Ask a Theologian IV

[_random_]

What's the best way to reply to this statement from Dawkins other than frustrated ragespeak?

I once read about philosophy students taking a class focused on The God Delusion. In spite of your feelings on Dawkins, do you think it's a good idea to learn how to engage pop philosophy?

 

[Plotinus]

What's the best way to reply to this statement from Dawkins other than frustrated ragespeak?

Well, it's obviously just trolling, since I think Dawkins knows perfectly well that the study of what theologians have said is as meaningful a branch of the humanities as any other, since they're all basically about studying the beliefs of human beings one way or another. He doesn't question the legitimacy of e.g. English literature as a subject. And also of course his programme to undermine belief in God obviously requires an understanding of what people understand by "God" in the first place if it's to have any substance to it. But if you take "theology" in the narrower sense of study of God, then I'd agree with him, in that there's nothing there to actually study. The objectionable nature of his comment is in his use of the word "theology" to mean only that.

I once read about philosophy students taking a class focused on The God Delusion. In spite of your feelings on Dawkins, do you think it's a good idea to learn how to engage pop philosophy?

Sure, I think it's a good idea. People like Dawkins have huge readerships and are clearly tapping into something that people think is important, one way or another. It's right for philosophers to engage properly with that, hopefully in a way that's both critical and constructive.

 

[El_Machinae]

It should be fairly easy to dismiss Dawkins' more shallow arguments; all you need are some counter catch-phrases. On the deeper philosophy, I have no suggestions.

Hitchens (imo) always had the best line when discussing religion "You're claiming something that you cannot know." Sure, you can use that line in everyday life, but it should be especially useful in a lot of religious discussions.

 

[timtofly]

How does anyone know anything? Dawkins can only assume what another person can or cannot know.

 

[Plotinus]

How does anyone know anything? Dawkins can only assume what another person can or cannot know.

It's Hitchens who said it, not Dawkins. But I'd have thought one can be pretty confident about at least some cases. I think I can be certain that no-one knows for definite that God exists, or indeed for that matter that God doesn't exist. All we have are opinions, which may be held with utter psychological certainty, but that doesn't constitute knowledge. I can't find a source for the quotation, though, so I don't know what claim Hitchens was rebutting.

 

[El_Machinae]

Claims regarding Heaven and Hell, iirc.

 

[Plotinus]

Then that would seem appropriate. I can't imagine any plausible circumstances under which a person could be said to know anything about heaven or hell. The only real circumstances I can imagine are if a person has actually been there - but it's equally hard to imagine circumstances under which one could reasonably believe that a person (oneself or someone else) really had been there.

 

[Agent327]

Apparently Jesus went there. Unfortunately he didn't have much to say about it. (Ofcourse I am assuming that the natural place to go for the Son of God would be Heaven for a period of 3 days. It is not mentioned that he simply stayed dead for 3 days or got a temporary residency in limbo, so that appears to me a reasonable assumption.)

 

[Plotinus]

The traditional view is that he went to hell, not heaven. That's what the apostles' creed says.

However, the concepts of "heaven" and "hell" weren't really worked out in Christian theology until some centuries later - after the apostles' creed was formulated. So I would hesitate to say that it means "hell" in quite the sense we would imagine. But then, "heaven" and "hell" in traditional Christian theology - at least the official doctrine - don't quite mean what popular theology thinks they do anyway (they are supposed to be temporary states, not final destinations).

In any case, supposing that Jesus really did die, experience some kind of afterlife, and then come back to life to talk about it; it's very hard to see how anyone else could be certain that he really had, just on the basis of his description of what he'd experienced.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

When it says that he descended into Hades, it could very well just be emphasizing that he was buried. Hades (literally meaning "the Unseen") was not only the term for the place of the dead (good and bad) in Greek mythology, but also a common term for what was hidden right below the surface of the earth. Seeds went to Hades when they were planted, miners dug down into Hades to retrieve gold, etc.


John 20 makes it clear that Jesus had "not yet ascended to the Father" at the time that Mary Madelene saw him, but there may be an implication that he ascended to heaven and returned between the time that he told Mary not to touch him and the time that he told Thomas to touch him. (Newer translations typically have him say to Mary "do not cling to me" or "do not hold on to me" rather than "do not touch me" though.)


Whatever the intermediate state of a soul after death may be, the biblical emphasis is always on the ultimate fate after the bodily Resurrection in the last days. No one has been there and back, and the New Heaven and New Earth do not exist yet.

 

[timtofly]

Seeing as how Jesus only had the Old Testament as scripture explaining a heaven and a hell, anything the New Testament said would either back that up, or deny it.

I don't know if any one would view Paul or any other NT writer as theologians, but they were writing about what they had learned, and what they knew. For people to come along later and examine what they thought the writers of the Bible thought, could go in all different directions of thinking.

There have always been people who claim to "know" different things. I suppose we can discredit them or believe them. I think that we can also know what they knew.

The word revelation is from latin. The Greeks also had the word ἀποκαλύπτω (uncover, revealing what is hidden (veiled, obstructed), especially its inner make-up; (figuratively) to make plain (manifest), particularly what is immaterial (invisible))

The concept was already around at the time of Jesus that hidden things could be brought to light. That seems to me, they had a sense that even God can be known.

Jesus taught that hades was in the earth and that there was a separation between the ungodly and the godly. It was only after his death that the godly were allowed into heaven. One can discredit what was said about Jesus, or one can believe it.

 

[Agent327]

The traditional view is that he went to hell, not heaven. That's what the apostles' creed says.

I'm unfamiliar with that particular aspect of the creed; I've heard it many times, but with the hell sentence section omitted.

However, the concepts of "heaven" and "hell" weren't really worked out in Christian theology until some centuries later - after the apostles' creed was formulated. So I would hesitate to say that it means "hell" in quite the sense we would imagine. But then, "heaven" and "hell" in traditional Christian theology - at least the official doctrine - don't quite mean what popular theology thinks they do anyway (they are supposed to be temporary states, not final destinations).

In any case, supposing that Jesus really did die, experience some kind of afterlife, and then come back to life to talk about it; it's very hard to see how anyone else could be certain that he really had, just on the basis of his description of what he'd experienced.

Christians seem very certain of everything else Jesus is supposed to have said. But if he just was plain dead until resurrected that won't tell us much anyway.

 

[ParkCungHee]

In any case, supposing that Jesus really did die, experience some kind of afterlife, and then come back to life to talk about it; it's very hard to see how anyone else could be certain that he really had, just on the basis of his description of what he'd experienced.

Theoretically, couldn't knowledge gained in the afterlife constitute compelling evidence?

 

[Plotinus]

Theoretically, couldn't knowledge gained in the afterlife constitute compelling evidence?

Yes, if you knew that it had been gained in the afterlife. But how could you know that? It's not like someone telling you what Paris is like on the basis of having been there, because if they say they've been to Paris then you probably have no good reason to doubt them (and besides, their testimony can be compared to that of all the gazillions of other people who claim to have been to Paris too; and there's nothing stopping you from going there yourself and checking if you really care). This doesn't apply to claims about the afterlife.

I might take LSD and have a vision of heaven, and tell everyone what it was like. But they wouldn't be justified in thinking that I'd really got knowledge of what what heaven was like, because they wouldn't be justified in thinking that I'd really been there.

I think it's a little different if you yourself are the person who's had the experience of heaven (or whatever). In that case, you wouldn't have any better case, from a rational point of view. How could you know that what you experienced was really heaven? However, the psychological case would be far better. If you experienced it "as" heaven then it may be extremely difficult not to believe that it was heaven, even if you know that, rationally speaking, you shouldn't believe it. This is because we're not really rational when it comes to personal experience. Even in such a case, though, you wouldn't really have knowledge of what heaven is like, even if you thought you did. Even if in fact you really did experience heaven, I'm still not sure I would call it knowledge, because it would suffer from such epistemic uncertainty (despite being in fact true).

 

[ParkCungHee]

Yes, if you knew that it had been gained in the afterlife. But how could you know that?

Knowledge about the existing life that couldn't plausibly be gained the other way.

If I took LSD, had a vision of heaven and then...could speak Aramaic, point to the location of undiscovered archaeological sites, etc. and claimed I learned these things from people in the afterlife, would that constitute plausible evidence of my knowledge of the afterlife?

 

[Plotinus]

That would make it more plausible, yes.

But the question would remain whether there might be more plausible explanations. E.g. perhaps psychic powers really exist, and perhaps the LSD had some effect on your latent psychic powers that allowed you to glean that surprising knowledge from tapping into other people's brainwaves subconsciously, all the while believing that you being taught it by spirits of the departed. That is an unlikely explanation, but it's arguably more likely than the explanation that you actually visited heaven - at least if you think the existence of psychic powers is less unlikely than the existence of heaven. I would be inclined to think that. Either way, though, I agree that displaying such knowledge would make the heaven explanation more probable than it would have been without it.

 

[Arakhor]

Please excuse the mini-necromancy, but given the thread topic, I hope I can be excused.

Is Anselm’s argument for God as simple as “since we can conceive of the existence of an omnipotent God, therefore he must exist”?

That seems fundamentally flawed, or (more kindly) just wishful thinking.

 

[El_Machinae]

I continually allude to Anselm when I discuss theology with Christian who go on to excuse natural evils as being 'necessary'.

 

[Plotinus]

Please excuse the mini-necromancy, but given the thread topic, I hope I can be excused.

Is Anselm’s argument for God as simple as “since we can conceive of the existence of an omnipotent God, therefore he must exist”?

That seems fundamentally flawed, or (more kindly) just wishful thinking.

No, I think Anselm's argument is more complex than that.

It's really an attempt to show that if you assume the non-existence of God, a formal inconsistency follows. So it runs something like this:

(1) If God does not exist, we can still conceive of God (as not existing).
(2) If God does not exist, we can conceive of something exactly like God, but existing.
(3) God is, by definition, the greatest thing we can conceive of.
(4) A thing conceived of as existing is greater than a thing conceived of as not existing (other things being equal).
(5) Therefore, if God does not exist, we can conceive of something greater than the greatest thing we can conceive of. Which is a contradiction.
(6) Therefore, God does exist.

So the argument turns not simply upon our ability to conceive of God, but upon our inability to conceive of anything greater than God, and the notion that this would lead to a contradiction if God didn't exist.

 

[Arakhor]

Part 5 is where it falls apart for me. I don't think it follows from the first four (despite my personal belief in an omnipotent God).