Re: Theism is popular; what follows?

Tom Higgins wrote:

[me, responding to Mark, about my earlier claim that all the
evidence for S ("some sort of supernatural something exists")
is really evidence for something more specific:]
Actually, I agree; "all" is a bit too strong. But the evidence
that *doesn't* take that form is terribly weak evidence for S,
or at least all of it I can think of is. (Example: Every time
some difficulty is found in the currently-best-available
scientific theories, that's a very little bit of evidence
for some such proposition as "there is no theory at all like
the ones scientists look for that accurately describes the world".
As such, it's evidence for S. But very weak evidence, especially
in view of how many such difficulties have turned out to be
handled just fine by later scientific theories.)

[Tom:]
I think there are some important issues that got left out there.

My article was already 427 lines long, and I'm in a bunch of
other threads-with-lengthy-articles that I don't want to ignore
completely (including some replies I owe you from weeks back).

Firstly, most scientists don't merely wish to *describe* the natural
universe ('the sky is blue'), but also to *explain* it ('the sky is
blue *because*...'). But scientists do not have an explanation for
the existence of the universe. This is not just because they have
not yet worked hard enough at at, or because they do not have enough
data. It's more than that: it is not all clear whether it is even
*possible* to explain the existence of any physical universe.

(Ooo, I saw what you did there. You slipped the word "physical"
in. Clever!)

That's
because when all one's data is gathered from *within* a system, it
is far from clear how to explain the origin of that system while
remaining stuck within it.

Yup. That's why, when all our data-gathering apparatus was
located on the surface of this planet, we had no idea that
there was anything other than that planet. And why now, when
all our data-gathering apparatus is located within the solar
system, we have no idea that there's any universe beyond the
solar system. And why, when all our data-gathering apparatus
is temporally "located" in the present, we have no notion
of billions of years of history.

If "universe" means "absolutely everything that exists" then
indeed there's probably no answer to "why is there a universe?";
it's hard to see how any answer could be given that didn't
(impossibly) refer to something outside the "universe". Note
that if God exists then he is part of the "universe" in this
sense.

If "universe" means something like "everything we can observe
directly" or "everything that obeys a certain sort of physical
law" then it seems to me perfectly possible that we might be
able to figure out why *that* exists. The answer might lead to
an enlargement of our notion of what we can observe, or of what
sorts of things there are obeying what sorts of law. By such
expansions we might eventually get to "absolutely everything
that exists", though I suppose we could never know we'd done
so, and at that point presumably we'd stop finding really good
explanations.

An example I gave Gareth was this: suppose someone gave you an
accurate list of the laws of the physical universe. How could anyone
ever answer the question: "Why are *those* the laws, and not some
other set of laws?" But without that answer, the existence of that
universe would not be explicable. (No cosmologist of the natural
universe, ancient or modern, from Aristotle to Hawking, has come up
with any theory that could, even potentially, avoid this problem.)

Nor any philosopher or theologian. And since it's far from
clear that the demand all these people are failing to satisfy
even makes sense, the word "problem" seems a little unfair.

You may say that you avoid the problem by saying that "the natural
universe" exists because God made it, or something of the kind.
But you don't avoid the problem, you just push it back. And it's
no use saying "the problem doesn't arise with God, because by
definition it doesn't make sense to ask why he exists", for
the same reason I gave you last time around: saying "by definition,
X doesn't need explaining" doesn't relieve you of whatever need
for an explanation you might otherwise have had.

With that, this means that anyone making any claim about the reason
for the existence of the universe is inherently making a
supernatural claim -- a claim not verifiable by any process solely
relying on information gathered from the natural universe itself. So
a Christian claim that God created the universe is a claim about the
supernatural.

But likewise, a claim that the supernatural does *not* exist is also
a claim about the supernatural -- a claim that cannot be proven from
*any* amount of information gathered from the natural universe.

That would be why skeptics don't usually claim that "the supernatural
does not exist". Obviously, for all I know, there could be utterly
undetectable ghosts and demons and suchlike in some parallel world
that doesn't affect this one; obviously, evidence for or against that
isn't going to be easy to come by. (It's just barely possible that
there might be kinda-evidence of the following kind: the simplest
available explanations of what we observe might imply the existence
of a profusion of other things that aren't directly observable and
that include ghosts and demons and whatnot. The "many worlds"
interpretation of quantum mechanics is a bit like that, except
that there's no reason to think that any of its "worlds" have
ghosts and demons.)

What I claim -- and I think this is absolutely standard -- is that
(1) the more specific supernaturalist claims I know of (which do
say that "the supernatural" affects the natural universe, and whose
proponents do in fact frequently claim that things happening in the
natural universe are good evidence for their supernaturalist
beliefs) appear to fit my observations much less well than a
naturalist understanding, and (2) I don't know of any good reason
to believe in "the supernatural". So, provisionally, I adopt
naturalism.

And yes, that's a claim about the supernatural; who ever denied it?

I'll reiterate something I mentioned in passing a couple of paragraphs
up: it simply isn't true (and, for the avoidance of doubt, it's not
clear to me whether you're claiming this, so I may not be disagreeing
with you here) that claims about the supernatural can't be strongly
supported or undermined by evidence collected in the natural, physical,
material world. Some claims about the supernatural most certainly
can be.

This
would mean that someone claiming that the supernatural does not
exist, and offering to demonstrate this by referring to information
solely gathered from the natural universe, is making an incoherent
and irrational claim.

I don't know of anyone seriously offering to demonstrate that
the supernatural doesn't exist. But there's nothing incoherent
or irrational about undertaking to provide evidence that a
particular conception of the supernatural is wrong, if that
conception is one that does make some sort of contact with
the natural world.

The Christian claim that God created the universe is *rational*,
in that it appeals to information provided by the supernatural.
An atheist's claim that God does not exist is *not rational* if it
offers to prove this by using only information gathered from the
natural universe. By comparison, an agnostic's claim to lack
knowledge of the supernatural might be held rationally.

If our hypothetical atheist restricts himself to claiming that
our hypothetical Christian is wrong, then she needn't be being
any less rational than the Christian is.

And if the Christian is asking *someone else* to believe that
God created the universe and purporting to offer evidence then,
unless this evidence is offered in some directly supernatural
way, the Christian is in fact offering natural things as support
for a supernatural claim. I don't think there's anything wrong
with that (and have said a bit above about why), but it sounds
as if you do.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

Relevant Pages

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