him, then neither was Napoleon, neither was MLK’s and neither was Obama’s. It is a shaky world to live in to look at those people, and the things that they do and say that their actions weren’t based off of their own free will, and original thought. A determinist’s world is dark, depressing and sort of pointless. If no one’s actions can make a difference and alter the course of the world, then what is the point really? It almost seems that the universe is dependent on people not knowing that everything is determined. If everyone knew, and agreed that everything is determined then people would most likely give up, and the world would implode in on itself... or did the universe determine that at that point it would implode on itself, and teaching humanity its greatest secret is the vehicle for letting itself go..? I don’t know if that last bit made sense. Again, at this point I still agree with Tom Cruise in Total Recall “There is always a choice”
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 24.
I have missed a good couple days of Philosophy 101 due to Mock Trial. Perhaps I will make a post about the instances where I used what I have learned in philosophy in Mock Trial... but not right now, and probably not today seeing as it is nearly 1 am. When I got back, I was shot right into the philosophy of free will and determinism. The class seemed extremely heavy on determinism and forms there of. I had read the slides and watched a couple good videos, one being a brief lesson from some dude, who reminded me of Melvyn Bragg but was not Melvyn Bragg (unfortunately), at the University of Oxford posted on their YouTube channel (there is also a In Our Time BBC broadcast on Free Will and Determinism that I plan to listen to). This, coupled with the general structure that the class seems to follow, it seemed like to make sense that I had missed the Free Will section of the unit while I was away in Fresno. The class was a fun one though, we talked all about Combatablism, which is essentially a compromise between free will and determinism. The two inherently seem like diametrically opposed (foes), and the idea that everything in the universe can be determined whilst people have free will seemed absurd. Before really learning what the combatablist would think it appeared that we were going to hear about a view akin to a new progressive church from Californialand Canada that says “It is okay guys, you do not have to chose between worshiping God and the Devil because they are the same person now” Crazy. And once we learned the lesson, not much changed, it just seemed like the combatablist was explaining away how determinism works through a less depressing lens that would satisfy those who want to hold people morally accountable for their actions. It is my understanding that a combatablist believes that yes, everything in the world is determined, but people also act freely based on their beliefs and preferences. It is just convenient that those preferences are also pre-determined by what could be nothing other than God. However, this view seems to mesh pretty well with both of the disagreeable positions on the previous topics. It seems like someone who wants to reject God’s existence would say that determinism is how it is, because if there is free will, then that opens the door for why there is evil in the world and everything implodes with it. For the philosophy of mind, the view that everything is physical, and that the mental state being just a convenient accident (that I’m miraculously creating original thought with writing this post) would also like to say that everything is determined by physical action that way every decision that a person makes can be traced back to a seemingly infinite link chain of events that ultimately are the cause to me going to class or running over children or any action I may do. One unique spin on determinism that I hope we expand on is the idea that maybe everything is determined, regardless of our choices. The example I’m calling from is Total Recall, but that is a whole lot to explain so I will expound a similar situation from the Oxford video. There is a fire and a person has two choices, door a or b. The person picks door a and leaves Scott free. The question is what happens if they pick door b? Do they die? What I am getting at, is that person is determined to live, then they must go through door a. Well say for example you rewind the situation, and they pick door b-- it is locked or blocked on the other side... Does that person still have free will? They have now been forced to act on door a regardless of what they wanted to choose, door b. I don’t know. I think I explained that poorly, anyways
Your Obedient Servant
N.P.
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Day 22.
NEW experience for today. I’d imagine belief in God is way too personal and divisive to have done this, but today Thad split the room in two: those who believe in dualism and those who do not, binary at first but eventually most people sat towards the middle, symbolic to say “Eh I don’t really know”. Being almost sold on epiphenomonalism (forgive if that is spelled right I tried without looking at it) I sat on my right side, where dualism was. We picked up with the question we ended with last week, like a soap opera, “If Mary is fully color blind but knows EVERYTHING there is to know about the physical properties of color... the Doctors fix her face and now she can see color. She takes the bandages off and sees the color red for the first time looking at a sunset; Does she learn anything new?” This created a double bind in my mind. To me, it is either one of two ways. Either 1) She did not know EVERYTHING there is to know about color, OR 2) She stills knows the physical properties, and to have the experience of seeing color teaches her something new outside of physical understanding. I cannot articulate what she learns under option number two, but I am drawn to that argument. There are a ton of analogies to supplement this... You could learn golf from someone like Happy Gilmore who is just good at doing golf, or say if Stephan Hawking for some reason knows EVERYTHING about golf... Now obviously Hawking can’t actually play golf, so it begs the question, who do you pick as a teacher? Can I know how to ice skate if I never set foot on ice? Should anyone take sex advice from a virgin? Do the people in Plato’s cave actually know how the real world works if all they see is a 2D projection of it??? The answer always seems to lend itself to needing experience to truly know about a subject. And I mean, to be honest, I can’t come up with a conclusive answer... it seems to vary by subject. That is the fun part though, there technically isn’t a right answer, just beliefs. The closing of class was the most interesting part though, and I cannot believe that someone (hell even ME from my debate experience) didn’t interject and ask how the word KNOW is defined. This was called the fallacy of equivocation- using the word in two different contexts to mean the same thing when it clearly doesn’t. Bar none there is not a better example to explain this than the one Thad came up with in class “A BK Whopper is better than nothing, and nothing is greater than God” Clearly the use of the word nothing there is not the same, but if you equivocate their meanings, then logic would dictate that a whopper is greater than God... RIP. Going back on the original question though, I cannot see a way for the answer to be no... Non dualists simply think she just could not have known everything, and a dualist would say she knew everything physical and learned something in the mental... Knowing everything about something, and not being able to put the experience of seeing a new color as learning something non physically, just sounds contradictory... You also cannot say she didn’t learn anything at all because she didn’t know what color looked like before and now she does... With all that on the table, my conclusion has to be that the answer is yes, learning something is non-unique to both beliefs, however, the question really should be, WHAT does she learn? oof.
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 21.
I love solutions that compromise, some of the great ones come to mind whenever I think about all the compromises that happened to make the US Constitution exist. They’re also pretty great in philosophy too. The Causal Closure argument again seemed insurmountable for dualists, and pretty much is for anyone who wants to comfortably believe in interactionalism. The compromising solution is pretty much what made up most of today’s class- it maintains that there are two- for lack of better words- realms, the mind realm and the physical one, where our body is. They both exist, but they interact in one direction, physical to mental... creating a belief that does not clash with the causal closure argument, it’s like having cake and eating it too, but actually possible. Epiphenomenalism. So many of these words are not recognized by spell check its miraculous, anyways. I imagine it like a crab trap, physical sensations go up and get locked into a cloud like jail where we can think about them but they never come out, and are subsequently not able to do anything in the physical realm. However, again I have trepidation because while this sounds like the end all be all solution, there is still sacrifices to make from interactionalism. For one, it is tough to abandon the idea that people can have original thought and creativity, but I talked about that last time with Hamilton. I almost cannot wrap my head around the fact that my thoughts and my mind aren’t writing this blog and I think it is a tough burden for science to meet to prove that, or at least to me anyway. It seems like they have proven that beliefs and feelings can be seen as a reaction to physical stimuli, but who knows, I certainly haven’t studied the science lit to know if they do. What is even trickier for me is how this doesn’t really mesh with the Free Will Defense that well... (I’ve gone back and forth on whether it helps or hurts the free will defense, this is my third time typing this part) If the mental is a crab trap for beliefs, and they all come from the physical realm, then how did Adam/Eve ever get the idea to use free will to sin? Moreover, and I think more importantly, if the non physical realm is a product of the physical, would that mean that God was created by the universe???? BLESS, I’m throwing myself through loops and have to think about this a LOT more
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 20.
I expected it, it follows the general pattern of the course. Today we discussed the response to dualism and or internationalism. There are a couple arguments, but the stronger of the two is called the Causal Closure argument, which is reliant on the fact that every single non physical event can be explained by a physical event and every physical event can also be explained by a prior physical event. This one’s tough- it takes the mind out of the equation. Thad explained that this is confirmed by science. Unbeknownst to me, there are experiments where experimenters hook people up to machines and use electricity to alter people’s thoughts and emotions. For a lack of better term I’ll refer to this as shock therapy. There is also the instances where people can suffer brain trauma and be transformed into completely different persons. Too me it seemed a little odd to be so sure that things can only work one way based off of this. Yes, every time you shock someone you will create an emotional response- but what about when that emotion comes without shock? What physical event causes me to naturally love my significant other or creates other natural emotions? What physical event spawns an original idea? It just doesn’t leave me fully convinced. It would be weird belief that would subscribe me to believe that the brilliance of our Founding Fathers- the one that this blog is themed after- isn’t there’s at all. That physical events caused the thoughts and the creation of the Constitution and the rest of the documents they created. ALTHOUGH, it becomes incredibly easy to blame physical events when it is not greatness we are talking about... Take for example Hamilton’s infidelity. “I hadn’t slept in a week, I was weak, I was awake / You never seen a bastard orphan more in need of a break / longing for Angelica, missing my wife, that’s when Miss Maria Reynolds walked into my life” and later on in the song “She turned red, she led me to her bed, let her legs spread and said stay” (LinManual Miranda actually said that but it still) Here it is clear that Hamilton believes that the physical events around that night were clearly the cause of his misjudgment. It becomes easy to blame physical events for our thoughts when we don’t want our thought to be to blame. Of course, when we want to be recognized for an idea it is all on our mental.
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 19.
The philosophy of the mind. An interesting subject... We started with the Inconsistent tetrad- a series of four statements that individually seem true, but collectively are not. Of course they contradict, they’re supposed to, so arguing that they don’t is off the table. The good thing is, 3 can be true if one goes away but doing so may have some serious implications with regards to other beliefs. One piece of the tetrad is that non physical elements and physical elements cannot interact. At first I thought that this posed some serious problems for religion. If the nonphysical and physical cannot interact, then how could God, nonphysical, interact with people who are physical? Moreover, how could God have created the universe- our world specifically, which is also undeniably physical. Immediately, to make it work, I was okay with the two to not interact, and gravitated to wanting everything to be like the mind and be non physical. It’s absurd but it would work. Luckily, the first solution to the issue was also pretty compatible with religion- not to make that the prerequisite to it being sound. It denies that the two cannot interact. Mind events can cause physical events and physical events can impact mind events- and this makes a whole lot of sense. It is hard to say that the two don’t interact when everyone knows, stubbing your toe hurts a lot. However, to say that they don’t interact is consistent with the argument made in defense of animal testing. I have heard people say that animals, from chickens to dogs to elephants, are not smart enough to understand pain, thus they don’t feel pain and it’s okay to torment them for science. They argue that the whimpering, crying and other signals of distress are just physical responses to stimuli... Still seems highly unlikely. It is of course interesting. This subject is much much easier for me to ponder, and take all things into consideration because it does not seem like it carries a lot of weight on my life, the world will still spin, the sun will still rise, and I will still carry out my daily routines whether or not my mind is physical or non physical, and whether or not they can interact. This may seem like a bad thing, that I’m apathetic and or impassioned for the subject, but I don’t see it that way. I believe that it opens the door for more free thought and also makes it easier to think about if there is no bias for me to confirm. As always
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 18.
FINALLY the REAL FREE WILL DEFENSE. It has been a long time in suspense, and we finally got it. As I write this Softly and Tenderly by Johnny Cash just came on, then Jump in the Fire by Metallica, super odd coincidence? I don’t know, it doesn’t really pertain to this so ANYWAYS. Thad had given me a taste of this argument and response to the Problem of Evil, and immediately I was hooked. However, the amount of bias I have when mulling over this topic irritates me, but at the same time it would probably annoy me more if there was insurmountable evidence placed in front of me and I was too stubborn to change my mind. Dubbed open theism, it holds that God is omniscient and omnipotent, in the way that He knows all truths and can cause any possible thing. Now, God wanted man to love Him, but He wanted it to be true love, so endowing creatures with free will is absolutely necessary, for if people didn’t freely choose to love Him, then it isn’t love at all. This places God in control of creating all the conditionals, being able to cause all things until man has to make a free decision... There are implications to everything and man having free will came with the flip side of being able to unleash all evil in the world, and when given the chance, man was weak and fell to temptation to pick the wrong. Now some people in class said, “why didn’t God create the circumstances that made personsub1 pick good” but that doesn’t really help the cause. 1) Because well, even if He made utopia, which Biblically He did, because of free will, He cannot guarantee the favorable outcome.2) Even if He did, that doesn’t mean that mans second decision, or the second person or any given free decision thereafter would be the good one. It makes perfect sense, and also accounts for many other attributes that the Christian God has (cannot speak for the other similar gods) such as being able to react to things. People have asked me “Well fi God knew people would screw up why does He get mad” First, He didn’t get outwardly angry at Adam and Eve but secondly someone can predict and know something will happen, or for the sake of this argument that if H happens then it will cause effect E, and that is bad, and still be angry. I can accurately predict that each time I walk into sociology class I will be annoyed with the class and lo and behold I get annoyed anyway. I can predict that my brother will make me mad when he plays with my Styrofoam planes and breaks them, and when it happens I still get mad. I believe it makes the same sense. But back to the idea of open theism/ the real free will defense I find it pretty perfect, and unfortunately this seems to be where the buck stops as far as learning the philosophy of religion, and hopefully my scatter brain has not butchered and or mislabeled the ideas, but needless to say I am fully content with the conclusion being a nice cherry on top.
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 17.
Today was an interesting end to the Problem of Evil. Of course, it won’t be the last day we talk about it, but it will be the last day we get the argument against God without a rebuttal. Unlike a normal day in class though, Thad presented the argument that essentially says, if God is wholly good, and all powerful, than He would have created a world better than the one we have. Because we have the one that we do then it is apparent that He is missing one of his key attributes, omniscience or omnipotence. After this we spent the rest of the day discussing possible answers to this argument, all with a common theme- free will. Basically people asserted that God did not create the evil that was released into the world and we all know the story of Adam and Eve so that’s that. Of course, Thad had an answer to that that called upon people to either come up with a new answer or to dig deep with the Biblical free will defense. Spoiler, no one did it. However, my group came up with an interesting objection that I do not believe anyone really hit on, and it bases it self of of the third premise in the argument. “IF a wholly good being could have prevented bringing about our world A THEN this wholly good being would have prevented bringing about our world A” Now without putting much thought into this, I brought it up before to Thad the example of an adult and a child- an infant even. Now the adult for whatever reason really really wants to drop this child over his knee, and punt it like a football. Moreover he easily has the power to, its not like the child can defend itself. However, we know that he doesn’t, why? Because there are implications to doing so of course. I want to believe that God was in a similar position when creating the universe. Now back to the premise and tying that in. So this is an if x could then y would situation- a counterfactual. Because it is a counterfactual than everything must be valid in the most similar universe to the one we got. So to make counterexample, we would make an incredibly similar situation in which God has just one justification for being able to create a better world, but not doing so, and that’s all it takes. OR maybe, for some reason unbeknownst and or incomprehensible to us, THIS IS the greatest possible world. Maybe for God, the greatest possible being such that nothing greater is possible, He looked at all his options and for some reason decided that a “perfect world” was good- but not the greatest, maybe there’s something about the contrast we have that is slightly better, we just don’t know. For the adult in my analogy, going to jail for life is just one reason, but it is a pretty good reason so it binds the adult to not taking action. From there the burden was upon us to think of what could possibly tie up God in such a way, and I do not think we were incredibly successful on this front. My quick idea takes a Biblical form (surprising I’m sure) but I have trepidation seeing as the Bible doesn’t exactly flesh out all of its warrants and is open to a lot of interpretation. In fact, I couldn’t even cite a verse for it, but I know it is a general principle and essentially because we (man) were created to serve and love God, then we must have been endowed us with free will.... oh and we’re back to square one :) fun.:)
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 16.
My front line to the objection for the second cosmological argument was shot down like a single payer healthcare system in our Congress. Bad analogy but point made. ANYWAYS gosh darn it. The Problem of Evil IS HARD. It is hard. Very hard. The content is pretty easy actually, if I just had to memorize it and regurgitate it, it would be pretty simple. But no, being my self, this is the type of thing that occupies my mind and it has for quite some time. Back whenever I was doing small group Bible study with some friends of mine, we were reading something in Matthew, (I don’t remember what, I’ll have to go back to that) and I raised the same question. I was new to the church and the group so I wasn’t being confrontational about it, just curious. Of course I don’t remember what my youth minister said, but that is only indicative that it wasn’t a very satisfying answer. When reading in the this chapter of the textbook I naturally gravitated to the section talking about Leibniz’s input, and his rebuttal to The Problem of Evil. It is just so hard to grapple with an answer that is outside of our understanding, to say that the answer is beyond us, and the reason evil must exist is to create the perfect/greatest world is just so difficult to accept. This is heavy stuff, not heavy enough to convince me, that would take a lot, but heavy enough for me to reaaaaally want to find an answer to it. In reading the Hamilton biography (The Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow) Chernow explains that in his early life up through college, the $10 founding father without a father was an enthusiastic Christian, kneeling and praying every night. Chernow goes as far as to describe said praying as vigorous... Then later on in the book while Hamilton was the Aid-de-Camp he did a lot of his own private studying, intense (dare I say intents) private studying and among his favorite things to study, and major influences on him was Hume. Now the book does not outright say that Hume’s work was the reason Hamilton fell off religiously, but after not even reading Hume’s work, but just learning about it, I think it is fair to extrapolate that the Dialogues had an impact Hamilton. That is tough. Hume was one of the few philosophers I knew a little about, and when I learned that he had influence on Hamilton’s life I got really excited to learn about his stuff... and of course this had to have been it... RIP.
Your Obedient Servant
N.P.
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Day 15.
Today we learned a second version of the cosmological argument, yet to hear the objection though. The argument is a little different, it is reliant on all events having a cause, not material objects having a cause. It goes like this: 1) If E is a contingent event, then E has a cause outside itself. 2) Even the entire actual (perhaps infinite) chain of events (including all contingent events) is itself a contingent event EInf. 3) Thus, Einf has a cause C outside itself 9) If E is a contingent event including all contingent events and Einf has a cause C outside itself, then C is an eternal and free creator 4) Thus, there is an eternal and free creator, God. Makes a whole lot of sense, but Thad made an interesting inquiry to it after class. Basically he asked why God’s creation of the universe doesn’t count as event with a cause and if so, what caused God’s causation of the universe? That makes sense, however, in response to that I think premise 1 is important. It limits all events in the argument to contingent events. I would argue that there is no Universe that God’s creation of it couldn’t happen, so the cause of the universe is non contingent and is separate from Einf.
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Day 14.
These arguments for God get better and better. Today we finished talking about ontological arguments, and began cosmological arguments. Not only did we prove that God exists today, but also disproved that time doesn’t have a beginning. Early in the class he told everyone not to “go all Bertrand Russell” on everyone and say exactly that, that time and the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time. It made me chuckle because I thought he was the one who they essentially mummified and put on display (except the head, they changed the head out for wax) but I was wrong, that wasn’t Russell, it was Bentham which I don’t even remember what he was famous for anymore, it has been a while since I learned about him. ANYWAYS it is basically because, 1) whatever begins to exist has a cause (a cause meaning it is a consequence of something else happening, it was caused) 2) The universe began 3) The universe has a cause 4) If the universe were to have a cause, then the cause would be God 5) Thus an eternal and free creator, God, is the cause of the universe. NEAT. After this was presented, the rest of class was focused on prodding at this argument. I wonder if there are ever any new and unique things brought up in class, it doesn’t seem like it too be honest. I mean a) whoever developed this arg and was confident enough to publish it probably had everything front-lined to his satisfaction and 2) I imagine that this course has been taught the same way for a while, so really any objection that any new student could make was probably said in the years before it. Everything we think that are genius responses are probably just as stock as it gets, that is why Thad’s slides front-line them and someone always pulls the string. I cannot wait until we talk about The Problem of Evil though. To me, it seems easier to have a stricter definition of God when discussing that. If we just kept the being so great that nothing greater is possible, then an interpretation of what greatness would be manifested as would be hijacked by people who think greatness is perfectly nice and happy and benevolent to every body. Of course, I don’t think any of the Abrahamic God’s are like that, and I am unaware of any others. To me, greatness is being perfectly just.
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Day 13.
Really glad I used the word “seems” in my last post. Turns out Anselm’s argument is not perfect. Of course, if any of these arguments were perfect then we’d have to believe them and they’d be ingrained in society and the world would world would cease to have atheists. Basically, Anselm’s argument is objectionable because of its first premise, that God exists in understanding. The challenge is that, sure we have concept of what God is, but the rest of the argument fails to prove that there is anything that fulfills our concept of God. Frustrating, but interesting. I still wonder why people don’t want God to exist. Say for example, He doesn’t and someone is still devout. They would live their lives trying to uphold a high standard of morality. Moreover, in doing that, people are forced to reflect on their actions and recognize and admit to themselves that they have done wrong, and that alone is convicting enough. That was an off topic spout, but class got really interesting when it ended and a group came and formed around Thad as the usual. One student, I don’t know his name and even if I did I probably wouldn’t out him on here, was trying his hardest to get around the newest argument that was presented. Basically it says that, If God were to exist, then He could not exist as a contingent thing, if He isn’t contingent, He is a necessary thing and if He is a necessary thing, then He exists in every possible world because necessary means, that it has to exist for the world to function. To be honest, I think he was attacking the definition of God that Anselm and the second arg use, saying that Greatness is undefinable because there is no objectively better thing than anything else. He even refused to say that a world, with no suffering. rainbows, and everything else good, is better than a world that is in all essence hell. It was wild, false, but wild. That made me wonder though. Is there such thing as a necessary thing other than God? I mean I can imagine a universe without an earth, I can imagine a universe without gravity, I can imagine a universe that we are sustained not by water, but by photosynthesis, so I guess the question is; is there anything in the actual world that is necessary to every world?
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Day 12.
It was brilliant. Anselm’s argument, with just one minor adjustment, seems impenetrable. The argument that any bad thing that could be imagined in the understanding, could never be better in the real world. Too be honest, I thought of this with the example of the Holocaust, but Thad mentioned that things that exist in the real world, genocide, and things of that nature do not count because they exist outside of the understanding and in the real world. However, my solution to that, weak as it may be, was that often times really egregious things happen because of a lack of understanding about other humans. Once they happen, equality seems to jump right after and justice upheld. As horrifying as it may be to have to say, generally, I do not believe that humans care to much about each other until something bad happens, and then everyone climbs on board to bring justice. Thankfully I did not have to flesh out that idea, it would have been unpopular, and there is an even better solution. We were tasked to alter Anselm’s third premise to make it work. I had the answer, if you just limit his premises to all good things, then the patchwork is done, the statement is true, and God still exists. I wanted to say it and I was not called on but that is fine. Everything is fine. What is really interesting is that the next day, there were 2 Westboro Baptist Church-esk people standing outside of one of the Northern ASU entrances. People still do not like them, and the massive crowd in opposition was anything but logical, and just yelling, and insulting the two. Trust me, I get it, people’s lifestyles heavily clash with what the two believe in, but opposing them in that manner does nothing but fuel them and justify why they think they are there. To be honest, they are nothing more than modern day Fire and Brimstone preachers. I ended up having a side conversation with one of them, Bible in hand he showed me all the verses, and fleshed out his interpretations of said verses that justified to them why they should be there doing what they do. Ultimately, the our conversation met an end, he believed he was doing good by being straight and honest about the word, did not believe that the starting point of “God loves you, it is okay, but you ought to change” does not work, and he did not want to “Sugar coat” the teachings. As much as it pained me to admit, using the logic learned in Philosophy 101, everything he said was valid, and followed pretty decently. However, with that said, I am unconvinced that is a sound argument. Sure, Gandhi was the one that said “Hate the sin, love the sinner” and it does not appear verbatim in the Bible, but in my beliefs, founded in my church, and upon most research, I still believe that it is a principle generally portrayed throughout the Good Book. All of that to say, it was enjoyable to use what I learned in this class to actually have a smart conversation with someone I disagreed with, and to come away with a better understanding on someone else’s beliefs.
As always, Your obedient servant,
N.P.
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Day 11.
Back to Back. The philosophy of religion. This is what I believe is the beginning of everything I’ve been waiting for in this class. Now I will preface, before all of this section of religion, I believe in God. Specifically that my Lord and Savior is Jesus Christ. Before moving to AZ I spent the last two-three years in a Baptist Church, specifically Temple Baptist Church in the heart of Mississippi, Hattiesburg but I do not claim a specific denomination because I do not understand the differences well enough. ANYWAYS. Today we began on a good foot, with Anselm’s justification for God’s existence. He begins by saying first, God exists in understanding, and that is irrefutable. Second, it is possible that God exists. The third warrant, “If something exists only in the understanding, and could have existed in reality, then it could have been greater than it is.” Now, my understanding of this is slightly shaky but I believe that I have it... Essentially, God is a being that nothing greater is possible, this is how Anselm defines God, and I cannot say I object. Because God is so great that nothing can be greater, the third premise, guarantees His existence, because, we can imagine Him, and if we can imagine something, it gets even better when it exists. Thus, God’s perfection, makes the existence of God meet that threshold of existence. Through typing that I probably muddled that, but I guess the point is that I understand it. The more I learn, the more I doubt that quote that is attributed to Einstein [whether or not he said it is beyond me] “If one truly understands something, then he can explain it simply” If that’s true, then I must not understand the argument that well... which could be true, but I do not believe it is. Anyways, this argument is extremely interesting but I’m sure next class is going to be 75 minutes of tinkering and prodding at this arg- either that or expanding on it and making it more solid before it gets torn down. I am excited, but also depressed by the inevitable presence of super angst brought about by atheists. Now of course I am doing what I ought not to be doing, and that is blanketing an entire group of people together, but in my experience it is just that way. Once someone finds disbelief in God, then they believe that they are “woke” of some sorts and automatically smarter, and better than you. I will never understand the merit of there not being a God, it is not “liberating” in any way. I do not believe there is a lifestyle, that is both moral and not in the way of God.
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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Day 10.
I’m a tad late on this one, in the future I will be better on time about writing these reflections. With that said, Friday’s class, day 10 was extremely similar to the one before, with the addition of sound arguments. This again is relatively simple, if you have a valid argument structure, and the premises are true, you have a true argument. I am hard pressed to find many sound arguments in everyday life- even last time I wrote about the how sound the textbook’s argument for abortion is- but I now have one that applies to my life, and may even apply to my future as a whole. Right before Thad started his lecture, he pulled up a slide about majoring in philosophy. “Do not major in philosophy. We do not need any more philosophers philosophizing” [I did not know that was a real word until spell check didn’t correct me] This was odd, the philosophy teacher, who has not just an undergrad in philosophy, but an entire PhD, just told us that we should not major in philosophy. Instead he proposed that if we were really into it [for one reason or another], then we should double major! One major being something “useful” or something we like, and the other a philosophy major. This dawned on me as the perfect solution to what I had been pondering over the week prior. I was stumped, I do not like the “business” world, and everything being applied to “Well you’re running this giant fortune 500...” blah blah. And that doesn’t go to say that it’s not important, it’s just not applicable to me. Anyways, I narrowed down my major switch to a few, and I was torn. I am all out for going to law school and I want an efficient route there, and I want to attend a top law school. Long story short, all of my proposed majors were risky moves, and the one I was leaning on most, Philosophy (Morality, Politics, Law) was the riskiest. Now I have come to a conclusion that I want to double with Global Studies and the philosophy mentioned above. Not much of this post is too related to the class, so I will apply the mini lesson I learned to the actual lesson of the class and put the process I went through into a Mones Pones Argument.
1) Business is not fun to me.
2) Global Politics/International relations interests me
3) I have options to switch into a different major that interests me
4) Law schools like rigorous courses
5) Stem degrees are the most rigorous
6) I do not like stem (anymore) and do not have the capacity to complete
7) I like philosophy
8) Philosophy is good for law school
9) My ultimate goal is to go to law school
10) I have the ability to double major
11) Therefore, I should switch out of a business degree, and double major in Global Studies and Philosophy, because I want a rigorous major, in an area I am interested in, that is not stem.
There is probably way more premises I could include in that, I feel like I am leaving a bunch out but I believe it all follows and does not contradict.
Your Obedient Servant,
N.P.
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