Some have defined "agnostic" as someone who doesn't know whether God exists, or someone who doubts God exists. But many committed believers in God would agree they don't *know* that God exists-they just *believe* it. Similarly, many believers in God-even saints!-will admit they have consistent doubts-but it doesn't seem right to therefore call them *agnostics*. So we have to be very careful in laying out our terms in order to have a productive philosophical discussion. Edit: The same point goes for atheists. Many would gladly say they don't *know* God doesn't exist and have their *doubts* about the matter. But it doesn't seem we should call them agnostics as a result.
Another great video, Let's Get Logical! I agree with your point about the term "agnostic." In fact, I would add a similar point about the term "atheist." Some people nowadays claim that "atheist" means "lacks a belief that God exists." But this is a revisionist way of understanding the term. (I also think it's funny that, given this revised definition, babies are atheists!) Language can change, of course. But for many years no one ever used the term "atheist" to describe someone who merely lacks the belief that God exists. The term "atheist" was almost always used in the affirmative sense (meaning a person who *believes* that God does *not* exist). And I have some historical evidence for this! Antony Flew wrote an influential paper in 1972 called "The Presumption of Atheism." In it, he *stipulates* that he will use the term 'atheist' to mean someone who lacks the belief that God exists. But he explicitly acknowledges that his usage goes against established common usage of the term. I think that, following Flew, we can be clear by using the following modifiers: "Positive atheist" = someone who *believes* that God does not exist. "Negative atheist" = someone who lacks the belief that God exists. But if we casually use the term "atheist" without a modifier, we should use it in the more standard way--someone who believes God does not exist.
@@ThinkingAboutStuff Interesting point about babies. Makes me think it's also weird to think of babies as _agnostics._ So I'd want to say an agnostic _suspends belief_ , not merely that an agnostic doesn't believe and also doesn't deny. Here's a consideration against the "negative atheist" language: Not just babies, but also animals and tables and chairs all _lack_ belief in God. So are they negative atheists? (Maybe this last point is too goofy.)
Omniscience doesn't imply knowledge of the future. That would only be true if the future already existed (B theory of time) or if it was already settled (determinism). If it's neither, then it's impossible to exhaustively know the future.
Correct. Omniscience implies knowledge of all truths. (Or perhaps only knowledge of all truths that are _knowable_ .) If future contingents do not have a truth-value, then there is no truth-value for God to know. However, this solution comes with some serious baggage: it violates classical logic, according to which every proposition is either true or false. There's a huge (fun) literature on this difficult topic, starting all the way back with Aristotle's discussion of a sea battle that will (or will not) take place tomorrow.
@LetsGetLogical Yes I've heard an argument that the future must be settled because if it was not then all future contingents would be false, which is a contradiction because something has to happen. I don't find it compelling, but that could be because I'm obstinate. Language from the Bible seems to indicate that contingents about the future exist and God knows about them, by they may still change, for example God says Nineveh will be destroyed but it doesn't happen, and God says He will destroy Israel in Numbers 14 (and Exodus) but doesn't. Perhaps that's also a contradiction, but I'm pretty firm on the idea that the future isn't determined one way or the other. Determined to believe it, you might say.
I'm not really a religious person myself. But i'm still open to the possibility of god's existence. When i'm talking about god's existence. I'm not talking about the god of the abrahamic faiths. I'm talking about the god that is rooted in the cosmos. So i'm pretty much leaning towards pantheism or panentheism. 😎
What term would you use to describe someone like myself who is agnostic not merely because i suspend my belief, but because i believe that the existence of anything not bound by the naturalist world is fundamentally unknowable?
Classical Theism would say God is not a person though God is personal or person-like in the sense that God has intellect and will, in an analogous sense.
@reasonablemind6830 That's interesting. So on your view God is _personal_ but not a person? What does it mean for a being to be personal but not a person? I supposed you've already gestured at an answer: having intellect and will. But why not call a being with intellect and will a person? Indeed, the standard terminology in Christian tradition, at least, is that God is one substance in three _persons_ . In any case, speaking of God as a person is pretty standard in analytic philosophical theology (e.g. Swinburne). But if you can point me to sources that address reasons for thinking God is not a person, I'd welcome that. Thanks for viewing.
@@LetsGetLogical Thanks for your response. As you per your request for resources, I start by quoting Christian philosophers Brian Davies and Edward Feser: “The formula “God is a person” is ... a relatively recent one. I believe that its first occurrence in English comes in the report of a trial of someone called John Biddle (b. 1615), who in 1644 was brought before the magistrates of Gloucester, England, on a charge of heresy. His “heresy” was claiming that God is a person. Biddle was explicitly defending Unitarian beliefs about God, already in evidence among Socinians outside England.” - Brian Davies in _The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil_ (Continuum, 2006), 59 “As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem.” - Edward Feser (To be continued in my next comment)
(continuation: 2nd of 3) I quote the philosopher Edward Feser’s longer passage here with a link to his full article at the end: “As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem. “The philosophical problem is that this language implies that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person,” and anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause. Thus, nothing that is an instance of a kind could be God, who is of course essentially uncaused. (Obviously these claims need spelling out and defense, but of course I and other Thomists have spelled them out and defended them in detail many times.) The distinctively Christian theological problem is that God is Trinitarian -- three divine Persons in one substance -- and thus cannot be characterized as “a person” on pain of heresy. (As Davies has pointed out, it seems that the first time the English language formula “God is a person” appears in the history of Christian theology is in the 1644 heresy trial, in Gloucester, England, of someone named John Biddle -- where the formula was condemned as implying Unitarianism.) “So, the reason Davies labels the rejection of classical theism “theistic personalism” is not that he thinks God is impersonal. The reason is rather that he takes theistic personalists to start with the idea that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person” and to go from there. And this, he thinks, is what leads them to draw conclusions incompatible with classical theism, such as that God is (like the persons we’re familiar with in everyday experience) changeable, temporal, made up of parts, etc. To reject theistic personalism, then, is not a matter of regarding God as impersonal, but rather a matter of rejecting the idea that God is a particular instance of the kind “person,” or of any other kind for that matter. (For example, though classical theists certainly regard God as the uncaused cause of the world, they do not think that this is correctly to be understood as the claim that God is a particular instance of the general kind “cause.”)” edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html?m=1 I have one more comment next.
(continuation: Last of 3) In this last comment of this series of three comments, I quote the abstract of this published paper and give its link at the end: AGAINST THEISTIC PERSONALISM: WHAT MODERN EPISTEMOLOGY DOES TO CLASSICAL THEISM Roger Pouivet Université de Lorraine Abstract: Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all of us. But this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and especially how we could pretend to know that God is person. www.philosophy-of-religion.eu/index.php/ejpr/article/view/1871/2038
Interesting! Thanks for that. I'm familiar with both Davies and Feser (in fact, Feser went through the same philosophy program I did). I'll check it out further. However, it sounds like Feser is pretty much on board. He says the problem is not _person_ but "a" person. I take it he's referencing the same point I made above: God is one substance, three persons. But I would take that to mean God is _at least_ a person. (How could God be _three_ persons without being _a_ person?) Still, I concede there are interesting questions here. Hope you'll continue with your next comment. 👊🏼
The almighty God is normally supposed to BOTH A) being able to make decisions and B) to know the future. Here you should make a distinction between "optional futures" - God could maybe interact and modify them - and "THE ONE FUTURE", because ONLY ONE DETERMINED future will eventually come true. (The one that will become our ONLY ONE PAST). Well, God is supposed to be able to get the best performance: to know that ONE future. But then God MUST JUST LET IT UNFOLD EXACTLY like it is, He is NOT ALLOWED to change anything in it, because God makes no errors in his knowledge of the future! God cannot decide ANYTHING more: ALL God's decisions are already included in that future. What above means that EITHER God is free to decide, but this implies He does NOT know the ONE future, OR He knows the ONE future, but this prevents Him from making ANY further decision. Even worse than that, GOD WOULD BE OBLIGED to HIMSELF slavishly follow that one determined future. This all means the two abilities A) and B) are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE ("either", "or", but never "BOTH" at the same time). Since obviously God was able to make his decisions and we are also confident that He knows the future, the path followed must be from A) to B). When that transition occurred ? Certainly not during the man's history, of course that must have happened BEFORE the birth of the universe. However, God only arrived at step B) BUT WITHOUT ENTERING that step, we saw earlier that God is absolutely NOT INTERESTED IN TAKING PART to that future: He would be obliged to "SLAVISHLY" follow it. The God's actions in that one future (for example words) will AUTOMATICALLY come true instead. In other words that one future will become true WITHOUT GOD. NOBODY will be there to take the God's actions: that NOBODY is the SPIRIT OF GOD. God was thus FREE from any other duty. But where has the almighty God gone ? Of course He is now the Son of God. The almighty God dropped his then USELESS power to become like a normal man: Jesus. Thus, the almighty God is only IN THE PAST, "no one ever saw God" ""The world has not known you".
Incorrect definition of atheist. A theist is someone who holds a belief in a deity, an A-theist is someone who does NOT hold a belief in a deity. All agnostics are atheist because they do not hold a belief in a deity. There can be gnostic (profess knowledge) atheists who make the positive claim that no deities exist, and there are agnostic (does not profess knowledge) atheists who are not convinced that any deities exist but don't make a positive claim that one does not exist. This is not my only complaint about this video and the INSANE claims that it makes, but since it applies to me I figured I would correct that one thing.
That's the internet definition. And you're welcome to use it in that Reddit sort of way. But it's useful for people to know that in academic circles the more rigorous definition is used for the reasons explained in the video. Good definitions preserve important distinctions.
"The greatest conceivable being" isn't specific at all. Nor is "absolute perfection." Greatest in what ways? Is it *only* the three omni characteristics in this video? A perfect being would have to be perfectly square. A perfect being would also have to be perfectly square. You say God is non-physical, but I can conceive a being with the most beautiful possible physical form. So now I am conceiving a greater being than what you propose. But you defined God as "the greatest conceivable being." And before you say physical form is a weakness, let me be clear that the being I am conceiving has no weaknesses and also has all of the powers and attributes of the God with no physical form that you conceive. It just has one extra great thing. So what gives? Another example, the greatest conceivable being would create only the greatest possible things. But God, supposedly, created things like rocks that are not the greatest possible thing.
I don't want to dismiss your objection. You're right to ask, "What counts as a perfection?" But I don't think theists will be too terribly set back by your examples.
Some have defined "agnostic" as someone who doesn't know whether God exists, or someone who doubts God exists. But many committed believers in God would agree they don't *know* that God exists-they just *believe* it. Similarly, many believers in God-even saints!-will admit they have consistent doubts-but it doesn't seem right to therefore call them *agnostics*. So we have to be very careful in laying out our terms in order to have a productive philosophical discussion.
Edit: The same point goes for atheists. Many would gladly say they don't *know* God doesn't exist and have their *doubts* about the matter. But it doesn't seem we should call them agnostics as a result.
Another great video, Let's Get Logical!
I agree with your point about the term "agnostic." In fact, I would add a similar point about the term "atheist." Some people nowadays claim that "atheist" means "lacks a belief that God exists." But this is a revisionist way of understanding the term. (I also think it's funny that, given this revised definition, babies are atheists!) Language can change, of course. But for many years no one ever used the term "atheist" to describe someone who merely lacks the belief that God exists. The term "atheist" was almost always used in the affirmative sense (meaning a person who *believes* that God does *not* exist). And I have some historical evidence for this! Antony Flew wrote an influential paper in 1972 called "The Presumption of Atheism." In it, he *stipulates* that he will use the term 'atheist' to mean someone who lacks the belief that God exists. But he explicitly acknowledges that his usage goes against established common usage of the term.
I think that, following Flew, we can be clear by using the following modifiers:
"Positive atheist" = someone who *believes* that God does not exist.
"Negative atheist" = someone who lacks the belief that God exists.
But if we casually use the term "atheist" without a modifier, we should use it in the more standard way--someone who believes God does not exist.
@@ThinkingAboutStuff Interesting point about babies. Makes me think it's also weird to think of babies as _agnostics._ So I'd want to say an agnostic _suspends belief_ , not merely that an agnostic doesn't believe and also doesn't deny. Here's a consideration against the "negative atheist" language: Not just babies, but also animals and tables and chairs all _lack_ belief in God. So are they negative atheists? (Maybe this last point is too goofy.)
Omniscience doesn't imply knowledge of the future. That would only be true if the future already existed (B theory of time) or if it was already settled (determinism). If it's neither, then it's impossible to exhaustively know the future.
Correct. Omniscience implies knowledge of all truths. (Or perhaps only knowledge of all truths that are _knowable_ .) If future contingents do not have a truth-value, then there is no truth-value for God to know. However, this solution comes with some serious baggage: it violates classical logic, according to which every proposition is either true or false. There's a huge (fun) literature on this difficult topic, starting all the way back with Aristotle's discussion of a sea battle that will (or will not) take place tomorrow.
@LetsGetLogical Yes I've heard an argument that the future must be settled because if it was not then all future contingents would be false, which is a contradiction because something has to happen. I don't find it compelling, but that could be because I'm obstinate. Language from the Bible seems to indicate that contingents about the future exist and God knows about them, by they may still change, for example God says Nineveh will be destroyed but it doesn't happen, and God says He will destroy Israel in Numbers 14 (and Exodus) but doesn't.
Perhaps that's also a contradiction, but I'm pretty firm on the idea that the future isn't determined one way or the other. Determined to believe it, you might say.
I'm not really a religious person myself. But i'm still open to the possibility of god's existence.
When i'm talking about god's existence. I'm not talking about the god of the abrahamic faiths. I'm talking about the god that is rooted in the cosmos.
So i'm pretty much leaning towards pantheism or panentheism. 😎
What term would you use to describe someone like myself who is agnostic not merely because i suspend my belief, but because i believe that the existence of anything not bound by the naturalist world is fundamentally unknowable?
An agnostic on principle. 🙂
Classical Theism would say God is not a person though God is personal or person-like in the sense that God has intellect and will, in an analogous sense.
@reasonablemind6830 That's interesting. So on your view God is _personal_ but not a person? What does it mean for a being to be personal but not a person? I supposed you've already gestured at an answer: having intellect and will. But why not call a being with intellect and will a person? Indeed, the standard terminology in Christian tradition, at least, is that God is one substance in three _persons_ .
In any case, speaking of God as a person is pretty standard in analytic philosophical theology (e.g. Swinburne). But if you can point me to sources that address reasons for thinking God is not a person, I'd welcome that.
Thanks for viewing.
@@LetsGetLogical Thanks for your response. As you per your request for resources, I start by quoting Christian philosophers Brian Davies and Edward Feser:
“The formula “God is a person” is ... a relatively recent one. I believe that its
first occurrence in English comes in the report of a trial of someone called
John Biddle (b. 1615), who in 1644 was brought before the magistrates of Gloucester, England, on a charge of heresy. His “heresy” was claiming that
God is a person. Biddle was explicitly defending Unitarian beliefs about
God, already in evidence among Socinians outside England.”
- Brian Davies in _The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil_ (Continuum, 2006), 59
“As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem.”
- Edward Feser
(To be continued in my next comment)
(continuation: 2nd of 3)
I quote the philosopher Edward Feser’s longer passage here with a link to his full article at the end:
“As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem.
“The philosophical problem is that this language implies that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person,” and anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause. Thus, nothing that is an instance of a kind could be God, who is of course essentially uncaused. (Obviously these claims need spelling out and defense, but of course I and other Thomists have spelled them out and defended them in detail many times.) The distinctively Christian theological problem is that God is Trinitarian -- three divine Persons in one substance -- and thus cannot be characterized as “a person” on pain of heresy. (As Davies has pointed out, it seems that the first time the English language formula “God is a person” appears in the history of Christian theology is in the 1644 heresy trial, in Gloucester, England, of someone named John Biddle -- where the formula was condemned as implying Unitarianism.)
“So, the reason Davies labels the rejection of classical theism “theistic personalism” is not that he thinks God is impersonal. The reason is rather that he takes theistic personalists to start with the idea that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person” and to go from there. And this, he thinks, is what leads them to draw conclusions incompatible with classical theism, such as that God is (like the persons we’re familiar with in everyday experience) changeable, temporal, made up of parts, etc. To reject theistic personalism, then, is not a matter of regarding God as impersonal, but rather a matter of rejecting the idea that God is a particular instance of the kind “person,” or of any other kind for that matter. (For example, though classical theists certainly regard God as the uncaused cause of the world, they do not think that this is correctly to be understood as the claim that God is a particular instance of the general kind “cause.”)”
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html?m=1
I have one more comment next.
(continuation: Last of 3)
In this last comment of this series of three comments, I quote the abstract of this published paper and give its link at the end:
AGAINST THEISTIC PERSONALISM:
WHAT MODERN EPISTEMOLOGY
DOES TO CLASSICAL THEISM
Roger Pouivet
Université de Lorraine
Abstract:
Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and
without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of
religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God
appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today
tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all of us. But
this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One
God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is
a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology
to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and
especially how we could pretend to know that God is person.
www.philosophy-of-religion.eu/index.php/ejpr/article/view/1871/2038
Interesting! Thanks for that. I'm familiar with both Davies and Feser (in fact, Feser went through the same philosophy program I did). I'll check it out further.
However, it sounds like Feser is pretty much on board. He says the problem is not _person_ but "a" person. I take it he's referencing the same point I made above: God is one substance, three persons. But I would take that to mean God is _at least_ a person. (How could God be _three_ persons without being _a_ person?)
Still, I concede there are interesting questions here. Hope you'll continue with your next comment. 👊🏼
The almighty God is normally supposed to BOTH A) being able to make decisions and B) to know the future.
Here you should make a distinction between "optional futures" - God could maybe interact and modify them - and "THE ONE FUTURE", because ONLY ONE DETERMINED future will eventually come true. (The one that will become our ONLY ONE PAST). Well, God is supposed to be able to get the best performance: to know that ONE future. But then God MUST JUST LET IT UNFOLD EXACTLY like it is, He is NOT ALLOWED to change anything in it, because God makes no errors in his knowledge of the future! God cannot decide ANYTHING more: ALL God's decisions are already included in that future.
What above means that EITHER God is free to decide, but this implies He does NOT know the ONE future, OR He knows the ONE future, but this prevents Him from making ANY further decision. Even worse than that, GOD WOULD BE OBLIGED to HIMSELF slavishly follow that one determined future. This all means the two abilities A) and B) are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE ("either", "or", but never "BOTH" at the same time). Since obviously God was able to make his decisions and we are also confident that He knows the future, the path followed must be from A) to B). When that transition occurred ? Certainly not during the man's history, of course that must have happened BEFORE the birth of the universe.
However, God only arrived at step B) BUT WITHOUT ENTERING that step, we saw earlier that God is absolutely NOT INTERESTED IN TAKING PART to that future: He would be obliged to "SLAVISHLY" follow it. The God's actions in that one future (for example words) will AUTOMATICALLY come true instead. In other words that one future will become true WITHOUT GOD. NOBODY will be there to take the God's actions: that NOBODY is the SPIRIT OF GOD. God was thus FREE from any other duty. But where has the almighty God gone ? Of course He is now the Son of God. The almighty God dropped his then USELESS power to become like a normal man: Jesus. Thus, the almighty God is only IN THE PAST, "no one ever saw God" ""The world has not known you".
so many logical fallicies
Incorrect definition of atheist. A theist is someone who holds a belief in a deity, an A-theist is someone who does NOT hold a belief in a deity. All agnostics are atheist because they do not hold a belief in a deity. There can be gnostic (profess knowledge) atheists who make the positive claim that no deities exist, and there are agnostic (does not profess knowledge) atheists who are not convinced that any deities exist but don't make a positive claim that one does not exist. This is not my only complaint about this video and the INSANE claims that it makes, but since it applies to me I figured I would correct that one thing.
That's the internet definition. And you're welcome to use it in that Reddit sort of way. But it's useful for people to know that in academic circles the more rigorous definition is used for the reasons explained in the video. Good definitions preserve important distinctions.
"The greatest conceivable being" isn't specific at all. Nor is "absolute perfection." Greatest in what ways? Is it *only* the three omni characteristics in this video?
A perfect being would have to be perfectly square. A perfect being would also have to be perfectly square. You say God is non-physical, but I can conceive a being with the most beautiful possible physical form. So now I am conceiving a greater being than what you propose. But you defined God as "the greatest conceivable being." And before you say physical form is a weakness, let me be clear that the being I am conceiving has no weaknesses and also has all of the powers and attributes of the God with no physical form that you conceive. It just has one extra great thing.
So what gives?
Another example, the greatest conceivable being would create only the greatest possible things. But God, supposedly, created things like rocks that are not the greatest possible thing.
I don't want to dismiss your objection. You're right to ask, "What counts as a perfection?" But I don't think theists will be too terribly set back by your examples.
@@LetsGetLogicalAgree.
so many logical fallicies
For example?