Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Lecture 4
Imagine that God suspended all his activity for and specific period of time; how would this appear to us? Assume at first that naturalism (God's direct activity ceased after creation; effects are caused by the nature that God gave each thing) is the correct description of the world; then assume an occasionalist (all causation is directly God's will) perspective. Could the suspension of God's activity for a time help us decide between naturalism and supernaturalism (Hint: Think about how we sense.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
These are interesting premises to consider. for me, they bring up more questions than answers, but that's part of the fun of "discourse" (and "this course" as well). So, is evolution allowed as part of naturalism? I'm not clear on what supernaturalism is in this context. Are there those who think that God would indeed set all this up then just stand back and watch what happens? That sounds like God the Scientist, not the "all-loving" God that most religions endorse.
ReplyDeleteFor further explanation, lecture eight talks about methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. Methodological naturalism holds that we should appeal to naturalism as an explanation of causes. Philosophical naturalism mandates that nature is all there is. Methodological naturalism allows a god, whereas philosophical naturalism does not.
ReplyDeleteI would think that evolution would be allowed from a methodological naturalistic standpoint, if that is a quality that god gave things. (I say god, what I mean is a divine being, i.e. God, Goddess, Mother Nature). If god created things to be static, then no evolution would have happened; however, I do not believe that this is mandated in philosophical naturalism. However, in philosophical naturalism, no god exists, and so evolutionary progression is necessary.
By the way, a god creating "miracles" would be the "empathy" of the god of which most religions speak. A miracle is "a special event outside of Nature," according to 13th century thinkers. In addition, causation has two levels "Primary," or causation directly from god, and "Secondary," or causation from things made by god.
To answer the question of the prompt: if I assume a naturalistic viewpoint, and god stops all his action, I sense no change. The world goes on as if nothing has happened, because god has no day-to-day role in the world.
If I assume a supernaturalist viewpoint, I again would have to say that I would notice no change if god stopped his action in the world for some amount of time. This is because if god leaves, nothing happens, because all happenings have a primary cause. Since nothing happens, the world, including me, is “paused”. If I am “paused” and then started again, along with the rest of the world, no change is noticeable.