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Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods - part 3

Are defences of religion just pseudo-profundity?

Issue 44, 31st January 2016
| Philosopher of religion at the University of London. Books include The War for Children’s Minds and Believing Bullshit.
2,132 words
Read time: approx. 11 mins

 

Read part 1: Stephen Law on the allegiance of philosophy in the battle between science and religion.
Read part 2: Anglican theologian John Milbank's forthright response to Stephen Law.
Read part 4: Milbank argues that, when it comes to metaphysics, paradox is inevitable.


Thanks to John Milbank for responding to my opening piece on God and science. I initially suggested many God beliefs are empirically – and even scientifically – refutable in the sense that we might establish beyond reasonable doubt, on the basis of observation, that the belief is false. I gave three examples: belief there's a God that answers petitionary prayer; belief that there's a God who created the world 6,000 years ago; and belief there's a God that's omnipotent and omni-malevolent. I then suggested that, for similar reasons, we can reasonably rule out a god that's omnipotent and omni-benevolent.

John rejects that last suggestion and defends the view that his particular omnipotent, omni-benevolent God is indeed off-limits to any sort of empirical or scientific refutation. So what is his counter-argument?

Stephen Law
Issue 44, 31st January 2016

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Cornell Anthony 2 February 2016

Atheism is more in line with magic since atheists have no choice but to suggest that nonconscious reality somehow created conscious beings

The problem with this is that consciousness is a property, and Law would have to concede that reality can create properties that it once lacked.

Now if a godless reality is supposed to be eternal and never "came into being" then how does a property of an eternal reality such as consciousness come into being when an eternity has already passed us by? You have a godless reality with no beginning or end, so you'd expect all properties of said godless reality to exist alongside it, but if one concedes the point that consciousness always existed then you are commiting to Theism, since you are saying that a necessary consciousness exists.

If a Godless reality is supposed to be finite in time, then how did something come from nothing at all?

Voice of 2 February 2016

Dr.Law's stand on Logic and 'empirical' should be considered as very naive. Not only he, but majority of Westerners and ones from USA keep this typical position of 'objective observers' of reality; a stand that presupposes man as an ideal 'observer'.

I realize that, there exists no accepted logical or scientific method, or epistemology at present other than that of what West and USA consider as ultimate and final. But, remember, it was the four-elements theory that mankind used to keep as truth few centuries ago, from where she jumped to the atom and energy centered stuff of reality. So, it won't be any great wonder, if the existing methods and dogmas also turn out-modeled tomorrow.

What needs immediate rethinking is about the dogma that an OBJECTIVE reality,irrespective of the observer exists. Kindly share this peer-reviewed article that questions it:http://argumentsagainstscientificpositivism.blogspot.in/

The next is about our discipline of Logic. Bertrand Russel said, one can have knowledge on each word in a sentence without least knowledge about the content of the whole sentence ! Means, it is not about content, but simply about form ! Every men of mind must try to critically grasp,what the following blog talks about our faculty of reason:http://philosopherskorner.blogspot.in/
If man understand what our faculty of Reason really is, many of our hard-dogmas on Logic will evaporate !

Richard Morgan 2 February 2016

. "For the world appears to contain immense quantities of agony that are pointless from a divine perspective." I am wondering how you are able to make any claims at all about the "divine perspective", given that you are an atheist, Stephen.
You would need to reformulate that to read, "For the world appears to contain immense quantities of agony that are pointless from the perspective of the God that I have imagined based on my understanding of what theists appear to believe."