GOD IS NOT ABOVE LOGIC

I have engaged in some prominent debates with Sydney Anglican (read Episcopalian, if you're American or Scottish) bishops and the like at various universities over the years on such important topics as the existence of God and whether Jesus physically rose from the dead. One of the bishops I debated in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney was Dr Glenn Davies [pictured below] who is now the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. At least I found him to be a real gentleman. He was also no dill, although I didn’t find him to be much of a debater, nor apparently did a number of his Christian supporters---including some prominent members of the Sydney University Evangelical Union who organized the debate---who wrote to me after the debate saying that even they thought I had ‘won’ the debate. Of course, that neither proves nor disproves anything at all. Important issues of the kind in question are not truly resolved one way or the other by formal debates governed by the rules of debate.

I was the ‘atheist’ in these debates. Well, I wasn’t just play-acting for I reject all forms of traditional theism. If there is a ‘God’ that God is certainly not the crude anthropomorphic ‘being’ in whom my opponents believed. Atheists do not necessarily reject or deny the existence of God, rather they simply lack theistic belief (Greek áthe (os) god-less + -ist). Most, if not all, agnostics, are really ‘soft’ atheists, for they too lack theistic belief and, like atheists, live their lives as if there were no God, which may well be the case in any event. In other words, agnostics, by virtue of their lack or absence of theistic belief, are for all intents and purposes what are known as 'practical atheists,' as opposed to those who are metaphysical or philosophical ('hard') atheists. Forgive me, I digress (as usual).

Now, in the debates in which I participated I would seek to demolish the traditional, classical so-called ‘proofs’ for the existence of God. My opponents, knowing full well that those ‘proofs’ are all fundamentally flawed and have been found wanting by those 'evil, atheistic philosophers,' would invariably seek to rely upon what is known as presuppositional apologetics. A presupposition is an assumption that is taken for granted. That is, they would take for granted God’s existence---yes, Christian presuppositionalism presupposes the existence of an absolute God and temporal creation---because their a priori Christian beliefs would not allow them to proceed otherwise. 

You see the Christian presuppositionalist's 'reasoning' is derived from their basic presuppositions from which they refuse to budge no matter what counter-reasoning is presented by their opponent. They take for granted the truth and reliability of the Christian Scriptures and assume from the beginning the supernatural revelation of the Bible as the ultimate arbiter of truth and error. They then try to show how belief in the Christian God, Jesus, the Bible, the 'miracles', etc, is supposedly more reasonable than non-belief in those things. Amazing, really. You see, in light of their presuppositions about things metaphysic they see all thinking on such matters---well, at least their thinking---as being wholly receptively reconstructive of their (note this---narrow, emphatic evangelical) interpretation of what is set forth in the Bible as supposedly being God's Word (that is, God's thinking).

My Christian opponents’ arguments rested almost entirely on an absolutist belief in the Bible as the source of truth because the Bible is supposedly inspired by God, in whom, so we are told, we can believe because the Bible affirms it, and the Bible is the source of truth. ('Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.' Well, the Bible must be right, mustn't it? Because the Bible is the Word of God. It says so. So it must be right. Etc, etc.) This sort of reasoning is entirely circular and tautological, and is little more than fideism, which asserts---in its strongest form---that belief in the existence of God cannot be established by reason at all, but must be accepted or rejected wholly upon faith. 

In at least one of the debates in which I participated my opponent told the audience that, given my rationalistic worldview, I was simply incapable of entertaining any worldview of a 'supernaturalistic' kind. In other words, he was accusing me of presuppositionalism---of a naturalistic, rationalistic kind. Not so. I do not start with any such presupposition. My present position is simply that the physical world in which we live yields no credible or reliable evidence of 'supernaturalism.' This is not a naturalistic bias on my part at all. Not at all. I repeat, I do not start from any naturalistic or rationalistic presuppositions. For example, believing that there are no good reasons for believing that God exists does not necessitate that God does not and cannot exist since mere belief is not proof that God either exists or doesn’t exist. Although I lack theistic belief my mind is not closed to the possibility of God existing, although I think that’s most unlikely. My mind is not foreclosed to reason, counter-argument or evidence to the contrary. I fear, however, that my Christian opponents' minds were foreclosed. Their theistic presuppositions could not under any circumstances allow them to rightly determine God’s non-existence from evidence. Their basic presuppositions compelled them to always interpret all evidence in a manner consistent with those absolutist presuppositions.

With Bishop Robert Forsyth, the Anglican Bishop of South Sydney,
whom I debated in 2005 at the University of Technology, Sydney

In these debates---as in my various writings---I tried wherever possible to rely on reason and its principal ‘tool’, logic. (I must be honest. I would from time to time also employ some ridicule and theatrics well.) Now, when I use the word ‘logic’ I am referring to traditional Aristotelian logic. My opponents would then retort, ‘God is above the rules of logic.’ Really? That can’t be right. Now, for the sake of what follows, let’s assume that there is a God of the kind my learned clerical opponents claimed made the world, is watching attentively over it, and so on. How could this God be ‘above’---whatever that word means in this context---the rules of logic?

First, the assertion that God is above logic is not an a priori proposition. Where is the theist’s proof for this assertion? In fact, the theist, although rejecting the applicability of logic, always ends up applying logic, albeit wrongly. Theists tend to do that, and they end up tying themselves into knots of their own making.

Secondly, what is the point of reasoning about God if the principal tool of reason---that is, logic----is inapplicable or unreliable. Never forget that logic is about things, not thought, and about how things are related to other things. It is always a case of … what is.  As the Scottish born-Australian philosopher John Anderson [pictured below left] pointed out, there is only one order or level of reality such that a single logic applies to all things and how they are related to each other. There can be nothing ‘above’ or ‘below’ the proposition---not even God. Anderson was a realist, an empiricist, and in more recent times I have come to see that idealism and realism are not really in conflict with each other. Indeed, they need each other, and they even complement each other. Irrespective of whether or not you accept Anderson’s strict realism, I think what he said about there being only one order or level of reality is true, even if one embraces monistic idealism.

Thirdly, and most importantly, if there were anything above logic we simply could not trust our senses at all. All our attempts at fact-finding, determining what conclusions and inferences can be drawn from any given set of facts before us, and drawing appropriate conclusions and inferences from those facts, would be futile---and we know that is not the case. We can reason---and we must ... if we are to know our true bearings and 'navigate' our way successfully through life. With our eyes open, and wide awake, I mean.

Fourthly, if God were above logic there could be no interpretation (logical extrapolation) of God’s Word or Christian apologetics. For example, the various arguments for the Trinity would collapse. They’re pretty weak in any event, but that’s another story.

Fifthly, the theist does in fact use logic when expedient, that is, when it suits their purposes. Take, for example, the law of non-contradiction (viz that anything with a contradictory nature cannot exist). The theist affirms that God cannot contradict Himself. Thus, God cannot create a rock that God can’t lift. God cannot create a round square. God cannot make the immoral moral. God may be all-powerful but God is still constrained by logic. If that were not so, then there would be nothing to stop God from creating a rock so heavy that God could not lift it and then in the next moment lift it. In short, a God ‘above’ logic doesn’t make sense at all. It is inconsistent with the very attributes that are said go to make up God (reason being one of them). Reason and observation tell us that nothing can be done by anything---including God---that is not otherwise part of its capabilities.

Finally, assuming, for the moment that the God of traditional theism does in fact exist---something which, in my opinion, is highly unlikely indeed---that God would not be above logic nor below it. As with morality or goodness, reason would have to be an integral part of the nature of God. It would not be a question of God ‘submitting’ to logic nor could it be truly said that God arbitrarily created reason. In short, reason, a fundamental human capability, would have to be seen to be part of God’s nature and, once again, as the theist keeps on telling us, God does not and cannot contradict His own nature.

Of course, all that assumes that the God of traditional theism does in fact exist. I have written and spoken elsewhere on that matter.

THINKING THINGS THROUGH---LOGICALLY

This post is dedicated
to those former stellar students of mine

who could---and still can---think things through … logically

‘The horror! The horror!’ (Forgive me, Joseph Conrad.)

Yes, the bloody horror of it all!

In my almost 20 years of teaching law at a university in Sydney, Australia---I had more than 9,000 students in that period (and, lest there be any confusion, I truly enjoyed teaching for the most part)---I became increasingly concerned that far too many students were afflicted with a ‘disease’ which they had caught in their secondary education, or perhaps even earlier. Generation Xers were afflicted with the illness, but Generation Yers even more so. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory and self-conceited, baby boomers---of whom I am one---appeared to be largely immune to this disease. Perhaps we were inoculated against it along with our triple antigen. I don’t know.

No, I do know. The disease was transmitted in and by the education system---by faddish teachers who couldn’t teach (many of whom were failed students themselves in their day)---as well as culturally and politically … in other words, by people who had a socio-political (and largely leftist) ‘agenda’ of sorts. It’s a terrible sickness---and often terminal. Not even heavy, regular doses of Aristotelian logic assist once the disease has taken hold in the patient’s mind and body.

The disease, which has no name that is universally accepted, manifests itself in a style of thinking, speaking and writing that is characterised by, among other things, an extreme subjectivism and relativism---as well as an inability to engage in critical thinking.

I am so grateful to my parents for giving me the opportunities for a creative childhood. I am also most grateful to my teachers who gave me a good, classical, liberal arts education of the old-fashioned, non-faddish kind, for its emphasis on the humaniities and the arts---in which I excelled---gave me the disciplines of logical reasoning, argument and, above all, independent thought as well as the ability to engage in critical thinking.

Now, I want to set things straight, assuming anyone will listen. I am a philosophical realist---an Andersonian one to be exact. I know this much---and I will defend all of this as being true to my dying day:

FACT 1. Whatever exists---facts---is real. Yes, reality is---what is. That's almost axiomatic.

FACT 2. Truth is a factually correct description or statement of what is, and logic---that is, traditional propositional logic---is about real things in the real world, and how those things are related. (Good, logical thinking means relating---that is, putting together or distinguishing---different pieces of information about facts or alleged facts.)

FACT 3. Whatever exists are complex occurrences or situations in complex relationship to other situations.

FACT 4. Further, whatever exists is a situation located in context (that is, a thing is, under certain conditions, a situation), with the latter affecting that situation.

FACT 5. All such situations exist in the one space-time, and belong to the one order of being.

FACT 6. All things exist in situations which are complex, each such situation involving numerous differences and relations, being ‘a multum in parvo plurally related’ (to use the words of William James [pictured above left]), for each situation consists of ‘things’ (‘terms’) having both connections (‘relations’) and distinctions with other ‘things’ as well as internal differentiation.

FACT 7. There are literally countless, indeed, an infinite number of infinitely complex and interacting pluralities exhausting the whole of reality, and subsisting in one space-time, such that there is nothing but such facts, but not as ‘one vast instantaneous co-implicated completeness’ (to again quote William James).

FACT 8. Everything---yes, everything---is continuously changing and infinitely complex, causation being essentially non-linear interaction at all points in a ‘causal field’, that is, a complex relation where an event (‘situation’) acts upon a ‘field’ or context to produce a certain ‘effect’ (that is, a change in the field); in addition, all situations are caused and in turn bring about other situations.

FACT 9. Nothing---absolutely nothing---is constituted by or is dependent upon, nor can it be defined or explained by reference to, the relations it has to other things; things (‘terms’) and the relations between them are distinct. For example, the knower, the known, as well as the act of knowing, are separate, distinct and independent.

FACT 10. Facts are propositional in structure---that is, there is a logical, direct and coterminous relationship between any proposition that something is the case and the way things actually are.

FACT 11. We can and do have direct knowledge of actual (‘objective’) things---or, more correctly, situations (i.e. ‘facts’)---with each such situation being both complex and on the same level of reality as any other situation that occurs (there being only one level of reality).

FACT 12. It is only in propositions that we know---and can know---things at all, for it is the case that any situation is propositionally structured (i.e., something is predicated of some subject term).

FACT 13. Anything that can be true (or ‘real’) is ‘propositional’ in that something is stated to be the case. Further, every proposition is contingently (that is, not necessarily) true or false---‘logically there can be no alternative to ‘being’ and ‘not being’’ (to quote John Anderson [pictured above right, and below left]). That’s right. You see, no proposition is transparently true, because a statement that something is the case can be justified only by a statement that something else is not the case.

In short, there is a single way, mode or order of being---that of occurrence---namely, that which is conveyed when we say that a proposition is true. This one way of being---the so-called ‘propositional nature of reality’---consists of ordinary things, that is, ‘occurrences in space and time’ (also known as ‘states of affairs’ and ‘situations’). This one way of being (the ‘conditions of existence’) is that of the ‘situation,’ or fact---that is, something being the case in one space-time.

Are there philosophical objections to the above? Yes, of course. There are many different views, but I will tell you this. To date, I have not read any objection to any of the essential tenets of realism that has caused me to doubt the objective truth of the propositions I’ve set out above (albeit in a very summary, even crude, form)---and that is not because I am stubborn and close-minded. At the risk of sounding immodest, I say this---anyone who knows me well knows that is not the case.

Now, it necessarily follows from the above that every question---that is, every assertion that takes something to be the case in reality---is a straightforward (but not necessarily simple in the sense of easy-to-resolve) issue of truth or falsity, there being no different degrees or kinds of truth. 

Far too many students---and law students at that---would say to me, ‘There is no such thing as absolute truth,’ to which I would say, ‘Really, You have just shown there is, that there is at least one supposed absolute truth---the one you just espoused.’ You see, if there is no such thing as absolute truth, you cannot make a statement such as, ‘There is no such thing as absolute truth.’ Really.

I am not an absolutist, but because I refuse to be swayed by fads I am old-fashioned enough to affirm that there is such a thing as objective truth, namely, what is. I reject subjectivism and relativism. Not only do they result in epistemological anarchy---of which there is a helluva lot today---these systems of 'thought' are also otherwise contrary to the very logic of things. Truth is not relative to persons. Truth is what is. Ignorance and mistaken beliefs do nothing to make truth relative. When any proposition is taken to its logical conclusion, a question of fact---truth or falsity---is always reached. One always can get back to the objective distinction between something being the case and not being the case. For example, if I say, quite subjectively, 'The sky is for me blue', you may think quite differently. However, once I ask, 'Is the sky blue for you?', an objective issue is immediately raised. The question is whether it is true that the sky is blue for you, not whether it is true for you that the sky is blue for you.

Subjectivism and relativism assert that they sky may be blue for Wally, but may be green for Susan---and both can be right. My response to that? If a person believes or thinks the sky is, say, blue, then it is implicit in what they’re saying---and presumably in their belief or thinking---that there is something called the sky, and that there is also something called blue (or green, or whatever), and thus that there is something called the sky which may or may not be blue (or green, or whatever). Get the picture? In all cases---yes, all cases---we always get back to the objective distinction between something being the case and not being the case.

Sydney---and a BLUE sky. Yes, really!

I used the word ‘belief,’ because people---especially subjectivists and relativists---love to say, ‘Well, I believe the sky is blue, but it is open to you or anyone else to believe that it is green or red or whatever colour you believe.’ Yes, in the words of W S Gilbert, this disease means this--- ‘And I am right, and you are right, and all is right as right can be!’ We are all right, none of us is wrong, we are all equally precious, and we are all winners. Winners in what, I ask? A contest to determine who is the most stupid? ‘Oh, Ellis-Jones, you mustn’t say that. They’re all equally precious---and equally right. Look what you've done---you have made a student cry!’ Damn it, I will say it! In any event, what the hell has ‘belief’ got to do with any of this? I can still hear the voice of my old philosophy lecturer: ‘The sky is blue. The sky does not become any bluer because you believe it to be blue. Further, the proposition---the sky is blue---does not become any truer because you believe it to be true.’

One more thing. Here’s another problem with subjectivism and relativism. If things are as one believes or thinks them to be, then that implies---yes, implies---that each person, or (in the case of cultural relativism), each culture, is infallible in their judgments and opinions---that is, cannot err---and that also means that there can never be any real difference. Thus, if I think the sky is blue, and you think the sky is red, there is no disagreement or real contradiction. It is simply a case that ‘The sky is for me blue,’ and ‘The Sky is not for you blue.’ Those two propositions are not in contradiction to each other. Isn’t that wonderful? After all, we don’t want conflict or disagreement, do we? Rubbish, I say! Bring it on! I'm ready!

You may think I am a little dogmatic about all this, but am I? Who is the one who asserts infallibility---that people cannot err in their judgments and opinions? Not the objectivist or the realist, but the subjectivist and the relativist, of which there are too damn many these days. If only they would---think things through … logically!

To quote the immortal W S Gilbert again …

        I've got a little list---I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
         And who never would be missed---who never would be missed!

I kid you not. I never do. Never!

P.S. I still teach---but these days my students are medical practitioners, psychiatrists, and other mental health workers for the most part. Very few of them are afflicted with the disease referred to above. They tend to think things through. Interesting, that. IEJ.

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