Re: V. Natural Morality - "Sense and Goodness Without God"
Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 8:08 pm
I know there are contrary views, and well argumented ones.
A great deal of our disagreement in the book can be reduced to the accepted brute fact. We can agree to disagree on this point, but don't let that stop you from reading until the end. It would be refreshing to talk naturalistic politics.
Regarding the brute fact, there is symmetry to our positions. There is a knee jerk reaction we have when we dwell on concepts such as infinity and timelessness. It is one thing to pack these concepts into another abstraction. It is entirely another to imagine in your head how these things are objective. I can abstract a tree, and I can wrap my head around seeing an actual tree, walking around it, enjoying the susurration of leaves in the wind. We can't do that with infinity, or the beginning of the universe.
Unless we formulate an alternative explanation. Your question on how laws could possibly arise from chaos, or how something could come from nothing, or how the universe could go back in time infinitely, they elicit the same inability to imagine. Our minds recoil from this. Our minds do not recoil from the idea of an agent, such as god. We are used to dealing with agents, but not physics.
But when we analyze the idea of a god, the same problems present themselves. How did god come to be, and why? Does he exist so that we may exist? Why should either of us exist? Why isn't there nothing rather than something? We each have answers for the other person's incredulity, but incredulity is ultimately an emotion.
We will go in endless circles with symmetrical incredulity at the brute fact the other accepts. That's what we've been doing, in fact. Let's agree that we accept different brute facts and move on now. Or if you wish, discuss the part where Carrier discusses which brute fact we should accept.
But that is an earlier chapter - another thread.
A great deal of our disagreement in the book can be reduced to the accepted brute fact. We can agree to disagree on this point, but don't let that stop you from reading until the end. It would be refreshing to talk naturalistic politics.
Regarding the brute fact, there is symmetry to our positions. There is a knee jerk reaction we have when we dwell on concepts such as infinity and timelessness. It is one thing to pack these concepts into another abstraction. It is entirely another to imagine in your head how these things are objective. I can abstract a tree, and I can wrap my head around seeing an actual tree, walking around it, enjoying the susurration of leaves in the wind. We can't do that with infinity, or the beginning of the universe.
Unless we formulate an alternative explanation. Your question on how laws could possibly arise from chaos, or how something could come from nothing, or how the universe could go back in time infinitely, they elicit the same inability to imagine. Our minds recoil from this. Our minds do not recoil from the idea of an agent, such as god. We are used to dealing with agents, but not physics.
But when we analyze the idea of a god, the same problems present themselves. How did god come to be, and why? Does he exist so that we may exist? Why should either of us exist? Why isn't there nothing rather than something? We each have answers for the other person's incredulity, but incredulity is ultimately an emotion.
We will go in endless circles with symmetrical incredulity at the brute fact the other accepts. That's what we've been doing, in fact. Let's agree that we accept different brute facts and move on now. Or if you wish, discuss the part where Carrier discusses which brute fact we should accept.
But that is an earlier chapter - another thread.