BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}JAS, list
1. Your attempt to trivialize the famous Five Ways [and they are
famous; I'm stunned that you, a theist, don't know about them] won't
work. Neither of my statements is 'patently false' -which is merely
your assertion, and is not an Argument. Kindly provide evidence for
your claim that it is 'not shared by all Catholics' and others etc.
[And frankly, that is not only an assertion without empirical
evidence but is also a false argument- a negative] Alsd - I refer to
scholars who have studied these Arguments...The fact that the Five
Ways is both a famous argument that IS accepted and is also Argued
Against - takes nothing away from its validity as a Logical Argument.
I would certainly hope that an atheist would research Arguments for
the Reality of God - and not come to their own conclusion merely via
any of the false Fixations of Belief. I am equally stunned that you
would think that I came to my conclusion without research!!!
Therefore your mocking my research as 'ironic' denigrates the
scientific method of arriving at conclusions. I remain stunned that
you are unaware of these Arguments.
2. Moreover, these Arguments are hardly confined to one section of
the Christian theology - and your attempt to trivialize them by doing
so ..won't work.
3. You, by the way, haven't provided the other Arguments [i.e., from
your Lutheran background?] which differ from the Five.
4. An incomprehensible object is not the same as 'his nature' - and
it remains incomprehensible - outside the realm of Reason or Argument
and meant to be accepted only ..by faith. That's not good enough for
an Argument, relying as it does on a belief grounded in Authority, A
priori or Tenacity.
5. Please provide empirical evidence for your assertion [not an
Argument] that Peirce's vague outline of God is 'widely shared by
most [perhaps all] theists}. Why would you state such an
Appeal-to-Populam claim - and not provide the statistical evidence?
6. I totally disagree with your rejection of Peirce's equation of
the term 'God' with Mind. I think he says it quite clearly.
Furthermore your claim that God means"
"Supreme Being" does not do adequate justice to the other
traditional attributes of God, besides Being and Supremacy, including
infinity.".. These other traditional attributes are not mentioned by
Peirce. Therefore - what is their source? Being, Supremacy and
infinity are not found in Peirce.
I suggest you read Peirce's outline of the emergence of the world of
matter - which has no evidence of any 'god-like' activity. [1.412] but
does indeed outline the emergence of Mind.
Edwina
On Mon 14/05/18 1:15 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt [email protected]
sent:
Edwina, List:
1. Who said anything about "fame" or "extensive analysis," and what
relevance do they have anyway? You straightforwardly asserted that
the Five Ways "form the analytic backbone of theistic Arguments for
the Reality of God," and that they constitute "The Argument," but
both of these statements are patently false. I trust that the irony
is not lost on anyone of an atheist dictating to two theists (Gary R.
and myself) which kinds of arguments we must employ to defend our
belief in God--conveniently, arguments that you have already
dismissed as "inadequate." Not all theists are Christians, not all
Christians are Roman Catholics--Gary is an Episcopalian, and I am a
Lutheran--and not all Roman Catholics are Thomists; so imposing the
Five Ways, as identified by Aquinas and grounded in a number of very
specific (and controversial) metaphysical presuppositions, as the
only available intellectual defense of theism is completely absurd.
2a. I ask once more--what should we call Peirce's very explicitly
expressed view that God is Real, if not theistic? He certainly did
not "reject[] the traditional definition as incomprehensible"; on the
contrary, as carefully stated in the third quote that I provided
below, God is "that Being who possesses those Attributes which I take
to be most essential to the traditional notion"; and it was not this
definition that he called "incomprehensible," but "His nature."
Similarly ...
CSP: The hypothesis of God is a peculiar one, in that it supposes
an infinitely incomprehensible object, although every hypothesis, as
such, supposes its object to be truly conceived in the hypothesis.
This leaves the hypothesis but one way of understanding itself;
namely, as vague yet as true so far as it is definite, and as
continually tending to define itself more and more, and without
limit. (CP 6.466, EP 2:439; 1908)
CSP: "God" is a vernacular word and, like all such words, but more
than almost any, is vague. No words are so well understood as
vernacular words, in one way; yet they are invariably vague; and of
many of them it is true that, let the logician do his best to
substitute precise equivalents in their places, still the vernacular
words alone, for all their vagueness, answer the principal purposes.
This is emphatically the case with the very vague word "God," which
is not made less vague by saying that it imports "infinity," etc.,
since those attributes are at least as vague. (CP 6.494; c. 1906)
The Five Ways are deductive arguments for a fairly definite
conception of God, which (again) is not shared by all Roman
Catholics, let alone all Christians, much less all theists. By
contrast, Peirce offered a retroductive argument for a fairly vague
conception of God, which is widely shared by most (perhaps all)
theists.
2b. Peirce did not associate God as Mind--capitalized, not mind as
the primordial "stuff" of the universe, such that "matter is effete
mind" (CP 6.25; 1891)--with all three Categories; on the contrary, as
carefully stated in the third quote that I provided below, he
described God as "so little like a singular Existent" (2ns) "and so
opposed in His Nature to an ideal possibility" (1ns) "that we may
loosely say that He is a Spirit, or Mind" (3ns). Where did Peirce
ever write about God in terms of matter, let alone "Matter-as-Self
Organized"? He indeed objected to calling God "a Supreme Being," but
for precisely the opposite reason that you are claiming.
CSP: Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, justly
points out that the phrase "Supreme Being" is not an equivalent of
"God," since it neither implies infinity nor any of the other
attributes of God, excepting only Being and Supremacy. (CP 6.494; c.
1906)
"Supreme Being" does not do adequate justice to the other
traditional attributes of God, besides Being and Supremacy, including
infinity.
Regards,
Jon S.
On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 7:33 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
JAS, list
1] Peirce's 'Neglected Argument' is hardly comparable to the fame
and extensive analysis done on the Five Ways - with many books and
articles about these as theistic arguments. Therefore, the Five Ways
is not 'one approach', a comment by which you trivialize its hundreds
of years within both religious and philosophical research and
literature.
2] Peirce's outline of God is not, in my view, a theistic one nor is
it an argument, but is instead, purely semantic. He rejects the
traditional definition as incomprehensible - and we all know that he
said that it is useless to 'know' the incomprehensible. Instead -
Peirce defines 'god' as, instead, Mind. And his analysis of Mind is
always as a functioning of all three Categorical Modes: Firstness,
Secondness and Thirdness. That's it. And that definition is as far
removed from any theistic concept of a Supreme Power as it could be,
since it moves Power, so to speak, within all of Matter-as-Self
Organized.
Edwina
On Sat 12/05/18 10:02 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt [email protected]
[2] sent:
Edwina, List:
1. The Five Ways constitute one approach to arguing for the
existence (or Reality) of God, but it is a considerable overstatement
to call them "the analytic backbone of theistic Arguments" or
(especially) "The Argument" as if there were no others--like Peirce's
"Neglected Argument," for example.
2. If Peirce was not a theist, then what other term should we use
instead for someone who very explicitly, on more than one occasion,
in no uncertain terms, affirmed his belief in the Reality of God?
So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of
God, I answer, Yes. (CP 6.496; c. 1906)
The word "God," so "capitalized" (as we Americans say), is the
definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief
Really creator of all three Universes of Experience. (CP 6.452; 1908)
By the proper name, God, I shall refer to that Being who possesses
those Attributes which I take to be most essential to the traditional
notion; that is to say, while His nature is incomprehensible, He
doubtless has Attributes called by proper extension of the terms
Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Infinite Benignity ... But I had better
add that I do not mean by God a being merely "immanent in Nature," but
I mean that Being who has created every content of the world of ideal
possibilities, of the world of physical facts, and the world of all
minds, without any exception whatever. For the argument that I am to
consider; and which, by the way, I will designate as 'The Neglected
Argument,' would not be true of any other being than God. But I do
not, by 'God,' mean, with some writers, a being so inscrutable that
nothing at all can be known of Him. I suppose most of our knowledge
of Him must be by similitudes. Thus, He is so much like a mind, and
so little like a singular Existent (meaning by an Existent, or object
that Exists, a thing subject to brute constraints, and reacting with
all other Existents,) and so opposed in His Nature to an ideal
possibility, that we may loosely say that He is a Spirit, or Mind. (R
843; 1908)
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSch midt [3] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [4]
On Sat, May 12, 2018 at 3:31 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Gary, list:
1] The 'Five Ways' or Quinque viae, refers to the very famous
purely logical arguments by the scholastics [ Aquinas Summa
Theologiciae but see also Anselm's Proslogian] for the reality of
God. I know that JAS didn't refer to these arguments but I am very
sure as a theist himself that he would have to know of them; after
all - they form the analytic backbone of theistic Arguments for the
Reality of God. It isn't enough to say: I believe God exists'; that's
not an argument but a Fixation of Belief from ...a priori,
Authority..whatever. There has to be an Argument - and the Five Ways
is The Argument. I consider each one actually illogical and thus
inadequate, but...many accept them...and there have been over the
years, many volumes devoted to both support and rejection of the Five
Ways.
2] I disagree with you that Peirce was a theist. His references to
'Mind', do not, in my reading, outline it or even examine it as the
Mind of God. After all- to do so, would require an analysis of God
himself - and Peirce doesn't do this. His cosmological arguments, his
evolutionary arguments do not outline this 'Reality', this
metaphysical Being. Instead - what he outlines in his analysis of
What is Matter/Life.....are the three basic categories of MIND:
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. He sees them as 'ens
necessarium' in themselves and I see no correlation of these
operations with any specific Mind of God'.
3] As for Judeo-Christian traditions, I consider these societal
rather than religious traditions. All religions, after all, besides
their metaphysical outlines, are methods of forming and continuing a
sense of 'community'. Our species is a social species - and this
sense of belonging to a community is vital for our rational and
psychological health. Anyone who lacks this - is a psychopath.
So- we'll have to disagree on this issue.
Edwina
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[3] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[4] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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