Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Alex O'Connor (and fans) try to take on God's necessity of being and fail

 Again, YouTube:

 

 I find Alex O'Connor et al whaling away at God's necessary existence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6yH0QgwR6Q

My main response:  

<< Alex, pardon, but I think the start needs to be, logic of being given our going concern world with certain rational, responsible, significantly free and so morally governed creatures: us. This world is causal-temporal, thermodynamically constrained, where, it can be shown, we cannot have stepwise, year by year, traversed a transfinite past . . . one cannot completely traverse a countable transfinite set stepwise, and this counts for the actual past to now.

Yes, hard beginning, not just, look at the singularity 14 BYA or so. The [quasi-]physical world is inherently contingent, thus causally dependent.

Using possible worlds speak we contemplate logic of existence/being. Some things are impossible of being: a Euclidean plane square circle (as required core characteristics are genuinely contradictory, you cannot just assert that on alleged but failed paradoxes, cf Plantinga's Free Will Defense and the logical problem of evils). Others are possible. We and fires etc are contingent, so causally dependent. But other beings or entities are NECESSARY, fabric to any world. Try to imagine a world without two-ness, or where it begins or may cease. Just the distinction of world w vs neighbour w' already shows the necessity of duality, 2-ness, so 2. Not to mention just to speak words or think.

Already, necessary being of 2-ness brings in law of distinct identity and core math: NZQRCR* etc, hence trans world applicability of Math. That is, the study of the logic of structure and quantity. An extension of logic of being. And these omnipresent eternal entities are without beginning or end, so . . . eternal.  

It is in that context, that we recognise necessary being as the other mode of being.

In that light, we need a finitely remote reality root that is a necessary being, one, able to account for a world with rationally free morally governed creatures. If we are not free, we are not free enough to reason credibly, e.g. by computationalist reduction of mind. mind > brain > wetware computer > GIGO.

Now, I do a worldviews level abduction: the best . . . and only . . . serious candidate reality root to fill this bill, is the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great so supreme being. (Surely, you do not suggest that God is a contingent, thus causally dependent being. "Who made God, then?" is a blunder of the first rank.)

This comes back to the ontological argument: we NEED an adequate reality root. In that context, maximally great builds on inherently good and utterly wise. Where, as we should all know, the meaning of divine attributes is that they are compossible; the silly attempted paradoxes of dismissal fail to recognise that say, God must be just and loving justifier of the penitent. Necessary entails uncaused (we need a mode of being beyond cause!) and eternality. Creator implies supreme in power but that is mutually present with goodness and wisdom. Wisdom to maximal degree implies no unwisdom taints it: utterly wise.

And so forth.

I suggest, rethinking is indicated.

One contemplates the extremum of greatness of being, but in a world that requires an adequate reality root. Where, we as thinkers capable of credible thought ourselves must exceed computationalist reduction etc. So, we contemplate and we see, a necessary, maximally great, inherently good, utterly wise creator. God is serious candidate.

But a serious candidate necessary being has another attribute: impossible of being or actual, not merely a ghostly, insubstantial figment of our pipe dreams. There is no good argument that God is impossible of being. Post Plantinga, that is pretty settled. Try an argument _ and show why it and its arguer are coherent __ given GIGO etc. Predictably, fail.

So, logic of being, followed through to the end, strongly points to God. >>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6yH0QgwR6Q&lc=UgxD57ObvmwZvBKSsfJ4AaABAg

Our world of thought is in serious trouble. END