Pythagorean Quote

Life is like a festival; just as some come to the festival to compete, some to ply their trade, but the best come as spectators, so in life the slavish men go hunting for fame or gain, the philosophers for truth.
---Pythagoras

Antony Flew, Atheism

In his article, “Theology and Falsification,” Antony Flew poses a question that asks what is required for someone to disprove the existence of God. The basis, or foundation, of such a question is formulated in his belief that to know the meaning of the negation of an assertion is to know the positive meaning of the assertion. He forms this qualification on the back of a previous belief, namely, that “to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying that such and such is not the case.” Yet, one must ask the question, what is the relationship between the belief of the person asserting and the assertion itself? But for now, to a certain extent, we must say that Flew is correct. When someone asserts that they live in Paris, France, and it became known that in fact, they had actually lived in London, England, then we would say that the assertion, they live in Paris, France was one of two things: either they never lived in Paris, in which case they lied (Flew), or they recently moved from Paris, in which case the assertion, while once true, no longer ceases to be true (Nietzsche). Now, Flew would have us believe that in the case of the existence of God, when we say such an assertion, we necessarily rule out the assertion there is no God. While this is undoubtedly true, it is not the same as our above assertion that someone who lives Paris actually does not live in Paris, as to disprove God’s existence would require evidence unavailable to us. If we were to disprove the assertion that someone lives in Paris we would go to the facts, we would look up names in a telephone book, perhaps investigate on the internet. But when we set out to disprove the existence of God, we no longer have easily reachable tools at our discretion that target the belief. Instead, we use what is at hand, perhaps an argument from the problem of evil, as Flew does in his article. But in asserting an argument against God, such as the problem of evil, we have to ask, what actually have we refuted? Have we refuted belief in God, or simply an understanding of God, which may or may not be accurate? The death by a thousand qualifications (which is supposed to lead us to a type of evidentialist agnosticism) says less about our belief in God, and says more about the one attempting to understand, through analogy, an understanding of God. Would we say that belief in evolution also dies the death of a thousand qualifications when we explain why certain features (which seemingly have no usage) still remain in certain animals, or would we simply say that our understanding of evolution is ever growing, ever changing? Or, perhaps, qualifications of something are only a problem when the object of study is not empirically verifiable, and thus the evidence not scientifically determined? If so, once again, the problem is not qualification, but the criterion for adjudicating justified true belief, in which case Flew should hardly be surprised that any positive ontological statement of God dies the death of a thousand qualifications when thrown into the logical positivist’s waste bucket. Rather, the very complexity of God requires such a distinction. It seems Flew makes a conflation, namely belief in and understanding of. Disproving an understanding of says nothing of its belief in. This is not to say that there is no relationship between understanding and belief, rather there must be if we are indeed reasonable creatures. Yet, the relationship between them is not like a balloon tethered to a pole, where if only we cut loose an understanding of God, the whole notion of God floats away. Rather, if those qualifications about God are correct (and Flew presents no reason why they should not be), then we should not be surprised that cutting away at understandings of God is like Sisyphus eternally pushing his boulder, it’s a process of eternal frustration with no purpose. Or, is Flew right, and ought we to stop believing in evolution because our understanding of it has led to a thousand qualifications?

Luther and The Foundation of Protestantism

"Respondeo non ut Aristoteles: Cytharisando fit bonus cytharaedus, bene operando fit bonus, iuste faciendo fit iuste. Haec enim valent foro physico et mundo, sed non apud Deum. Nam coram Deo in hac nostra corrupta natura nemo fit iustus iuste agendo, sed iustus a Deo pronunciatus iusta facit et bene operando operatur."

Here is the part about Luther's justification bringing righteousness. But notice it is only after we have been declared righteous by God, we have done nothing ourselves. This needs to be seen as a direct assault against the Church's position that we are sacramentally imbued with an indeliable mark. Moreover, there is no change in the person via declaration, the change is "in alio ad caelum" or assumed in heaven. This needs to be seen as an assault on the Church's position that there is also a visible Church, not merely an invisible Church. Here we can see the foundation forming of Protestantism's complete individualism, lack of sacramental change, lack of salvific participation, and rejection of habitual virtues (i.e. virtues that are natural and not supernatural). Its a house of cards, you take down the bottom the whole thing collapses.

DiNoia, Postmodern Thomism and its Failures

DiNoia finds several interesting roles for the existence of God which intend to remove the typical rejections they receive from typically modern critiques, such as the Kantian undercutting of metaphysics. DiNoia argues that one role for traditional arguments, which can be found even in Thomas Aquinas and his “Five Ways,” is that these arguments should be understood as internal expressions of the ecclesial life, and not as rigid apologetics that ought to be used to combat modern critiques. For example, Thomas’ “Five Ways,” are not merely apologetic but also, “Rather, such arguments function to locate Christian worship, nurture, practice, and belief on the widest possible conceptual map: the God who is adored, proclaimed, and confessed in the Christian Church is none other than the cause of the world.” Hence, DiNoia places the Thomistic arguments for God in what we might now call an existential horizon, as an internal expression of concepts that bring to life the internal world of the liturgy to the real world of causality. Another role that traditional arguments for the existence of God can have, according to DiNoia, is also found in Thomas’ work, namely his use of analogical relations. The appeal of such relations, as I understand it, is that it uses a semantic framework which no longer speaks in what is perceived as univocal and absolute language (although this seems to be a caricature of medieval thought), and instead embraces a more nuanced approach that keeps in mind the limitless gulf between created and creator, and hence between object and subject. One can see the appeal of this to a postmodern audience, as it directly appeases a hermeneutical horizon that seeks a larger role for enculturation and subjectivity, and distresses the more ontological and objective role of arguments. With this said, one can still ask the question, is this “postmodern-friendly” role for Thomas’ arguments really what Thomas himself had in mind? If not, and I think there is good reason to question if it is, then using postmodernism’s own caution for the subjective context of place and situation, one would assume that such a re-appropriation of Thomas’ work undercuts his own historicality and neglects the very subjectivity that such a postmodern approach seeks to preserve.