Norman's objections to my objection #1: "My Turtle Can Beat Up Your Turtle" or "The Unsatisfying Ultimate Answer"

~ Norman ~
"So, my summary reply to Objection One is that the non-theist's "that's just how it is" is profoundly unsatisfying as either a basis of inquiry, or as an answer to ultimate questions.  Furthermore, the non-theist surrepticiously (and often unconsciously) borrows from the theist's worldview, without acknowledging the debt."

That's a pretty broad judgment, and I think much of it comes down to a subjective, almost aesthetic evalutation.  But let's take a look at each of those parts a bit closer.  I'll start with the unsatisfying ultimate answer and then go to the basis of inquiry.  The 'debt to theists' objection seems to really belong to the next big objection on abstractions which I'll try and deal with further down.

For starters, when I say 'that's just how it is,' I don't mean to be simplistic and dismissive of the ultimate questions.  But at some point there seems to be a need for a final turtle, and whichever one it is, well that's just how it is, whether that be material or God or whatever.  At some point something requires no further 'explanation' (mapping of causes).  Something IS, and that's that.  It is also possible that EVERYTHING IS (all possible scenarios somewhere), and that's that.  And that's just how it is.  IMO anyway.

So let's start comparing these turtles and see how they stack up.

As I see it, in the context of this discussion, there is a simple matrix of ultimate answers to the ultimate cosmological question of where IT all came from.  One dimension would be the actual source (God/Spirit/Mind vs Material) and the other dimension would be the chronology (eternal vs temporal).  And each answer can come in a variety of sub-flavors with ample support for turtles of all kinds.  There are probably more complete ways of representing all the options available, but I think focusing on these two aspects of possible scenarios and not others is useful for the purpose of theism vs non-theism.

1A. God/s (spirit/mind?) has always been and created everything.
This would be the traditional theist position.  Typically the god in question is defined in a very anthropomorphic way and is at least as complicated in nature as a human, but in most scenarios seems to be of such vast intellect, wisdom, power, etc. as to make it unimaginably complex.

PROS
Provides a causative label that can be applied to everything (material AND abstractions). 
CONS
Runs into the logical problem of infinite regression.  This causes God to act as container idea for another turtle problem, but one that would seem to forever trap God in the past due to the impossible (?) task of completing an infinite series of past 'moments.'  Sometimes this idea is camoflouged by the attempt to claim that God exists 'outside' of Time, but that is a very problematic notion in its own right.


1B. God/s (spirit/mind?) came into being (no prior cause) and created everything.

PROS
Provides a causative label that can be applied to everything (material AND abstractions).  It also avoids the infinite regression problem.
CONS
The intuitive discomfort around something coming from nothing only increases as the 'something' becomes more complex.  The jump from 'nothing' becomes a bigger one, and the jump from 'nothing' to something of infinite(?) complexity feels like a yawning chasm.


2A. Something (material) has always been and is the source of all that now is.

PROS
Provides a causative label that can be applied to everything (material - the source of abstractions).
CONS
Runs into the same logical problem of infinite regression that God does.  However, it is much easier to contrive 'out-of-Time' solutions to this problem than with a God whose anthropomorphic nature seems to forbid an exit from serial infinity.


2B. Something (material) came into being (no prior cause) and is the source of all that now is.

PROS
Provides a causative label that can be applied to everything (material - the source of abstractions).  It avoids the infinite regression problem.
CONS
Something coming from nothing will always give us a tingle of discomfort, no matter how small the 'something.'  But the something in question here (energy, maybe taking 'shape' as 'strings' with a few variable attributes allowing near infinite recombinations leading to humongous amounts of complexity all by its lonesome) is quite small, almost invisibly so, compared to the ginormously complex something called 'God.'  And there is no Law that I know of that would preclude something ULTIMATELY coming 'from' nothing.  It is simply an idea that feels very...weird.  But, as physics continues to suggest, weird is not necessarily wrong.


If I had to rank the turtles at this point, my favorite is 2A (with a little 'finagling,' all turtle discomfort can be avoided), then 2B (only a small amount of weirdness), followed by 1B (weirdness to the power of 'infinity'), and 1A bringing up the rear (illogical, Captain...).

So let's move on to the 'unsatisfying as a basis of inquiry' objection.  Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what is meant by that statement.  Rather than address the wrong objection in a case of mistaken strawman identity, I figure the best way to proceed is to answer some of your other related statements in a 'scattergun' approach.

~ Norman ~
"This position has overarching cosmological implications; it explains life, the universe, and everything in one fell swoop (or "one swell foop" as Dr. Spooner would say).  The existence of an omnipotent God makes everything fall into place from the scientific perspective.  It does not preclude rational discussion, but rather provides the best possible framework for it, since it provides a common point of reference, an entire 'worldview.'"

As noted before, the proposition of God does not so much 'explain' (map the causes of) the origin of the universe as it assigns a causative label to it.  For example, you could ask how life came to be.  A darwinist could say, 'It evolved.'  If that statement is the extent of his evolutionary theory, with no more detail than that, then no satisfying explanation has been given because there would seem to be many sub-level steps/causes involved.  Similarly, to explain the origin of 'all that is' simply by saying God created it is not to supply an explanation.  That is simply supplying a causative label.  We leave the conversation no wiser as to how any of this was done or how the 'supernatural' (whatever that is really supposed to mean) interacts with the 'natural.'

I'm not sure how God is supposed to provide a framework for the scientific perspective.  If that is a reference to the problem of abstractions, I'll get to that later.  If a fully fleshed out worldview is needed for scientific investigation, I think we may all be in trouble.  All our worldviews are incomplete, and I don't see how choosing one turtle over another will make any difference as to what 'laws' of nature we perceive.  And I don't see how a theistic position would alter or enhance any of our current science.  In the Christian version of theism, the Bible is regularly defended as a NON-scientific text.  And theism is regularly combined with Evolution without altering the Evolution side whatsoever.  In that scenario, God isn't always even directly necessary for Life.  If there is anything Christianity would change about science, it would be that there is another class of phenomena called 'miracles' or 'the supernatural' which have a relationship with natural phenomena that is not yet understood.  And I don't see anyone pursuing that angle with any seriousness.

The scientific method seems to be a good approach to discovering truths of limited scope about the universe.  These truths can be expanded as our ability to examine ever larger contexts improves.  Although knowing that ultimate turtle would give us the biggest context of all, giving that turtle a name and, at most, a vague description doesn't seem to affect what scientists do or what they find.

~ Norman ~
Conversely, the claim that "that's just how it is" is NOT a cosmological one.  Not only does it not provide an overarching framework, it indeed leaves anyone inquiring into the nature of things at an impasse.  If one is content with the proposition "things just are the way they are," one has already adopted a radically "pragmatic" standpoint, inherently antithetical (and perhaps even antipathetical) to theory of any sort.

Actually "that's just how it is" is not meant to be the actual turtle, only the floor that the final turtle stands on.  Although we would all like to know what that final turtle is, it doesn't make sense (IMO) to claim it is one thing or another without some observation/experience that requires such a claim.  IMO there are many possibilities.  I have some favorites, but I don't have to place faith in any one in particular to continue a cosmological investigation.  However, we may indeed be at an impasse on that last turtle.  I personally think we always will be at an impasse because all our tools of observation and measurement require something which may prevent us from poking our heads out of some particular turtle in the stack: Time.  This may indeed be a pragmatic observation, but it does not seem 'inherently antithetical (and perhaps even antipathetical) to theory of any sort.'  Arbitrarily inventing a final turtle without any good reason seems, if anything, 'antipathetical to theory' since it establishes a turtle as truth without verification or support of any kind.

~ Norman ~
Perhaps I am over-stating things, though.  Perhaps the intent is for "that's just how it is" to be a reply only to "ultimate" questions such as "Why is there morality?" or "What is the source of the laws of logic?"  Indeed, that is probably a better (and certainly more charitable) way of reading it.  Even then, this is ultimately unworkable because, as already noted, it provides no grand framework, no means of unifying diverse disciplines under anything like "universal" knowledge.  Indeed, the "crisis of reason" that Western intellectuals have been discussing for over a century coincides almost precisely with the collapse of widespread religious belief among the intelligensia.  God is, among other things (indeed, EVERYthing) the source of reason, so this should come as no surprise.

I don't see how God makes diverse disciplines any more unified than they would be without God.  If the material universe is unified/harmonious in its composition, that in itself would be a source of unity in the disciplines that study it.  And placing God in one's worldview doesn't seem to help us out of whatever epistemological pit that perceptually limited subjectivity creates for us.  Many leaps of faith must be launched to land on the shore of Christian theism even after one accepts a god into their worldview.  And once that landing is made, the view of the heavens is only further clouded by many mysterious wings of angels and other personalities.  Christianity thrives more on mystery than explanation, more on fog than clarity (IMO, of course).

~ Norman ~
Additionally, I don't think that any scientist actually thinks this way (although, as a non-scientist, I may be wrong about that).  Scientists are always looking for the next "turtle" on which the one they already know about is "standing."

Exaclty.  And I don't think they find that next turtle by choosing what it will be before they have any clue what it is.  The closest they come to that is through modeling complex systems, a process similar to your presuppositional apologetics where 'best fit' is meant to win.

~ Norman ~
There is nothing objectionable about this, of course, and one of the creation myths I've ever read is "The Big Bang."  It may be true, but even The Big Bang is nothing more than the ultimate "turtle," one that can stand on itself.  Here again, the non-theist view fails cosmologically, as it cannot give any further answer, other than "that's just how it is."  It seems quite pragmatic, but is not an effective foundation for anything.

There's no reason to think the Big Bang is the last turtle.  There has actually been some suggestion that we may be able to 'look' at conditions that led up to it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702084231.htm

The ultimate explanation does not serve as the foundation for science.  Empirical observation is that foundation, as I believe it is for all human understanding, even all the subjective claims of 'relationships' with God.  When it comes to God, theists can give no further answer because God is 'just how it is.'  The last turtle is where the buck stops, and it serves as the ultimate explanation (assuming we understand it or have enough information to actually understand something).  Nothing more is necessary.  But science starts at the other end and works its way out toward that ultimate turtle.  It doesn't start with the ultimate turtle and come back around full circle.

~ Norman ~
But there's a lot more to it than just that.  The Christian understanding of these fields also permits an explanation for the regularity and predictability of each of them.  I have yet to hear a thorough, persuasive, non-theistic explanation for why laws of logic and mathematics exhibit such amazing precision and regularity.  Saying "that's just how it is" may seem good enough to explain today, but what about tomorrow, or yesterday?  Why do these laws not change?  After all, just about everything else does.  Apply this to the laws of physics.  Why should we not have "heavy" gravity days--when even a walk to the corner store is an ordeal--and "light" days--when we all feel like Carl Lewis (showing my age there, eh?)?  Some days are rainy, and some are sunny.  The weather changes.  Why not gravity, or the laws of thermodynamics?

I have yet to hear a thorough, persuasive, THEISTIC explanation for why laws of logic and mathematics exhibit such amazing precision and regularity. I don't see a connection between these and the Christian God other than a claimed connection.  If anything, the universe seems to be founded upon a different logic than that of the proposed God who can either have an infinite past or act while 'frozen' in a time-less state, both of which seem to defy our logic.  I'll go into detail more on the abstraction objection below.

Why do our laws do not change on a regular basis?  Well, if things behave the way they do (follow such-and-such law) because of WHAT they are, then doing something different or random would require that the object in question change into something different or constantly change in a random fashion.  In a causal system, this would require a great many more causes than not changing at all which would essentially require no cause.  I don't think it requires a God to keep things from changing randomly all by themselves.  Now maybe if we lived in a universe created by a God who brought itself into existence or suddenly started its own Time clock or continued to change itself randomly, we would expect the universe it created to go around changing itself since theists correlate the characteristics of this universe with those of the creator.  This question assumes that effects regularly cause themselves in this universe (which is contrary to experience).  If such is the case, it might be that no god is needed to explain this material effect we see today.

That is:

if (no God = anti-persistence [not to be confused with anti-perspirant])
and if (anti-persistence = auto-causation [and these admittedly may not be fully equivalent terms])
then (no God = viable and most elegant turtle of all)

~ Norman ~
The point is that the theist has a basis not merely for explaining why the world is the way it is; he can also has a basis for projecting his knowledge into the future.  Since the laws of logic, mathematics, and physics--among others--have their basis in God's very nature, the theist's knowledge of God's unchanging nature explains why these laws are immutable.  The non-theist can really use these laws, but when he assumes that they will be the same tomorrow as they are today, he is at best projecting from past (limited) human experience into the future.  In so doing, he is borrowing from the theist's worldview, and in this case from the Christian worldview specifically.

Claiming that the universe has the characteristics it has because God has those same characteristics seems something of a non sequitur.  However, claiming that God chose to create the universe that way for whatever reason would not be.  However, it would merely be a claim.  I think the theist should be careful about claiming that God could not have created the universe in any other way because that impacts later discussions of Free Will, and it almost reduces God to 'nature.'  If anything the Christian God seems anti-mathematical (a 3-person godhead = 1 God and is a monotheistic concept), anti-logical (already addressed), and anti-physical in its supernatural nature, whatever that is.  So holding to a concept of God seems to be of no help in these disciplines that non-theists supposedly can't practice on their own.

~ Norman ~
There has never been a society of non-theists.  There is a good reason for this.  Human beings are cosmological by nature, which is to say that we want, indeed NEED, answers to ultimate questions.  We need to know who we are, where we came from, and why we are.  No society will long endure without a sense of self born of a common identity.  Everyone has a "god," or perhaps "totem" is a better word.  A person who does not worship God will worship something else, most often himself in one form or another.  As science fragments into innumerable sub-disciplines, under the pressure of both specialization and the ongoing crisis of reason, there is less and less binding knowledge together.  Knowledge is sought for the sake of knowledge, and ultimately becomes a game--a species of "turf protection." ....

There is more that follows, but it didn't seem to be an argument I needed to address.  I half expect you aren't really meaning what this argument sounds like.  What we emotionally NEED as humans is hardly a good way to determine what that last turtle is.  Humans have historically shown some poor tendencies in their thinking, and that's why we struggle to master rule systems (logic) to clean up our thinking.  We are terribly prone to magical thinking, and I suspect that sort of sloppy cause-effect connecting has led to the creation of many superstitions.  This also happens in animals who, like us, will tend to associate things by chronological immediacy rather than reasoned causality.  Human beings also tend to explain things based on what they already know.  This is something that artists do all the time when they use metaphors.  In the attempt to satisfy our curiosity about the world and establish a narrative and context for our lives, we have created many interesting and obviously metaphorical explanations based on what we know best, ourselves.  I suspect that is why we anthropomorphize everything, and it might be why our gods are all 'people' or 'animal-people.'

So my summary reply to your objections toward non-theist turtles is that you are claiming answers to unnecessary questions and not properly evaluating real isues surrounding the theist turtle.  In some circles this might be called 'padding your resume.'

Norman's objections to my objection #2: "But for the will of God, turtles would be hares, dogs and cats would be living together... mass hysteria!" or "Without God, Chaos would reign." or something like that...

~ Norman ~
It is true that "law" is a name applied to observed phenomenon, but I think that this is more a linguistic squabble than a substantive one.  One can easily reframe the issue to ask how it is that a non-theist can explain why light, e.g., behaves in a certain way, or why the denial of a false proposition is always true (law of the excluded middle).  As noted in the previous objection, the non-theist can also not explain why these laws persist, rather than changing (like the weather or the seasons).

I did say it was a subtle argument, and I think it is much more than linguistic.  But now you aren't requiring an explanation for the existence of Laws and abstractions.  You are asking for an explanation of consistency in 'that which is' from one moment to the next (persistence).  We have switched the question from why ALL light behaves similarly to why all light CONTINUES to behave similarly.  I've already addressed this basic question above with the solution that 'inconsistency' requires more causality and 'consistency' requires no causality.

~ Norman ~
I actually agree with Little Pig's claim that 'stuff' and 'law' in this case mean very much the same thing.  Consequently, I believe that this objection falls short for the same reason as the first objection, viz. that the non-theist can give a best a descriptive, rather than a normative, account for the things that are.  Heck, the non-theist doesn't even have any theoretical basis to trust his senses.  How can the non-theist know that he is really seeing what he is seeing?  What reason does he have to believe that the world around him has any basis in "reality' at all?  For that matter, what is "reality"?

As noted above, the theist causative label does not give a better normative account than non-theist labels.  Attributing the characteristics of this universe to the Christian God is, at best, a non sequitur and, at worst, contradictory.

And non-theists do have a 'theoretical' basis for trusting their senses, for the most part anyway.  There are theories that explain the non-supernatural workings of our senses and how they relate to the physical world around us.  Of course, trusting our senses and empirical observation in general is axiomatic and beyond full substantiation for everyone. This is another turtle game for everybody, theists included. I have often heard theists claim that this 'world' is not real, or at least as real as God's reality.  This would seem to suggest that some theists very much believe they cannot trust their senses, at least not when it contradicts dogma.

I promised to address abstractions a bit more, so I'll try and do that here. 

Math.  I hate math.  But it's awfully useful because it helps us to understand our universe. It helps us because it describes the relationships of quantities, i.e. abstractions (rules) about abstractions (groups/sets) that correspond to many facets of the interaction of multiple, discrete objects in our universe.  Like other laws and abstractions, math flows from objects themselves.  If there was no apparent discreteness at some level of our reality, would we have discovered the math that we now have?  Is a god required for us to have math?  Well, not unless a god is required for the existence of 'stuff.'  Math, like logic, is constructed from axioms that cannot be proven.  We have axioms because they are 'observed' empirically.  a=b, b=c, a=c. A cannot be A and not-A. From axioms come theorems.  We can change the axioms and build self-consistent systems of theorems, but when the axioms no longer match observation, I think the theorems also get out of whack.

So laws, abstractions, math, logic, physics, etc. are actually our efforts to describe things and their interactions.  They do not exist in and of themselves and require no extra explanation.  What requires explanation is 'stuff.'

Norman's objections to my objection #3: "Romancing the Infinity" or "Humans are only able to perceive infinity because God made it to be so."

~ Norman ~
Infinity is a tough one.  It's possible that man got the idea of infinity from staring at the ocean, but I don't think so.  Animals stare at the ocean, too, but when they do so, they're usually looking for food.  Why do WE look at the ocean differently?  I believe that the most reasonable explanation is that our longing for infinity comes from our innate intuition of divinity.

That may be so, but I'm not sure how you arrive at that particular conclusion or why you would preclude the possibility that humans, when looking at something inconceivably vast (i.e. the ocean, sands on the seashore, the stars) could develop a concept of something uncountable, unlimited, beyond the imagination.  That seems a very reasonable explanation needing nothing supernatural.  You imply that there is some significance in the difference between our own imaginations and that of other animals.  I agree that our imaginations are much more powerful than other animals and that we use abstractions in a much more complicated way, but I don't see how that means we intuit divinity.

Personally, I don't even 'believe' in infinities.  It is a concept useful in math, but I think that infinity represents unbounded POTENTIAL and not the ACTUAL.  'Everything that is' (IMO) is actually finite.  If any THING in our universe was infinite, it would infinitely overwhelm all of that which is finite when interacting with it.  Infinities are just too infinite to play nice.

~ Norman ~
Here the case is not nearly as strong as in the first two cases, but only because the evidence there was more objective.  Here, some subjectivity in required, as this question touches the very essence of what it means to be a human being.  What is the source of the "tingle" we feel when we stare at the heavens on a cloudless night, far the lights and bustle of the madding crowd.  Why do we yearn (for what, though?  we know not) when staring at the vastness of the sea?  Is it Darwin calling us back to our "home"?  Perhaps.  Is that what it FEELS like, though?  Or does it feel like you're faced with something, an apparent--though not actual--infinity, that reminds you of something you can't quite place, the vaguest sort of deja vu, where not only are you not sure you're seen it before--you're not even sure what it is that you're seeing.

I'm going to pass on trying to 'divine' what turtles may exist based on tingles inspired by the ocean.  We feel many things for many reasons, most of which are probably unexamined and poorly understood.

~ Norman ~
Immanuel Kant tried to wrap his very respectable, very decent, very atheistic, and very Prussian head around this very question in the 18th century.  In what is probably the best known portion of his third masterwork, The Critique of Judgment, tried to explain our intuition of infinity as related to our aethetic reaction to something--like the seemingly limitless ocean--that does violence to the imagination by exceeding its grandest limits.  Even this brilliant "analytic of the sublime" fails to get to the heart of things, though.  WHY do we have this reaction?  Even Kant was forced to conclude, in effect, that "that's just the way it is" or, to put the same thought somewhat differently, "it's turtles all the way down."

Actually, my intuition and reason tell me it's not turtles all the way down.  The notion of infinity is indeed mind-blowing.  It doesn't take much to put a hurt on the head.  But a million of anything also hurts my head, and a million is 'nothing' compared to infinity.  I think the feeling of the sublime is the same feeling that 'a million' has (if a number could have feelings) when it compares itself to infinity, or even 963 billion.  It is the feeling of being as nothing, of being absolutely dwarfed.  It is the vertigo of being on the small end of magnitudes and scale.

Thanks for the interesting thoughts, Norman.  As you can see, they inspired me to try and put a lot of my own into somewhat clear words.  Philosophers and infinities work together to maintain a price floor on Tylenol.

- L.Pig