Graham Oppy's Argument From Parsimony For Naturalism
For a long time I have been, theologically, an agnostic; but over the years I have slowly gravitated towards atheism. The final straw, or step, for me, was when I came across Graham Oppy's argument for naturalism from the principle parsimony, which can be summarized as follows:
Upon digestion, I find this sort of argument quite compelling: I have not come across any phenomena which required anything supernatural to best explain it. Therefore, it does seem more parsimonious (to me) to simply be a naturalist.
I don't think any of the big ticket itemse.g., morality, free will, consciousness, etc.require supernaturalism for their explanation either.
So, for those who are supernaturalists in this forum: what phenomena do you believe cannot be sufficiently explained naturalistically?
Graham Oppy's Principle of Parsimony Argument Link
[T]he naturalist does not have beliefs in anything over and above the things the theist believes in. From the standpoint of the naturalist, the theistic beliefs of the theist are pure addition; and, from the standpoint of the theist, the naturalistic beliefs of the naturalist are pure subtraction. In short, naturalism is a simpler theory than theism. A central premise of my argument in support of atheism is the Principle of Parsimony. This general principle states that if there are two competing theories and one is simpler than the other, then, unless the more complex theory provides a better explanation of something than the simpler theory, one should endorse the simpler theory. Since naturalism and theism are competing theories, and, as I just explained, naturalism is simpler than theism, the Principle of Parsimony implies that unless theism provides a better explanation of some relevant phenomenon than naturalism, one should endorse naturalism.
Upon digestion, I find this sort of argument quite compelling: I have not come across any phenomena which required anything supernatural to best explain it. Therefore, it does seem more parsimonious (to me) to simply be a naturalist.
I don't think any of the big ticket itemse.g., morality, free will, consciousness, etc.require supernaturalism for their explanation either.
So, for those who are supernaturalists in this forum: what phenomena do you believe cannot be sufficiently explained naturalistically?
Graham Oppy's Principle of Parsimony Argument Link
Comments (171)
I would begin by questioning the soundness of accepting a principle such as the principle of parsimony. Why would a simpler theory be prima facie preferable? What virtues does it espouse over a more complex theory? It may be easier to understand a simpler theory, so maybe there are practical reasons to choose it; but in terms of the veracity of a theory, I don't see why a simpler one is of greater import.
Secondly, I do think there are some phenomena that are not accounted for by the naturalistic thesis. What I have in mind are much the things you would expect me to say as a supernaturalist: places like Heaven and Hell, entities such as angels and demons, but also events such as the miracle of Fatima, and other miracles that I believe in as a Christian, such as the resurrection. I realize that the occurrence of such supernatural phenomena may provoke incredulity from a naturalist. Belief in these things is not only through testimony, but also an article of faith for me.
The principle of parsimony is NOT that the simpler theory is better: it is that the theory which posits the least conceptual entities to explain the same thing is better than one that posits more.
I have no doubt that Oppy means "naturalism is simpler" in this sense.
The reason this seems to be a sound epistemic principle, is that a theory which is less parsimonious [than another theory which explains the same phenomena] has patently extraneous/superfluous concepts.
That is fair. To Oppy's point, I think it is more parsimonious to explain the empirical data (that you would use to justify your belief in such things) under a naturalist account.
For example, just to take one, any miracle you give me seems, to me, to be better explained via naturalistic events--e.g., demonic possession described in most old texts was really seizure-related (e.g., epilepsy), etc.
I think you will also find discussion of the "Invariance Principle" as it pertains to physics interesting and perhaps quite agreeable. -- I think Nozick talks about it to some extent.
There are arguments against naturalism from perspectives other than the theistic. But from a theistic perspective the problem with this argument is that it makes of God one being among others, an explanatory catch-all that is invoked to account for purported gaps in naturalism. In other words, it starts with a naturalist conception of God which is erroneous in principle. Quite why that is then turns out to be impossible to explain, because any argument is viewed through that perspective, for example by the demand for empirical evidence for the transcendent. I think the proper theist response is not to try prove that God is something that exists, but is the ground or cause of anything that exists. That is not an empirical argument.
Quoting Bob Ross
Phenomena are appearances - that is the origination of the word. And from a non-theistic philosophical perspective, something this doesnt account for is the nature of the being to whom phenomena appear.
Wayfarer, looks like your answer to Bob Ross regarding the phenomena that are not accounted for on a naturalistic account is just this: everything.
I find that just a bit humorous.
Nicely put. I think that's a fair response to the argument from a more sophisticated theistic perspective. David Bentley Hart explores this in his essay, 'God, Gods and Fairies'.
Along the same lines as 's post, see Edward Feser's, 'Is God's existence a "hypothesis"?' (link)
Thank you: I will take a look!
True. But that is not the topic of this OP.
We only have appearances to directly work with; and we only posit anything besides them to account for them.
You are absolutely right that ontology is not itself directly knowable from mere appearances, but such appearances are the content of which we extrapolate (reason) about what ontology there probably is. So, in short, I think you are sidestepped the conversation by trying to point out a technicality, which does not, in the end, serve your purpose.
Not at all. The idea is that the phenomena (viz., those appearances) can be explained more parsimoniously with naturalism than (classical) theism.
One is not presupposing naturalism and then trying to add on supernaturalism; but, rather, posited both theories, and seeing if one is more parsimonious than the other.
I, nor do I think Oppy, claim(s) that God must be empirically verifiable: thats nonsense. I wouldnt even say everything that is natural is empirically verifiable. In fact, I would argue that certain perfectly natural studies are not capable of scientific investigation. Ethics is a great example; so is math, logic, (metaphysics of) truth, and epistemology. Nor, @Leontiskos, do I think that God is a hypothesis, in the scientific sense of the term; and I don't think that negates anything in the OP.
I dont think you are fully appreciating the OPs argument: it isnt demanding a proof, per se, of Gods existence: it is demanding an example, at a bare minimum, of a phenomena (i.e, an appearance: event) which cannot be explained more parsimoniously with naturalism (over supernaturalism)---in other words: is there anything which seems to demand we posit, conceptually, something supernatural? Thats the question.
Bob
Well, given the tendency to reject every account that is found in the worlds religious literature of such events, then probably not. None of those accounts appear in peer-reviewed scientific literature and are probably impossible to replicate (heck, plain old psychological studies are pretty hard to replicate.) So, given all that, youre probably on pretty safe ground.
Ive been reviewing a bit of Rupert Sheldrakes material again. He claims to have evidence of psychic phenomena that call naturalism into question, at least insofar as theyre paranormal. The phenomena he speaks of are fairly quotidian in nature - dogs who know when their owners are about to come home, the sense of being stared at, and so on. He is, of course, characterised as a maverick or crank by a lot of people, but he persists, in his quiet way, and claims to have significant evidence. The argument then turns into one about whether he does present evidence.
That quote you gave is dancing dangerously close between atheism and theism.
In a classical sense, God is absolutely separate from the nature that He created. Some of what you quoted, sounds an awful lot like pantheism; which, I would say, is really just a form of atheism.
Unfortunately, I am not that familiar with the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists; but I do hope that naturalists and supernaturalists can engage in fruitful discussions herein!
As @Wayfarer rightly pointed out, the terms "naturalism" and "atheism" are not synonymous nor is "supernaturalism" and "theism"; and this OP revolves around the former of each, and not the latter.
In the case of supernaturalism, the obvious example is going to be (classical) theism; and for naturalism, it is going to be a form of physicalism (in conjunction, presumably, with other views compatible with it---e.g., a theory of truth, moral realism/anti-realism, etc.).
When Oppy speaks of the "theory" of theism he is clearly construing theism as a hypothesis.
Quoting Bob Ross
Which is to say nothing else than that the simpler theory is better.
I don't think that one needs to limit themselves to what is scientifically peered reviewed or easily replicable. However, every example I have heard seems, to me, to be better explained naturalistically.
Oppy is not speaking of the "theory" of theism as a scientific hypothesis; which is what Feser, in the link you gave, was complaining about. Oppy does not think that a metaphysical theory that posits God's existence is something verifiable via the scientific method: that's nonsense.
Interesting: I will have to check out their work!
However, I think the point in the OP still stands: what phenomena requires us to posit God's existence to explain? That is the million dollar question.
An atheist is always going to say 'no' to any given phenomenon, from the question of being to why there's something rather than nothing.
But how would you find out? In the absence of that kind of data, what criteria can be selected? Recall the original point of Poppers falsifiability was to differentiate empirical claims from other kinds, although its now wrongly taken to imply a kind of verificationism. Popper, as it happens, held to a form of dualism, in that he believed in a third realm that contains the products of the human mind that, once created, lead an existence independent of their creators. This includes theories, scientific knowledge, mathematical constructs, cultural artifacts, and works of art. According to Popper, World 3 objects can influence both the physical world (World 1) and the mental world (World 2), yet they are not reducible to either. So whether that is a form of naturalism is debatable - and the reason its debatable is because the concept of naturalism is constantly changing.
As far as theism and atheism is concerned, the traditional divide formed between naturalistic science, which seeks explanations purely in terms of natural laws, and non-physicalist or metaphysical philosophies which are often but not always associated with religion (another very hard term to define!) But surely, in effect, naturalism leans towards explanations in terms of what have been known as natural laws - but then, theres a whole other issue there, in philosophy of science, as to whether there are natural laws and what that means (per Nancy Cartwright How the Laws of Physics Lie). And that debate, again, is not itself subject to a naturalist explanation, as its theory about theory.
I would go further and say that all explanations based on reason are naturalistic. "God did it" is not really a cogent explanation. Even if it were accepted as an explanation, there is no detail, no step-by-step explication of just how God could have done it. None that can really make any rational or experiential sense at all to us in any case.
Of course, a theist can say they believe God did it regardless, and that's OK provided it is acknowledged to be a matter of faith. Even the Catholic Church accept the evolutionary account for example, and it's not at all clear what part they think God played. When it comes to the Big Bang, there is no explanation for any prior to the very beginning. Theists can say God did it, but that doesn't add anything to the actual explanations of how the process from BB to now unfolded.
Cite a 'supernatural-Y' that (testably) explains some natural-X.
Also, do you dispute that questions which are 'answered by mysteries' (e.g. supernaturalia-of-the-gaps aka "illusions of knowledge" or "just-so stories") are merely begged?
If not, then you are a naturalist, Wayfarer. :smirk:
If, however, you dispute that mysteries beg questions, please defend either (A) 'mysteries answer questions without begging them' or (B) 'why supernaturalia are not mysteries (i.e. not inexplicables)'. :chin:
This might be a completely wacky idea, but---
In the realm of the multiverse, simpler universes appear more commonly than more complex universes. This is true for multiverse ideas like Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe or Stephen Wolfram's Ruliad - universes exist for all mathematical or computational structures. The reason simpler universes occur more often is because they occur in their simplest form, but then they re-occur because they can be re-specified in more verbose forms in more complex universes as well.
Obviously that's a completely speculative reason to believe in parsimony, but there's a way to make sense of it there.
That is, in Carnap's sense and other modifiers of his position, we all accept a plurality of languages that say things true/false within a language but any questions as to choices among languages are not to be truth bearers. The only debate to be had now is how all these languages may be cohered or shown to be mutually impossible to inter-translate. With possibly no clear end goal in sight. Some may in that case prefer their ideas of parsimony which may restrict the range of or lengths that their philosophical imagination may take them. I.E. that its metaphorical story telling of a "scientifically" realist sort.
It's rather redundant of me to say that most of philosophy in general doesn't change those phenomenological impressions we intuitively take as fundamentally true in the moorean sense. Its outside the confines of those certainties that we can't help but speculate to our own detriment. Perhaps we shouldn't? If we start down that road then the certainties of our everyday world might start to crumble under the weight of our scientific "truths" or soul weighty "revelations". Which can be truly detrimental in some cases.
No matter the outcome of supernaturalism vs naturalism, or all the critiques of classic philosophy, I'm still not going to drink bleach or attempt to walk through the nearest wall by mere will alone. Is that because I've accepted a scientific truth about the world? I have some immutable knowledge? Naturalism is true? Some weighty revelation of a spiritual sort has made itself to me? Does it even matter what excuse I come up with?
I just linked it at the top.
This doesn't answer the question in the OP; and isn't necessarily true.
What do you mean?
It is not scientifically peer-reviewed that a=a, 1+1=2, every change has a cause, p ? q, q, therefore p, truth is the correspondence of thought with reality (or whatever theory of truth you would like to insert here), knowledge is a justified, true, belief (or whatever theory of knowledge you would like to insert here), etc.
It is nonsense to think that scientism, which is what you are arguing here for, is true.
We believe things based off of evidence-based reasoning; and science is not the only form of valid evidence (as clearly exemplified in my examples above).
You seem to be trying to win by means of drowning your opponent in over-complicated, irrelevant information.
For intents of this OP, naturalism is the view that everything in reality is a part of the processes of nature; and supernaturalism is the view that some things transcend those processes of nature.
In terms of laws, it is commonly accepted that there are laws of physics; but it doesnt matter either way for all intents and purposes of the OP. Even if you reject the existence of laws proper, if you believe everything in reality is a part of the processes of nature, whatever they may exactly be, then you are a naturalist.
I would not go that far. Reason can easily overstep its bounds, while still maintaining its principles, and this is why some supernaturalist accounts are logically consistent but still should be rejected.
I think you would be better off just critiquing the, external and internal, coherency of supernaturalist views than its application of pure reason.
I agree that it can often be very nebulous, but this is a straw man. Sophisticated theists have very detailed metaphysical accounts of God.
I do agree, and to the point of this OP, that when God is posited there are things about God which never are explained (and cant be) and this affords naturalism an equal footing. As Oppy put in (in the link I gave in the OP), anything theism can posit with God is equally available for the naturalist to posit about the universe (or nature). If God is necessarily existent, then nature is. If God involves an infinite regress, then nature does. Etc. The interesting thing is that, because the same explanations are afforded to the naturalist, naturalism becomes the better option because it is more parsimonious.
The principle of parsimony seems like an Occum's Razor argument. Since God is an assumption, and naturalism makes less assumptions, this makes sense. The only way anyone could have a viable disagreement with this decision is if they could make God a provable entity, and not merely an assumption. I don't believe finding any phenomena that cannot be explained naturalistically matters to this fact. I think more importantly, there is no phenomena that necessarily requires a supernaturalistic explanation for its existence. Good post! :)
There was a recent debate between Ben Shapiro and Alex O'Connor. I only watched a few minutes, but one of Shapiro's arguments was the exact opposite of what you say here, and I think he's right. The theist simply has a more justified recourse to inexplicability than the atheist or naturalist does. There is nothing in naturalism which parallels the opacity and transcendence of God.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a strange claim, and I don't think it is even plausible. Theists posit things like incompatibilist free will, an eternal soul, transcendent moral norms, miracles, etc., and clearly these are not equally available to the naturalist. What in fact happens is that the atheist or naturalist tends to deny the very things the theist posits, in part because their system cannot support them.
More succinctly, the prima facie problem with Oppy's argument is that theists and atheists hold to vastly different beliefs and explananda. This is a big oversight, and it becomes even more acute as one moves away from our secular historical epoch.
But what is the argument, here? Is it,
This relates to what might be called orders of being, and there is a sense in which you are right that it relates to faith. For example, a child's bicycle might break, and they might go to their parent and ask them to fix it. The parent says they will fix the bicycle, and a week later it is fixed. Is the child justified in believing that their parent has fixed the bicycle?
The key here is that the parent "transcends" the child, so to speak. The parent can do things that the child cannot do or even understand, and the child knows this. Thus the premise of your argument is that there are no "parents" vis-a-vis humans; there are no orders of being that transcend the human order. Once this premise is questioned the argument seems to collapse. What remains true is that the epistemology of things-above-us will tend to differ from the epistemology of things-below-us.
(I should also note that your argument pertains to discrete events, and this is only a subset of the subject of this thread.)
Not sure which of my comments you are responding to.
Go back a few steps - you asked:
Quoting Bob Ross
To which I responded:
Quoting Wayfarer
because accounts of Biblical miracles, and miraculous events described in other religious literature, might constitute the kinds of examples you're referring to, but as a rule these are not considered, because they're not replicable and generally not considered credible by any modern standards. So what examples are being referred to? Where to look for the data?
As it happens, there is one large body of records collected concerning allegedly supernatural events, which are the investigations of miracles attributed to those being considered for canonization as saints by the Catholic Church. These alleged interventions are the subject of rigorous examination - see Pondering Miracles.
Aside from those, I mentioned Rupert Sheldrake's research in telepathic cognition, which is considered supernatural by some, in that it seems to require that there is a non-physical medium through which perceptions and thoughts are transmitted.
Both these appeal to empirical data. The following argument is philosophical.
Quoting Bob Ross
In order to declare that everything is 'a part of the processes of nature' we need to understand where the boundary lies between what is natural and what might be supernatural. I simply pointed out that even the metaphysical status of natural laws is itself contested: are natural laws part of nature? It seems obvious, but it is contested by philosophers, and it is a question that itself not scientific, but philosophical.
Furthermore, where in nature do your examples of inductive and deductive logic exist? As far as I can tell, they are purely internal to acts of reasoned inference, they're internal to thought. Science never tires of telling us that nature is blind and acts without reason, save material causation; so can reason itself explained in terms of 'natural laws'?
It's looking ever more likely to me, that the answer is, "Yes."
There are often problems in arguments such as the OP's, such that "supernatural" (or non-natural) is effectively defined out of existence, and many responses have referred to this problem.
When Newton first posited his theory of gravity it was met with incredulity as an "occult"/hidden account, insofar as it posited no intermediary or reason for gravity. At that time it was believed that objects at a distance could only interact through some physical medium, and Newton posited a kind of instantaneous interaction without any medium. Newton's account was question-begging or "magical" in the very same sense that supernatural causality is often referred to as magical or question-begging. I think we could even go so far as to say that, at the time, Newton's account was non-scientific or non-naturalistic insofar as it disregarded the prevalent canons of scientific reason. For the opacity of Newton's account would call into question its rationality.
I believe so. At least, I use them interchangeably.
I'd say it's quite scientific, to recognize new and better ways of understanding things. Casting Newton as non-scientific seems rather bizarre to me.
:up:
Can you elaborate?
I dont see how any phenomena requires an appeal to something supernatural; so I dont see why a theist has more justified recourse to lack an explanation.
That is entirely fair; but that is the point of the OP! It is to get supernaturalists to name things that they think require supernatural explanation.
Let me go through your examples: lets break it down.
1. Incompatibilist free will: I dont see how supernaturalism affords a better answer. It is more parsimonious to hold an atheistic substance dualism or idealism. Whats incoherent with believing in a soul without believing in God? I dont see why that couldnt be a natural process. Bernardo Kastrups idealism is a great example: in that metaphysical view, ones mind has supremacy over matter, because matter is weakly emergent from it. The minds which are derived from the universal mind are derived via a natural process of dissociation. The point is not that it is a correct theory, it is just that if a supernaturalist can posit a soul or incompatibilist free will, then so can a naturalist; but the latter will posit less entities.
2. Soul: already discussed in #1.
3. Moral facts: I am a moral realist and a naturalist. Irregardless, moral realism is more parsimoniously explained with atheistic accounts than theistic ones. Same goes for supernatural accounts that are atheistic, like neo-platonist accounts: they are less parsimonious than naturalist accounts.
4. Miracles: lets just say, for the sake of the argument, that a miracle can and has occurred in the sense of something fundamentally extraordinary happening which defies our understanding of the laws of physics. It seems, by my lights, to be a better and more parsimonious answer to say that miracles like that defy our understanding of nature and not nature itself (and there are thousands of examples why this is the case).
If a person does genuinely believe that there is something naturalism cannot account properly for, then, of course, this argument holds no water (for them). BUT, if one finds themselves, like me, in a situation with nothing that seems to demand the use of supernaturalism; then they should be a naturalist. I am sure you probably agree on that point, but disagree that naturalism affords us an equal footing on most of the examples you gave.
I think they do tend to, but I may be mistaken on that.
I responded to your only comment (that I see most recently in thread).
Oh, I think I understand now: you are saying that, because you dont think the examples which you have readily available are legitimate sources (or are problematic), that you cant give any example of a phenomena that requires supernaturalism to account for it, correct?
If so, then I totally agree.
Are you saying that miracles require a form of supernaturalism to account sufficiently for them? I cant tell if you are giving me a history lesson, or providing an answer.
Could you elaborate more on their research? I do not think we can transmit thoughts to each other with solely minds; but I am open to its consideration.
Yes.
Yeah, I guess I dont see why it is so contentious.
I am not here trying to claim that reality is inherently rational. I am convinced that we do afford reality some rationality in the phenomena which are representative faculties produce.
Yes, that's generally what I was getting at. Added to that, the difficulty involved in vaidating or falsifying accounts of anything so-called 'supernatural' in a controlled environment.
Quoting Bob Ross
:chin: Isn't that what you asked for?
Quoting Bob Ross
I would have thought that 'miracle cures due to prayers' would fit that bill rather nicely. The account I linked to was from a medical scientist, Jacalyn Duffin, who was called to give evidence at an ecclesiastical tribunal. This tribunal was tasked with discerning whether a case of permanent remission from a usually-fatal form of leukemia could be attributed to the prayers of one Marie-Marguerite dYouville, the founder of the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal and a candidate for canonization.
Duffin, who says she is atheist, and is an historian of medicine as well as a haemotologist, had her interest sufficiently piqued by the case to research and write several books on such cases.
You may be aware that the saying 'the devil's advocate' originated with such ecclesiastical enquiries. The role of the devil's advocate was to aggressively question the evidence of miracles to establish whether they had a natural explanation. Indeed, Duffin notes in the article that she 'never expected such reverse scepticism and emphasis on science within the Church', saying that the majority of such enquiries result in dismissing the purported miracles and declaring natural causes instead.
So, anyway, the reason that came to mind, is that one of Duffin's books discusses '1400 miracles from six continents and spanning four centuries. Overwhelmingly the miracles cited in canonizations between 1588 and 1999 are healings, and the majority entail medical care and physician testimony.' I'm not saying that you or anyone should draw any conclusions from that, but so far as empirical evidence is concerned, that at least constitutes a respectable data set, and one which does have bearing on the question.
As far as Rupert Sheldrake is concerned, if you're not familiar with him, it's a long story to tell. He's routinely described as a maverick scientist (or 'crackpot theorist') for his initial research in something he designated 'morphic resonance', the tendency of nature to form habits. His initial book was fiercely denounced, with the then-editor of Nature saying it was a candidate for burning. He is, however, an actual scientist, a plant biologist, and claims to have evidence in support. He also has written on telepathic effects, such as the 'sense of being stared at' and 'dogs who know when their owners are about to come home', for which there is no physical explanation. He's a frequent guest on discussion panels nowadays, alongside contemporary philosophers and public intellectuals. Again not saying you or anyone should believe what he says, but it's worth noting in the context. You can find more information at https://www.sheldrake.org/.
Quoting Bob Ross
The philosophical arguments are more subtle. Academics like Nancy Cartwright (see No God, No Laws) have critically addressed the problematic nature of referring to observed natural regularities as 'laws', by asking in what sense they can be considered laws at all if not decreed or enforced by an authority. Her critique underscores a broader skepticism about the metaphysical foundations of scientific laws, suggesting they are better understood as descriptions of consistent patterns or behaviors in nature rather than prescriptive rules imposed upon it. It also throws into relief whether the status of scientific laws is itself a scientific question; arguably, it is not. The consideration of the nature of these laws belongs more in the realm of metaphysics and philosophy, where the focus shifts from empirical validation to conceptual analysis. Whereas, naturalism tends to simply assume these laws, but itself has no explanation for them.
In practice, 'naturalism' often amounts to a kind of demarcation between 'rational science' and 'superstitious religion' (a.k.a. 'woo'), but it's also part of the debate between physicalism and idealism in philosophy.
I haven't made that argument. That said, if we cannot say how X has done Y, and there is no empirical evidence that X has done Y, what possible justification could we have for claiming that X has done Y? And note I haven't said we should not believe X has done Y if we feel somehow convinced of it despite lack of evidence or modus operandi, but that would be a belief supported by faith, not by reason.
What I believe on the basis of faith or feeling can never provide justification for you to believe it. Your own feelings or faith are the only non-rational justification for your own beliefs. So, one should never make argumentative claims based on feelings and faith alone lest one embarrass oneself.
Quoting Bob Ross
I haven't criticized supernaturalist accounts on the basis of failures of "pure reason'. To say the accounts are logically consistent is only to say that they do not contradict themselves. You can say all kinds of nonsense without contradicting yourself.
My criticism was made on the grounds that supernaturalist accounts that claim to be explanatory are really not so, because they present no clearly understandable causal series of events and conditions. No mechanism of action in other words.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think this is true at all. Can you cite an example? How could theists have a "sophisticated metaphysical account of God" when God is generally considered to be unknowable?
You ask some tough ones and well done.
This comes up a lot. I think the gist of it is that unsophisticated accounts of god are the magic man in the sky who has temper tantrums and demands obedience. Pretty much the literalist Biblical account. It is philosophically unsophisticated and an easy target for the Dawkins brigade. Despite the idea's great power across the globe, many theists are ashamed of this god and ridicule atheism for even addressing it.
A sophisticated account of god seems to lend itself to a greater mystery, more in line with perennialism and associated traditions which hold that all created beings participate in and derive their being from the ultimate Being of God. God as the source and ground of all existence, the "Absolute" or "Ultimate" Being from which everything else derives its existence.
And so from theological thinker and philosopher David Bentley Hart we get this:
Neither of the two provide any explanatory power as I see it. The latter is more baroque and fun and I guess would align itself with philosophical traditions of idealism and a robust critique of naturalism.
Hence this from Hart (again).
Has any more sophisticated writing about god like this ever resonated with you?
Quoting 180 Proof
That passage reads to me like reificatory 'theo-babble'. I can relate to the feelings some of the words evoke: devotion, passion, love, a sense of divinity, fullness of being, the truth of being, consummation in boundless delightWilliam Blake wrote about these feelings, and also many another mystic.
These are evocations of very human, very poetic, feelings. But there is no rational warrant to draw any metaphysical or ontological conclusions therefrom as far as I am concerned.
So, I agree they don't explain anything, and they don't point to anything beyond the human potential to feel such things. But that just aint enough for some people.
Quoting Tom Storm
Of course, the closedness of natural systems cannot be proven, but I can't see that we have any reason to think otherwise. Not only can we not prove such a thing to be wrong, we cannot find a shred of evidence that it might be wrong. We cannot but treat nature as a closed system because that system is all we can know. How could science incorporate something unknowable into its methodology? Methodological naturalism is not merely the only game in town, it is the only possible game in town.
Quoting Tom Storm
Some mystical writings have resonated powerfully with me, but I understand such resonance to be a matter of feeling, not of rationality. It is perilously easy to fall into wishful thinking. All that said, I see nothing wrong with people having their own personal faiths, but I think it's important in respect of intellectual honesty, to call a spade a spade. These faiths cannot be rationally argued for, but there are many who don't want to admit that.
Fair enough. It doesn't work for me either, but some folk around here may go for it.
Quoting Janus
I don't see how we really have any alternative.
Quoting Janus
Which is why I often think that we approach so many of our values and beliefs aesthetically. We recognise a kind of aesthetic, poetic truth and, perhaps, mistake it for something more.
Quoting Janus
If feels a little like a stalemate. I wonder if there will ever be a breakthrough, some new science, some new philosophy?
This question sounds sillier than I mean it.
I guess my point is, doesn't pragmatism always assume some goal or make some kind of commitments?
You said, "...when God is posited there are things about God which never are explained (and cant be) and this affords naturalism an equal footing." How do you think this affords naturalism an equal footing? Does naturalism believe in an infinite being? Is a system which posits an infinite being on "equal footing" with a system that denies an infinite being, so far as the inexplicable goes? Of course not. Infinite things are less explicable than finite things.
Quoting Bob Ross
What is the proportion of naturalist incompatibilists to non-naturalist incompatibilists? Why?
Quoting Bob Ross
Generally we would say that someone who believes in a universal mind is a theist.
Quoting Bob Ross
These are just question-begging assertions, and I spoke of transcendent moral norms, not moral realism. Again, what is the proportion of naturalists who believe in transcendent moral norms (or also moral realism) to non-naturalists who believe in such a thing? Why? At every juncture you will end up saying something like, "Well, 90% of incompatibilists are non-naturalists, but incompatibilism is still way more parsimonious on naturalism," which is a prima facie irrational claim. Beyond that you still haven't told us (and specifically @NotAristotle) what parsimony has to do with anything, much less truth.
Quoting Bob Ross
Then you've botched the definition of a miracle, and you are equivocating.
Quoting Bob Ross
The very fact that so many people are and have been non-naturalists is itself strong evidence against the OP. If naturalism was such an obviously better explanation then everyone would be naturalist.
Quoting Bob Ross
They do, and that's the point. For example, theists (tend to) believe in miracles; naturalists don't. The explanandum differs. Each camp is attempting to account for a different set of existing things, because each camp believes different things exist. Oppy falsely presupposes that they are trying to account for the same set of things.
Then what is the reasoning underlying your argument? It seems pretty clear to me that it is what I laid out, but if you reject that interpretation then you will need to tell us what the reasoning is. "Neti, Neti," does not an argument make.
A few sentences later you give the same underlying reasoning that I imputed to you:
Quoting Janus
Ergo:
The parallel argument is:
I generally hold that god has no explanatory power. To say god did it seems identical to saying the magic man did it since we have no further information. When theists say (for instance) atheism cant explain why theres something and not nothing, but they (the theist) can by inserting god, What has been explained? I would question why we would need to accept a deity (whatever that means) as a candidate explanation. Thoughts?
I am assuming you mean objective purpose, and I think a naturalist could just say there is a purpose embedded into the evolution of nature: a law, or set of laws, that provides Telos overtime. No need to add God into the equation.
Nature.
Because it is up to sufficiently intelligent beings to uphold the moral law.
Justice is the act of providing a fairness which, in turn, is derived from what is (objectively) good.
I find love to be a bit too ambiguous: theres a reason the greeks had like 9 words for it. Theres love in the sense of a sexual, primitive attraction; love in a maternal/fraternal sense; love in a selfless sense; love in a soulmate sense; etc.
The last part is what I was disagreeing with, which I would have thought was clear. If there were a God that did things, whether or not we can explain how he did them is irrelevant. If we want to say that there is a God who does things, on the other hand, believing we have rational justification for such a claim then a cogent explanation would be required. But such an explanation is impossible since we have no idea how an immaterial entity could do things.
Quoting Janus
The logical conclusion of these two sentences is, "Therefore, we cannot say that there is a God who does things" (modus tollens).
No do I.
Quoting Tom Storm
Totally agree. I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human.
Quoting Tom Storm
It's hard (for me at least) to see how such a thing would ever be possible.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, the logical conclusion is that we cannot, with rational justification, say that there is a God who does things. I have no problem with anyone saying that they believe there is a God who does things, provided they acknowledge that their belief is based purely on faith (as it must be since we know nothing of immaterial entities doing things).
Right, same difference. And by the same sort of reasoning, the child cannot say that their parent fixed their bicycle.
Or to provides a way to avoid facing, what it is to be human.
With respect to what you quoted of me, my point was that if a theist can appeal to ambiguity; then so can a naturalist.
If you say Gods infinite, I can say Reality is infinite. If you say God is eternal, I can say reality is eternal. If you say God is so unique and supreme, that we cannot give a full explication of His nature, I can Nature (reality) is so unique and supreme, that we cannot give a full explication of Her nature. Etc.
Obviously, and to your point, if one believes that there are certain phenomena which naturalism cannot afford an answer; then naturalism is no longer more parsimonious than supernaturalism.
Naturalism does not preclude the existence of an infinite being. It just doesnt. Another great example is Arthur Schopenhauer, a staunch atheist (and naturalist), that was an idealist that believed reality is universal will; and that will is infinite...but it is not God because it has no mind and is impersonal (since it is not a person).
In a more mainstream sense, a naturalist that believes the universe, or multi-verse or something similar, is infinite also doesnt fit well with your quote (above) here.
In the literature, I would say most libertarians are non-naturalists, but not supernaturalists.
Among the masses, I would say most libertarians are supernaturalistshands down.
It is because most people dont believe that libertarianism is compatible with naturalism; but this doesnt lend any support to your argument, because most people lack proper education on the subject. Most people use naturalism, materialism, and physicalism interchangeabley; and they still yet misrepresent all three with stereotypes. So, so what if most people think naturalism is incompatible with libertarian free will? That doesnt settle the matter at all.
Nope. Theism is the view that there is a personal universal mind. If the mind is not a person, then it is not God. Schopenhauer is rolling over in his grave (:
For a moral norm to be transcendent, it must be objective; and I am assuming moral cognitivism and non-nihilism here (to save wasting time). If there is some sort of nuanced distinction between the two, then please elaborate.
In the literature, the vast majority of atheists and naturalists are moral realists, hands down. So you are wrong there.
Among the masses, the vast majority of atheists and naturalists are moral anti-realists, hands down. Again, who cares? We are talking about the average, ignorant person. The question is whether there are any phenomena that require supernaturalistic explanationnot if people generally believe it does or doesnt.
I dont see how it is an irrational claim. I think that positing that a soul is perfectly natural, and analyzing it in terms of scientific investigation, would make more sense than going the supernaturalist route. Why are we assuming that one cannot have a soul (i.e., an immaterial mind) under naturalism (i.e., that everything is a part of the processes of nature)?
I have said it many times, and will say it again: if naturalism is on equal footing with supernaturalism, then it is more parsimonious to go with the former over the latter. Now, if one doesnt think they are on equal footing, then they have no reason to accept the consequent because they have rejected the antecedent.
Implying that a miracle cannot truly be one unless it is supernatural is merely begging the question. I am providing why a miracle would be more parsimoniously explained naturalistically.
Not at all! The OP is not about how many people believe that there are phenomena which require supernaturalistic explanation.
Who said it was obvious?
Obviously, the explanandum differ insofar as theists posit some things are supernatural (which is all you just said here): the question is whether naturalism can account for the same phenomena, because then it is more parsimonious to be a naturalist than a supernaturalist. I dont think you are fully appreciating the OP yet.
Not at its core. People are trying to explain the same phenomena: the differing is in what people posit ontologically to account for them.
The child might have seen the parents fix the bike. Or has been told by the parents that they fixed the bike, this time and every other time that it needed repair. There is no problem with understanding how a material entity (a parent) can do things to another material entity (a bike) so the analogy is not a good one.
Quoting wonderer1
Yes, it could be that too. Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. Fantasy and confabulation may be ineliminably central to humanity, We, or at least some of us, may need to fantasize and confabulate transcendent things in order to make life bearable.
I already gave the scenario <here>. They didn't see it.
Quoting Janus
And why wouldn't that method also apply to God?
Quoting Janus
Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument.
I'd say that's a pretty reasonable doubt. :wink:
Even to a very young pre-rational child the parents are entities the child can see doing things, so the analogy fails, since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity.
Quoting wonderer1
:up:
If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false.
The Biblical response to @Bob Ross' inquiry usually goes to miracles, and often the specific miracle of sortilege. There are endless examples, but to take one:
Quoting Judges 6:13-18, 36-40, RSV
Again, this sort of thing is quite common. "Hello, this is God." "Prove it by doing X." "Okay." "Alright, now I know you're God." (This kind of verification is also used in human affairs, except without miracles.)
Now are you going to tell me that Gideon has no rational justification for his belief that he is dealing with God?
The case for @Bob Ross' OP is much the same, because apparently if God appeared to Oppy, Oppy would claim that there is no possible sign that could convince him that he is dealing with God (a variation out of Ahaz' playbook in Isaiah 7). Gideon's reasoning is, "If you can do X, then this will prove to me that you are God." What @Janus and @Bob Ross seem to be claiming is that there is no X that would yield any form of rational justification for the claim that one is dealing with God. This seems clearly wrong.
(Wayfarer is right to note that we do not need to depart from natural theology to answer the OP, but I think the OP fails in all sorts of ways.)
Quite. Well for one thing,we know that there are such things as parents and that parents exist physically and do things. We can demonstrate their existance and identify how they came to be parents. We can't say the same about gods in any such capacity. In focusing merely on whther they were not observed doing, the comparison seems to miss the mark.
Surely not an argumentum ad populum? Yes, I would agree that there are countless numbers of people who have had any number of experiences they are wrong about or misinformed about or exaggerate about or lie about. This is not news.
Janus claimed that, "God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity." Think about what that claim entails for a few seconds, Tom.
From the naturalistic viewpoint, the answers are to be sought in terms of evolutionary development, a pragmatic philosophy and a utilitarian outlook. Justice and love are the adaptations of social hominids. And so on. Combined with democratic liberalism, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but whether it is all there is to life is an open question. (And at least, in democratic liberal cultures, one which we're free to pursue.)
A useful essay by John Hick. He was an English philosopher of religion, notable for his commitment to religious pluralism. Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! - Who or What is God?
[quote=John Hick]The basic principle that we are aware of anything, not as it is in itself unobserved, but always and necessarily as it appears to beings with our particular cognitive equipment, was brilliantly stated by Aquinas when he said that Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower (S.T., II/II, Q. 1, art. 2). And in the case of religious awareness, the mode of the knower differs significantly from religion to religion. And so my hypothesis is that the ultimate reality of which the religions speak, and which we refer to as God, is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to, in historical forms of life within the different religious traditions.
What does this mean for the different, and often conflicting, belief-systems of the religions? It means that they are descriptions of different manifestations of the Ultimate; and as such they do not conflict with one another. They each arise from some immensely powerful moment or period of religious experience, notably the Buddhas experience of enlightenment under the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, Jesus sense of the presence of the heavenly Father, Muhammads experience of hearing the words that became the Quran, and also the experiences of Vedic sages, of Hebrew prophets, of Taoist sages. But these experiences are always formed in the terms available to that individual or community at that time and are then further elaborated within the resulting new religious movements. [/quote]
It depends on how you define parsimony. How many "brute facts," does naturalism require? The jury is out on that. Seemingly, it might be quite a lot.
So you end up with a lot of things that have no reason for being, they just are, irreducibly. Just from the Fine Tuning Problem, you would seem to have quite a few.
An explanation where God creates the world to have life only has to posit one such fact that "is its own reason."
If parsimony is considered from the point of view of explanation, it doesn't seem possible to beat theism. The answer "from whence comes..." always has one ultimate answer.
But from the perspective of ontological entities, I would agree that the argument holds in favor of naturalism.
Thanks. As we discussed elsewhere, a thread on this would be interesting.
Sorry, you'll have to help me. 1) What is the significance of this? 2) How do you see it connecting to the point Janus made?
Further, even once you admit to goal seeking or possessing commitments the possible scenario under which we possess a plethora of options can dilute the philosophical weight that any one single position has. To the point that we may become rather indifferent to the choice. See it as rather meaningless.
I agree. It is a straw man that Janus is arguing against (most of the time).
I appreciate you providing an example, and quite an interesting one at that!
The problem I have with this example, and most like it, is that I dont think it demonstrates, even if the events were all granted as having occurred, justification for believing in Gods existence (even if just for that particular subject in the example) because the tests are wholly incapable of verifying the claim.
Let me give you a much easier example of what I mean (that I believe we can both agree on): lets say I am holding something in my hand, and you say thats a banana. Now, lets say I do not know if it is a banana or not, and so I respond if what you say is true, then do five jumping jacks...if you can do five jumping jacks, then I know what you say is the truth. Lo and behold, you drop down and do five jumping jacks: am I justified in believing that the object in my hand is a banana? Of course not! Why?
It is because the test I deployed to verify the claim has no potential, even in principle, to actually verify it.
I know there is more to the story and there are many other similar cases Christians site, but, to keep this simple, I find Gideons test to be analogous to the jumping jack test example: at best, it demonstrates that there is a being that is more powerful than Gideon, who can remove or add dew to a fleece of wool.
How could such a test, in principle, ever verify that the more powerful being is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. let alone the creator of the entire world? It cant. It just demonstrates, at its very best, that there was at least one being, in that day and age, capable of doing things humans could not.
Adding God into the explanation for this phenomena (of experiencing the wool with dew vs. not in accordance with what was demanded preemptively) is extraneous. A person who says yeah, if that really happened, then there must be some being capable of performing things humans did not seem to have the capabilities to perform back then is giving a more parsimonious explanation than one who says God, an all-supreme creator of everything (who is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.), performed those things which the humans were not capable of doing.
This is an interesting thought. With respect to there being supernatural entities (in general), I can envision scenarios where it would be perfectly rational to believe in theme.g., positing numbers are Platonic Forms, if there were beings that were consistently violating our understanding of the laws of nature then that would lend support to the belief in something like an angel or demon, etc.). In terms of God, I must profess I cannot envision any; and perhaps you can help me see some (if there are any). It seems like Gods attributes are so extravagant that positing even a slightly less extravagant being would be more parsimonious to explain a set of supernatural phenomena that positing God.
The Gideon example is also interesting because in general it's not considered to be a good sign of his character that he "puts the Lord to the test." Gideon, like all the Judges aside from Deborah and Samuel, ends up being ultimately flawed, a backslider, and his need for this evidence is often taken as an indicator of his future deficits. For the idea is that one should love the Good and God in themselves.
Indeed, Jesus denigrates the need for signs and those who ask for them (despite working many signs).
Well, consider how one learns what a banana is. People show you bananas or describe them to you. People discuss their unique properties. They transmit a definition.
Given this, you now can compare you experience to what you have learned about bananas and say: "this is what people call bananas."
In the same way, super natural beings have unique attributes and abilities, and through observing these the same sort of inference can be made.
But of course, you raise a good point. Finite experience can never be evidence for a truly infinite God. So, the trouble distinguishing between "powerful and seemingly 'supernatural,'" and God is a real difficulty.
This is precisely why St. Aquinas says we cannot know God's essence. Also because God is simple, but human reason is necessarily discursive, working through joining and dividing concepts.
Yet he draws a distinction between knowing "what God is," and knowing "that God is." God's existence can be determined by signs/traces of God in the natural world (Romans 1:20), as can things about God. But for Aquinas, this unknowability was why revelation had to work as the first principles of any divine science. The point of theology then is not to prove the axioms, as this undermines faith at any rate (a person is "forced" to accept a logical demonstration). The point is to pull out what revelation entails.
But this intersects with the proof question in that recognizing God would ostensibly work in the same way we can recognize something that has been described to us or shown to us in pictures.
Aside from this, there is also direct noetic experience of God, God known in the same way we grasp self-evident truths that ground our knowledge in anything. So there is this path too, the "infused" knowledge, which is the focus of St. Denis and many of the mystics. Since God can make people grasp truths about God in this fully noetic way, outward demonstrations are less important.
Naturalism is a metaphysical theory - just as is theism. A metaphysical theory provides the explanation. The theory must explain all the objective facts of world (what we see by "looking around") - both can do that, but theism depends on more ad hoc assumptions.
[Quote]That's what I mean about the shortcoming of empirical demands - 'show me where this "god" is. You can't produce any evidence'. It's a misplaced demand. But, that said, I'm not going to go all-in to try and win the argument, it's take it or leave it, and most will leave it.[/quote]
The proper demand is: show me evidence (facts) that can't be explained by naturalism.
Declaring it a sign of poor character, to engage in critical thinking when it comes to one's religion, seems like it could be a psychologically effective way of keeping people from questioning the religious beliefs they inherited.
Is there a reason to think otherwise in the case of Abrahamic religions?
This is really a misreading of the concerns with Gideon. Gideon points to his material conditions and says the Lord has abandoned Israel and asks why he hasn't already seen wonders. When asked to do something for the Lord he makes excuses and demands a sign. Contrast this with the Patriarchs, whose response is always "here I am." The idea is that Gideon fails to recognize the Angel of the Lord in the first place precisely because of his weak faith.
And this would probably be passed over if not for Gideon's later history. God helps Gideon achieve a miraculous victory over the people oppressing Israel. He then piously turns down becoming king. But after this he becomes vindictive and violent, pursuing his own ends, eventually making a huge golden idol that the Hebrews come to worship. So it's a textual analysis about the seeds of this when compared to other figures who always instantly recognized angles.
It's in line with the main theme: "in those days of the judges, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what seemed right in his own eyes," (including the Judges). This is where we get Sampson and some of the other warrior heros that seem much more in line with Greek heroes or other near Eastern ones than the rest of the Biblical heroes. The general point seems to be that greatness alone, Herculean strength, etc., is nothing if not oriented towards the higher good, e.g. Sampson's great powers are undone by vice.
Plenty of other places seem plenty in favor of critical thinking. Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Peter's invocation to be prepared to explain the reasons for one's faith, etc.
That people might say they know something about God does not entail that they actually know anything about God. They would need to be able to explain how they came to know things about a purportedly immaterial, infinite entity.
Wouldn't knowing that God is unknowable constitute knowing something about God? Or knowing that God is infinite and that our terms cannot be predicated univocally of God? And might we be able to still make statements about what God is not (apophatic negations)?
But then there seem to also be ways of justifying analogical predication of God within these constraints as well, at least potentially given divine revelation. For as respects knowledge via revelation, "with man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible."
We have no way of knowing whether revelation comes from God or merely from the imaginations of people.
[quote=Eric D Perl, Thinking Being]The introductory section of Parmenides philosophical poem begins, The mares that carry me as far as my spirit [?????] aspires escorted me (B 1.1 2). He then describes his chariot-ride to the gates of night and day, (B 1.11) the opening of these gates by Justice, his passage though them, and his reception by a Goddess, perhaps Justice herself. The introduction concludes with her telling him, It is needful that you learn all things [?????], whether the untrembling heart of well-rounded truth or the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief (B 1.2830). From the outset, then, we are engaged with the urgent drive of the inmost center of the self, the ?????, toward its parmenides 13 uttermost desire, the apprehension of being as a whole, all things.2 Since the rest of the poem is presented as the speech of the Goddess, this grasp of the whole is received as a gift, a revelation from the divine.[/quote]
In other texts, the reference to the 'gates of day and night' are interpreted as a clear reference to non-dualism. In any case, as is often stated, Parmenides is recognised as one of the sources of Western philosophy generally and of metaphysics in particular.
'I can't understand this' or 'it doesn't make sense to me' or 'I don't see how that is possible', don't constitute arguments.
Quoting Relativist
As already stated, naturalism assumes an order of nature, without which it wouldn't be able to get started. But it doesn't explain the order of nature - nor does it need to. For all practical purposes, it doesn't really make any difference. Natural theology is able to rationally argue that the fact of the order is itself an indication of a prior intelligence, through arguments such as the cosmological anthropic principle. The fact that such arguments may be inconclusive or beyond adjutication does not make them irrational.
While Hick is far and away more coherent than anything that is occurring in this thread, I would still argue that he represents little more than an academic fad in philosophy of religion. A little over a decade ago I took a graduate seminar on interreligious dialogue, and even at that time Hick was already but a footnote in the history of that field. When we did the historical overview each student was assigned one or two figures to research and present on, and I was assigned Hick along with Paul Knitter.
Thomas Nagel's The Last Word includes no chapter on religion proper, but if it did Hick would be the subject of that chapter. Hick extends the precise sort of relativism that Nagel opposes to the religious sphere, and he is a Kantian to boot. If Nagel had been more knowledgable of religion I think it would have been good to include such a chapter, but plenty of other folks have leveled the same sort of Nagel-esque arguments against Hick.
I think there is a reason Hick's influence waned more quickly than his compatriots in other fields. It is because the sort of a priori second-order argumentation that Nagel targets has always been less effective when it comes to religion. Religion favors the a posteriori, the experiential, the earthy realities like ritual and tradition. Antiseptic a priori systems of philosophers don't often drive religious thought, and the academic religious anthropologists understand this same truth. Hick's thesis has left a more lasting impression on the popular mind than on the academic field (or, one could equally argue, the popular mind and the conditions of modern life birthed Hick's thesis).
If we want to take Janus seriously then he is proposing a kind of apophatic exclusivism, and I admit that this resonates with Hick to a certain degree. But what Hick has said is a great deal more fleshed out and Kantian than what Janus has said. In Christian terms Hick is a modalist rather than a strict apophaticist, and as such his proposal is a great deal more coherent than Janus'. It seems to me that Janus has given voice to an extreme form of cultural secularism, where Charles Taylor's "self" is buffered not only implicitly but explicitly. "Thou shalt not have contact with God!"
The order in nature is observed, not merely assumed. Both metaphysical systems should explain it. Naturalism best explains it as law realism: there is order, because there are laws of nature that necessitate it; and laws of nature are relations between universals.
If theism explains order by assuming an omnipotent intelligence just happens to exist that chooses to establish order, that entails a rather enormous assumption.
I actually don't think ' absolute prohibition on asking for signs is Biblically tenable. In the Bible asking for a sign is one of those things that can be done well or poorly, and the opposite error of religious credulity manifests in many stories as well.
Aquinas explicitly argues that miracles are the rational means for establishing the credibility of supernatural claims:
Quoting Aquinas ST II-II.178.1
Yes, this is absolutely true, I did not mean to imply otherwise; there is nuance here. I was thinking of Gideon in particular and Jesus' words about the value of signs in John. The nature of the asking matters.
Yes, and it is also a form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Apparently Janus thinks that 98% of religious believers are hopelessly mistaken when they use the word "God," because on Janus' premise anyone who believes they know something about "God" is not actually talking about God. This is a word game, and obviously Oppy was not directing his argument to some invisible 2% of "true believers."
Quoting Bob Ross
Pay more attention to the claim that is being verified. It is not that God exists. It is that God is with Gideon, and will be with him in battle. The OP is not fundamentally about God's existence; it is about any event that provides good reason to posit a supernatural cause. So Oppy would apparently say that, in Gideon's case, naturalism provides the more "parsimonious" account for what occurred.
So the question here is, "Does Gideon possess rational justification for his conclusion that he is dealing with God?" That's not rhetorical. You need to actually answer it.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because your test/sign was incredibly stupid, that's why. The ability to do five jumping jacks has no power to justify the claim in question.
Quoting Bob Ross
Let me make this easier for you. If you were Ahaz in Isaiah 7 (or Gideon), is there some sign you could think of, some test, that would prove to you that you are dealing with something other than natural occurrences?
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<- this post branches in too many directions. If you like, pick one of the many topics and I will reply.
Okay, I agree with that. And what I am interested in is the basic rational ideaapart from moral considerationsthat if someone claims to be supernatural or divine, then their ability to do supernatural things will tend to justify their claim.
The same way a child draws conclusions about the unfathomable abilities and acts of their parent:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Leontiskos
I would again invite you to present an actual argument for your claim, preferably with formal logic. If you try to flesh out your reasoning I believe the invalidity will become more apparent to you.
1. Do you believe yourself to be somone who has interacted with God on a number of occasions?
2. If so, are you willing to talk about how you came to that conclusion?
Sure.
Quoting wonderer1
A third-person example has already been provided: link. Feel free to address it.
(I won't "make it personal," no. That is a terrible approach in general, especially when it comes to contentious religious debates.)
But I'm glad you didn't say, "God doesn't exist," because that would have been begging the question, and it would have followed the sort of lack-of-reasoning that has characterized this thread. For example,
IIRC Maimonides puts forth a sort of radical negation of this sort, in that things simply cannot be predicated of God. However, Maimonides still allows that God can be known as cause, and of course God can be known via revelation. So, it's a somewhat similar idea, but I think it hangs together better because people experiencing miracles have warrant for their beliefs, it's just that their finite predicates have no grip on the infinite.
However, St. Denis and the tradition following him, particularly St. Aquinas believe they have a way out of this. Yes, all our predicates of God are equivocal, but they are ordered equivocal statements. It's not the same as "plane" and "plain," where the two terms just arbitrarily sound the same with no relation.
In The Meanings of Truth: Disputed Questions on the Truth, Thomas gives this example: take a the predicate of being "healthy." This applies to living things. A living being can be more or less healthy, and to talk of a man's health is a univocal predication. However, we also call certain foods, say lentils, "healthy." This is not an univocal predication. Lentils are healthy because they promote health. Likewise, taking medicine is "healthy." But the predication here is derivative of the healthiness of the organism, ordered equivocation.
Likewise, God's goodness, God's steadfast mercy, etc. are not the human versions of these predicates, but they are also not unrelated to them. So, for St. Denis and those following him, God can be known as cause, excess (above all predicates), and then negation (negating the human mode of the predicate). Maimonides is more dower on this.
So, this might not apply to all of your argument, which seems to be about knowing in general, but it gets at one horn (the one I find more serious), the ability to predicate things of God. I think the knowing can be addressed empirically, through religious experience, through how a thing is know through its causes, etc.
There is also metaphor, which St. Denis says is in many ways superior in most cases. When we do analogous predication, it is easy to mess up and confuse the mode of human wisdom with the wisdom being predicated of God. But when we say things like "God is an everflowing stream," or "God is a rock," we do not mistake God for these things.
I'm afraid your third person example is hear say.
Quoting Leontiskos
The thing is, I used to be a believer and believed I had experiences of God. What I considered at that time to be good reasons for such beliefs didn't stand up to scrutiny. Furthermore, when I've asked people who claim to have had experiences of God, to explain what they interpreted as experiences of God, they tend to respond as you have.
I can relate to being uncomfortable sharing that sort of thing, because even when I believed I had had experiences of God, I knew in the back of my mind that I really couldn't justify those beliefs in the face of critical thinking being applied to them.
So I'll leave it to the back of your mind, to let you know whether your reasons for believing that you have had experiences of God really stand up to scrutiny.
...but just read this back to yourself. You're a troll, and what you're doing here is trolling, and we know you're a troll, and we know that there is no good reason to throw pearls before trolls. ...but apparently to your mind the religious are simply afraid of subjecting their personal inferences to your superior rational skills, lol.
I would suggest retiring from trolling, at least on a philosophy website. Instead you could take up the practice of philosophical argument and addressing things from a third person perspective.
Yeah, hostile reactions like that are pretty typical.
Well, glad to have come across someone who actually knows who John Hick is. (And Paul Knitter.) But I don't necessarily agree that he's guilty of the kind of relativism that Nagel critiques. I would have thought in our pluralistic world that a philosophical framework which allows for many divergent perspectives would be something of value. Many here regularly say that, as all religions claim to have the absolute truth, and they all disagree with one another, then in effect that cancels out the entire subject matter (not in those exact words, but it's a frequently-expressed sentiment.) I rather like the expansive view of John Hick (and Huston Smith and Karen Armstrong, to mention a couple of other names.)
That's not to say I subscribe to the kind of 'many paths up the mountain' approach, either. I think there are genuine and profound distinctions to be made between different religious philosophies. But then, there are also genuine and profound distinctions between different cultures, but they're still human cultures. But, we're called upon at some point to make a decision as to which we belong in, I guess.
Quoting Relativist
Interesting you mention universals, they are not spoken of much in most contemporary discourse about naturalism. What's your view of their role?
One of the characteristic views of today's atheism is that all faith is blind faith, that faith can only ever amount to 'belief without evidence'. There might be a recognition as faith is important to some, then respect is accorded to it on the basis of freedom of conscience, but that is implicitly relativising, reducing its grounds to the purely personal or subjective. And furthermore that secular culture has no criteria for discriminating between the truth value of, say, Scientology, and the Orthodox Church.
But many great figures in religious history wrestle mightily with doubt. I remember reading that Mother Teresa, a favourite target of Christopher Hitchens, was tormented by the possibility that her faith might be in vain. There are many other examples to be found. Not every religious believer is a complacent fundamentalist.
I agree. Like I said, there would seem to be two horns here, the evidential and the ability to apply predicates to God. I do not see the evidential as much of a problem. We can have only grasped a finite number of natural numbers in with our intellect and yet we still have evidence that they are infinite. We don't have to have ever seen an uncomputable number to believe in such a thing, etc. The finite points to the infinite.
There is a problem of plurality here too. Many people claim to have knowledge of the divine, but they often disagree, so there is a question as to what is truly known. But of course, they often agree on many points.
The question then is if a plurality of exclusive viewpoints entails the impossibility of knowledge. I would say it clearly doesn't. At one point people had a great many theories about the shape of the Earth, the nature of the sun, the origins of species, etc. Plurality here did not entail unknowability. And knowledge can exist in the context of plurality. It would be silly to say we know [I]nothing[/I] about quantum foundations just because there are like 9 major competing theories in this area. It is also possible that one among these theories is true, or more true than all the others, even if this can't be demonstrated. Otherwise, we'd have to say that truth doesn't exist before demonstration and consensus.
I am confused when you use the term "embedded" in this context. Is the law you refer to a part of nature or is it outside of nature? If it is a part of nature, how does it order nature?
Relativist, same question.
I think it would be both epistemically and ontologically parsimonious to posit naturalism than supernaturalism, if there is no need to posit supernatural entities because we start out with nature.
I am not sure that I see the real difference between ontological and epistemic parsimony; because the explanation is what posits the ontology.
The idea is that one who posits God to explain life, has to posit all the same conceptual entities as a naturalist and add in an extra conceptual entity of God. So unless there is some need to posit God, it is less parsimonious.
An explanation is not more parsimonious when it posits monism over pluralism IF it posits extraneous entities to get to monism.
I think, perhaps, you hold a distinction between epistemic and ontological parsimony that I am not fully appreciating.
I think I may be being a bit too liberal in my assessment of naturalism: I am starting off, conceptually, too entrenched in naturalism to fully appreciate supernaturalism.
I think that if there were phenomena which reasonably could not be explained with our knowledge of the natural order, in the sense that it was consistently violating the laws of nature and there was no good naturalistic explanation, then that would, prima facie, all else being equal, count in favor of supernaturalism. I think I have to concede that, in order not to beg the question.
However, I think that the reason I am so inclined to view phenomena in the light of naturalistic events, and thusly say things like "violations of the laws of nature are really violations of our understanding of the laws of nature", is because there is (at least to me) overwhelming evidence that everything is a part of nature; and so I am inclined to stick with that hypothesis.
Take miracles, for example. I think most people, even theists, agree that the vast majority of them are nonsense: it is usually only a small minority of purported miracles that a theist believes are legit. That minority of miracles, I think are better explained like the rest: fallacious/misunderstandings. This seems more parsimonious, because I can not only fit the data nicely into the theory but I do not have to posit an extra entity (or entities) that are above nature.
Another noteworthy point on miracles, is that, given our understanding of nature (and how mystical it really is--e.g., quantum physics, general/special relativity, etc.), it isn't implausible that an extradimensional being (or one with representative faculties capable of representing not in time or space) may exist and still be a part of the natural processes of nature. It seems like one could still, even if one does not want to posit that minority of miracles as misunderstandings, more parsimoniously posit a natural, extra-dimensional being over a supernatural one. Making is supernatural just seems very extraneous.
@Leontiskos:
I already answered this in depth in my response: you just ignored it. No, I don't think Gideon possessed rational justification for believing God was helping him.
With respect to having rational justification for believing in a supernatural entity in general, I would say no. Back then, we had very limited understanding of nature. Any test I would have been able to, plausibly, come up with, just like Gideon, would most likely be in vain: this is the same reasoning that every civilization has had for believing in their own gods (e.g., if
With respect to God, I already mentioned, which you ignored, the fact that there is absolutely no test that can demonstrate "God exists": not even in a non-scientific sense of the term "test". There is always a lesser being to God that would be more parsimonious for explanation of something else.
A part of nature: in the case of naturalism, it would have to be. The telos would have be a part of how nature functions, as a whole.
For instance, if there is a shovel buried in the ground, and I was like, "I need that shovel to dig a hole here" and you said to me "well just use that shovel to dig it out" then I would be puzzled, it cannot be used for the task that we have appointed to it because it is embedded in that which we are trying to apply it to.
I think I might be able to clarify:
Consider that naturalism still has to explain gods, angels, djinn, genies, etc. Clearly, people think these exist, and so there needs to be a naturalist explanation for these entities, it will just be a different explanation.
Would we then say naturalism cannot be more parsimonious because it still needs to posit every supernatural entity that people conceive of? I don't think so. Naturalism accepts that people think these entities exist, but it will tend to claim that their [I]apparent[/I] existence is [I]reducible[/I] to something else. If some thing in the world can be fully explained in terms of some other things, then we are able to remove that thing as a sort of ontologically basic entity (making the system more parsimonious).
E.g., people used to think heat was a substance, phlogiston. Now we understand it through a process view rather than as its own entity one less irreducible substance in our naturalism.
So, you could consider a very parsimonious naturalism where there are just atoms that come in five flavors. Each flavor has its own properties, and they relate to one another differently in different combinations. But here, it seems possible that we might be able to explain everything in terms of just these five things and maybe their relations, leaving us with very few ontologically basic entities.
But current forms of naturalism have a great many "brute facts." The more brute facts you have, the more ontologically basic things you have.
Someone like St. Maximus by contrast has a very parsimonious system because all the multiplicity of the many (logoi for him) are reducible to the Logos. There is an infinite ground (the Father), and the Logos (Son) that divides and incarnates it, and there is the subjectivity of the Spirit. Three things, but begotten and proceeding from a single source (without being reducible to them). Creation just is Logos incarnated, and doesn't have to be a separate thing.
Shankara gets even more parsimonious by having just one thing, although it's questionable if he falls into the excluded middle by having Maya (i.e.,the illusion of multiplicity) be as sort of "actual illusion." Ultimately, all things are reducible to Brahman (maybe requiring dialtheism).
A naturalist might say, "well there is one thing, Nature," but then they have a plausibility problem because "from whence the apparent multiplicity?" remains an open question. Parmenides bites the bullet and avoids the excluded middle by having just one changeless, divisionless thing, ultimate parsimony, at the cost of making implausible statements about the lack of diversity in the world. Naturalism, without recourse to a sort of "higher level" of being to which to reduce things, tends to get stuck with all the brute facts that science leaves it with (less some for some hopeful thoughts about their reduction). But if supernatural explanations are less parsimonious, they may have more evidential problems.
In PI, Wittgenstein talks about how people are convinced to adopt totally different starting positions due to their symmetry and parsimony. We might include beauty here too. If you look at theistic thinkers, this is often part of their explanation. Whether we accept the thought of someone like St. Maximus or Plotinus as plausible or not, they certainly do create very beautiful systems, which seem to lead to their enduring appeal.
Right, the boundaries of nature can stretch quite a bit. Eriugena's conception of "nature" includes God. Or we might place the boundary at the truly infinite and transcedent, in which case such a thing is in a way inaccessible, only known through finite causes.
If something routinely violated the laws of nature in a uniform way, we would just posit a new law. If it did so in a random way, we could just conclude that nature is random in some respects. Miracles then seem to be more than simple violations of what we assume to be "natural law" (i.e., Hume's view, which I think is ultimately question begging).
I think what makes a miracle evidence for the supernatural would be that it displays a certain type of intentionality. If a new, bright star appeared in the sky out of nowhere, defying all our theories of star formation, we would not tend to think of this as necessarily miraculous. It would be a confusing new natural phenomena.
If several new stars appeared in the sky spelling out "Allah is the Greatest," we would almost certainly take this as miraculous. To me, the difference seems to be the intentionality and the fact that it seems directed towards us for some purpose.
An argument against such supernaturalism is often that if God could do this, God would want to because then we would believe. I am not so sure about this. Certainly, very many people would initially convert to Islam if those stars appeared, but in the long term I don't think it would make people that much more pious or loving it would get old, and so less miraculous. Plus, if one God reveals themselves to be real, it is now more plausible that others exist, and so the miracles boost the warrant for seeking alternative aid as well, which a major theme in the Old Testament. Seeing the works of God, the people, not happy with what God says, have more warrant to seek after the help of Baal, Moloch, and co., turn to walking in the ways of Jeroboam, yadda, yadda, yadda.
David Armstrong's physicalist metaphysics utilizes universals (existing immanently, not in a "third realm") and they're accepted by all law realists. I'm not aware of a more plausible alternative, so I accept them.
Their "role" is ontological. Single properties (and sets of properties) can be instantiated in multiple particulars. e.g. -1 electric charge is a universal, with multiple instantiations. Electron is a universal (a set of properties) instantiated in each individual electron.
Quoting Bob Ross
'Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only what we know of nature' ~ Augustine.
I would say that all warrants for propositional beliefs (beliefs based on observation or reason) consist in "finite predicates". As I already said, I think individuals' faith-based beliefs, beliefs based on some feelings or experiences, are not rationally justifiable, if 'rationality' here is understood as being in a kind of Kantian sense, "pure reason". On the other hand, in Kantian, and other senses, people may well have practical reasons to hold faith-based beliefs, so I'm not arguing against that.
Quoting Janus
I mean, you are making implausible claims and then refusing to provide arguments or reasons for those claims. This is a philosophy forum, last I checked.
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Quoting Wayfarer
Well, would we agree that Hick has attempted to eclipse first-order religious claims? It is in that way that it mirrors Nagel's target, for Nagel is targeting the attempt of second-order reasoning to eclipse first-order reasoning. Hick posits what he sees as a kind of meta-thesis about all first-order religious claims.
Quoting Wayfarer
True. I myself don't like Hick's approach, but it is a complex subject with many facets. Perhaps a more obvious way of critique comes from Francis Xavier Clooney, who is a scholar of Catholic-Hindu dialogue. He says, paraphrasing, that today everyone will say that all of the world religions are equal, and are ultimately saying the same thing, and yet no one today seems to know anything about any of the world religions. That is more or less the difficulty I have with Hick. His approach seems more a priori than a posteriori. His thesis cannot be rejected out of hand, but it needs concrete evidence in its favor.
It's just hard to take you seriously when you compare this rain example or your jumping jacks example to Gideon. It's like you're not even trying. The irony is that Gideon's grasp of "naturalism" is more keen than your own.
I would say that the rational naturalist will necessarily disagree with you here (and I am certain that Oppy would disagree with you). If naturalism is true then there must be counterfactuals which would demonstrate the supernatural, else the thesis of naturalism is entirely vacuous and unfalsifiable. Or at the very least, that form of naturalism which provides for predictability would become entirely vacuous, and that is what we mean by naturalism in our own day and age.
I don't think 'eclipse' them, as much as viewing them in a wider context. As I said, many will say here, and I've been presented with it many times, that all religions claim to be the sole custodians of truth, and as they all disagree with one another those are grounds for claiming they all cancel each other. How can they all be right, if they're making conflicting claims? From the perspective of analytical philosophy, not to say common sense, it seems clearly contradictory. I won't repeat the excerpt I copied from Hick's essay but I stil say that at least it provides a framework which makes sense of pluralism. And also, this is a philosophy forum, I'm not inclined towards quoting scriptures except insofar as they can be taken to make a philosophical point.
I could say that my view is that spiritual enlightenment or illumination are universal phenomena. The three philosophical traditions that I am at least slightly familiar with are Christian Platonism (my native tradition), Vedanta, and Mah?y?na Buddhism. Certainly, they all differ, but their distinctions can be seen as complementary rather than conflicting. The world is a global village nowadays and those who are secure in their faith need not feel threated by those of other persuasions.. And by viewing it that way, a case can be made for a kind of 'religious naturalism', in that the phenomena of spiritual illumination have cross-cultural characteristics, which indicate that there is something deeper than just culture in play.
I also want to add that a factor in all these debates about naturalism and the sacred, is the overwhelming influence of what I think of as 'the objective orientation'. I have an intuition that prior to modernity, we had a different kind of relationship with the world - as the world was understood as an expression of the Divine Will, so the relationship with it was 'I-thou' rather than today's assumed subject-object relation. But from the subject-object perspective, it is assumed that 'the sacred' is some kind of object, entity or thing, the addition of which to the objects and entities of naturalism makes no sense. And that is true - it doesn't!
Here, I'm reminded of Terry Eagleton's 2006 review of Dawkins' The God Delusion, which is what drew me to forums in the first place:
[quote=Terry Eagleton - Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching; https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching]Dawkins holds that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. Christianity teaches that to claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself: not, as Dawkins thinks, in the guise of a cosmic manufacturer even smarter than Dawkins himself (the New Testament has next to nothing to say about God as Creator), but for Christians at least, in the form of a reviled and murdered political criminal. The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound.
Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or existent: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.[/quote]
I've been wondering about this. I like the Hick essay you posted and have read snippets of this venerable old thinker over the years.
To me it seems that Hick is simply explaining away the differences between religions. It reads to me as if he is rationalising and downplaying an issue rather than acknowledging its full implications.
Hick almost adopts the slightly superior air of David Bentley Hart, in as much as he implies that the simple faiths of most of the world's believers are just unsophisticated surrogates for the genuine ultimate reality - the logos; Brahman - whatever.
Unfortunately this genuine transcendent truth seems also to be ineffable, so we are left with a posited and theoretical alternative which can't even be described or assessed. There's only the vague promise that some people may 'experience' it in some way via certain contemplative practices. And this still goes no way to demonstrate that this 'more sophisticated' shall we say perennial tradition version of 'god' is worth considering.
Hick's essay seems like a lengthy rationalisation - since religions are often at odds with each other, there must be some truth they all have in common. It's very important for some believers to find this commonality because otherwise religion no longer involves the Absolute but is relegated to the absolutely contingent. I'm not convinced the case Hick makes can be made so confidently. Would we accept this kind of jump in other areas? If we say that Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters are really just different expressions of the same truth about politics, I'd see this a largely fruitless simplification.
I don't know if I agree. Yes, there is an ineffable truth, but within the specific domains of discourse which have grown up around that truth in it varying forms, there are ways of imparting it, ways of conveying it, and ways of understanding it. In Buddhist, Hindu and Christian religious orders, there are ways of assessing the progress, or lack of progress, of the aspirants. Those insights form the basis of many great and lasting works of sacred art and architecture.
We're in an historically unique moment where we have instantaneous access to these vast stores of information about any subject, but I wonder if that ease of access makes us jaded. Many of the teachings which can now be so easily accessed from the comfort of your study, were once upon a time nearly impossible to get. The Chinese monks whose pilgrimages were made at enormous peril across the ancient trade routes to India to bring back the precious Buddhist scrolls that formed Buddhism in China. Likewise the Nestorian Christians who were exiled to ancient China and composed the Gospels in Chinese using Buddhist idioms. Whereas now these texts are digitized and freely available at the click of a mouse.
As far as the absolute and the contingent are concerned, the 'unmade' or 'wisdom uncreate' has to all intents vanished from public discourse (at least since the decline of idealism in philosophy where it still had a foothold.) It has dissolved into the nihilism that Nietszche foresaw.
Quoting Tom Storm
Only one of the two has expressly stated an intent to undermine the constitution, so it's a false equivalence. Anyway that belongs in another thread.
Well I don't know how long it's been seen you read Nagel's book, but I think Hick does the same thing. So maybe we want to say that Hick is "viewing them in a wider context," but it seems to me that the exact same claim could be made about the kinds of thought that Nagel targets. Your point about a multiplicity of views is something that Nagel addresses directly in the chapter on ethics, and all of the parallel arguments would hold with respect to religion. Because of the multiplicity problem, second-order reasoning is more persuasive when it comes to ethics and religion (I actually think Nagel's chapter on ethics was objectively weaker than his other chapters for this very reason). Still, that seems to be what Hick is doing.
What is the move of Nagel's second-order relativizing? It is something like saying that the claims of first-order reasoners are false, but nevertheless the field of inquiry (including aspects of those claims) can be resuscitated under a different guise and form. So for example, for Wittgenstein philosophy in the traditional sense is impossible and misguided, but nevertheless by examining language we are able to salvage certain aspects of traditional philosophy and solve some of the problems which befuddle us, problems which are necessarily linguistic. Or for Kant, science in the traditional sense is impossible (i.e. study of the noumenal), but by introducing a Kantian theory of cognition we can resituate science in such a way that phenomena rather than noumena form the subject of investigation. Similarly, Hick thinks that substantial knowledge of God is impossible, but that philosophy of religion and the existing knowledge-claims can be salvaged by reconceiving religious epistemology along Kantian lines.
Again, my primary thesis here is that Hick runs afoul of Nagel's project, not that Hick is wrong. Nagel might not even think he is wrong.
Quoting Wayfarer
They could, but Aristotle's warning about "small errors in the beginning leading to large errors later on" is incredibly pertinent. If we start out with an a priori desire to seek out commonalities, thenlo and behold!we will find commonalities, and we will come to the conclusion that the similarities are very great. If we start out with an a priori desire to seek out differences, then the opposite will occur.
It seems to me that if we try to remain unbiased, then we are forced to admit that there are significant differences between religions and between religious conceptions of God, even to the point where Hick's thesis fails. For example, it is not coherent to say that God manifests to zealous Muslims or crusading Christians as someone who demands violence and war, and that God manifests to Shakers as someone who demands pacifism. Unless God is schizophrenic, it simply cannot be the same God manifesting to both groups. If we assume that God does exist then one group's belief or interpretation must be more correct than the other, and Hick's idea that both are equally interpreting the same divine reality surely fails. (I think those who have no skin in the game are quick to observe significant religious differences.)
Quoting Tom Storm
This strikes me as an apt analogy. It really is possible to see Trump and Sanders through the same lens (reactionary populism, professed opposition to the political status quo, etc.). Nevertheless, stressing that aspect and concluding, "Mostly the same," would not be valid.
Of course Hick does not seem to be engaged in "rationalization." He is not a religious apologist. It would be more apt to call him a pluralist, or a globalist, or a cosmopolitan.
Quite! Your points are well-taken.
That's an epistemological definition of "miracle". I prefer a metaphysical definition, wherein a miracle is an event involving something unnatural (irrespective of anyone perceiving it as such).
Re: Armstrong - his main achievement was the development of a comprehensive, physicalist metaphysics (described in A World of States of Affairs). I've found it a useful framework when debating theists who suggest that an unnatural basis is somehow needed to account for the natural world.
What's your issue with his theory of mind? He's influenced a lot of other philosophers.
Well, if you're going to give up that easily then I will be forced to admit that there are a lot of important similarities between religions as well. :razz: Folks like Huston Smith have argued this claim closer to the ground. I used to hold to something like Hick's thesis 15 years ago, but I have changed course over time. So I do think the points you've made have merit, and I am not entirely unsympathetic to that approach.
Quoting Relativist
He and C C Smart (both Australian, as it happens) were what I regard as lumpen materialists. I think any such argument is susceptible to the criticism made in Chalmer's Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, in fact, I would bet that Armstrong (along with Dennett) was just the kind of philosopher Chalmers had in his sights.
Huh? I think it goes directly to Hick's point about multiple expressions stemming from one source. Some of those expressions, like fundamentalism, are destructive (Trump being an appropriate analogue here).
Quoting Leontiskos
It reads like rationalisation to me - an elaborate justification for religions being true, despite their often apparently irreconcilable differences. He's saying all religions may lead to, in fact point to spiritual truth. Surely this is perennialism, perhaps we could say he's an apologist for perennialism. One is either convinced by this kind of argument or not.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree. Question for you. Can we say that Hick is a relativist of a sort? Seems to me there's an overlap between pluralism and relativism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Whilst l like John Hick's kantian distinction between appearance and ultimate reality. The problem is he relegates the truth claims of all world religions to the domain of appearance or mythological claims. To give one concrete example, he was famous for denying the literal incarnation of God as the person of Jesus in Christianity.
This would not be a problem if the partial truths found in all world religions could be combined together to give us a vision of the ultimate reality without any logical contradictions.
Does this happen ? Nope. John Hick was aware of this problem and he suggested we should make use of dialetheism. Maybe, the ultimate reality doesn't abide by the laws of logic. But even dialetheists aren't prepared to grant so many true contradictions. Given we can't contain the contradictions to ultimate reality alone, it does spill over to the world of appearance.
Religious pluralism also suffers from something similar to the paradox of tolerance. Religious pluralism by definition views religions exclusivism to be wrong. So it ironically ends up excluding the great majority of religious people in this important aspect of their faith. Ofcourse, people who believe in religious pluralism won't ever likely persecute those who believe in religious exclusivism, but there is definitely an intellectual confrontation.
Insofar as its a claim, perhaps its not the truth. The best words can do is point. And as far as philosophy is concerned it can only take you to the border and drop you there. Then it's up to the individual.
I'll share an odd fact. I discovered Kant through T R V Murti's Central Philosophy of Buddhism. He makes extensive comparisons between Buddhist Madhyamaka and Kant's CPR (and also other idealists. A mid-last-century book, it's criticized by more recent scholars as excessively eurocentric.) But one of the comparisions Murti makes is between the 'two-truths' teaching of Madhyamaka and the Kantian distinction between phenomena and the noumenal. Conventional truth, samvritti, corresponds with the phenomenal realm, paramartha is ultimate truth, but at the same time, empty of own-being and beyond predication, as it were. N?g?rjuna (who authored the principle text) said he makes no claims and holds no thesis of his own. He has no absolute truth to proclaim and writes only as a kind of propadeutic. The analogy is, words are like a stick used to stoke the fire, but once the fire is ablaze, the stick is thrown in with it.
Quoting Sirius
Not so much doesn't abide by, but overflows, because it is beyond coming and going or dying and being born. That is why it is the subject of a kind of negative dialectic, rather like apophatic theology (although not explicitly theistic in the case of Buddhism).
As far as pluralism is concerned, Buddhism was born and came of age in the pluralistic culture of ancient India. It was quite a different milieu to the Semetic, as there was a thriving culture and counter-culture of orthodox and heterodox philosophies and spiritual movements. There was a vigourous exchange of ideas between these many movements (at least up until the Mughal invasion.) As a consequence, dialectic reached a very high plane. It's been said that Vedanta and Madhamake each helped define the other because of that. Similarly with many other schools of Indian philosophy (technically 'darshana'.)
The problem with your assessment is that you have encapsulated nature into one entity, nature, which includes such laws, and then immediately denied that the laws are a part of that one entity.
I am not sure I entirely followed this analogy, other than that nature cannot arrange herself. I would say nature can, but I am not saying that there is an entity which modifies itself (like a human organism can do to itself); rather, I mean that the laws are in the whole, which is nature; and they have some jurisdiction over some aspects of nature.
Testing whether something is a banana by doing jumping jacks is analogous to testing whether something is God by asking it to put/remove dew from a mat.
If you disagree, then please demonstrate why the analogy does not hold: hurling unsubstantive insults does not help further the conversation. I am after truthand only truth.
I already conceded with amendment to my position in my previous post. I already conceded I was using naturalism too liberally. In principle, if a phenomena is seemingly violating the laws of nature; then, prima facie, all else being equal, that counts in favor of supernaturalism.
I see, and agree. So, it seems like epistemic parsimony is about concepts, and ontological parsimony is about (concrete) entities.
I think I see where you are going. Theism, being that it posits one supreme entity, is the ultimate ontology, allegedly, because it is monistic; whereas, allegedly, naturalism is pluralistic. Correct?
I dont think an ontology is more parsimonious all else NOT being equal just because it is a form of monism, would be my reply. Since we start out with natural entities, which both theists and atheists have to ontologically posit, it seems more ontologically parsimonious to go with naturalism IF it can all be sufficiently explained that wayeven if it has more brute facts than theism.
For example, imagine, to take your example, there are five basic atoms which everything is ontologically reducible to. Imagine a theist says this atomic five theory doesnt account for miracles, and we need to posit God to explain them. IF the atomic five naturalist can explain sufficiently such miracles under their theory, then it seems, to me, to be more ontologically parsimonious, even though God would provide a form of monism whereas atomic five theory does not because the latter doesnt have to posit a whole new category of entities.
This is a good thought; and, upon reflection, I agree. @Leontiskos, let me refurbish my earlier statement: a phenomena that consistently or demonstrably violates the laws of nature in a manner that indicates divine intentionality should be considered supernatural, all else being equal.
Reminds me of Plato's Divided Line and his difference between opinion (about mutable things) and knowledge (about things that are always true). It struck me a while back that the Platonic preference for this sort of knowledge is essentially reborn in modern philosophy's preference for Humean "relations of ideas" or Kantian analyticity. The whole idea of "a priori" truths is very akin to the theory of remembered truths, known prior to all sensory experience, in the Phaedo.
But this is a point where I tend to go over more to Aristotle, even if I generally find more to like in Plato. We learn from sensory experience and from experience of our own thoughts. Plato might be right to preference the realm of being over becoming to some extent, but it isn't true that all knowledge is of being alone.
Yes, this makes sense. And I think it applies to the "classical theism" of most contemporary philosophy of religion, where God is just a very powerful entity outside the world who created the world and occasionally intervenes in it against the normal "laws of nature."
Religion is only more parsimonious in systems where there is a higher level reality that the world of appearances is plausibly reducible to. This tends to be true in panentheistic systems, whereas pantheism would seem to require an identical number of entities to naturalism and theism additional entities. Advaita Vedant, Neoplatonism, and most Catholic and Orthodox theology would seem to fit the bill here. The reduction flows from a vertical conception of reality based on what is more essential.
The Catholic Mass has a line where everyone says something to the effect of "praise God in whom 'live and move and have our being'" (from The Book of Acts 17:28). God's essence is said to be identical to God's being, but this is true of nothing else. All created things are a sort of derivative partial being, existing according to their essence. All essence is derivative of the Logos (Christ) in the same way light comes in many colors but is one thing. Being is God's being alone (existence, haecciety), which is incarnated/instantiated in Logos according to essence, where essence is derivative of Logos. This maintains a true ontological God/creation distinction unlike Advaita, but it nonetheless collapses the plurality of ontological entities. But there is also a personalist trend here (normally associated with the Holy Spirit) that also tends to make persons ontologically basic, which increases the number of entities.
Dialectical. A thing is / encapsulates its opposite (Eriugena, Boehme, Hegel, etc.) . :cool:
In some ways we might say that, but in general I don't tend to view Kantians (like Hick) as relativists. The reason is that the noumenal will impose some aspect of normativity on the Kantian pluralism. For example, I am guessing Hick might say that there does not exist any religion which self-consciously worships an evil god, because the one reality that is being mediated by religion excludes this interpretation. Or if we take the analogy of the various colors of light that get diffused by a glass prism, we do not find the color black among the colors dispersed, because the normative form enforced by the light source does not permit the color black. Although in Hick this normativity is very thin and subtle, on my view true relativism includes no such normative form.
I think this is a good point, and there is also the fact that religious pluralism universalizes a move that had already been localized by various religions. To give a simple example, some Christians might say that Jews worship the same God they do, but Muslims do not. Hence there is a kind of Christian-Jewish pluralism going on, but which excludes Islam. In the ancient world this was very common, where it was believed that the same god could be worshipped by a number of different peoples and regions under a different name. For example, Zeus and Jupiter.
When you have these very old and developed traditions of discerning when the same god was being worshipped and when a different god was being worshipped, Hick's novel thesis that everyone is worshipping the same god comes across as flat-footed.
Quoting Bob Ross
And how is it that you believe Gideon's test does not do this? Do you believe that the natural phenomenon of dew will affect a fleece and nothing else on one day, and then it will affect everything except the fleece on the following day?
I would view it as an intricate web of relations of things; so, yes, there are the relations and there are the things. I don't see what the puzzle is though: what about what I am saying leads to nature being its own negation?
The point is that cannot prove, in principle, that the dew which affected the fleece (and nothing else that day) was a direct result of a divine, ultimate creator.
Either way, yes, I would be inclined to say that there is a natural explanation for it; whatever it may be; for we there have been many examples similar to this that were explained naturalistically.
For example, on some steep hills a car will naturally roll up the hill. Now, just like the dew example, you could ask "do you really believe that the natural phenomena of gravity would cause the car to go up?". This line of questioning is just incredibly flawed: you are relying on an argument from ignorance.
Quoting Bob Ross
Faith in naturalism. Gotta love it.
He doesnt say that at all. His thesis is that religions originate with the encounter with the sacred, which is then interpreted in divergent ways from the outset, according to the way in which it is expressed by the originator and the culture in which it is interpreted. So cultures conceive of the sacred in vastly divergent ways. Whether there is one or more sacreds is kind of a silly question, which is also the point.
Thanks. Yes, that's a wise assessment.
It seems to me that if there is only one "sacred" then everyone must be worshipping the same god; the phenomenal elements of each religion each derive from one and the same noumenal reality. Metaphysical polytheism is logically incompatible with Hick's theory, no?
'The sacred' is a category, not an entity. Consider David Bentley Hart's depiction of God in The Experience of God - 'one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.' " From a review. He sees commonality between diverse theistic traditions. Is he also falling into Hick's 'barren relativism'?
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not sure who you are quoting, but I just explained why I do not think Hick is a relativist ().
I heard Hart say that he dislikes perennialism and sees himself more as a syncretist. For what that;'s worth.
Differentiates syncretism (which he likes) from perennialism (which he doesnt). Describes John Hick as a well-meaning syncretist thinker, not a perennialist. Sees value in syncretism and says the different faiths complement each other (as did I).
Interesting. I never much liked syncretism (homogenisation, cultural appropriation, etc) but then I'm not a theist, so who cares?
Interesting. I actually think that is a helpful video for showing why Hart does not follow Hick. I am not familiar with the term "perennialism" as Hart and @Tom Storm are using it, but when Hart here says that Hick was not a perennialist he is more or less saying that Hick is not a proponent of a "cult" (in the pejorative sense). Of course this is true. (Hart's adjective "well-meaning" is a clue that he does not agree with Hick. It's hard to say why the interviewer inserted Hick into this topic. Hart assumes that the interviewer is under the impression that Hick was a "perennialist.")
Some quotes from the video:
Throughout this video Hart is doing something that Hick's thesis does not allow Hick to do. Hart is making value judgments between different religious traditions. As I understand it, Hick is committed to a kind of non-hierarchical religious landscape. All religions are differently interpreting the self-same divine reality, and no one interpretation is better than another. To begin placing religious traditions within a hierarchy would be to begin slipping away from pluralism (and this would require knowledge of the noumenal).
Hart's vision is hierarchical, as is the vision of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism in their traditional forms. I actually think most religions are hierarchical in the sense of believing that some religious expressions are better and truer than others, with the possible exception of something like Hinduism.
It has been many years since I visited the debates that resulted from Hick's thesis, and obviously Hick does try to respond to some of these fundamental objections. But in cases such as this I don't think counterarguments will succeed. Hick is either a pluralist or else he is committed to religious hierarchy. He can't be both, as these are opposed poles of meta-religious thinking. As many have noted, Hick's trajectory must be understood in terms of a reaction against the exclusivist fundamentalism of his youth.
To be clear, the problem in these debates is a false dichotomy: pluralism or exclusivism. This dichotomy was broken down explicitly at the Catholic Second Vatican Council, but it was surely present before the Council in various religious traditions. What the Council proposed (in Lumen Gentium #8 & #16) was a form of religious hierarchy, where both disjuncts of the dichotomy are avoided: it is not that all religions are equally true (pluralism), nor that one religion is true and all others are false (exclusivism). Instead there obtains a hierarchy of religious truth and value.*
* I am aware that this idea is hard for secular folks to countenance, lol. Regardless, in truth I believe the secular mind also ranks religions.
:roll:
Perhaps I was wrong to suggest that nature is both orderly and disorderly.
The philosophia perennis is the idea that there is a kind of mystical universalism of which all the primary spiritual traditions are expressions. Specifically, perennialism refers to a group of mainly independent scholars who wrote on those themes in the 20th century. Those Hart mentions are René Guenon and Frithjof Schuon but there are several others (including Ananda Coomaraswamy and Julius Evola). As Hart notes, many of them tended towards reactionary fascism as they despised modernity and political liberalism (indeed the definitive textbook on them is Against the Modern World by Mark Sedgwick. Im not an admirer of those writers in particular but I accept the basic idea that there is a common theme in many classical spiritual philosophies. There is one perennialist philosopher, Sayyed Hussein Nasr, of Iranian origin, whom I believe enjoys a reasonable reputation in current scholarship.)
The obvious reason why the interviewer mentioned John Hick is that they were discussing syncretism and defining that in distinction from perennialism. If you read Harts The Experience of God it is a thoroughly syncretist book.
John Vervaeke's concept of "extended naturalism" explores the interplay between naturalism, spirituality, and the sense of sacredness, moving beyond traditional scientific reductionism and materialism. This approach emphasizes the consilience between structural and content arguments, rooted in neoplatonic thinking, and explores the nuanced relationship between top-down and bottom-up processes in nature. Vervaeke and his colleagues discuss this concept extensively in the context of "Transcendent Naturalism," which aims to bridge the gap between empirical science and deeper spiritual insights, without resorting to reliance on religious dogma.
Vervaeke's discussions often touch on the limitations of traditional propositional knowing in fully comprehending concepts like sacredness, proposing instead that sacredness can be viewed as an inexhaustible and paradoxical fountain of intelligibility. This perspective sees the sacred as something that transcends traditional notions of understanding, pointing to a depth of reality that goes beyond the surface level of empirical facts. In his podcast, Vervaeke delves into concepts like the soul and spirit as ineffable aspects of human experience, highlighting our capacity for self-transcendence and the role of symbolic ideals and transcendence in enriching philosophical discourse.
One of the key insights from Vervaeke's work is the idea that truth and reality possess layers that cannot be fully captured through rational analysis or empirical observation alone. This "extended" form of naturalism suggests that understanding the deeper aspects of existence requires an openness to experiences of transcendence, where one can encounter truths about reality that are not accessible through conventional means.
(citation:1,Redefining Spirit, Soul, and God | Transcendent Naturalism #3 Dr. John Vervaeke Podcast Podtail](https://podtail.com/en/podcast/john-vervaeke/redefining-spirit-soul-and-god-transcendent-natura/) [oai_citation:2,Vervaeke-Henriques 'Transcendent Naturalism' - The Philosophy Forum](https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14505/vervaeke-henriques-transcendent-naturalism) [oai_citation:3,Redefining Spirit, Soul, And God | Transcendent Naturalism #3 Dr. John Vervaeke podcast](https://player.fm/series/dr-john-vervaeke/redefining-spirit-soul-and-god-transcendent-naturalism-3).
I don't see anything incoherent with positing that some of nature is orderly, and some may not be.
Question: Does naturalism explain the phenomena it purports to? I guess what I am asking is: what does naturalism say requires an explanation, and does naturalism succeed at explaining what it says requires explaining? Similarly, would you mind expounding the Naturalism Thesis?
Side note: it seems to me that if we talk about laws, we must talk about a lawgiver, although you seem to disagree with this.
That's not what I claimed. Nature has elements of order and disorder.
Yes, but so does all metaphysical theories per se. The question is whether or not it succeeds in explaining sufficiently phenomena in general. I would say so--obviously, that is a contentious claim.
All phenomena--i.e., appearances--of which we experience. Every metaphysical theory, if it is robust, will claim to have a good framework for explaining all phenomena (in general) or all explainable phenomena (in general).
I think so.
I would say the thesis of naturalism is that everything in reality is natural. By 'natural', some mean 'capable of scientific investigation'; however, for me, I mean 'a member of nature'.
The idea is that the phenomena which we all experience is best explained by appeal to natural entities--i.e., entities that are members of nature--and nothing else. The Nature with which we are all well acquainted, can be extended to all of reality.
Correct. I don't see how a 'law' presupposes an agent which created it. It seems perfectly plausible that 'laws' are behavioral patterns of how things relate to one another, and perhaps they are fundamental or derivates of other natural things.
What will we take to be a sufficient and adequate explanation of a given phenomenon?
I'll give an example: let's suppose there is a storm. Now, you want to say, look, that's not Zeus being angry, there's a perfectly natural reason behind the storm. Okay, sounds good. You'll say, the storm happened because water evaporated and condensed around dust particles in the sky, these further condensed into a cumulonimbus cloud, and, after a bit more condensation and perhaps some atmospheric electrical activity or something, the storm happened, lightning and all.
Then I say, "okay Bob Ross, I think that's a good explanation, but what is it that explanation is supposed to answer?" And you'd say something like, "it's the water cycle, it explains the storm." Then I'd respond, "ah, okay, that's good and well, but what about this water cycle - does it have an explanation also, or is it without any kind of explanation and is explanatorily fundamental?" I am not sure what you would say. Perhaps you would say, "well if it's a phenomena, then it must have an explanation." The explanation of the water cycle is...[Earth's gravity] [the accumulation of liquid water on the surface of the planet] [the electro-magnetic activity of the magnetosphere] [etc.]." But then suppose I were to pry further and say, "very well, and what explains those?" And this process may go on until one of us is either out of knowledge or out of patience.
Now this explanation either proceeds on infinitely, or it has a starting point. If it proceeds infinitely, I am inclined to regard that as a most unparsimonious account of reality. If on the other hand, the explanation terminates somewhere, it either terminates in something natural or not. If it terminates in something natural, I will agree with you that this naturalism is most adequate, complete, sufficient, and all-around a great explanation. But if it terminates in something not natural, then I think I will have to stick with my original supernatural suppositions.
Quoting Bob Ross Okay, as in plants, animals, people, rocks, and so on and so on, these are the natural members correct? Tell me again how laws fit into that ontology?
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think laws can be derivative of natural things, otherwise they would be ordered by the natural things not the other way around, right? In that case, we would have to regard the natural laws as being more fundamental.
Side note response - Isn't this just an argument from Muslim and Christian apologetics 101? For one thing this is an anthropomorphism fallacy - by attributing human-like characteristics (such as legislating laws) to the concept of the 'laws of nature'. Laws of nature are descriptive, not prescriptive, and do not imply a conscious lawgiver. The word 'laws' is a distraction. 'Natural regularities' might be a better term.
It also sounds like a fallacy from incredulity - 'I can't understand why there are regularities in nature, so I'll attribute them to a magic man (lawgiver).' This overlooks the possibility of naturalistic explanations and assumes that one's personal incredulity constitutes evidence for the existence of a lawgiver.
:ok:
This is hte perfect place for Hume's 'constant conjunction'.
:up:
Strangely, this is a very common conception outside of religious contexts as well that "laws" and "regularity" can only exist as the sui generis creations of minds. I have never found arguments of this sort compelling, all though it's worth noting that they also make accusations of "anthropomorphizing." I.e. "how can you say nature acts in any law-like way, you only know that your experience of nature works in that way." "But," they will claim, "the mind 'constructs' that view," and so relying on it for any judgement leads to a sort of "making the world into the image of the mind."
I am not sure how these folks think they have grounds for even believing other minds exist in this case though.
I apologize: I missed this response!
Exactly what is sufficient in order to explain something has a hint of subjectivity to it; but, generally, I would say that the explanation is sufficient if it has ample evidence supporting, and it explains the full range of questions that could be asked of it. Of course, we may bicker about what exactly constitutes ample evidence and evidence, but generally I think that is what we mean.
You are absolutely spot on with your anticipation of my responses: I would say that the explanation of why there even is a water cycle is going to be akin to the explanation of how a storm works.
So, upon reading this, I am not so sure I am really a naturalist in the full, ontological sense of the term; but perhaps just a methodological naturalist. As I dont find any good reasons to believe that causality is finite nor infinite; and I certainly dont think that we understand exactly, even in terms of naturalism, what the most primitive, fundamental natural entities are.
I find that a lot of the metaphysics around it on both sides is just pure speculationanalysis deprived of empirical content.
The final and proper naturalism, which would have the answers you are seeking here, would only be the final result of the meticulous expedition and analysis of reality (if that is even possible for us to do).
My point with the OP is that it seems like naturalism is a better choice because it seems, so far, to explain everything more than adequately; and if there isnt anything demanding the need to posit something supernatural, then why do it?
By things, I would not referring to objects but, rather, just generic entities. Laws are entities in this sense.
If I were to indulge myself by coming up with a complete (ontological) naturalism, then I would probably say that some Law is supreme, and all other laws derive from it, kind of like Platonism but without the supersensible abstract object realm, and so, you are absolutely right that, laws are more fundamental than objects.
The problem with indulging myself like that, is twofold: (1) as already noted, it is too speculative (since we do not have any sufficient empirical content to analysis it with) and (2) nature has proven, time and time again, to behave really weirdly (as a giant web of inter-relations) of which our mathematical and physical models only do just that...provide a map of the territory.
Bob