Skip to main content

Theism assumes what it purports to explain

Theists posit God's agency to explain aspects of reality that must be assumed in order to posit God's agency: being, order, contingency. If we already have those, we have no need for God's agency - no need for an intelligent designer who creates, who wills.

"God's nature" is therefore better seen as... simply nature - after we peel away the mask of God that man has applied.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God and Nature

If nature is whatever isn't designed and executed by an intelligent agent, then for the Christian, nothing about the so-called natural world is actually natural, because it's all the product of intelligent design and execution. It's all "creation". So what is natural, by this definition of nature? Perversely, God Himself, who, as the personification of the ultimate, cannot be the product of design and execution.  God's nature represents the most crucial aspects of reality -  necessary eternal being and order. These attributes cannot be the products of intelligent design and execution because intelligent design and execution presuppose them. If the most crucial aspects of reality cannot be the products of intelligent design and execution, then why postulate an intelligent designer executing anything? Why not cut out the middle-man and see reality as the unfolding of nature's... nature? Instead of God's nature, why not simply speak of nature? And thereby...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where did reality come from?

A Christian thinker asked me: "where did reality come from?" It's absurd to ask where reality came from. I shall explain. If one supposes that reality came from somewhere, its origin must be either real or unreal. It's absurd to suppose that reality came from unreality. Consequently, reality must have come from something real. But hold on - if that origin was real - then it was also constitutive of reality - and therefore reality (in your scenario of reality "coming from somewhere") would have existed before it existed - which is equally absurd. Consequently, reality must not have come from anywhere. QED.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Bugs: a parable

Imagine that there are some bugs that live under the bark of a tree in a great forest. The bugs are tiny, and not especially long-lived, and have poor senses, but they're quite clever. They've managed to figure out the vaguest outlines of their tree and that their tree is growing. Some of the most clever bugs have extrapolated backwards and decided this means the tree originally came from a tiny speck they call "a seed". Some of the bugs believe this means that the seed must have been created and caused to sprout into a tree by an all powerful, all knowing and provident bug they call the Great Bug. Why else would the tree exist at all, let alone be so well suited to the lives of bugs? Some other bugs think there must be more trees, perhaps with bugs living in them too. Believers in the Great Bug scoff at these ideas, and shake their heads. Even if it were so, wouldn't that make the lives of bugs meaningless? This is at least an improvement over times past wh...
Post a Comment
Read more