You Can't Have It Both Ways in Metaphysics; Unless You Are Kristor, Of Course

11/3/2024

In his most recent post in our ongoing discussion, Kristor claims that I have misconstrued the eternal God of classical theism and eternity. I responded with the following comment:

You are confusing my apparent misconstrual with disagreement. I haven’t misinterpreted the eternal God of classical theism as temporal. I disagree with the assumption that the eternal God of classical theism is atemporal. The same applies to my other supposed misinterpretations of time, freedom, and the motive for Creation.

Concerning the post to which Kristor responded, I added:

My post demonstrates how the assumptions and assertions of classical theism become incoherent when the framework for said assumptions is removed. For example, an atemporal God becomes incoherent if one assumes the reality of time, which I do. God as the exclusive first cause becomes incoherent if God is not the exclusive first cause, and so forth.

Kristor, in turn, vehemently protested the approach I had taken:

You can’t talk about before and after in the life of the eternal God of classical theism, and argue from the absurdities that result from so doing, without implicitly presupposing that the eternal God of classical theism is temporal.

And to do that is to suppose that he is not the God of classical theism to begin with, but rather a god like Thor.

If there is before and after in the life of God, so that he could enjoy his perfection before he created (thus raising the question of why he created a world utterly superfluous to his perfect enjoyment) then he is temporal … and he is not the God that the classical theists are talking about, but a straw man and a misdirection and a confusion.

You can’t have it both ways. If you want to debunk the eternal God of classical theism, you’ll have to dispense with all the talk of before and after, and talk about the God of classical theism.

Kristor has raised a crucial point when it comes to discussing metaphysics. So, let’s take a moment and apply the same point to him:

You can’t talk about the non-omni qualities of the God of Romantic Christianity (for lack of a better way of putting it) and argue from the absurdities that result from so doing, without implicitly presupposing the God of Romantic Christianity is omni-everything and atemporal.

And to do that is to suppose that he is not the God of Romantic Christianity to begin with, but rather a god like the omni-everything, absolute God of classical theism.

If the Romantic Christian God is omni, atemporal, and a Trinity, then that God is omni-everything…and that God is not the God that Romantic Christians are talking about, but a straw man and a misdirection and a confusion.

You can’t have it both ways. If you want to debunk the non-omni God of Romantic Christianity, you’ll have to dispense with all the talk of omni, ex nihilo, absolute, and atemporal, and talk about the God of Romantic Christianity.

I bring this up because I want to make Kristor acutely aware of something he seems oblivious to.

He consistently exempts himself from the considerations he insists upon above, particularly when debunking the concept of God I or Dr. Charlton put forward. And when I say consistently, I mean for more than a decade in Bruce’s case.

Kristor expects me to debunk his concept of God solely on his terms while enjoying the privilege of not having to do the same when he debunks my concept of God.

Put another way, if I want to debunk the God of classical theism, I must do it within the parameters of classical theism.

Kristor, on the other hand, reserves the right to debunk the Romantic Christian God within the parameters of, you guessed it, classical theism.

I don’t know about you, but that seems like having it both ways. It also helps illuminate why our discussions about metaphysics never go anywhere.

You can’t have it both ways. Kristor is right, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

On that note, it would be great to see him apply that criterion to himself more vigorously and rigorously when discussing metaphysics.

17 Comments

bruce g charlton

11/4/2024 09:34:28

I regard the "trad-classical" refusal to discuss metaphysics (instead deflecting the conversation to second-order considerations, such as epistemology - *within" primary assumptions that are simply asserted to be necessarily correct) as a phenomenon that is primarily *psychological*.

Church (any church) Christianity is, IMO, in a Really bad way; Much worse than the most pessimistic evaluations I have seen that focus on statistics of rapid and accelerating decline in countable behaviours.

Even the devout are riven by bad faith and hypocrisy, which are very near the surface and go right to the bottom.

Part of this is that there are truly massive disagreements about fundamental matters within any church you could care to name - so that (e.g) the Roman Catholic church is riven by multi-level bitter disputes, and exclusionary accusations of apostasy, heresy, and damnation.

There is no "church line" on anything positive that is uncontradicted at the highest levels - often explicitly, but always implicitly.

Naturally, therefore, there is a strong temptation to achieve a pseudo-unity by encouraging RC members to gang-up (including with Eastern Orthodox and Protestants) against persons or groups that reject assumptions common to all the mainstream churches.

This creates a false sense of unity amidst centrifugal dispersion, and indeed metaphysical pseudo-coherence; meanwhile the decline and dissipation of Christianity accelerates, because its causes remain denied and unaddressed.

In other words, trad-orthodox Christians who fundamentally disagree with each other, and who (as a simple matter of fact, on a daily basis) Just Are picking and choosing their own path through already-massive and still-growing schisms and fissions within their own churches - all get a spurious sense of cohesion from attacking a common enemy.

In the context of what seems like increasing and irreversible collapse - this negatively-directed activity is not just tempting, but becomes psychologically essential to retain motivation and stave-off despair.

That's what Our metaphysics represents - it represents the threat of demotivation and despair; and the avoidance of this, by attacking a common enemy (i.e. a double-negative masquerading as a positive) becomes de facto the major religious practice.

I see this stance all over the internet among the trad-orthodox, and sometimes (you know who I mean!) this double-negative coping mechanism is extreme, overwhelmingly obvious, and almost monopolizes the religious impulse.

Church-led/ mediated Christianity just is not a viable option, here-and-now. Because there is no real "church" to lead, hence *genuine* obedience is impossible, therefore the actuality is one of individual discernment -- a situation which is either denied (as with trad-orthodox), or should be embraced as the basis of Christianity (Romantic Christianity).

The only way out would seem to be such a *complete* failure of the trad-orthodox, that it overcomes the fear of acknowledging its failure.

Only when people cease to attain even the paltry cohesion and motivation of fear-induced negation and gang-aggression, may they be compelled to expose and examine the assumptions that have led to this impasse.

However, the more usual response to a collapse of trad-orthodox assumptions is to leave Christianity altogether (which is, of course, short-term expedient), take advantage of the opportunities for immediate pleasure, careerism, wealth - and take steps Not to think about the future; instead to immerse in the present by intoxications and distractions, until it all becomes too much when suicide is sought.

(And self-chosen damnation ensues.)

The stakes are That high, IMO; and most people (including most self-identified Christians) are trapped by their dogmatic assumptions and short-termist *psychological* desires, into being active agents and accelerants of the collapse of Christianity - i.e. a refusal to learn the spiritual lessons of mortal life, and the rejection of salvation.

Francis Berger

11/4/2024 19:18:22

@ Bruce - Yes, I agree. I've often wondered why any discussion of metaphysics inevitably and almost immediately veered into epistemology and/or ontology. Some psychological block does seem to be in play, especially when you factor in the intelligence factor. It takes a certain level of intelligence to discuss philosophy, which leads me to believe that the "I just don't get where you are coming from" stance is insincere. Granted, it may not be a fully conscious form of insincerity, but remains insincerity all the same.

Regarding deference to authority/tradition, I sympathize with those who say they don't trust their intuition enough to follow it and, thus, defer to authority/tradition. At the same time, the stance is a denial of something that they are already doing -- personally choosing/discerning while claiming to submit to authority/tradition entirely.

11/4/2024 12:08:40

@Frank - I should add that I regard the trad-orthodox blockage on understanding "our" POV as *psychological* - because several of those involved are plenty clever enough and have sufficient powers of concentration to understand what is relatively a very simple, concise and concrete set of metaphysical assumptions, and to draw conclusions from these (and their own) assumptions.

That this does not happen (over a long timescale of years) is what indicates to me that the block is psychological.

11/5/2024 07:18:44

@ Bruce - I don't understand the frequent oppositional engagement. I rarely, if ever, comment on trad-ortho blog discussions of freedom, God, Creation, etc. I read them, quietly disagree, and move on. For example, I have never commented on any of K's philosophical skeleton key posts (what would the point be?) or referred to them directly on this blog. Yet trad-orthos like K insist on oppositional engagement that never actually engages with the POV being opposed.

11/6/2024 07:26:10

Turns out I have referred to his skeleton keys posts once. His most recent one in which he discusses a post of mine.

Kristor link

11/5/2024 07:57:25

Francis, I hate to break it to you, but your attempted reciprocation does not carry through. I have never treated the perpetual god you advocate as eternal, whereas you have persistently treated the eternal God of Christianity as temporal. I have been careful to distinguish between temporal being and eternal being, whereas you have consistently conflated them, treating eternity as if it is a perpetual series of temporal events. My critique of the notion of the perpetual god in a perpetual world of similar perpetual beings – call that notion The Perpetuity, for short – is not founded on a prior supposition of the truth of a contrary – orthodox Christianity – but on the incoherence of the notion of The Perpetuity, taken on its own terms.

The Perpetuity fails the test of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and therefore of thought: strictly speaking, it is inconceivable. It fails the test of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It treats God as one being among countless others of his sort: he is not even their lord, indeed not even a Big Man among them, let alone their creator. It treats the order of things as the personal idiosyncratic project of one god among billions (or maybe googol; or maybe infinitely many). It does not explain why any of the other gods would (or even could) pay attention to him. It fails to explain the origin, source, or basis of goodness, truth, beauty, freedom, love; of logic, math, reason, being, life, relations; of time, change, permanence. It understands nothing as necessary, so its explanations are all unfounded, bottomless; in The Perpetuity, it’s turtles all the way down.

There is another problem: the Bible radically and repeatedly contradicts The Perpetuity. So there’s that.

11/6/2024 07:31:05

@ Kristor - "Those arguments have never been refuted. Indeed, *they have never even been answered.* Why have they never been answered?"

That's not true. Bruce and I have answered many of your arguments, Bruce far more and for far longer than I have; however, you reject those answers as answers, in the same way you reject some questions as questions.

The reason why you reject those answers as answers is because you insist on defining what qualifies as valid argumentation. You hold that the God of classical theism is defendable and valid within the parameters of logical argumentation; hence, all other interpretations of God must meet the same criteria to be coherent or valid.

I can’t speak for Bruce, but I reject that. You are working from within parameters that exclude many possibilities Bruce and I put forth.

For example, your whole system is calibrated against the possibility of uncreated freedom. Yet you expect me to prove uncreated freedom within that system. There are other ways of thinking about God. This is what I mean by talking about vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream.

Nevertheless, I have foolishly attempted to answer some of your questions within those parameters, but no answer satisfies you. It’s all circular reasoning, begging the question, contradicting some saint or other, going against the Law of Sufficient reason, etc.

You also accuse us of all sorts of fallacies yet appear blinded to the overarching fallacy upon which you utterly depend — the appeal to AUTHORITY fallacy.

Anyway, I try again, and you return with more of the same. After a while, I lose track of what we are arguing about because you throw so many things into the discussion. It becomes like wading through a complex legal document.

Forgive my presumptuousness but you appear to be obsessed with being able to answer every possible objection to your understanding of God, yet most of your answers are not really answers at all — just recycled theology and philosophy, none of which is uncontroversial.

Yet you act as if the framework you use and the sources you cite are infallible/uncontroversial and that there is some established consensus within the Church and philosophy; however, this is not the case, as demonstrated by that stupid link I included in one of your posts.

When I suggest God may be temporal, you label it a misdirection; however, some of the philosophers mentioned in that link use the same argumentative framework and present coherent arguments for the existence of a temporal God, all while adhering to orthodox definitions of God. Your reaction? It’s wrong because they are modern and have turned away from God.

Another thing you do is define what counts as valid for argument. Well, motivation is a big part of my metaphysical assumptions about God and Creation. You reject that as a non-question within the framework of your reasoning. Thus, the only answer you can provide is a non-answer.

That demonstrates that the classical/conventional mode of reasoning about the existence and nature of God contains some serious limitations.

We are dealing with metaphysical assumptions here, which at the end of the day are unprovable. They can be argued into coherence, but contrary to what you insist upon, that argued coherence does not actually prove anything beyond the coherence of the arguments.

Speaking of argumentation, your rhetoric is suspect. For example, you rely heavily on definitional tautologies to persuade and impress. You structure a lot of your arguments in such a way that they can't be satisfactorily negated -- not because of evidence or assumptions, but because of the way the statement is structured. This may be fun for you, but I find it tiresome.

For example, I speak of uncreated freedom, you speak of God creating actual beings. You then say actual beings are free. That's just your definition. It says nothing about reality. And that's just one example.

The same goes for your whole eternity spiel. You have one definition for it, but that's just your definition. That doesn't mean that that is what eternity is. You then use this sort of thing to trip up those you argue against, as you have tripped me up on occasion.

As for metaphysics, you don't really do it. You immediately veer into epistemology (How would I know? How would it be understandable?) and/or ontology (focusing on features of being rather than the fundamentals).

And all of that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Worst of all, I am forced to write these ridiculously long, wall-of-text comments in an attempt to draw attention to all of this.

Kristor

11/6/2024 23:13:51

<blockquote>You hold that the God of classical theism is defendable and valid within the parameters of logical argumentation; hence, all other interpretations of God must meet the same criteria to be coherent or valid.

I can’t speak for Bruce, but I reject that. You are working from within parameters that exclude many possibilities Bruce and I put forth.</blockquote>

Francis, read what you have here written. By it, you reject logical validity; you refuse to be bound by the laws of coherent thought. You reserve to yourself the prerogative of propounding whatever notion you like, no matter how incoherent or oxymoronic it be, and no matter how much it disagrees with experience, scripture, tradition, or common sense.

Think about that. Is it not clear to you that your rejection of the laws of thought thrusts you into the depths of the solipsist chaos that, on your account, preceded the inception of creation by the God who is the source of his world’s order – which includes the laws of thought of creatures participant therein?

If you succeed in your rejection the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the laws of logic, you are incapable of reason, and cannot be reasoned with. There is in that case nothing to be said to or for you, other than prayers on your behalf. So I shall not endeavor to refute or correct any statement of your comment; to do so would be bootless.

But I shall pray for you. And I hold out hope that you may one day rediscover your faith and trust in the Lógos, and accept his suzerainty; for, it seems to me that success in the rejection of reason – in the rejection of the Word, and thus of the Name – must be in the final analysis impossible: to utter any proposition – even the proposition that no proposition is reasoned – is to presuppose that it can be reasonable. Even the demons believe. They are wise enough still to tremble.

11/5/2024 07:58:58

The conjecture that I am intellectually disabled by some psychological defect due to my orthodoxy is fantastic, risible. It is an ad hominem response – a *fallacious* response, NB, of which honest careful thinkers should feel ashamed – to reasonable arguments I have offered. Those arguments have never been refuted. Indeed, *they have never even been answered.* Why have they never been answered? Why has nobody ever tried to defend The Perpetuity against Kalam, e.g.? Why is it that, rather than just simply *proving my arguments fail,* you and Bruce have instead retreated into accusing me of intellectual bad faith? Why is it that, rather than showing logically that classical metaphysics is mistaken, you have instead gone on about my obsolete Medieval consciousness, that prevents me from just seeing that Christian orthodoxy is wrong, and that The Perpetuity is right? Why have you not demonstrated that your metaphysics must logically be true?

Sheesh. It’s pathetic.

You guys are both smart. You can do better, I’m sure of it.

But I doubt you will. Instead, I bet you’ll repeat the notion that because I don’t have the New Age Consciousness of our modern day, I just don’t understand The Perpetuity, or won’t, because I’m scared.

That dog won’t hunt: I was once a convinced Process theist! I thought creatio ex nihilo is nuts, that reality is democratic, that time is basic, that God is subject to time, that he is no more than primus inter pares, that Jesus was just a Great Moral Teacher, no more than a man, at most an avatar like Krishna, probably survived the Crucifixion, might have gone to France with Magdalen and had kids, the early Church invented the Resurrection and suppressed the Gnostics and the Collyridians – the whole shooting match. And I reached that position by thinking and studying *really hard* – as I thought – for years. But I kept thinking and reading, and eventually I discovered that Whitehead – like Aristotle, Augustine, Dionysius, Anselm, and Aquinas – was actually a Neoplatonist, through and through; and that classical metaphysics transcends and elegantly subsumes process metaphysics (and paganism) without rupture. So, it just isn’t true that I am too emotionally vulnerable to entertain alternative metaphysical proposals. I’ve been doing it all my life.

11/5/2024 20:03:32

Aw, come on, Kristor. No need to get all huffy. It's not as if you are immune from making ad hominem responses. You once called Bruce and I enemies of Christianity. We let it slide.

11/6/2024 22:15:42

That was not an ad hominem argument. I did not suggest that you or Bruce are somehow intellectually disabled or psychologically defective, so that you embraced your notions irrationally, which in turn weighs against their veracity. I argued, i.e., not that you are heretic and therefore this or that among your notions are heretical. That would have been to deploy the ad hominem fallacy. I argued per contra that some of the notions you propagate are objectively heretical, forasmuch as they contradict dogma. Who propagates a heresy is heretic by definition. By that propagation, he scandalizes the faithful, inclining them to defect with him from communion with the Body of Christ, thus obstructing their participation of the Mind of Christ, and increasing their risk of damnation. And to do all that is to act as an enemy of the Body and Mind of Christ, willy nilly.

You wonder why I controvert these topics with you guys? That’s why. Damnation: of readers, and in the limit, of you both. I like and admire both of you a great deal, and would rather you made it to Heaven than not.

It’s no good to object that these recondite topics are merely a matter of private opinion, and so are no big deal: that, after all, readers are free to stay in Church and chant their mistaken creeds if they like (the poor fools, deluded by false or premodern consciousness) and by them irrationally form their lives (Dawkins says the same); why then get all het up about them?

Well, in the first place, by publishing them, you make them public; and in the second, it is a Very Big Deal to vitiate the faith of the faithful, thus to promote their apostasy (whether or not intentionally), and so worsen their chances at everlasting life in Heaven. It is like posting essays online that suggest fentanyl is cool. Moreover (as Dawkins has recently noticed), the abandonment of Christianity is not merely an inconsequential private matter: as apostasy propagates, it has disastrously vicious social and cultural sequelae. The post-Christian world looks categorically, profoundly worse than the pagan world that preceded it; for, paganism having been long already utterly moribund and incredible to moderns, it has not even the benefit of pagan morality. It is totally unmoored from morality, reason, truth; from reality, from life.

I use the present tense because, despite the fact that a quarter of the world is still Christian, the character of the post-Christian culture bereft even of pagan cults is already horribly clear in peoples among whom apostasy has spread. When you derogate the Church or her dogma, then whether you mean to do so or not, you promote that insane anti-Christian, anti-human culture and cult of death. Where Christ wanes, Moloch waxes. It’s a deadly serious matter. It is serious as Hell.

11/5/2024 08:31:14

@Kristor - I stand by what I wrote (but Not by your summary of it!).

Importantly: Not only is there nothing wrong with ad hominem arguments (as such), they are absolutely vital to wise and good behaviour.

In other words, the nature and motives of the person or other being we are interacting with, is overwhelmingly important.

These motives etc. can "only" be inferred (not observed) yet motives etc. Must be inferred, if we are to evaluate and discern validly.

Everybody knows this, and everybody does it! (I mean, everybody takes into account the nature and motives of the people they interact with, when evaluating what they say). Those who try Not to take into account the person making an argument/ statement etc, merely distort, and often end by inverting, valid understanding.

The point is not to refrain from ad hominem; but to do it as well as possible (ie. honestly and from our own best nature; and being open to further learning).

11/7/2024 08:00:57

@ Kristor - "You hold that the God of classical theism is defendable and valid within the parameters of logical argumentation; hence, all other interpretations of God must meet the same criteria to be coherent or valid."

"By it, you reject logical validity; you refuse to be bound by the laws of coherent thought. You reserve to yourself the prerogative of propounding whatever notion you like, no matter how incoherent or oxymoronic it be, and no matter how much it disagrees with experience, scripture, tradition, or common sense."

Uh, no . . . allow me to explain.

Yes, I do reject logical validity for the simple reason that a logically valid argument does not need to have true premises or a true conclusion to be valid.

What I embrace is soundness -- an argument whose premises are TRUE and whose conclusion is TRUE.

And I think that touches upon why I find nearly everything you say and expound upon so "problematic", to use your own term.

Nearly all of what you expound upon is logically valid but barely any of it is sound.

So, contrary to what you say, rejecting logical validity does not make me incapable of reason or coherent thought.

I won't bother wading into how logic is secondary to assumptions and intuition.

However, I will say this: obsessing over the "philosophy of God" as we have been doing draws one closer to philosophy, not God. At its core, it's a miserable business.

11/7/2024 11:16:34

@ Kristor - To be clear, I am talking about rejecting logical validity as it is frequently applied (misapplied) to metaphysical assumptions, not logical validity in general. And since we are talking about assumptions, logically sound arguments are difficult to come by. Logic is useful, but it has limits, limits that are often ignored or downplayed.

11/9/2024 20:03:45

When you wrote that you reject “the parameters of logical argumentation,” I took you to mean that you reject the parameters of logical argumentation – all of them, at least when it comes to talking about metaphysics: validity, soundness, the Law of Noncontradiction, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the whole nine yards. It is a relief to learn that you accept soundness, at least, even if you reject validity, and with it all argumentation, thus all hope of demonstrating the truth of your own metaphysical hunches. An invalid argument from true premises even to a true conclusion is but a tinkling cymbal, signifying nothing.

Despite declaring that you are off the hook when it comes to logical validity, you have still a job of work to do in ushering your intuitions over the thresholds of the Law of Noncontradiction and the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

What is more, in prescinding from logical validity, you render yourself impotent to demonstrate that any of my premises or conclusions are false, or that my arguments are unsound. All you can then do is declare that you find them unattractive. That’s not nothing, but it’s close.

11/10/2024 09:29:59

@ Kristor - You are missing my overarching point. It is very simple. Read it carefully.

There is NO logical proof for God. None. Whatsover.

Arguments for God? Sure. But the vast majority, if not all, arguments are little more than word games, semantic chicanery, and endless qualification.

This is because proof of God can only be found at the level of primary thinking and direct knowledge. Logic is secondary thinking. Secondary thinking is symbolic in nature.

So, whatever success I may have in ushering my intuition over this law or that will accomplish nothing as far as you are concerned because you will inevitably work very hard to find problem with it and then argue against it using another law or argument because LOGIC.

Regardless, I'm going to so some ushering.

11/12/2024 02:47:00

"There is NO logical proof for God. None. Whatsover."

Can you prove that? O wait, no, you can’t; for you have rejected logical validity. The most you can do therefore is say that you find the arguments for God unconvincing; but that’s no more than your opinion, and it is all you have to go on, all that you can propose.

Given your rejection of logic – and make no mistake, to reject validity *just is* to reject logic per se – I can understand how it could seem to you that there are no logical proofs of God; can see how to you all such proofs – indeed, all proofs whatever, of any proposition – would seem like mere word games. Math, for example: it's just a matter of opinion …

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

You Can't Have It Both Ways in Metaphysics; Unless You Are Kristor, Of Course

Leave a Reply.

Archives